Zócalo Public Square

It’s easy to pin responsibility for war on political leaders or soldiers who commit the worst atrocities, from rape and torture to bombings of civilians and ethnic cleansing. But experts note that, because of technology and other factors, modern conflicts in particular “[blur] the lines among soldiers and civilians, winners and losers.” And the injuries that accompany war—moral as well as mortal—reverberate for generations and create far-reaching ripple effects. What responsibility do citizens living in a democracy hold for a war enacted in their name? Does the burden change if they were born or immigrated after a war began? Or if they themselves served in the government, supported the government, or protested the government?

Lieutenant General (ret.) Robert E. Schmidle, Jr., Air Force veteran and social worker Noël Lipana, and Farnaz Fassihi, journalist and United Nations Bureau Chief at the New York Times, visited Zócalo to discuss what it means to bear responsibility for war and its atrocities, and why that matters. This event was streamed live from Los Angeles, CA, and was moderated by William Sturkey, University of North Carolina Historian and Author of Hattiesburg.

This is the first event of a two-year editorial and event series “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?,” supported by the Mellon Foundation. Blending scholarly essays and personal stories, we will explore how societies around the world collectively remember their transgressions and make attempts at repair, and how we might imagine new paths forward.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3PAWd9H

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

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From tax cuts and voting rights to healthcare and labor coalitions, middle- and working-class Americans frequently vote for politicians and support policies that go against their interests. The reason, argues economic and social policy scholar Heather McGhee, is racism. Prosperity and success, as the majority sees it, is a zero-sum game: Whatever benefits Black Americans, as well as immigrants and other minority groups, costs white Americans. In reality, explains McGhee, the opposite is true—whether it’s draining public swimming pools after integration, disinvesting in public education, or deregulating banks. These policies have had a disproportionate effect on Black and brown communities, but they hurt middle- and working-class white people, too. How have politicians and corporations pitted Americans against one another since before the country’s founding? Why is it so difficult for groups to come together across racial lines, even in the 21st century? And how are communities, from fast food workers in Kansas City to African immigrants and longtime residents of Lewiston, Maine, building new models for solidarity?

Heather McGhee, winner of the 2022 Zócalo Book Prize for "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together" and the former president of Demos, visits Zócalo to discuss the racial roots of American inequality, and what it will take to grow a better nation, together.

Zócalo Public Square is proud to award the 2022 Zócalo Poetry Prize to Chelsea Rathburn for her poem “8 a.m., Ocean Drive.”

The 2022 Zócalo Book and Poetry Prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3xc717C

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

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Mayoral candidates in Los Angeles love to offer plans and make promises. But in L.A., City Hall is more likely to follow than to lead. Change here has always come from Angelenos themselves, and the ways we interact with each other and cope with the accidents, disasters, and ongoing challenges that define life in L.A. Before June’s first-round mayoral election, Zócalo tunes out the politicians and asks the people: what do we want for Los Angeles, and how might we get it? What will it take to improve our diminishing quality of life, reduce the cost of living, and improve our schools? And what are people prepared to do to make Los Angeles more just, safe, healthy, beautiful, and equitable?

USC political scientist Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, Green Qween co-founder and CEO Taylor Bazley, and CSUN government and community relations assistant vice president Rafael de la Rosa visit Zócalo to imagine what an L.A. of the people, by the people, for the people could look like. This event was streamed live from Los Angeles, CA on May 26, 2022 and was moderated by Janaya Williams, Host of KCRW’s All Things Considered.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3lRiQd5

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

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Direct democracy is supposed to be a people’s process, allowing everyday citizens to enact their own ideas for laws or constitutional amendments. But does California’s system live up to that promise? Qualifying a measure for the ballot costs so many millions of dollars that only the richest people and interests can bring their proposals forward. Elected and appointed officials have considerable sway over the process, and routinely use it for their own aims. And voters have little information, and few opportunities to deliberate, as they make decisions about complicated proposals that, once approved, are very difficult to fix or change. How should recall and ballot initiatives change, and what reforms does the state seem likely to enact?

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Public Policy Institute of California president Mark Baldassare, and Initiative & Referendum Institute president John Matsusaka, author of Let the People Rule, visit Zócalo to explore what it would take to bring more democracy into California’s direct democracy. This event was streamed live from Los Angeles, CA on May 11, 2022 and was moderated by Nathan Gardels, Editor-in-Chief of Noēma Magazine and Co-founder of Berggruen Institute.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3PlXl1p

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

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Food, art, culture, weather, beaches, mountains—and people, from all over the world and with a broad range of talents and dreams—make Los Angeles an amazing place to live. A homelessness and housing crisis, drought, traffic, inequality, and political dysfunction can make Los Angeles an impossible place to live. The county is home to areas with the lowest and highest rates of child poverty in the state; innovative tech companies and broadband dead zones; and some of America’s best infrastructure to support green energy as well as poor air quality and deeply entrenched, polluting industries. Los Angeles has a serious gap between its potential and its reality. How are individuals and organizations working to harness L.A.’s many resources to solve its worst problems? What would the best possible Los Angeles look like, and how can the entire city come together to create a shared vision?

Gloria Gonzalez, Youth Development Coordinator at Youth Justice Coalition, and Sissy Trinh, Founder and Executive Director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance, visit Zócalo to discuss the efforts that inspire them—from mutual aid to policy change—and what they think it will take for Los Angeles to live up to its full potential, for all Angelenos. This event was streamed live from Los Angeles, CA on May 4, 2022 and was moderated by Meztli Projects Director Joel Garcia.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

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

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In 1933, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg immigrated to the United States, settling in Los Angeles; he would spend the rest of his life writing music and teaching composition at USC and UCLA. Following him, in 1940, came Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor Stravinsky, who settled in Hollywood after making the move from France. Then, in 1942, fellow Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff arrived in Beverly Hills. These immigrants—and others who followed them—fused L.A.’s free-spirited culture with the traditions they brought with them from their homelands.

A string quartet of four Los Angeles Opera musicians—cellist Evgeny Tonkha, violist Erik Rynearson, and violinists Roberto Cani and Ana Landauer—visits Zócalo to perform the music of L.A.’s immigrant composers, from Schoenberg to contemporary Indian American composer Reena Esmail, who continues in this proud tradition today by merging the worlds of Indian and Western classical music. This event was streamed live from the ASU California Center in Los Angeles, CA on April 28, 2022 in partnership with Artistic Soirées and the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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

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Growing homelessness has fueled bitter conflicts in hundreds of neighborhoods across California. The drought is renewing generations-old local wars over water. Schools have become political and cultural battlegrounds, with parents and teachers at odds. And fights over pandemic response, from Shasta to Orange Counties, have escalated into violent threats between citizens and local officials. Why are so many Californians falling into fights with their neighbors? How much do social media and our polarized national politics contribute to local divides? And what are the best strategies to extract ourselves, and our neighbors, from intense conflicts so that we might work together to solve problems?

“High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out” author Amanda Ripley, UCLA sociocultural anthropologist Kyeyoung Park, and mediator and former California Superior Court judge B. Scott Silverman visited Zócalo to discuss how we can stop contentious disputes from escalating and taking over our communities. This Zócalo/California Wellness Foundation event, co-presented with the Natural History Museum of LA County, was streamed live from the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum on April 13, 2022 and was moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Erika D. Smith.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

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

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California is turning away from mass incarceration. After generations of opening prisons and increasing the number of inmates inside them, the state government now plans to close a number of institutions. But many state prisons are located in struggling rural communities that depend on the jobs and health care infrastructure these facilities provide. The Newsom administration’s announcement of its intention to close the California Correctional Center in Susanville this year has sparked questions about the resulting effects on the Lassen County community. How do the economies and civic spheres of our prison towns really work? What is the relationship between these institutions and their communities? And what assistance, if any, should the state provide to towns that lose their prisons?

Lassen Community College President Trevor Albertson, Parlier mayor and retired correctional officer Alma Beltran, and University of Wisconsin sociologist John M. Eason, author of Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation, visited Zócalo to discuss what the end of prisons will mean for neighboring communities. This event was streamed live from Susanville, CA on April 7, 2022 and was moderated by Marshall Project staff writer Keri Blakinger.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3ulcmbt

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

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Survey after survey suggests Americans strongly support immigration. Yet fear dominates the politics around immigration. Elected officials and pundits routinely use the rhetoric that immigrants are threats to culture, public safety, and jobs—not only to justify restrictions on migrants’ rights, but also to divide communities and gain power at the expense of democracy itself. What makes this fear-mongering so effective, and is there any way to fight it? How have communities, organizations, and governments successfully reconciled differing views on immigration over the past few years? And could immigration inspire unity rather than conflict and crisis?

National Immigration Forum president/CEO and ASU Social Transformation Lab fellow Ali Noorani, author of Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants, visited Zócalo to examine how new policies, stories, and responses to immigration can be used to build a more cohesive and welcoming nation. This Zócalo event was streamed online on Thursday, March 24, 2022 and moderated by New York Times national correspondent Miriam Jordan.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3DedKPT

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

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To leave your birthplace behind and make a home elsewhere is to cross any number of boundaries—national and linguistic, religious and spiritual. While loss is an inevitable part of this journey, it’s not just about displacement; it is also a story of cultural change and celebration. Migrants and immigrants find new ways to balance assimilation and tradition—and to create entirely new identities. This reinvention happens at home and out in the world, and cuts across religion, food, and art. Its impact is as personal as it is global. How do people who are separated from their homelands reinvent cultural practices in their new communities? How does cultural identity change across generations and over time?

Ragamala Dance artistic directors, choreographers, and principal dancers Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy, writer and Science Fiction Poetry Association president Bryan Thao Worra, and USC Institute of Armenian Studies director Shushan Karapetian visited Zócalo to discuss how they are reimagining what home means. This event was streamed live from The Soraya at California State University, Northridge on March 16, 2022 and was moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano.

Read more about our panelists here: https://zps.la/3cjL6OA

For a full report on the live discussion, check out the Takeaway: https://zps.la/3wg0ed6

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

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