Power habitually lies in public to make a particularly egregious point: We can lie in public, and you can’t stop us. “We didn’t murder that protester, she was a domestic terrorist determined to kill police;” “I strangled that Black man to death because I feared for my life.” The debate over whether the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is indeed a genocide is a fraudulent diversion—the genocide was pre-announced by government leaders in October, 2023: “We will starve them; we will deny them medicines and fuels; we will make Gaza uninhabitable.” The so-called ceasefire is also a ruse, a phony attempt to change the international narrative while continuing to murder, drive out, and erase the population. We’re joined in conversation with Nell and Leta Hirschmann-Levy, two brave and intrepid sisters from New York City whose opposition to the US/Israeli genocide in Palestine has led them to picket lines, boycotts, rallies, organizing campaigns, and to Palestine itself.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were used by the powerful in the government and the bought media in the most manipulative and shameless way, whipping up Islamaphobia and xenophobia to justify and accelerate a rush to war. This would be a war without boundaries, justified battlefields, or any identifiable end-point—a “war on terror.” The war-makers never elaborated on the objectives of their war—where it would be fought, how it would be conducted, or how it could be won—simply that it would be a crusade against faceless and nameless evil-doers wherever they might be lurking. The message boomed forth: shut up, salute, and march in step with a revitalized imperialist project. Remarkably, amidst the manufactured frenzy and panic in every direction, an antiwar movement was brought to life that created a significant counter-narrative that stood up against the tide. We’re joined in conversation with co-host Jeff Jones and Jeremy Varon, an activist-scholar, Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in New York, and author of Our Grief is not a Cry for War, a social history of the movement against the “war on terror.”

Here is the proposed preamble to a new Constitution for Public Education, conceived by the visionary teacher and organizer Jay Gillen: “Every middle-schooler will have the expectation that when they are in high school they will have a good-paying job, sharing knowledge or skills with peers, younger children, or other people in their communities.” He offers this radical proposal in order to propel a conversation and an organizing focus toward building a broad national consensus about how children should be prepared to grow up with dignity and strength in all of our communities. When he recasts the language of the preamble slightly—“If we could pay teenagers to do things that benefit their communities, contribute to the education and culture of younger children, and incidentally advance their own educations, it would be a good thing”—Gillen argues that we already have enormous sympathy in principle. And so we move on to specific steps we might take and concrete principles we might adopt which are surprisingly practical—and within reach. We’re joined by Jay Gillen, author of Educating for Insurgency and The Power in the Room, and Jamarria Hall, a student advocate and lead plaintiff in Gary B. v. Whitmer, the Right to Literacy case that argued the Detroit public schools were “functionally incapable of delivering access to literacy,” and resulted in a $94.4 million settlement in 2023.