Zócalo Public Square (Audio)

Zócalo’s panel — including Stanford’s Tomás Jiménez, USC’s Dowell Myers, Peggy Levitt of Wellesley College, and Richard Alba of the State University of New York — explored to what extent immigrants are expected to abandon, or adapt, their native cultures and languages, and what it means to be American.

Luis Alberto Urrea’s fiction and nonfiction works chronicle the Mexican immigrant experience. Urrea, who now teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago, visited Zócalo to explore the experience of moving from south of the border to the Midwest, and the people he meets there.

Or are they not powerful enough? Politicians and reformers often complain about the power of teachers' unions to dominate elections -- from local school boards to the governor's race -- and frustrate their plans to improve education. Yet teachers still don’t have the power to receive pay commensurate with their education, the institutional support and instructional resources they need, or even -- at least in Los Angeles -- accurate paychecks. Now a rising generation of teachers' union leaders in the state say the labor organizations must add to their power and reach by tackling broader social and governmental problems that hurt schools. Zócalo assembles a distinguished panel to examine the promise and limits of the power of the teachers’ unions: Joshua Pechthalt, a vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, is part of a group of one-time union dissidents who have risen to power with an eye towards more aggressive organizing around issues that extend far beyond union contracts; Mikki Cichocki, a board member of the California Teachers Association, the largest teachers' union in the country, will offer thoughts on the statewide picture; David Tokofsky, a former school board member in LAUSD, offers his perspective as someone who has fought with and against big teachers' unions; and Steve Barr, founder and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, discusses the role of unions in the charter school movement. They discuss how unions can support—and block—education reform.

In Los Angeles, you can eat Chicago-style deep dish pizza and New York-style steaks, Buffalo chicken wings and Philly cheesesteaks, Southern barbeque and Seattle salmon. But try to find a restaurant boasting Los Angeles cuisine anywhere in the world. Nobody thinks of McDonald's, Johnny Rockets or the Caesar salad as coming from Southern California. They think of them as coming from America. L.A. Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold asked, what is Los Angeles food? Providence Restaurant’s Michael Cimarusti, Palate Food & Wine’s Octavio Becerra, and Angeli Caffe’s Evan Kleiman consider how the ports, the produce, the people and the tacos shape L.A. food.

Worldwide, there are more slaves today than ever before, and as the first person in recorded history to witness negotiations for the sales of human beings on four continents, journalist E. Benjamin Skinner has gone inside the modern slave trade like no one else. In his book, A Crime So Monstrous, Skinner weaves a vivid narrative of slaves, traffickers, survivors and liberators. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, and The Netherlands, he has produced a vivid testament and moving reportage on one of the great evils of our time. His journey led right back to the United States, where some 50,000 are slaves—including countless numbers held in hidden bondage right here in Los Angeles. At the heart of the story are the slaves themselves. In his Zócalo lecture, Skinner bears witness for them, and for the millions who are held in the shadows. (This event was sponsored, in part, by The California Wellness Foundation.)

The garment industry provides more than 50,000 jobs in Los Angeles County, including many that are tied to a commercial underground where safety rules don't apply, there's no minimum wage, and a labor pool of illegal immigrants keeps quiet about violations out of fear of deportation. Legitimate garment makers, meanwhile, face a disadvantage in battling underground competitors who skip workers compensation payments and other safety standards, and often shift locations suddenly in order to stay a step ahead of the state’s handful of inspectors. How big and dangerous is this floating world of the garment underground? Miguel Morales of the Garment Worker Center, a Downtown-base advocacy group, Garment Contractors Association Executive Director Joe Rodriguez and T.A. Frank, New America Foundation fellow and editor at The Washington Monthly, visit Zócalo to sort it out. (This event was sponsored, in part, by The California Wellness Foundation.)

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989—or 11/9—many Americans turned their attention away from foreign policy, and only re-awakened to world affairs on 9/11, even though trends that led to that day—failed states, religious extremism, terrorism—were brewing during the happy-go-lucky, self-congratulatory 1990s. Derek Chollet, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and James Goldgeier, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, brilliantly mapping the forces that shaped the post-Cold War era, discuss how the legacy of the 1990s is vital to understanding the challenges faced by the Obama administration, and why foreign policy is more difficult when it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

Novelist and literature professor Philippe Claudel makes his directorial debut with the powerful yet subtle “I’ve Loved You So Long,” about secrets and the possibility of being reborn. In perhaps her most nuanced and soulful film performance to date Kristin Scott Thomas sets the tone for the story that focuses on two long estranged sisters who are trying to reestablish a relationship. Smart, intense, psychologically textured, and clearly written with a novelist’s eye, “I’ve Loved You So Long” (to be released by Sony Pictures Classics on October 24) is a story about the power of forgiveness and the universal need to reach out beyond ourselves.

Gustavo Arellano, the unofficial mascot of Orange County, talks to an L.A. crowd about their southern neighbor (he was surprised anyone showed up). From its settling by the Spaniards to today's popular television shows, residents of Orange County, California have always imagined their homeland as Eden on the Coast, a respite from urbanization, where one only needed to work, vote Republican, and hate Mexicans to partake in the American Dream. But behind this bucolic veneer is a more complex picture. OC Weekly staff writer Gustavo Arellano unveils the truth behind the OC (don't call it that) by discussing his new book, Orange County: A Personal History, a history of the biggest little county in America as seen through four generations of his Mexican family.

Shamim Sarif brings her award-winning debut novel, "The World Unseen," to the screen for a sweeping tale of forbidden love in unforgiving times, inspired by her grandmother's stories of 1950s South Africa facing the birth pangs of apartheid. Distributed byRegent Releasing on November 7th, "The World Unseen" offers what the British Film Institute has called "a rare combination of intricate character study and engaging narrative" along with a compelling statement about the individual's quest for fulfillment against a backdrop of social coercion, violence, and pain. She discusses the film with lead actress Sheetal Sheth and KPCC’s Shirley Jahad. he film with lead actress Sheetal Sheth and KPCC’s Shirley Jahad.