Racially integrated community on the south side, and i knew of the civil rights struggles. There is an idealized view of the Family Vacation. Families are not like that anymore. A Family Vacation now might be three generations. It might be having grandma along. As a grandma now, i hope that is true. It might be unmarried couple or a same sex couple. Now there are places they can go and not be turned away. Theres an interracial couple or a single mom with kids. I think its our idea of family have become more flexible. I hope and it seems to me that places are opening up. If you go on a vacation with your one child, to me, thats a Family Vacation. You are creating family time. You dont have to look like ours he and harriet to have a good Family Vacation. For more information on book tv recent visit and the mammy other destinations, go to cspan. Org cities tour. The use of the word manifesto, why. I liked it because its an attempt to write a clarion call. The attempt is to say, all these issues that we debate in this country, theyve been framed incorrectly or they been framed in a way that narrows our landscape. I wanted to write a pamphlet type book that took big issues that i care about and where i think are in the majority of public opinion. I dont think im a barricaded minority with some weird outlier out ideas. I think im in the majority. So what i wanted to do was take it out of the frame thats been given to us to make it kind of in the form of a manifesto, this this is what were fighting for. I wanted to say lets just take one example, healthcare. The debate is obamacare or the way its always been. I reject that. I want free healthcare for all. I want to break the reality we get trapped in an the framing of issues that i think is wrong. Schools is something that i am passionate about. The framing of the debate as those who want to privatize and those who like the status quo. I reject that. I hate the status quo in public education, but my answer is not to go in the direction of Corporate School reform. Thats why the book was written. Its a short book, its a punchy book, its a manifest that you contact up on the door of the executioner. Thats kind of where i wanted to go which is whats the Historical Context of the word manifesto. To me at something that you put a nail in the door of the king who has been running roughshod over the people and you post the manifesto on the door and its both a signal to those who want a more humane and liberated future and its also a signal to the one percent or the kings realty that the people are not satisfied. That the town crier goes around the village saying all is well and the manifesto says all is not well. Things are out of balance and we are in a mission of repair. I tried to call for action and its kind of a summary of lots of things ive been involved in for 50 years. How can healthcare be free . Healthcare could be free very easily. The thing you have to do is you have to take capitalism out of healthcare. As long as healthcare is a product and not a human right, then we see not only the abuses of people check jacking up drug prices and so on, but it becomes a market, amid evil market. What the training is peoples lives. We cant have that. A sillier example of how crazy capitalist medicine is turn on tv, any night and watch the ads for madeup diseases. We are the only advanced industrial country that advertises drugs on tv. Why would we allow that . Why is health not something you are concerned with with a medical professional and with your family. Its not something to be sold by looking at Beautiful People doing beautiful fun things while you take pills. Then on these tv ads, yours here here at the end the list of side effects, suicidal tendencies, kidney failure, tuberculosis and a no bleeding, it just goes on and on. Its ridiculous. So thats the first thing you have to understand. Capitalism and medicine dont go well together, just like education and capitalism dont go well together. The second thing is we are the richest country in the world. We have enormous wealth. The only question we should be debating is how do we want to spend that wealth. What are we signing up for . I look at this country signing up for 1 trillion of military spending a year year. I look at signing up for mass incarceration and surveillance thats run amok. I think know, and those are none of the things i want to vote for. I want to vote for healthcare, education, guaranteed standards of living, those are the kinds of things we ought to be investing in we could easily do it. You can look to canada and the scandinavian countries and see that our healthcare is less satisfying, more expensive and more inaccessible than those countries. We could change that and we could do it. What has been your personal experience with medicare now that you are of age. Im on medicare, medicare is a great idea. Its not only not fully realized, its kind of, its almost a joke of itself. Theyre mildly socialistic medical programs. People who are in them are pretty satisfied compared to what they had before, but because im in medicare, last year or two years ago, a friend of mine from canada was visiting and he was sitting at the table when the mail arrived and i got this back which was all the choices i had to make in my medicare program, all the different options, all the Different Things i could sign up for and what would cost extra and so on. He pulled out of his wallet a single credit card and said to me, a little meanly i thought, this is my whole medical program. This is it. Dental, eye doctor, mental health, everything is on this card because its simple. This book is an example of whats wrong with our healthcare system. Yes im on medicare, yes its a step forward from what i was on for years and years, but at the same time its not streamlined its not userfriendly it makes you jump through hoops that you shouldnt have to jump through. Another way i could say this is i dont want to demand the impossible even though thats the name of the upcoming book. I just want healthcare, the exact program that the u. S. Congress has. Everyone should have that program and then we would be free citizens in a free country having, the ruling class should not be better than the rest of us. If they vote at him for themselves they should vote that in for the rest of us. Its a good standard. You reject the current argument that were having about the direction of public education. What is the argument that we should have question it. Argument we ought to have is what our schools in a democracy required to do . Schools in a free society . We all know schools are mirrors and windows into any society. If youre in an authoritarian or totalitarian society, the the schools will reflect that. Schools in africa reflect the apartheid. There are horrible overcrowded schools for the african population and Great Schools with white students. That reflects apartheid. If you look at romania, germany 60 years ago, those schools, while, while they produce some good scientists and smart people and good athletes they also produce conformity because they reflect a society that demanded obedience and conformity in a democracy you would want Something Else. That Something Else is a fundamental belief. That belief is that every human being is has incalculable value. That means the fullest development for all of us is the full development for all of us. It depends on full development of quality. That has lots of implications. We dont want different schools for the wealthy, the schools that the president children attended when they lived in chicago, the school that the secretary of Education School attended in the mayors children attend. Thats the school where they have a classsize capped at 15. They have a wellrespected and unionized teacher corps. They have five libraries. They have a full arts program. They have sports. If thats good enough for Arnie Duncans children and the mayors children, we in a democracy have to demand thats good enough for all of our children. If anything less than that is in a democracy destroys the foundations. So what i am arguing in the book that i just wrote be more utopian than weve been. We can look toward schools, not just for the 1 in the wealthy and what they demand for their kids but we can go beyond that and say we want schools were kids emerge from them not having to recover from the experience but having learned how to think for themselves, how to imagine the new world. We should base our schools on the democratic value, the values of liberty, of life, curiosity, imagination, entrepreneurship initiative, courage, that should be the underpinning of our school, not obedience and conformity which is more in line with an authoritarian society. You mention the amount spent on students in d. C. Schools which was 11000 then private schools where the obama kids attend in its 37000. How do we bridge that difference . How do we find the money . Yes we need to find the money and you and i can do it right now p the first thing we need to do is agree that its worth doing. Since there is no agreement with the powerful, there is they continue to churn out models for schools for other peoples children they would never allow for their own. My problem is when they say that other peoples children dont deserve that. You can say it but is not Realistic Campaign for quality thats not realistic. The same racial equality is not realistic but its an aspirational goal and is presented as such that we know what we are working. When i talked to party in which i have many times or when i talked to john king, the current secretary of education and i say but what do we want, they say everybody should have choices. Im choosing the school. Other people are choosing other schools. Thats a hypocritical live. When they say choice, they dont dont mean on the south side of chicago standing next to the Scarborough High School and then the university of Chicago School right next door and you can choose. We want schools for all children with creativity and Critical Thinking are honored and every child has an adequate chance and everything is living a decent life in the school. Their finding things that matter to them. I know its possible because ive seen it, not just with kids with the elite kids in new york city where there have been initiatives taken where profoundly Great Schools are happening for ordinary kids. The problem is if we dont invest in that, if we dont care about that say the way things are is just the way things are, then we can never get equity and we never get the schools we deserve. Because you have written this book in 1968 . No i couldnt of. When you take about the issues that im talking about, military expenditure. Sure the issues i care about, youre absolutely right about the connection draw the connection. The issues that i care about war and peace, White Supremacy and racism, and institutional racism, education for all, decent healthcare, environmental justice, these issues i cared about in 1968 and in 1965. I think that what is changed as the world keeps changing and we keep changing. We are all works in progress and were all diving through a vortex of swirling history in the making. I know the guy couldve written 68 only because, not because it was a passionate, but i didnt have the experiences that i have now. I think the 60s is mostly myth and symbols. Its mostly created by the media. I dont remember looking at my watch on december 31, 1969, and saying its almost over. Nobody lives by decade. Nobody watching this does. We live in the here and now. If were smart we dont allow ourselves to become set in stone and dogmatic and stupid and say the way i was then is the way i was now. Im happy i was able to experience that moment and certainly 1968, it was a magical year for me. I was 24 years old, it was magnificent. Im thinking of the olympics and then them being expelled from society and now these ladies from west point with the same gesture and nothing happens. A kind of depends on us if they change for the better or the worse. Another world is not only possible, its coming. Will it be a better better world . Only if we, and i mean me and people watching and other citizens fight for more democracy, more transparency, more peace and more fairness. If we fight for those things we might get a better world but equally possible as a world of nuclear war and endless war which are political leaders are promising us, world of of greater it a inequality which we are seeing day by day. Those things are possible too. When i say im a working progress, i wasnt writing then, i was mainly shouting. I hadnt written a book then. Now ive written several and im kind of evolving and trying to say whats the next utterance i want to make. Thats a different place than i was 40 years ago. What has changed for the better . I think that a lot of things have changed for the better. Certainly, people are more aware, young people are so much more aware than i was as a kid or as you were as a kid, but what kids today, they know everything. Thats overstating it. They know a lot and theyre smart and theyre savvy. I love being with them in one of the great joys of having been a teacher all my life is that i get to be with young people and young people are always, whats great about young people is they put old people on trial, every year. I think thats a great thing. We should be put on trial. Whats gotten better . I think in many ways were more aware and conscious and clearheaded about race. If i had to say one thing that is so much better than when we were kids, its gay rights and clear rights have grown in ways that are breathtaking and unimaginable. Even ten years ago. When i was a kid, forget it. The the idea that we would be sitting here saluting gay marriage and seeing Marriage Equality is reasonable, now the debate is ridiculous things about toilets and so on. Thats huge. Another thing that is huge is that we elected an africanamerican president. A country with this history to elect the person who comes out of that history in the position of it task in a class that was despised. When i was young and possibly when you were young, there was this big debate in the newspapers about whether a black man could be the quarterback of the football team. That was a debate. How could a black man leader football team. Now a black man has led the United States for eight years. We should be very proud of that. Was he flawless, did he do the right thing, could he have done more . Absolutely. I dont look at the president. I i dont look at him as he is king. I look at how they respond to the power of the neighborhood, the the community, the workplace, the school, the synagogue, if we mobilize that power we can accomplish amazing things. Abraham lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party. Power from below is what its about. How do you label yourself . Distant and radical im happy with, ive never been a terrace. A good friend and dear man passed away a few weeks ago. He was also called a radical and a terrace. If you want to put me in that category, im pleased to be in that category and i dont measure up. The Freedom Fighters that we him and meyer, Martin Luther king, dorothy day, all day, all the great people who moved history forward were radical. Thats where we look for inspiration. The terrace label was a convenient label to lay on us, but actually what we did was when 6000 people a week a week were being murdered by our government, we did extreme acts of vandalism and we destroyed property. Thats not vandalism. We werent using violence as a weapon of trying to crush people or persuade people, we were issuing a very noisy scream against genocide and the terrace in that time or the people dropping bombs on the nominee was our government. Thats a very sad chapter. You can go back and read Martin Luther king or any of the great people who are living then and they will all say the americans involved in a terrorist war and those trying to stop it were on the right side of history even if our tactics were sketchy but we never hurt anyone. Therefore i reject the name terrace. Where did the name the Weather Underground come from . We were part of students for a democratic society. I was an elected leader and my wife was and we were engaged in huge internal battles about the direction we should take. This was in the late 1960s. We opposed the war from the beginning. In the beginning a majority of americans supported this war. By three years later a majority opposed the war. They were coming home and describing what they had done and seen. The war continued to drag on. A group of us wrote a manifesto and it was a dense impossible to read, but it wasnt incorrect. We were trying to name the historical moment which i think is a responsibility. We were trying to name historical moments when we wrote this historical document. We had to give it a title in one of our members just whimsically came up with a line from bob dylan and the line was you dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. We meant it as a joke because history is so obvious, just just open your eyes and youll see that we are right about places in the world. Ill tell you, the debate was between that line, we dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and the line further down in the song that said they dont work because the vandals took the handles, so we might have been called the vandals that history calls us the Weather Underground. Students, when you teach, do, do they know who you are . Rarely. One of the funniest moments in 2008, i had my doctorate students over to my house and we had our seminar with our potluck dinner and so political junkie turned on the debate between Hillary Clinton and brock obama. Just as they turned down they were asking obama about his relationship with jeremiah. I wasnt paying much attention but then he pivoted and said what about your relationship with bill ayres . My students fell on the floor. He went on saying bill ayres did this and bill ayres did that and obama answered it cleverly but one of my students turned to me and said oh my god, that man has the same name as you and one of my other students said he has the same name because thats the same man. Ive always been a public person but i became more notorious. I assume students tell each other but i just taught at a Catholic University here in town. I was an adjunct and i would say half the class have no idea who told the third or fourth class when someone told them during break. Its not what my teaching is about and frankly its not as prominent a flag on my own chest as it probably is for folks like you who are looking at my life from the outside and seeing one blowing moment. If i were to define myself, i like the word radical and dissident but if i were to name myself, i would think that proud parent of three unbelievably beautiful men and the grandfather of four incredible grandchildren who i spend as much time as i can and whom i love dearly. That has been a defining aspect of my life. When i sat down to write my second memoir which is called public enemy, i was going back to the Weather Underground and i didnt anticipate this, but the book is mostly about teaching and parenting. It sounds surprising. You talk about this public enemy and what you want to write about, when i began to tell my story, the story is really the story of raising kids and it was something i was committed to and cared about and i still care about. How many books have you written . Im not sure. 20 or 30 . Close to 30. Two books come out this year and another one is coming out later. I had a book that came out in january called every person is a philosopher and then i wrote a book called teaching with conscious in and in perfect world. This cover includes artwork from my granddaughter. Im very proud of that. They were surprised because they worked on it in one morning they came home from school and they have a letter in the mail and there was a check from the publisher for being artists. Part of their vita, when they have a v that is that they are illustrators on this book. You say you were recently adjunct to the Catholic University. Was it a conservative university . No, i dont think it was, universities are generally conservative but they also allow and encourage a lot of dissidents and a lot of points of view. I think this universities are conservative in the sense that they conserve the knowledge of the society and they pass it on, thats part of their mission, but they also may be the last place or some of the last places in the u. S. Where there is a public debate and dialogue about the issues. We assume that the university that every opinion is welcome and subject to scrutiny and to be argued about. I look at the catholic universities, for example, and im seeing jesuit universities can be very, very progressive and forwardlooking. Pope francis, what are we talking about. This is not the church i remember. This is a church that really has some things going for you may remember when pope francis was first making noise and Steven Colbert was saying he could be the next best thing for this church. Theyre not all like that, not all universities, but i think the Catholic Schools have played a good role in recent years in this country. Something else you address and demand the impossible, what about political correctness. Weve seen some incidences this past year at university. We see this all times. Have redefined this . I think its very important to not fall into the trap, of, saying we love this particular candidate for president because he says what he thinks. Lets examine what he thinks. Its not enough to say what you think. They use it often to say im a free thinker i think black people are inferior. I know its not politically correct. Thats ridiculous. To me thats ridiculous. Youre right there have been some incidences that are ugly and ridiculous on college campus. Professor at Wheaton College was fired for wearing a shirt that said we worship the same god. Another express solidarity with muslim individuals who are being oppressed. Its true that some people say you cant say this and cant say that. I think the best way to defeat what you can and cant say is in open debate. I think shouting people down and throwing things should not be encouraged. It happens, people get passionate but we can correct that. We should exclude people from talking. There was a hubbub with donald trump having a rally here in chicago. I was in that demonstration against his presence but no one was trying to prevent him from speaking. What we did at this particular rally that i think with admirable, and students today, the students got together and they said we dont want hate on our campus. Students build a coalition and they had a huge rally and i got a ticket to go when i stood in line with the truck people and had spirited discussion. I was wearing my black lives matter tshirt which provoked a lot of discussion. I had some great conversation. When we got into the auditorium, instead of having 10000 trumps supporters they had 5000 supporters and 5000 didnt approve. At that point he canceled and didnt come to chicago. Why did he cancel . Because the rally requires an adoring crowd. We at entry denied them the adoring crowd. He likes it when people can be carried out of the room and called disgusting. When theres 5000 in the room, room, he didnt want to give that speech. We did not deny him the right to speak. Did we create the condition for interesting dialogue . I had great conversations all day and it didnt turn ugly until he canceled, but it wasnt a big deal. What was great was that people were expressing themselves and on a college campus, that should be totally allowed. The greatest part about the rally was that our wines were 10 feet apart. I was with the organizers of the dissidents. I had. We were talking back and forth. To me that his life in a free society. It ought to be encouraged. It should be shunned or condemned. With a friendly conversations . For the most part. There are a few guys who are hostile but they figured out who i was pretty quickly. I probably talk to 25 or 30 people and only two or three of them are hostile. Most of them them were having fun debating the issues. First they objected to being called a liberal because im a radical. We had the spirited discussion about issues and most of them were kidding and there was fun with no hostility. Its not that we were completely accommodating each others views but its also true that i talk to conservatives off time and i believe in them. I think how can you possibly move forward if we dont listen to the possibility of change and in my mind, the efforts of democracy is talking to strangers. You cant live in a democracy if youre living in a barricaded living room or in a title. You can only be part of a democracy if you enter the Public Square all with some goodwill. Its a phrase, they sent at one point at the end of the top, they said be realistic. The man impossible. I kind of love that, that the impossible is what we ought to be working toward because our imaginations are stunted unless we think outside. Think about harvey mills. He was thinking outside the world that was given to him. He was saying the way we define what sexuality is ugly and disgusting i dont buy it. A human being. This is my humanity speaking up. Take anybody else. Take jane out of. All these folks have said that the world given to me is unacceptable for me and i cannot fight for my community and expand the definition of who is part of a humanity. Martin luther king was a great leader, one of the things we forget is that he was only an activist for 13 years. Every year he became deeper and more complicated and more in touch with what he wanted. His dream kept expanded by the end of his life, if you read his speeches over the last three years, hes hes talking about connecting racial justices with economic justices and local justice or peace. That combination was brilliant he was not accepting, stay in your lane. He said if you think im about civil rights, you know nothing about me. Im about humanity. When i see an an inhumane war, i must stand up. I think we have to do somebody like him and say we can do that too. That means expanding our imaginations. To imagination. To me on the impossible found the contradiction but if we only demand the possible, this is why Hillary Clintons campaign is so bored. Oh the idea that somehow youre going to trim your sales and talk about whats possible, thats where we started. I want to talk about peace and justice enjoy. Those are human rights. He talk about your grandchildren doing the cover, but i happen to notice notice your hand. What is that . I got this tattoo this year, just a few months ago. I have have a lot of tattoos, but this one after i got the my brother said to me, you will never get a job if you have a tattoo like that. I said good, i dont want a job. It was given to me by an artist from latin america. It was her design and she has lived with us for a while and we didnt ask her to give us any money or rent and she was wanting to give us something so she came down for breakfast one morning and she had to find attack to for my hands and my wifes hand. We decided what the heck. We are both in our early mid 70s so we got our hand tattooed. We are still evolving so you dont know whats next. You mentioned your first at two. My first i got when i was 18 years old. I got a red star on my shoulder because it was 19, early 1960s and i had just become enamored of the Liberation Movement around the world and i said i wanted a red star to identify with communist areas around the country. You think its permanent but as you get wrinkles and things that, nothings permanent so it doesnt look like a red star. Do you consider yourself a communist . In some way, ive always been a teacher who opposed labels. I reject all labels that you see in school. I think theyre wrong, both morally wrong and incorrect, but if you make me label myself, i would say on some matters im a communist. When it comes to government im an anarchist. We can govern ourselves. We dont need mayors and chiefs of police. When it comes to the first amendment, im a fundamentalist. When it comes to sexuality, im a libertarian. So yes, i can be many things but i refuse to be boxed as one thing. Im many things just as you are. I think one of the things as a teacher that ive been sensitive to for my whole adult life is that as soon as you put a label on somebody, you limit their capacity to move in active be in the world. I dont want to say this