We Grow the World Together: Parenting toward Abolition with Maya Schenwar, Kelly Hayes, Anya Tanyavutti and Bill Ayers

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Maya Schenwar, Kelly Hayes, Anya Tanyavutti and Bill Ayers will be at Pilsen Community Books for an event in celebration of We Grow the World Together: Parenting toward Abolition. Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What if abolition is something that grows?” As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. Maya Schenwar is Truthout's editor-in-chief, author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better, and co-editor of Who Do You Serve, Who Do you Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States. Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator, and photographer. She is also the host of Truthout’s podcast Movement Memos. Hayes is a cofounder of the Lifted Voices collective and the Chicago Light Brigade. Her written work is featured in numerous publications and multiple anthologies, including Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2016), Education in Movement Spaces: Standing Rock to Chicago Freedom Square (Routledge, 2020), and The Solidarity Struggle: How People of Color Succeed and Fail at Showing Up for Each Other in the Fight for Freedom (BGD Press, 2016). Hayes also coauthored an essay with Mariame Kaba in Kaba’s book We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021). Hayes’s movement photography is featured in the Freedom and Resistance exhibit of the DuSable Museum of African American History. Anya Tanyavutti has 25 years of experience working in the fields of education and nonprofit leadership. She earned her Bachelor's in Elementary Education and Masters in Socio-Cultural Studies and Educational Thought, from Western Michigan University. Anya is a trained birthworker a 3 time alum of the Jade T. Perry Cecilia Weston Spiritual Academy and a trained shamonic reiki practitioner. Tanyavutti is certified in Healing Centered Engagement and is also a published author. She is the proud mother of three amazing children who are the realization of their ancestor's dreams and work everyday to build a more decolonized world in big and small ways for and with the collective. Bill Ayers is a social justice activist, teacher, Distinguished Professor of Education (retired) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of two memoirs, Fugitive Days and Public Enemy.