Zócalo Public Square

The state of California has some of the nation’s strongest legal protections for workers. But Californians continue to suffer from various forms of abuse by their employers—from unpaid overtime to dangerous working conditions; from wage theft to racial, ethnic, gender discrimination. What are the biggest challenges for agencies and communities as they seek to turn pro-labor legislation into better workplace realities? To what extent do our systems—from the courts to workers’ compensation to federal and state labor enforcement—create obstacles to realizing California’s promises to workers? And what steps could state and local governments, and workers themselves, take to make jobs safe from discrimination and abuse?

California State Senator Maria Elena Durazo, warehouse worker Sara Fee, and California Labor Commissioner Assistant Chief Daniel Yu talk with Zócalo on the Capitol steps in Sacramento to discuss how to make jobs more fair for workers. Introductory comments by Don Howard, President & CEO of The James Irvine Foundation.

This program is part of “What Is a Good Job Now?”, a series supported by The James Irvine Foundation, focusing on workers in the low-wage sectors of California’s economy, in communities across the state. Public programs and essays, grounded in workers’ experiences and realities, will explore how to make the hardest jobs more rewarding, and make life better for those who do them.

Early this year, an uncrewed Chinese-operated high-altitude balloon floated across U.S. airspace, stoking anxiety and fascination among Americans, who assumed it was spying on them, and ultimately provoking President Biden to order the Pentagon to shoot it down. Just as alarming as foreign espionage, though, is the fear of information-gathering turned inward. American anxieties around the “surveillance state” have only grown since the Watergate scandal; with the post-9/11 passage of the USA PATRIOT Act; and with revelations that federal agencies sift through ordinary Americans’ phone and email communications, financial information, and Internet usage. Add in the rise of artificial intelligence, and our addictions to smartphones and sharing personal data, and pressing questions arise: Is Big Brother watching, and do we like it? What is the role of surveillance in our democracy, and to what ends do government and business use it? Does being watched keep us safe, or are we being snookered into becoming our own unwitting informants? What standards for digital privacy do we even want?

ArtCenter College of Design art and tech scholar Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Brennan Center government surveillance expert Faiza Patel, and ACLU SoCal attorney Mohammad Tajsar—experts working in and thinking deeply about surveillance and what it means for our 21st-century public and private lives—visit Zócalo for a timely discussion moderated by Ramesh Srinavasan, tech and society scholar at UCLA and director of the UC Digital Cultures Lab.

This discussion was co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, ACLU of Southern California, and The Progress Network.

We know cooking best as an act of nourishment, love, and tradition—but it can also cut as sharply as the knives that chop an onion. In Sinaloa, Mexico, a group of relatives of desaparecidos (the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared from the country), have banded together to fight back against government indifference and complicity. Dubbed Las Rastreadoras del Fuerte, the members’ main method of resistance is to search for the bodies of those they love. But they have also brought their battle to the kitchen, where they cook missing family members’ favorite dishes, preserving their memories and reminding the world of the void their absences create. What makes feeding people an act of protest? How do the families of the disappeared continue to find communion, hope, and joy at the table? And where else can cooking be a potent weapon in the face of a fight that feels never-ending?

An exhibition based on Recetario para la memoria, a cookbook that collects recipes and remembrances from these families in collaboration with photographer and creator Zahara Gómez Lucini, is currently on view at LA Cocina de Gloria Molina, a first-of-its-kind museum dedicated to Mexican gastronomy. Zócalo and LA Cocina host Gómez Lucini and culinary historian and Hungry for History podcast co-host Maite Gomez-Rejón to cook pozole in the museum’s demonstration kitchen and discuss what happens when the kitchen becomes a battleground.

This program was co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, LA Cocina de Gloria Molina and California Humanities.

Benjamin W. Rawlins Professor of Communication Andre E. Johnson, Monument Lab co-founder and artist Ken Lum, and reparations leader Robin Rue Simmons join Zócalo and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to discuss what repair looks like, and how different people and places have stumbled and succeeded in its pursuit. This program was co-presented with the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN and is the third program in Zócalo's series "How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?" supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Public health professor Helda Pinzón-Perez, health care workforce researcher Janette Dill, and in-home supportive services provider Martha Valladarez visited Zócalo to discuss how to build a healthier health care workforce. This discussion was moderated by KVPR News Director Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado at The Fresno Center in Fresno, CA on Thursday, August 23. This is the second program in the "What Is a Good Job Now?" series, presented in partnership with The James Irvine Foundation.

Boxing is a sport of contradictions. Known as the “sweet science” because of the technical skills its fighters need to succeed, it is also incredibly brutal. Boxing has provided a creative outlet and a path out of poverty for generations of California strivers, forging cultural and individual identity, promoting dignity, pride, and agency, and delivering million-dollar paydays for some. But the sport has also destroyed some of its most talented practitioners, seemingly abandoning them to post-career bankruptcies and grievous injury.

What accounts for boxing’s disconnects? Boxers themselves, who take epic risks with few safety nets? Promoters, agents, and managers who forget clients once they’re past their prime? The industry’s structure and sanctioning bodies, that allow abuse and neglect? California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster, former middleweight champ Sergio “the Latin Snake” Mora, and Kali “KO” Mequinonoag Reis, professional boxer and actress, visit Zócalo for a panel discussion, moderated by sport and ethnic studies scholar Rudy Mondragón, to reflect on boxing’s future—as an athletic endeavor, as a business, and as a cultural force—in California and beyond.

Beyond debates over keeping statues up or tearing them down and changing the names of schools and streets lie more fundamental questions at the intersection of personal and public memory. We know how to honor and memorialize idealized heroes; we know less about remembering complicated, real people, who did extraordinary things—let alone how to remember historical figures who changed the world for the better but also contributed to systems of oppression. And we struggle to lift up the people and places that don’t appear in history books, or fit in with the bigger narratives of our shared past. How do we decide whom we remember and how? What do we owe those who lived before us, and those who will come after us? How can we expand our definition of monuments to include not just physical, public works, but other types of remembering?

Civil rights historian Daphne Chamberlain, visual and performance artist Richard Lou, and Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, visit Zócalo to discuss what public memory looks like in the 21st century, and how future generations might experience the act of looking back.

There is a long and global tradition of artists—visual, performing, and literary—creating arresting, even beautiful works that address the horrors of war. How is art used as a form of protest, to change minds as well as hearts? What happens to its meaning over time—as war persists, and as new battles erupt? And what does it say about us all that war has inspired acclaimed works from artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Pussy Riot, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?

In 1932, amid Hitler’s rise to power, the German choreographer Kurt Jooss created The Green Table, a ballet subtitled A Dance of Death in Eight Scenes. As the Paul Taylor Dance Company brings this work to The Music Center—as part of its Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center series—join us for a panel discussion, moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Can such art help us now, in a moment of many international crises? And how do warmongers and politicians co-opt and commission art as propaganda?

Panelists included Gelare Khoshgozaran, artist, filmmaker and writer; Khalil Kinsey, COO, chief curator and creative director for the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection; Michael Novak, artistic director, Paul Taylor Dance Company; and Nadya Tolokonnikova, creator, Pussy Riot. This event took place on April 25, 2023 at The Music Center and was moderated by novelist and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Live from The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture at the Riverside Art Museum: One Fair Wage president Saru Jayaraman, hospitality expert Lesley Butler, and restaurant worker Ralph Prado IV visited Zócalo to discuss the future of tourism and hospitality work in the Inland Empire and throughout California. This event was presented in partnership with The James Irvine Foundation and moderated by freelance journalist Elizabeth Aguilera.

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Recorded live from ASU California Center at the historic Herald Examiner Building: Artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, and essayists and novelists Laila Lalami and Pankaj Mishra visited Zócalo to discuss why the English-speaking world can’t seem to fully absorb one of the central events of the recent past, and what it all means for our collective future. This event was presented in partnership with UCI Forum for the Academy and the Public and moderated by international relations expert Kal Raustiala.

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events.

Follow along on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepublicsquare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepublicsquare/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zocalopublicsquare

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/z-calo-public-square