When Freedom is the Question… was published on September 10, and we had a book launch that night at our home-away-from-home, Pilsen Community Books, in conversation with Eve Ewing. We traveled to Women and Children First, Seminary Coop, The Wooden Shoe in Philadelphia, Book and Puppet in Easton, PA, Riff Raff in Providence, Firestorm in Asheville, NC, Red Emma’s in Baltimore, Busboys and Poets in DC, the PIT (Property is Theft!!) in Brooklyn, and more. I read at public libraries, coffee shops, and Movement venues like Haymarket House, Hasta Muerte, and The James Connelly Social Club. A couple of the events were taped, one at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY where I was in conversation with the legendary thinker and activist Barbara Smith, co-author of the Combahee River Collective statement, and one at La Pena in Oakland where I was in conversation with Cat Brooks, organizer, activist, and KPFA radio host---Under the Tree will drop those spicy conversations in the future. I was honored and often awed to be in conversation with several other powerful comrades and dazzling friends: Lisa Lee, Danaka Katovich, Alice Kim, Damon Williams, Jacqui Lyden, Daniel Kisslinger, Martha Biondi, Adam Bush, James Michael MacDonald, Jeff Jones, Martha Swan, and more.

The word “racism” can apply to a specific person or to the social structure, and in our hyper-individualistic culture, the word most commonly devolves to a singular individual who did something obviously prejudiced: Cliven Bundy, the Nevada cattle rancher, Amy Cooper, the New York person who called the cops on a bird-watcher who’d asked her to keep her dog on a leash. Racism is this or that person or particular act or behavior, and it means“bigoted, backward, stupid, and offensive.” But since I’m not backward and bigoted and stupid like them, “I’m not racist.” Convenient for white liberals, but not helpful in repairing the harm. We dive into that wreckage with the brilliant thinker, writer, and teacher, Janine de Novais who explores and engages human liberation as a cultural project. Her book, Brave Community: Teaching for a Post-Racist Imagination, illuminates practices that confront racism and empower and edify everyone involved.

This is the country we live in…no doubt about it: white nationalists well-organized and rising; a fascist in the white house surrounded by his loyal Renfields; a preannounced genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza underway, funded and fueled by our taxes; raging, racialized police violence unchecked; capitalist-induced climate collapse on full display; fragile and anemic democratic institutions on life support; religious authoritarianism on the rise; women’s bodily integrity under sustained assault. The day after the recent election, the 10 richest Americans added $64 billion to their personal wealth, and extreme right-wing para-militaries armed up. The overlapping crises threaten to overwhelm us. We’re joined in conversation with Davarian Baldwin, a leading historian and cultural critic from Trinity College, and David Stovall, engaged scholar and legendary teacher/activist from the University of Illinois at Chicago, to reckon with the wreckage, and to discuss where we might go from here.