Transcripts For CSPAN2 BOOK TV 20160703

Landscapes. I wanted to write a little pamphlety kind of book that took eight issues that i care about and, incidentally, where i think im in the majority of public opinion. I dont think im a barricaded minority with some weird, outlier ideas. I think im in the majority on issues like war and peace, issues like mass incarceration. So what i wanted to do was take it out of the frame thats been given to us and make it kind of in the form of a manifesto, this is what were fighting for. I wanted to say that, you know, lets just take one example, health care. So the debate is obamacare or the way its always been. I reject that. I want with Free Health Care for all. And i wanted to break the kind of, you know, duality that we sometimes get trapped in. And the kind of framing of issues that i think is wrong. Schools is something, as you know, that im passionate about. So the framing of the debate is those who want to privatize and crush the unions and measure education by a single metric 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. So thats why the book was written. And its a short book, its a punchy book, so its kind of a manifesto. You can kind of tack it up on the door of the executioner. Host well, thats kind of where i wanted to go which is whats the Historical Context of the word manifesto . Guest for me, it means something that you put a nail in the door of the king whos 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 1 or the king, the royalty, that the people are not satisfied. That things you know, 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 on a mission of repair. And so i try to reframe the issues, i try to call for action, and its kind of a summary of lots of things ive been involved in for 50 years. Host bill ayers, how can health care be free . Guest well, health care could be free very, very easily, and the thing you have to do, though, is you have to take capitalism out of health care. As long as health care is a product and not a human right, then we see not only the abuses of people jacking up drug prices and so on, but it becomes a, it becomes a market, a kind of medieval market. And what theyre trading in is peoples lives. And we cant have it. You know, a sillier kind of example of how crazy capitalist medicine is, is turn on tv any night and watch the ads for madeup diseases, and, you know, were the only advanced industrial country that advertises drugs on tv. Why would you allow that . Why is it not why is health not something you are concerned with a medical professional and your family . Its not something to be sold by looking at Beautiful People doing beautiful, fun things while you take pills. And then, you know, on these tv ads you always hear at the end they read off a list of possible side effects, suicidal tendencies, kidney failure, tuberculosis, you know . Anal bleeding, i mean, it just goes on and on. Its ridiculous. So thats the first thing you have to understand, that capitalism and medicine dont go well together just like education and capitalism dont go well together. But the second thing is we are the richest country in the world, and we have enormous wealth. And the only question that we should be debating is how do we want to spend that wealth. How do we want to what are we signing up for . I look at this country signing up for a trillion dollars of military pending a Year Spending a year, i look at it signing up for mass incarceration, for a surveillance state thats run i amok, and i think, no, one of those are things i want to vote for. I want to vote for health care, education, guaranteed standards of living for elderly people. Those are the kinds of things we ought to be investing in, and we could easy do it easily do it. You can look to canada, you can look to, you know, the scandinavian countries or any european country and see that our health care is less satisfying, more bureaucratic than any of those oh countries. Other countries. Host whats been your personal experience of medicare now that youre of age . Guest yeah, im on medicare. Medicare is a great idea x its not only not fully realized, its kind of a its almost a joke of itself. I mean, the v. A. And medicare are mildly socialist medical medicine programs. And people who are in them are pretty satisfied compared to what they had before. But because im in medicare last year, two years ago, i was at home x a friend of mine from qanta was visiting, a professor of education up in ottawa. And he was sitting at the table when the mail arrived x i got a book this thick which was all the choices i had to make in my medicare program. All the different options. All the things i could sign up for, what would cost extra and so on. And he pulled out of his wallet a single, what looked like a credit card, and said to me a little meanly, i thought, this is my whole medical program. This is it, this one card. Dental, and, you know, eye doctor, mental health, everything is on this card because its simple. And this book is an example of whats wrong with our health care 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, its not streamlined, its not, its not userfriendly. It makes you jump through hoops that you shouldnt have to jump through. Another way i could say this, incidentally, as long as were talking about health care is, you know, i dont want to demand the impossible even though thats the name of the upcoming book. I just want health care, exactly the Health Care Program that the u. S. Congress has. Everyone should have that Health Care Program. And then we would be free citizens in a free country having the people the political ruling class should not be better than the rest of us, so we should have what they have. Be they vote that in for themselves, they should vote that in for the rest of us. Its a good standard. Host so you say you reject the current argument that were having about the direction of public education. What is that new argument we should have . Guest the argument we ought to have is what are schools, what are schools in a democracy are required to do, schools in a free society . We all know that schools are, you know, mirrors and windows into any society. So if youre in an authoritarian or totalitarian society, the schools will reflect that. The schools in apartheid south africa reflected apartheid. There were wonderful, state of the art schools for the white students and horrible, overcrowded, broken down schools for the african population. That reflects apartheid. So if you look backward a little bit and you say in rumania 30 years ago, in germany 60 years ago, those schools while they produced some good scientists and smart people and good athletes, they also produced obedience and conformity. And that was because they reflected a society that demanded to obedience and conformity. In a democracy you would want Something Else, and that Something Else is based on a very fundamental belief. And that belief is that every human being is of incalculable value. And that means that the fullest development of all of us is the condition for the full development of any of us. And conversely, the full development of each of us depends on the full development of all of us. And that means that has lots of implications for both policy and curriculum. It means that we do not want some schools for the wealthy like here in chicago, i could take you here, you know . The schools that the president s children atppedded when they attended when they lived in chicago, the schools that arnie cup can, the secretary of education, the schools that his children attended, the schools that the mayors children attend, thats a school where they have the class size capped at 15. They have a curriculum based in part on pursuing the interests of the children themselves. We have a wellrespected and union used teacher corps unionized teacher corps. They have five libraries. They have a full arts program. They have sports. If thats good enough for arne duncans children and for the mayors children, we in a democracy have to demand that thats good enough for all of our children. If anything less than that in a democracy destroys the foundations of society. So what i am arguing in a book that i just did with Teachers College is that we can be more utopian than weve been. We can look toward schools not just for the 1 and the wealthy and what they demand for their kids, but we can actually go beyond that and say we want, we want schools where kids emerge from them not having to recover from the experience, but having learned how to think for themselves, how to imagine a new world, how to we should base our school on the democratic values, the values of liberty, of life, curiosity, imagination, entrepreneurship, initiative, courage. That should be the underpinnings of our schools, not obedience and conformity which is more relevant to an authoritarian society. Host in your book demand the impossible, you list the cost or the amount spent on a student in d. C. Public schools, 11,000. You list the cost of sidwell and friends, a private school where ash shah and mall, where sasa and malia obama attend, 37,000. How do we bridge guest well, the first thing we have to do is agree that its worth doing. And since there is no agreement with the powerful that its worth doing, they continue to churn out models of schools for other peoples children that they would never allow for their own. I mean, i have no problem with the obamas going to sidwell friends. I have no problem with arne duncan going to the university of Chicago Laboratory schools. My problem is when they say that other peoples children dont deserve that. Now, you can say that its not realistic. Thats fine. You know, Hillary Clintons campaigning for womens equality. You could argue thats not realistic. We could say racial equality isnt realistic, but its an aspirational goal. And as long as we set it as an aspirational goal, then we know what were working toward. So when i talk to arne duncan, which i have many times, or when i talk to john king, the current secretary of education, or when i talk to forest claypool, the superintendent ceo, sorry, its a business now in chicago, and i say but what do we want, they say everybody should have choices. Im choosing this school. Other people are choosing other schools. Thats a flat out hypocritical lie. When they say choice, they dont mean on the south side of chicago standing next to [inaudible] high school well build the university of Chicago Laboratory school and then parents can choose. They mean you can go to the high school which is in real trouble, or well build the school right next to it thats just like it, except its a newer building. Thats no choice at all. We want schools for our children where Critical Thinking and creativity are honored and where every kid has an adequate not just chance at a decent life, but every kid living a decent life right now in this school, finding things to connect to that matter to them. And i know its possible because ive seen it. Not just with the kids of the elite, but with kids in new york city. There have been initiatives taken where really profoundly Great Schools are happening for ordinary kids. The problem is if we dont invest in that, if we dont care about it, if we say the way things are is just the way things are, then we can never get to equity, and we can never get to schools we deserve. Host could you have written this book in 1968 . Guest the book demand the impossible . You know, thats an interesting way to think about it. No, i couldnt have, because in 1968 i was 24 years old, and im now 72 years old. So in that sense host i mean, when you talk about the issues youre talking about in the book. Guest i think host military spending. Guest sure. The issues ive cared about, i mean, youre absolutely right to draw the connection. The issues that i care about, war and peace, White Supremacy and racism and institutional racism, education for all, Decent Health care, environmental justice, these issues i cared about in 1968. I cared about them in 1965. I think that whats changed is the world is changing, and we keep changing. Were all works in process, and were diving through a vortex of swirling history in the making. I dont feel i could have written it in 68 only because not that i wasnt passionate about the issues. I didnt know the things i know now, i didnt have the experiences i have now. And one of the things i feel very strongly about is that i sometimes am trotted out by, i dont know, in universities and other places as kind of a relic of the 60s. I think the 60s is mostly myth and symbol. Its mostly created by the media. I dont remember looking at my watch on december 31st, 1969, and saying, oh, damn, its almost over. Nobody lives by decades. You dont, nobody watching this does. We live in the here and now. And if were smart, we dont allow ourselves to become calcified and set in stone and dogmatic and stupid and say the way i was then is way i will always be. I whatever the 60s was as myth and symbol, it was prelude to whats on the agenda now. So im very happy a that i was able to experience that moment, and certainly 1968, the year youre pointing to, was a magical year for me. I was, you know, 24 years old. It was magnificent. Im thinking now of tommy smith and john carlos raising their fists at the mexico city olympics and being expelled from society. And here we have these young women at west point raising their fists in the exact same gesture. Things change. But also things dont just change for the better. It kind of depends on us whether they change for the better or for the worse. Things are always changing. Another world is not only possible, another world is coming. Will it be a better world . Only if we, and i mean me and people watching and you and other citizens, fight more more democracy, more transparency, more peace, more fairness. If we fight for those things, we might get a better world. But equally possible is a world of nuclear war, a world of endless war which our political leaders are promising us, a world of greater inequality which were seeing grow day by day. Those things are possible too. So when i say im a work in progress and could i have written this in 68, i couldnt have written it because i wasnt writing then. I was mainly shouting, and i hadnt written a book now. Now ive kind of written several and kind of evolving and trying to say whats the next utterance i want to make in the public conversation. And thats a different place than i was, you know, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Host whats changed for the better . In those years . Guest well, i would say, look, i think a lot of things have changed for the better. Certainly, people are more aware. Young people today are so much more aware than i was as a kid or than you were as a kid, and youre much younger than i am. But kids today know everything. Thats overstating it. They know a lot, and theyre smart, and theyre savvy. And i love being with them. 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, you know, whats great about young people is they put old people on trial are every year. And i think thats a great thing. We should be put on trial are. Whats gotten better . I think in many ways were more aware of and more conscious of and more clearheaded about race. Were more clearheaded about gender. If i had to say one thing i that i unequivocally is so much better than when we were kids, gay rights, queer rights have broken through in breathtaking and unimaginable ways. Go back 50 years when i was a kid, forget it. The idea that we would someday be sitting here saluting gay marriage, seeing Marriage Equality as reasonable. Now the debate is, you know, what . You know, ridiculous things about toilets and so on. Thats huge. Another thing thats huge is we elected an africanamerican president. A country with this history to elect the person who comes out of that history in the position of a caste and a class that was despised is an incredible step forward. Did it defeat White Supremacy . Absolutely not. Was it a blow against White Supremacy . It was. And when i was young and possibly when you were young, there was a big debate going on in the newspapers about whether a black man could be the quarterback of a Football Team. That was a debate. Well, how could a black man lead a Football Team . Now a black man just led the United States for eight years. I think we should be very pleased with ourselves because of that. Was he flawless . Was he did he do the right things, could he have done more . Absolutely. But, you know, i dont look, for example, at the president as somebody who is a king and just do whatever he wants. I look at elected officials as people who respond to the power that people like you and i have and rarely use properly. And that is the power of the neighborhood, the community, the workplace, the school, the synagogue, the mosque, the church. We have power there. And if we mobilize that power, we can accomplish amazing things. Its not up to the Lyndon Johnson didnt give us the civil rights act. The black Freedom Movement did that. Franklin roosevelt didnt give us social legislation. The Labor Movement did that. Abraham lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party. Fire from below is what i believe in and what this books about. Host bill ayers, youve been called a dissident, a radical, a terrorist. How do you label yourself . Guest dissident and radical im happy with. Im not a terrorist, i never was. Dan [inaudible] passed away a few weeks ago, a good friend and a dear man. He was also called a terrorist. He was also called a radical and dissident. If you want to put me in that category, im very pleased to be in that category, and i dont measure up. But the Freedom Fighters that we admire, dorothy day, Martin Luther king, malcolm x, eugene debs, you can go back through history, all the great people that moved history forward were dissidents and radicals. Thats where we look for inspiration. The terrorist label was a convenient label to lay on us when, actually, what we did in the Weather Underground at a moment when 6,000 people a week were being murdered by our government, we committed extreme acts of vandalism. We destroyed property. And thats not terrorism. We werent using, we werent using violence as a weapon of trying to crush people or persuade people. We were issuing a, you know, a very noisy scream against genocide. And the terrorists in that time were the people dropping bomb on vietnam, and that was our government. And thats a very sad chapter. But you can go back and read Martin Luther king or think of the great or any of the great people who were living then, and they will all say america was involved in a terrorist war. And those of us who tried to stop it were on right side of history even if our tactics were sketchy or stupid. We never killed or injured anyone except our own people and, therefore, i reject the name terrorist. Host where did the name come from . Guest the label of terrorist . Host no, the Weather Underground. Guest oh, im sorry. You know, the Weather Underground, we were part of students for a democratic society. I was an elected leader, my wife was, and we were engaged in huge battles, internal battles within the Student Movement about the direction we should take. This was in the late 1960s. We had opposed the war from the beginning. And in the beginning, a majority of americans supported the war. And by three years later, a majority opposed the war. And we did that partly in the black Freedom Movement coming out against the war did that, veterans coming home and describing what they had done and seen turned the country away from war. And yet the war dragged on. And so we were having huge battles about what direction to take. A group of us wrote a manifesto, and it was a dense, impossibletoread i dont recommend reading it, itll drive you blind, but it wasnt incorrect. We were trying to name the historical moment which i think is a responsibility of us then, and its a responsibility of us now. We were trying the name the historical moment, so we wrote in this dense document. At the end of the day, we had to give it a title, and 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 blows. And we meant it as a joke because we were saying history is so to obvious. Just open your eyes, and youll see that were right about the place of the u. S. In the world and what ought to be done. So we chose this ill tell you, the debate at that moment was between that line, you dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and the line further down in the song that says the pump dont work because the vandals took the handles. So we might have been called the p vandals, but history called us the Weather Underground, so well take it. Host do students, when you teach, do they know who you are . Do they know your history . Guest rarely. Rarely. And, in fact, you know, one of the funniest moments in 2008, in the spring of 2008, i had my Doctoral Students over at my house, and we had we had our seminar, we had our pot luck dipper, and then some political junkie turned on the very end of the debate between Hillary Clinton and barack obama that George Stephanopoulos was moderating. And just as they turned it on, stephanopoulos was asking obama about his relationship with jeremiah wright. And i wasnt paying much attention. I was walking in and out of the room. And then stephanopoulos pivoted and said what about your relationship with bill ayers . My students fell on the floor. And he went through this whole thing about bill ayers did this, and bill ayers did that, and youre friends. And obama answered it cleverly. But one of my students turned to me and said, oh, my god, that guy has the same name as you. And one of my other students said thats because hes the same guy. So it wasnt front and center for my students ever. Certainly ive become more notorious since 2008. Identify always been a public ive always been a public perp, but i became more notorious, and so 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 had no idea until after the third or fourth class when probably somebody told them during break. I mean, its not, its not what my teaching is about. And, frankly, its not, its not as prominent a flag on my own chest as it probably is for folks like you or who are looking at my life from the outside and see one, you know, kind of dwelling moment. Ill tell you, if i were to define myself, i like the words radical which i take to mean going to the root. I like the word dissident because in an unjust society, dissidents are on the right side. But if i were to name myself, id say im the proud parent of three unbelievably beautiful men and the grandfather of four beautiful grandchildren who i spend as much time with as i can who i love dearly. In fact, when i sat down to write my second memoir called public enemy, i was going baa to the end of the weather understood ground and coming up to 2008, and i didnt want anticipate this, but the book is mostly about teaching and parenting. Its kind of surprising, you know . You think about this public enemy and what does he want to write about . Well, when i began to tell my story of those 20, 25 years, the story is really the story of raising kids. And its something i was committed to and cared about and still care about. Host how many books have you written at this point . Guest gosh, im not sure. I didnt count. Host 20 . 30 . Guest i have close to 30 if you include edited book. And i had two books come out this year and an edited book that came out in january called every person is a philosopher about the radical teaching life of a colleague of mine who passed away too young. And then i wrote a book called teaching with conscience in an imperfect world. That one is not a manifesto, its called an invitation. Host well, you have it there. Will you hold that up in. Guest this is my and this cover includes artwork from my granddaughter. So very proud of that. And they were so surprised, because they worked on it, and then one morning they one afternoon they came home from school, and they had a letter in the mail, and it was a check from the publisher for being artists. And so top of the vida is going to be that they were illustrators on this book. Host you say you were recently adjunct at a Catholic University. Was it a conservative university . Guest no, i dont think it was. I mean, you know, universities almost by definition are conservative. But they also allow and encourage a lot of dissonance and a lot of points of view are. I think universities are conservative in the sense that they can serve kind of the knowledge of the society, and they pass it on. Thats part of their mission. But they also are places, they may be the last places or some of the last places in the u. S. Where there is a public debate and dialogue about the issues. And we assume in the university that every opinion is welcomed, every opinion is subject to scrutiny, every opinion is to be argued about. So, but i look at the catholic universities, for example, and i see the jesuit universities can be very, very progressive, forwardlooking. I mean, god, you know, pope francis, what are we talking about, you know . This is not the church i remember of cardinal spelman. This is the church that really has some things going for it. Or you may remember when francis was first making noise, Stephen Colbert who called himself at the time americas most prominent catholic, he said of course i believe that pope francis of course i believe the pope is infallible, but not this guy. Because pope francis has been a real breath of fresh air in the church. Jesuit university withs tend to encourage universities tend to encourage progressive thinking and humane values. And vincentian universities tend to do that. Theyre not all like that, but i think the Catholic Schools have played a good role in recent years in this country. Host well, manager else you address in demand the impossible is Political Correctness. What about Political Correctness . Weve seen some incidences this past year at universities. Guest well, we see incidents all the time host first of all, how do you define being yeah. I think its very important not to fall into the trap of, for example, saying, well, we love this particular candidate for president because he says what he thinks. Lets examine what he thinks. I mean, its not enough to say what you think. The ku klux klan says what it thinks. Thats not valuable in itself. And this kind of, this kind of bludgeon that people use of Political Correctness, they use it often to say, see, im a dissident. Im a free thinker. I think black people are inferior. See thats i know its not politically correct. Thats ridiculous. To me, thats ridiculous. You can examine those things on the content. But youre right, there have been some incidences that are ugly and ridiculous on College Campuses and throughout society. But lets take a balanced view. A professor at Wheaton College was fired for wearing a hijab and saying we worship the same god. She was fired. Professors at Dominican University have come under attack for expressing solidarity with muslim citizens who, you know, who are being oppressed. So it doesnt work one way. It is true that sometimes people say you cant say this, you cant say that. I think the best way to defeat what you and cant say is in open debate. I think shouting people down, excluding people, throwing things at people is incorrect and should not be done. Should not be encouraged. And it happens, people get passionate, but we can correct that. And what we shouldnt do is have speech codes in any direction, nor should we exclude people from speaking. I think there was a big hubbub about donald trump having a rally here at the university of chicago. I was many that demonstration against his presence, but no one was trying to prevent him from speaking. No one could prevent donald trump from speaking. What we did at that particularrally that i think was admirable and students did it. Students got together, and they said we dont want hate on our campus. The muslim students, the gay students, the immigrant rights students, the black lives matter students built a coalition, and they had a huge rally. And they i got a call from one of them saying get a ticket to go into the rally. So i got a ticket. I stood in line with the trump people, had great, spirited discussions. I was wearing my black lives matter tshirt. Most of the folks were young people who had come in from the suburbs for the spectacle. And i had some great conversations. But when we got into the auditorium, instead of having so ,000 Trump Supporters 10,000 Trump Supporters, they had 5,000 of us who did not approve of that message. At that point, he canceled. He didnt even come to chicago. Why didnt he cancel . Why did he cancel . We denied him the adoring crowd. He likes it 2007 theres two dissidents who can be called out as disgusting people and carried out of the room, but to have 5,000 of us in the room was a little disconcerting. He didnt want to give that speech. So did we deny him the right to speak . We did not. Did we create the conditions more some interesting dialogue . I had great dialogues all night, and it didnt turn ugly until he canceled, and at that point the people who had stood in line for so long were unhappy, and they pushed some other people around. But it wasnt a big deal. What was great was that people were expressing themselves. And on a College Campus like the university of illinois at chicago, that should be fully allowed. The greatest part of that rally was our lines were 10 feet apart. So i was with the organizers of the dissident, and after a time i just crossed over and joined the lines for the trump people because i was i had a ticket. That was great. We were talking back and forth. To me, thats life in a free society. It ought to be encouraged. It shouldnt be shunned or condemned. Host you talked about spirited conversations. I mean, were they friendly on guest oh, for the most part there were maybe two or three guys who were hostile. But they also figured out pretty quickly who i was. Somebody recognized me. And so they knew who i was. I was probably in the hour and a half i was in line, i probably talked to 25, 30 people. And only two or three of them were at all hostile. Most of them we were having fun, debating the issues. So one of them called me a tax and spend liberal. First, i objected to being called a liberal, because im a radical. And then we talked about, you know, whether we should close the pentagon, because i want to close the pentagon, so i must be more maul government than them small government than them. No, they didnt want to close the pentagon. Most of it we were kidding each other, it was fun, there was no hostility. Its not that we, its not that we were completely accommodating each others views, but it is also true that i talk to conservatives, organized conservatives all the time. And i believe in it. I think that how can we possibly move forward if we dont listen with the possibility of being changed and speak with possibility of being heard . And in my mind, the essence of democracy is talking to strangers. You cant live in a democracy if youre living in a barricaded living room oryoure living in a tunnel. You can only be part of a democracy if you enter the Public Square with some goodwill and try to debate the issues. Host when did you start using the phrase demand the impossible . Guest oh, you know, its an old, old phrase. Its a phrase from che guevara. He said at one point at the end of a talk, i believe, he said be realistic. Demand the impossible. And i kind of loved that, that the impossible is what we ought to be arcing toward. Because, because our imagine imaginations are stunted unless we think outside of whats begin to us as acceptable opinion. Think about hardened milk. I harvey milk. Just to take one example of a Great American dissident. He was thinking outside the world that was giving to him. He wasnt just standing up for his own humanity. He was saying the way we define homosexuality is ugly and disgusting, and i dont buy it. Im a human being, and this is my humanity. Take jane adams, you know, take i mentioned debs a while ago. I mean, all of these folks said the world thats given to me is unacceptable to me x im going to fight for my humanity x in fighting for my humanity, im going to expand the definition of who is part of humanity. So Martin Luther king, the great leader who everyone acknowledges as great, but one of the things we forget is he was only an activist for 13 years. He evolved every year. He became deeper, more complicated, more in touch with what he wanted. His dream of what he wanted kept expanding. And by the end of his life if you read his peaches in the last three years of his life, hes talking about connecting Racial Justice with Economic Justice with global justice or peace. And that combination was incendiary and brilliant. But he was not accepting stay in your lane. You know, he was told continually in the late 60s, mid to late 60s, stay in your lane. Youre about civil rights. He said if you think im about civil rights, you know nothing about me. Im about humanity. Martin luther king lived that very important moral compass. And i think that we have to, we have to looking at somebody like him or like harvey milk or like gloria steinem, and we have to say we can to that too. And that means expanding our imagine nights. So demand imaginations. So demand the impossible sounds like a contradiction, but if we only demand the impossible this is, incidentally, why Hillary Clintons campaign is so boring. Heres biny sanders saying Bernie Sanders saying free higher education, she says, not free. He says free medical care. She says maybe 50yearolds should qualify for free medical care. The idea that somehow youre going to trim your sails and say lets talk about whats possible, i want to demand the impossible. Peace, justice, joy. Those are things we all deserve. Those are human rights. Lets get em. Host bill ayers, you held up that book a minute ago, teaching with conscience. You talked about your grandchildren doing the cover, but i happened to notice your hand at the same time. What is this . Guest okay. My hand i got this tattoo this year, just a few months ago. I have a lot of tattoos, but this one after i got this one, my brother said to me, now youll never, youll never get a job if you have a tattoo like that. I said, good, im 72, i dont want a job. This tattoo was begin to me by an artist from latin america. It was her design, and she, she had lived with us for a while while she was getting her immigration in order. And we didnt ask her to give us any money or rent. She just stayed on the third floor of our house. And she was wanting to give us something, so she came down to breakfast one morning, and she had designed a tattoo for my hand and a tattoo for my wifes hand host Bernadette Healey guest bernadine. And we decided, what the heck . Were both in our early 70s, and we got hand tattoos. Were still evolving, you never know whats next. Host you mentioned your first tattoo. What was it . Guest my first i got when i was 18 years old, and i got a red star. I was in the merchant marines, and i got a red star on my shoulder because i was it was 19, early 1960s, and i was, had just become enamored of the liberation movements around the world, and i said i want a red star to identify with the communist revolutions and the independent struggles around the world. So i got a bright red star on my arm and, of course, like everything, its you think a tattoo is permanent, but as your skin, as you get wrinkles and things sag, nothings permanent. So my red star is now faded pink. Host do you consider yourself a communist . Guest in some ways. You know, ive always as a teacher been opposed to labels. I think labels are limiting, and i dont i reject all the labels as a teacher that you see in schools. I think theyre wrong, both morally wrong and incorrect. But if you make me label myself, i would say when it comes to economic matters, im certainly a communist. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. When it comes to government, im a bit of an anarchist, you know . We can move ourselves. We dont need mayors and chiefs of police. What does the mayor of chicago do except lie and steal . So im a bit of an anarchist. When coit ms to the when it comes to sexuality, im a libertarian. So, yeah, i mean, i can be many things, and i refuse to be boxed as one thing. Im many things just as you are. And i think one of the things that as a teacher that ive been sensitive to for my whole adult life is as soon as you put a label on somebody, youve limited their capacity to move and act and be in the world. So i dont want to say, you know, this person is behavior disordered. I want to say hes got lots of things going for him including being an incredible street poet. Lets look at the fullness of our humanity. Lets not get stuck in these stereotypes or flat images of each other. Were all human beings, were all moving for a short period of time through a wildly diverse world. Lets love each other. Its that simple. Host teaching with conscience, demand the impossible comes out in september, and you mentioned a spring 2017 title. What is that . Guest well, i have a book coming out with beacon called you cant fire the bad ones and 20 other myths about teachers. And so its a book, they have a series of books that are myths. And thats another attempt to change the frame of the discussion. The idea that there are all these things that are said about teachers, theyre laze can city and inwe lazy and incompetent. You cant fire the bad ones, you know . Theyre aimlessly sucking on the teat of society. All those things, im going to counter all those arguments and try to get, make a little handbook for fighting back. Host longtime education professor and author bill ayers has been our guest on booktv. Guest thanks very much. Appreciate it. Heres a look at some of the books that have been written about president ial candidates donald trump and Hillary Clinton. Donald trump has had many books written about him. Some of the more recent include never enough by Michael Dantonio published in 2015 in which the pulitzer prizewinning reporter profiles Donald Trumps Business Career and personal life as well as his president ial aspirations. Cnn political commentator jeffrey lord makes the case for a Trump Presidency in what america needs, published earlier this year. Twice updated and originally published in 2001, mr. Trumps relationship with his family and reports on his candidacy for president in donald trump the candidate. Throughout Hillary Clintons political life, over 150 books have been written about her or feature her as a key player. These include several released last year. Bloomberg news Jonathan Allen and the hills amie parnes book hrc chronicles senator clintons 2008 loss to barack obama and her return to political prominence. Love her, love her not, decide et admitted by joanne bamberger, is a collection of essays by women that looks at how clinton is equally lauded and disliked. Edward kline, former editor of the New York Times magazine, argues against a Clinton Presidency in unlikable. Media matters Founder David brock who also runs a super pac supporting her president ial Campaign Says that theres a rightwing plot to redale Hillary Clinton in his derail Hillary Clinton in his book, killing the messenger. And coming out in july, Dinesh Dsouza asserts another Clinton Presidency will change the cup for the worse in hillarys america. Several of these books have been discussed on booktv, and you can find them on our web site, booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations]