Podcasts and Interviews
“Friendship and Freedom”
The latest episode of “A Different Lens” features a conversation about love and struggle with artist, illustrator, community leader, and author Vernon T. Batman and the Liberation Center’s Organizational Relations Director, Derek Ford. The episode comes as Vernon’s struggle picks up steam after Congressman André D. Carson’s recent letter in support of Clemency for Vernon. The letter, which you can read here, also notes how the IDOC’s “punitively strict probation restrictions” against Vernon “severely limit his ability to work and make positive contributions to our community.” Sign and share the petition to exonerate Vernon at FreeVernon.org!
“Breaking Chains: Vernon’s Fight for Freedom”
In this powerful episode, Eric of The Underdawg Podcast sits down with successful underdawg Vernon T. Bateman to discuss his harrowing journey of being wrongfully convicted and the challenges he faces even after being released from prison. Vernon shares his story of being in prison since 1998 for a crime he didn’t commit, his fight for exoneration, and the unjust conditions he continues to endure. Despite facing immense obstacles, Vernon has channeled his energy into creating children’s books and artwork while in confinement. Join the conversation as Vernon and Derek Ford from the Liberation Center shed light on the injustices faced by individuals like Vernon and the importance of fighting for justice. The episode delves into the emotional and mental toll of navigating a flawed system and the resilience needed to keep pushing forward. Listen to this eye-opening episode to gain insight into the realities of the justice system and the strength of individuals like Vernon who continue to fight for their freedom and rights. Don’t miss this raw and emotional discussion on the challenges faced by those wronged by the system.
Leon Benson One Year After Exoneration: Book Launch and Panel
Leon Benson spent almost 25 years imprisoned–10 of them in solitary confinement, considered a human rights abuse by the international community–for August 8, 1998 murder of Kasey Schoen in downtown Indianapolis. When he was 47-years-old, he walked out of the notorious Pendleton prison on March 9, 2023 as a free man, exonerated on all charges. He spent over half his life locked up for a crime he didn’t commit because the police intentionally withheld evidence indicating another shooter and eyewitness testimony contradicting the narrative they wanted to frame. Now, for the first time since his exoneration, Benson returns to Indianapolis for a weekend of his “re-birth,” not to condemn those individuals who stole decades of his life and deprived his daughter, family, and our entire community of his beaming and positive presence, but to shed light on the countless others who are still locked up based on wrongful convictions. The panel features Kelly Bauder of the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, Kolleen Schoen-Bunch, the sister of Kasey Schoen who Benson was wrongly imprisoned for killing, DePauw University Professor Derek R. Ford, and Liberation Center organizers Dani Abdullah and Queene Lewis. The event also served as the launch of Benson’s first monograph, “Letters of Gratitude: I Am Because We Are” (Iskra Books, 2024), which you can purchase on their website or at major booksellers. www.iskrabooks.org www.IndyLiberationCenter.org
Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle
Derek Ford returns to the RevLeft Radio to discuss his upcoming book “Teaching the Actuality of Revolution.” Topics discussed include: Marxist pedagogy, sensory perception, education, Althusser, Marx and Engels, ideological struggle, aesthetics, and much more!
Learn more here: https://www.liberationschool.org/
“Understanding Marx’s Capital with Liberation School”
In this episode of Revolutionary Left Radio, Breht talks with Derek Ford about the Liberation School’s new podcast/online class “Reading Capital with Comrades.” All 12 episodes of “Reading Capital with Comrades” can be found here.
Epidemic of Racism: Three Police Killings in Indiana
The Movement now isn’t being placated by any promises. We’re demanding that the officers involved be named, fired, indicted and convicted. And we’ll stay in the streets until that happens. Hear PSL organizers speak on coronavirus and the epidemic of racism in capitalist America.
“Communist Study and the DPRK with Derek Ford”
Derek is an organizer, communist thinker, and educational theorist who teaches classes in philosophy and history of education. He received his PhD in cultural foundations of education from Syracuse University. His research examines the educational logics at work in political, economic, and social systems, what educational theory can offer contemporary political movements, and how education can help us re-imagine and re-enact our ways of being-together.
He has written and edited six books and published in a variety of journals. He is associate editor of Issues in Teacher Education and chair of the education department at The Hampton Institute. His most recent book is Education and the production of space: Political pedagogy, geography, and urban revolution.
Follow Derek on twitter @derekrford
“Party Time with Derek Ford”
In this episode of The Magnificast, Matt and Dean talked with Derek R. Ford, author of Communist Study: Education For the Commons, about communism, party movements, and bridges between Christianity and leftism.
“The Actuality of Revolution: Marxist Education and the Commons”
What is the role of education within radical and revolutionary movements? Is the classroom a political space? How do traditions of Marxian thought and pedagogy frame those questions? In this episode of Nothing Never Happens, Derek R. Ford offers a crash orientation to the terrain of Marxist educational theory and practice, with a focus on its dynamic expressions in resistance movements, organizing campaigns, and more formal schooling contexts. Topics include Marxian traditions of education, dialogical pedagogy, practices of interpretation in a so-called “post-truth” era, and cultivating learning spaces where all people can experience the freedom and invitation to learn, question, explore, and build new ways of living and being.
Derek Ford is an organizer, author, and teacher with deep ties to Left movement spaces. Currently an Assistant Professor of Education Studies at DePauw University, their books include Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Pedagogy, and the Sensations of Struggle(2023), Communist Study: Education for the Commons(2022), Encountering Education: Elements for a Marxist Pedagogy (2022), Inhuman Educations: Jean-Francois Lyotard, Pedagogy, Thought(2021), and many edited books and articles on eco and urban pedagogies and politics. They are also an editor at Liberation School where they help to create the Reading Capital with Comrades podcast series.
Credits: Outro Music by Akrasis (Max Bowen, raps; Mark McKee, beats); audio editing by Aliyah Harris; production by Lucia Hulsether + Tina Pippin.