1) The Nib offers the most up-to-date and imaginative political cartoons and commentary, and the best in non-fiction comics:

 

Tune into what’s going on through the dynamic and dazzling comics medium, a channel that keeps getting deeper and wider, breaking boundaries and crossing borders, revolutionizing the way we see and understand ourselves and the world. Oh, and check out our recent piece on the Nib.

 

2) Long time fanatic for Michael Franti and Spearhead. Check out “Yell Fire” which has lit up my writing desk for these past weeks.

 

And now comes another revolutionary group, Prophets of Rage:

 

Tom Morello and Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy’s Chuck D, and Cypress Hill’s B-Real come together to create a soundtrack for the resistance and the beloved community in formation—a finely focussed wrecking crew on a mission of inspiration.

3) Love Coco Fusco, Cuban-American writer, performer, curator, and interdisciplinary artist. Here she touches on questions of identity, artistic expression, and appropriation with compassion, grace, subtlety, and wisdom:

 

4) Let’s get to the movies with the Waschowski clan, among my favorite thinkers, writers, explorers, experimenters. Chicago at its most propulsive and uncontainable.

 

5) Intuit—The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. Another Chicago original—a museum, an art space, a gathering spot, and an educational center that appreciates and illuminates outsider art.

BILL AYERS BIO:

William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior Bill AyersUniversity Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), member of the executive committee of the Faculty Senate and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, taught courses in interpretive and qualitative research, oral history, creative non-fiction, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University, Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is a past vice-president of the curriculum studies division of the American Educational Research Association.

Ayers’ articles have appeared in many journals including the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, The Nation, Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education.

His books include Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident (Beacon Press, 2013), with Ryan Alexander-Tanner To Teach: The Journey in Comics (Teachers College Press, 2010), with Bernardine Dohrn Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press 2008), with Rick Ayers Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (Teachers College Press, 2011), Teaching toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom (Beacon Press, 2004), with Kevin Kumashiro, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall Teaching toward Democracy: Educators as Agents of Change (Paradigm, 2010), A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2001, 2008), On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited (Teachers College Press, 2003), Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice (Teachers College Press, 2004), The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, (Teachers College Press, 1989), and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press, 1993) which was named Book of the Year in 1993 by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995.

Edited books include: To Become a Teacher: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives (Teachers College Press, 1995); with Janet Miller, A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation (Teachers College Press, 1997); with Pat Ford, City Kids/City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row (The New Press, 1996,2008); with Jean Ann Hunt and Therese Quinn, Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader (The New Press and Teachers College Press, 1998); with Mike Klonsky and Gabrielle Lyon, A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools (Teachers College Press, 2000); with Rick Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment (The New Press, 2001); with Bernardine Dohrn and Jeff Jones, Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground 1970 – 1974 (Seven Stories Press, 2006); with Gloria Ladson-Billings, Pedro Noguera, and Gregory Michie, City Kids/City Schools: More Reports From the Front Row (The New Press, 2008); and with Therese Quinn and David Stovall, the Handbook of Social Justice in Education (Routledge, 2008).

He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago with Bernardine Dohrn, partner, comrade, friend, co-parent and grand-parent, inspiration, co-author, lover, and soul-mate for close to half a century.