malik was named after malcom x. those are arabic names. >> host: if you would, bill aayers, walk us through the year 1970 for us. >> guest: 1970. oh, of course. 1970, i was an officer of sds. >> host: students for -- >> guest: students for democratic societies. a major student antiwar organization, and in march of 1970 there was a terrible explosion at a townhouse in greenwich village. my girlfriend at the time was killed two friends were killed and the rest of us went underground. i was underground until 1981. >> host: what in 19 # 1 made you come out from underground? >> guest: well, we had been underground for 11 years and that was long time and the war had ended and the war was the real defining reason he had gone underground. we now had two kids, and it seemed a lot of expert a lot of energy to -- and frankly, you know, unable to do the the kind of political work we would have liked to have done so we determined it was probably time to make our peace with the u law and take whatever consequences were there and

. >> host: who are malik, zade and chesa? >> guest: good try. malik is the middle schoolteacher, he's 29 now, and chesa is my youngest son and has just finished his first year at yale -- >> host: he's also an author. >> guest: i'm sorry? >> host: he's also an author. >> guest: three books, i feel like a slouch around him. he's this summer in south africa clerking for a justice on the constitutional court. >> host: and his name is chesa boudin. >> guest: good try. we adopted him at 14 months. >> host: why? >> guest: because his parents were arrested and went to prison for life. his mother got out five years ago, and we're still hoping that his buy logical father -- biological father will get out. he's an extraordinary kid, and he's a kid who, you know, who came to us with many problems and was slow to kind of do a lot of things, slow to read. he didn't read until the third grade. now he just finished his first year of law school, so no first grade teacher should make heavy judgments about kids. but he had a complicated life history and had a lot

. >> host: who are malik, said and chess saw? >> guest: you pronounced them wrong, but it was a good try. i have three grown boys. malik is the middle schoolteacher, he's 29 now, and chesa is my youngest son who just finished his first year of law school at yale -- >> host: he's also an author. >> guest: i'm sorry? >> host: he's also an author. >> guest: he's quite an author. he's 28, i feel like a slouch whenever i'm around him, what the hell have i been up to? he's this summer in south africa clerking for a justice on the constitutional court of south africa. >> and his name is chess saw bow din? >> guest: we adopted him at 14 months. >> host: why? >> guest: because his parents were arrested and went to prison for life. his mother actually got out five years ago, and we're still hoping that his biological father will get out. but we raised him from 14 throughout, and he's an extraordinary kid. he's a kid who, you know, came to us with many problems and was slow to kind of do a lot of things, slow to read. he didn't read until t

he talk malik the ropes. don't bring anything that is contraband. empty your pockets, take off your shoes, don't get annoyed. be prepared to wait. why do you have a chapter about visiting prisons in this book called race course? >> guest: well, there's almost no example that is more clearcut about why we still have a problem with racism and the structures of white supremacy in the united states than the prison gulag we can no longer sustain. 2.3 million of our sisters and brothers incarcerated overwhelmingly for nonviolent offenses no evidence whatsoever that this kind of caging of young black and latino men makes us safer. really no evidence. and all kinds of other ways to sanction law-breaking. and to happen people recover from the worst think they ever did. no other country does what we do, and as every governor can now testify, we can't sustain this. what it costs to look people up, costs to have them come back out with no skills, no prospects for housing no prospects for jobs, no prospects to vote, really stripped of their opportunity to recove

ought to be taken out and given a real job in fact my son dish have three sons but my middle son, malik, is a middle school math and science teacher and whenever the talks to his two professor parents and his writer brother and his law student brother he says, would you people please be quiet, some of us have a real job, and i accept that. it's a real job teaching middle school math and signs. last semester i taught four courses. i taught a course in narrative research which i teach every spring. i taught a required course in the masters program called improving learning environments. i taught a seminar in teaching for a cohort of people who were career-changers and i taught a course in writing memoir to 17-year-olds. >> host: wow. >> guest: 17-year-old writing a memoir. let me tell you. how much have they cnn done? more than you imagine because it's all here. >> host: we have two hours left in the program with bill ayers here, we are live at the chicago tribune's printers literaryfest, and we're at the corner of south state street and congress, bat block from where the festival is taki