On Sunday, Nov. 3rd from 1-3 pm, author, educator and activist Bill Ayers will be speaking at the Huntington Woods Rec Center as a special guest of the Huntington Woods Peace Group co-hosted by the Book Beat. Ayers’ will present his new book When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation.The Huntington Woods Rec Center is located at 26325 Scotia, Huntington Woods, MI 48070. Phone: 248.541.3030, or Book Beat at (248) 968-1190
Blending history and political theory and weaving in examples from literature, social movements, and his personal life, this book is a useful resource and primer for those interested in fighting for social justice. Guided by questions like what is freedom?, how do we get free?, and what are the freedom dreams that encourage us and drive us forward?, esteemed activist Bill Ayers explores the concept of freedom in eight essays.
“In the US, ‘freedom’ has become a dollar-store word—cheap, stripped of its real meaning. Not for Bill Ayers. He knows freedom is dear, precious, and always unfinished. These lively conversational essays take us on a journey through freedom struggles—past, present, and future—toward freedom’s destination: abolition.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“In combining his decades-long experience as an activist with his impressive erudition, Bill Ayers’s most recent book offers us the best possible framework for formulating the central questions of our time and for seeking answers with the most transformative potential.”
—Angela Davis
“For over fifty years, as an activist, an educator, a writer, and a mentor, Bill Ayers has been a freedom fighter determined to change the world for the better. In his newest book, When Freedom Is the Question . . . , his wit, wisdom, and passion for justice offer an eloquent illumination of the challenges and opportunities facing social movements today. In its pages, we find history lessons, hard truths, and poetic inspiration. Read it and resist!”
—Barbara Ransby, historian, writer, activist, and author of Making All Black Lives Matter
“As revolution embodied, Bill Ayers is proof that our historical task is never to be abandoned.”
—Tongo Eisen-Martin, poet laureate of San Francisco
“Bill Ayers is a lifelong freedom fighter, teacher, and truth teller. His decades of fearless advocacy for the downtrodden stem from a deep well of compassion and laser-sharp revolutionary analysis. His wisdom and insight are on full display here.”
—Tom Morello, justice activist and guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and Prophets of Rage
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an engaged scholar and a peace and social justice activist who has written extensively about social justice and freedom, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is a former vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association, and a former member of the executive committee of the Faculty Senate at UIC.
His books include, When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation (Beacon Press); Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto (Haymarket Books); Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom (Beacon Press); A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press); Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Beacon Press); Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident (Beacon Press); On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited (Teachers College Press); About Becoming a Teacher (Teachers College Press); Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice (Teachers College Press); The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives (Teachers College Press); To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press) which was named Book of the Year by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography; with Ryan Alexander-Tanner, To Teach: The Journey, in Comics (Teachers College Press); with Kevin Kumashiro, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall, Teaching Toward Democracy: Educators as Agents of Change (Paradigm); with Rick Ayers, Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Commitment in the Classroom (Teachers College Press); with Bernardine Dohrn, Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press); and with Crustal Laura and Rick Ayers, “You can’t fire the bad ones!” And 18 other myths about teachers, teachers’ unions, and public education (Beacon Press).
He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago with Bernardine Dohrn, his partner, co-conspirator, and comrade for over 50 years.