“I grew up biculturally in Arizona. It was very common for people to cross the border five to six times a day. I’m sorry we don’t have that openness that we used to have,”* said ASU School of Transborder Studies director Irasema Coronado, during a panel at last Saturday’s Zócalo and Universidad de Guadalajara program “Are the U.S. and Mexico Becoming One Country?” The event was part of the Spanish-language LéaLA literary festival and book fair at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles.

Panelists included artist, curator, and cultural consultant Anita Herrera and Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León sociology professor Víctor Zúñiga. The program was moderated by Puente News Collaborative’s executive editor and correspondent Alfredo Corchado.

The conversation moved past the vitriol around immigration in contemporary political debate and looked at what unites the U.S. and Mexico. The panel spoke of the ties that bind the two countries—through migration, work, family, culture, language—and shared ways people themselves can serve as bridges for cross-border exchange.

Obvious connections bind the U.S. and Mexico to one another, the group observed. The two countries are geographic neighbors, and parts of the U.S.—like Los Angeles—were once part of Mexico. Mexico is the U.S.’s primary trading partner. Mexico also has the second largest number of citizens living abroad, after India— many of whom are in the U.S.

Despite this, there is still polarization, Corchado said. So how can culture fight back against it, and change the climate between the two countries? he asked.

“I think that culture transcends borders,” Herrera said. Born and raised in Huntington Park, California, Herrera was inspired to start her “Diaspora Dialogues” art series after she moved to Mexico City in 2018. The project consists mostly of experiential art installations. One such installation was set up at Saturday’s event and celebrated a family backyard party typical of her upbringing. It consisted of displays of old family photos, tacos, music, and the specific balloon arches and tables customary at those events. In the series, she wanted to share her specific culture, her Los Angeles, and open a space to discuss what connects, and disconnects, Mexicans and the diaspora.

“The diaspora exists because of an imaginary line,” Herrera said. Though she and her friends in Mexico City often listened to the same music and watched the same novelas, they were clearly not from the same country. Friends and family in Mexico called her “la gringa,” a name she did not like. She recalled struggles to obtain her Mexican tax identification number and her “papeles,” to learn more Spanish, and assimilate into Mexico City culture.

“I’ve learned a lot and unlearned a lot,” she said. “In the U.S., we are taught to be more selfish and individualistic. I’ve learned a new way to live.”

Zúñiga, the sociologist, offered the example of the “0.5 generation,” those who lived in the U.S. (many of them born there) and then moved to Mexico in the earlier part of this century, who are the subject of his book. This generation’s unique experiences and perspectives, as American and Mexican, inspire Zúñiga to believe a better relationship between the two countries is possible, he said.

“These children are much more than just bilingual individuals, these children are binational” and also bicultural, he said, having learned “to move between worlds, rituals, and norms that rival each other.”*

“To be bicultural,” Zúñiga further defined, “requires you to feel at home in the U.S. and equally at home in Mexico”*—something he and many migrants cannot claim. So, he asked, what impact does this 0.5 generation have on their communities? How are they adapting, and how is Mexico adapting to their presence?

Part of the reason some families move back to Mexico is because of immigration issues, like deportation. These families do not want to live separately. For Zúñiga, when families make the decision to stick together and move back to Mexico in the face of state policies they are defending themselves against separation.

Coronado offered a different perspective on those families, highlighting that many of this generation that moved back to Mexico are angry. They feel alienated and estranged in their new schools. They grew up imagining their lives on the football team or going to prom, and their lives have been changed radically. Many state a desire to return to the U.S. when they become adults.

Zúñiga said his research shows the situation appears to differ by region. At schools located closer to the border, in, for example, Zacatecas, his work has shown that 99% of students asked if the American-born students were similar to them said “yes.” The same question posed to students in Oaxaca and Puebla resulted in only 20% affirming the similarities. That “anti-Yankee” sentiment is regional, it demonstrated.

In so many ways, the border is a model for the larger countries, said Coronado, who herself grew up moving between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora. People move across the border for work, for doctor visits, and for medicine, she observed. Border towns exhibit an interdependency that can serve as a model for both countries on “how to get along, respect each other, have a harmonious relationship.”*

*This quote was translated live from Spanish to English by on-site interpreters.

The post What Unites Mexico and the U.S. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

With the new school year starting, universities across the country anticipate a new wave of protests around the war in Gaza, now in its 10th month. To offer broad perspective, Zócalo brought a panel of scholars and practitioners to the ASU California Center Broadway last night to discuss the history, legality, and art of American protest.

The Zócalo event—which asked “When Does Protest Make a Difference?”—took the form of two back-to-back panels, both moderated by KQED correspondent and “The California Report” co-host Saul Gonzalez.

The first panel was made up of academics: urban journalism professor Danielle K. Brown, former director of the ACLU LGBT Project Matt Coles, and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh. They discussed what makes an effective protest movement, the media’s role in legitimizing protest in the eyes of the public, and what forms of protest the First Amendment allows.

Coles, known for his work in the LGBT rights movement—notably, authoring San Francisco’s first sexual orientation nondiscrimination law—shared his thoughts on what it takes for protesters to make real change.

First, he said, think about what you want to achieve: Are you trying to energize your constituency? To persuade people generally of something? To change policy?

Reflecting on the anti-war movement of the ’60s and ’70s, ACT UP’s AIDS demonstrations of the ’80s and ’90s, and LGBT protests more broadly, Coles, now a constitutional law professor, pointed to successful strategies. Particularly at the start of a protest, he said, it’s important to catch public attention with an action “that feels arresting, whether that’s norm-defying or convention-defying.”

To make change you also need “concrete articulated goals” that allow “you to make change over time,” Coles said.

One more key thing? Organization “to keep a movement sustained.”

Sometimes protests are “simply there to signal their capacity to other people,” added Brown, the journalism professor. The goal could be getting a politician to recognize that an overlooked issue matters to their constituency. Or it could be to impact “the hearts and minds of other people” more broadly, she said.

Brown’s research focuses on media representations of protests and social movements—particularly, Black Lives Matter. “Most people don’t go to protests, most people learn about protests through the media,” she said. That’s why the way media coverage approaches protests is important, she argued. What biases does the coverage reflect? Does it present protesters as a legitimate part of the electorate? Does it portray them as having an agenda with concrete goals and demands?

Volokh, the legal scholar, spoke about the limits of First Amendment protection. “Movements may be successful or not,” he said, “but they all have to comply with the law or else face both the risk of criminal punishment [and] the risk of civil liability.”

A great deal of protest is constitutionally protected, he said, but some conduct is not. Decades of litigation established that officials cannot restrict protests based on the ideas they express. But authorities can crack down for other reasons: noise level (say, if people are protesting at night), or picketing in a residential area. Protesters who block highways illegally can be jailed or fined.

“Before you figure out what you’re going to do, you need to figure out what the lines are and what the risks are,” Coles affirmed.

The evening’s second panel featured activists and a law enforcement official: National Day Labor Organizing Network co-executive director Pablo Alvarado, Los Angeles Police Department former assistant chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, and immigrant rights and labor justice activist Victor Narro. They mused on responses to protests, what a “well-policed” protest might look like, and joy in protests.

Narro, who has engaged in activism for decades, said that witnessing police repression as a kid growing up in New York City was a formative experience. His friends and neighbors were unjustly targeted, he said, not just because of law enforcement attitudes but “because [the NYPD was given] the green light from the mayor.” It’s important to recognize how officials’ “perception and viewpoints” translate into law enforcement conduct, he said. “We have to hold them accountable as well.”

MacArthur, who is retired from LAPD, now works at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office teaching law enforcement agencies de-escalation skills. There are things police can and should do to prevent needless violence, she said. “Our fundamental duty is to be out there to protect and to allow those people to have the right to assemble,” she said. Through training, experience, and working with organizers, officers can understand “at what point to engage.” If it’s too late, she said, “there’s too much going on.” If it’s too early, “then we create the storm.” Offering regular training to help officers know what to expect on protest days and placing seasoned supervisors in the field are tools that can de-escalate future situations, she said.

Alvarado, who came to the United States from El Salvador in 1990, near the end of that nation’s 12-year civil war, organizes low-wage workers. He spoke about how protests can be joyful spaces, sharing an example from 2010, when his organization was pushing against an anti-immigration law in Arizona. While they were protesting a local business that had hired off-duty sheriff deputies to patrol neighborhoods and arrest workers, armed counter-protesters showed up—”people with swastikas and really ugly messages against immigrants”—supported by then-sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Rather than escalate the situation, Alvarado’s group decided to infuse their protest with arts and culture. Bringing in mariachi bands, eloteros (people who sell corn on the street), and brass bands helped to dial down the hostility, he said, “not only on our side but on the other side.”

Martin Luther King taught us how to fight with “peaceful tension,” he added.

Both conversations concluded with audience Q&A. One of the audience members asked panelists about “keyboard warriors.” Are digital protesters effective?

“There’s nothing more powerful than physically holding up that protest sign, that picket sign, or that banner,” Narro said. But digital media can feed into how we physically come together. “You can never go wrong when you get activists together in solidarity to make their message heard.”

The post What’s the DNA of an Effective Protest? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Salinas, California, isn’t just “Steinbeck Country,” its landscape famously memorialized in novels. The Monterey County city is also known as “America’s salad bowl,” for the produce, including lettuce, that is grown there. And last night, it was a fitting site for the Zócalo and The James Irvine Foundation event, “‘What Is a Good Job Now?’ In Agriculture,” part of a larger series exploring low-wage work in sectors across California.

One-third to one-half of all agricultural workers in the U.S. reside in California—so what happens here matters immensely for the industry, The James Irvine Foundation president and CEO Don Howard reminded a packed audience at Sherwood Elementary School, in opening remarks.

The evening’s panel consisted of farmworkers and their advocates: Salinas local and UC Berkeley student José Anzaldo; agricultural consultant James Nakahara; Alianza Nacional de Campesinas executive director & co-founder Mily Treviño-Sauceda; and retired farmworker attorney Juan Uranga. Los Angeles Times staff writer Rebecca Plevin moderated.

The group teased out the many challenges California’s farming industry and its workers face, from climate change to low wages to health issues. A meaningful message emerged: The solutions to these challenges will have to center on the humans that do the work.

Plevin launched the conversation by asking Treviño-Sauceda to list issues impacting California’s campesinas (women farmworkers) today. Citing wage theft, pesticide positioning, and discrimination, Treviño-Sauceda noted that sexual harassment and rape are widespread—9 out of 10 women are harassed in the field. Alianza Nacional de Campesinas aims to bring attention to these issues and more, she said.

Anzaldo chimed in, speaking directly to Treviño-Sauceda, saying that he respects the work she and her organization do.

“And we want people like you, too, talking about it and building consciousness in society,” she responded.

What about climate change? Plevin wondered, moving on to another hot-topic issue. With extreme heat, wildfires, and floods ravaging California farmlands, what kinds of changes are needed to protect workers?

Nakahara, who advises on farming practices, said that climate change presents both risks and opportunities. Some agriculture will have to shift geographically to accommodate changing climes—citrus, stone fruits, and avocadoes will move north—but other crops may move in to take their place. “We are going to get to grow things here we couldn’t 3,000 years ago,” he said. Throughout these large-scale changes, though, the industry will need to support and care for its workers.

But isn’t California progressive, with good protections for its workers? Plevin, who reports on equity issues, pointed out that California’s rules exceed federal standards. The state regulates when workers cannot work outside due to extreme heat, and requires growers to extend overtime benefits to farmworkers.

“I think the solution is better wages, not better overtime laws,” Nakahara said. Farmworkers cannot afford to live near their work, sometimes commuting four hours each way to get to the fields.

This resonated with Anzaldo, who recalled his own experiences pulling weeds and strawberries. “I remember being paid $13 an hour. I needed it for textbooks.”

To make ends meet, Anzaldo’s mother worked another job in addition to her farm work, and did not have a lot of time to spend with him and his siblings. The work is also physically grueling, and back-breaking. If he put his back up to rest or stretch, Anzaldo remembered, he would be penalized. “We will replace you,” his employers told him.

“It’s disheartening,” Anzaldo told the audience.

And change isn’t easy, said Uranga, the retired lawyer. “Anytime you make substantial changes to the relationship between grower and farmworker, growers are going to complain,” he said. Uranga started working in Salinas in 1974, with California Rural Legal Assistance. Growers like the status quo, and don’t want the challenges of creating new business models that take into account protections for workers.

There’s another big problem, too, Uranga said: Farm work is seasonal. So even if you’re getting $17 an hour, you’re getting it only some of the time. The communities that farmworkers live in have a big role to play, he said. Salinas and Monterey could help agriculture and farmworkers by subsidizing affordable housing or tutors in schools.

And what about technological changes? Plevin asked. How is tech changing farm work?

It’s helped—seed planters and other advances in greenhouses and nurseries have helped make the work easier—but advances are often hard-won, both Nakahara and Uranga noted. Outlawing short-handled hoes, which are more strenuous on the body, only happened when workers and advocates pushed for it, Uranga said.

“We need to stabilize the labor force,” Uranga argued, which dovetails with immigration reform and policy. The H-2 visa program allows growers to go directly into other countries, like Mexico, to recruit farmworkers for brief periods—making it difficult to develop an empowered, stable farming workforce. Fieldworkers should be allowed to stay, with some sort of pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, Uranga said.

For Uranga, that growers and industry leaders didn’t stand up for immigrant workers when political reform came up and amid Republican vitriol against migrants was disappointing. It “gets in the way of creating a job situation for the farmworker community in the U.S. that is more valued,” he said.

The way society values farm work needs reframing, all the panelists agreed. “We need to change the way we view the people who do the hardest work in our country and state,” Nakahara said, pushing back on the notion that farm work is “unskilled.” Treviño-Sauceda, too, pointed out that farmworkers were considered “essential workers” during the COVID-19 pandemic, but not treated as such. No one gave them health insurance or sick days.

The panel fielded questions—from both the online and in-person audiences. “How can consumers leverage purchasing power to drive positive change in food systems?” asked one in-person guest.

Change the packaging, said Nakahara: We have all these labels—certified organic, local, natural. But we don’t have a label that says “this food was made without exploiting labor,” or without forcing workers to get by on poverty wages, he noted. “I think if we did, people would shop differently.”

The night closed with a performance from a live mariachi band and catered food from El Charrito. But before the reception, the audience viewed clips from East of Salinas, a 2016 documentary film that features a young Anzaldo and his mother as subjects; and Beyond Salinas, a forthcoming sequel delving into Anzaldo’s experience at UC Berkeley as a first-generation college student.

Anzaldo said a few words to the crowd at Sherwood, which he attended all those years ago. He said he was dedicated to his community in Salinas, and he wanted those who viewed the films to understand not only his compassion but the issues he and his community face.

“My struggle doesn’t stop,” he said.

*CORRECTION: This “Takeaway” originally reported that panelist Juan Uranga argued for cities and counties like Salinas and Monterey to subsidize farmworker wages. Uranga mentioned subsidies for affordable housing and tutors.

The post California’s Farm Industry Is People Powered appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Racial hate and discrimination are serious problems in California’s Inland Empire—and solving them begins at the most fundamental levels. This was the conclusion of a panel of people who study and fight against hate crimes at “How Does the Inland Empire Strike Back Against Hate?,” a Zócalo/California Humanities event at UCR ARTS in Riverside, California. The speakers agreed that acts of racism and hatred go underreported across the region, and that building strong institutions that promote understanding begins in schools.

The discussion was moderated by Brian Levin, professor emeritus at the Cal State San Bernardino School of Criminal Justice, who studies extremism and hate crimes. He opened the discussion by noting that hate crimes “increased at double digit levels in major American cities” in 2023. This year isn’t likely to get better given that hate crimes have increased in every election year since 1991. Levin asked the panelists to speak to how California—which perhaps should be “a shining city on the hill for the rest of the country”—is combating hate.

California State Assemblymember Corey A. Jackson said that his goal is to build anti-racist, anti-xenophobic infrastructure around the state. He pointed to two bills recently signed by Governor Gavin Newsom—AB 1078, which pushed back against book banning (and which Jackson wrote) and AB 1955, which bars schools from notifying parents about student gender identity—as well as the state’s Civil Rights Department’s Commission on the State of Hate as examples. “Overall, what are we saying in the state of California? Not on our watch. We are making sure we are upholding what other generations did for us. When hate, racism, [or] xenophobia raises its ugly head, we are going to beat it back in the shadows where it belongs,” he said.

Turning to Candice Mays, project director of Black Voice News’ Mapping Black California, Levin asked how local institutions are fighting hate, and what they can do to combat skepticism and distrust of law enforcement and government.

The first hurdle, said Mays, is “How do you tell the police on the police?” Currently, the responsibility to report an incident is on the victim—who may not want to report a violent interaction to the organization perpetrating it. And law enforcement itself might not tick the proper boxes to characterize a violent act as a hate crime. Who holds the people who are mandated to report hate crimes accountable for their reports? Mays asked. She added, “It’s not as much as, how do we fix the Black community’s opinion of law enforcement; it’s how does government hold law enforcement accountable, so it’s not on us to deal with that.”

Levin concurred, pointing out that over the last few years, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department—the nation’s 10th largest law enforcement agency—has reported just a handful of hate crimes each year, while the Los Angeles Police Department reported over 800 in 2023.

Xenophobia has a long history in the Inland Empire, said ACLU Southern California Inland Empire Office senior policy advocate and organizer Luis Nolasco. He sees his work as “ensuring that the Inland Empire is welcoming and is not anti-immigrant,” he said. “The hate comes from lack of knowledge or interfacing with the group.” He added, “A lot of that can be solved by talking to a person that’s an immigrant.” Some of his work has been with young people—including a lawsuit challenging how law enforcement and schools punish Black and brown students—but he is also working on recognizing racism as a public health crisis.

Mays said that unequal healthcare access is a major issue in both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, though it’s significantly worse in the latter. She said that people by and large have health insurance. But new arrivals from Los Angeles County—many of them Black and brown, and without local networks—lack access to resources and providers. They often end up going to urgent care, for instance, instead of a primary care doctor.

Levin turned the discussion toward solutions. “What can we do to hone allyship?” he asked.

Jackson said that Black people are always at the top of any list of hate crime victims—but they are not alone there. “We are all on the menu. It depends what the dish of the day is. As a matter of fact, this is starting to become a buffet, when it comes to hate,” he said. He urged people to band together—but also to “hold onto your own humanity. Speak up against other people who are being targeted, even if you have nothing to win or lose.”

In the face of extreme hate, allyship has to be active, said Nolasco. “We’ve lost that sense of really putting ourselves on the line for our other communities,” he said. “This is something we all need to do for each other.”

Mays echoed that sentiment in response to a question from an audience member about helping people who want to fight hate but feel too overwhelmed to take action.

“I’m exhausted, too. I look at bad numbers all day,” she said. “It’s important to work in collaboration and connection with other people because then you’re restoring each other.” Surround yourself in community, she added, and remember that other people did this work before you.

Another audience member asked the panelists whether anti-hate, anti-racism movements needed better marketing—slogans like “Occupy,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Defund the Police” are triggering, or easy to push back on.

Mays didn’t deny the need for better marketing but pointed out that “desegregation” and “integration” got pushback in the civil rights era. “Whatever we’re going to push for next, no matter how we word it, is going to upset people, she said. “Honestly if it’s not, I don’t think we’re pushing the right things or pushing hard enough.”

The post Fighting Hate Is the Ultimate Group Project appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The city of Los Angeles, the world’s most famous zócalo, and the word “Latino” are connected by a shared history—a history of people and cultures and languages colliding, explained journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar. Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino,” and he was speaking at an event honoring his book and the themes of the prize: community, human connectedness, and social cohesion.

The event at the ASU California Center at the historic Herald Examiner building, titled “What Is a ‘Latino’?”, opened with a recorded reading by the 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize winner, Melanie Almeder, and then the presentation of the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize by Tim Disney, who generously sponsored both awards. “This book drove deeply into the dissonance, the paradox, between our very human compulsion to categorize, separate, and other-ize on the one hand, and our equally human capacity for decency, love, and connection on the other,” said Disney, before turning the microphone over to Tobar.

Tobar then delivered a brief lecture that wove together many threads—much like his book and the history of the word “Latino” itself. “To be Latino,” he said, “is to be a product of the sometimes violent, sometimes amorous mixing of cultures.” The people who built the town known today as Los Angeles, in 1781, didn’t think of themselves as Latino; they were classified according to race and caste labels invented by Spanish authorities. Many of those labels were offensive, Tobar noted, and became even more offensive and granular as the people of the New World mixed more and more—though the process also allowed social mobility that would have been impossible in Europe.

Two centuries later, when Tobar was born in a Los Angeles hospital in 1963, both of his Guatemalan parents were listed as “Caucasian” on his birth certificate, “invited into the safe, privileged ground of American whiteness” in Los Angeles of that time, as other groups had been before them. But decades later, with increased migration from Latin America into California, the ground shifted again—and Tobar, who had always called himself “Guatemalan,” became “Latino,” a word enshrined in the stylebook of the Los Angeles Times, where he was the “Latino columnist.”

“Unfortunately, ‘Latino’ hides our Indigenous and our African heritage, and replaces it with a term whose etymology goes back to Europe and Rome. Like every other ethnic and racial term, ‘Latino’ places a simple, one-dimensional label on relationships that are filled with complexity and nuance,” said Tobar. “Sometimes we wear those terms proudly, and other times they fit us like loose clothes, or like a sign someone stuck on our back. And sometimes, if we don’t fit them, we make up new ones.”

He continued, “To say today that Latino people are a race means only one thing. It means we have a relationship to the United States that is racial.” Yet if race is about power and labor, it is also about resistance and community, said Tobar. “We should treat those [race] labels as artifacts of a human journey, as myths made up to explain what a people are, and as a true story people tell about their families and their dreams. ‘Latino’ is a story of empire, of exploitation, and it’s a story of the work and struggles that have made us into a community in our barrios and the gathering places and the zócalos we call home,” he concluded.

American historian and 2020 MacArthur Fellow Natalia Molina—who writes about interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship—joined Tobar onstage for a moderated conversation and audience Q&A. They talked about their own Latino and Los Angeles stories, the students Tobar teaches at UC Irvine, and where they find hope for the future.

“A central figure in your book is Wong Kim Ark,” said Molina. What role does he play in Our Migrant Souls?

Tobar explained Ark’s story: born in San Francisco in the late 1800s, he was the son of Chinese immigrants during a time when little legal migration was allowed. After a trip to China, he returned home and was put in immigration detention for months. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in Ark’s favor—that anyone born in the U.S. was an American citizen. Ark’s story resonated with Tobar on many levels, including the fact that his parents were in the U.S. on tourist visas when he was born. Later, Tobar learned about the Chinese community in eastern Guatemala, where his father is from. “Everywhere you look in American and Latin American history, you see this braiding” of peoples and histories, he said.

That braiding is part of the lives of his Latino students, who helped inspire the book—which Molina called “a love letter” to them. She asked Tobar, “What changes have you seen across the years in your students?”

“People have a way of processing traumas and processing things that embarrass them and turning them into something powerful,” said Tobar. For example, the terms “Chicano” and “Cholo” were an insult and a race term, respectively, that eventually took on new meanings. Young Latino people have taken embarrassment or self-consciousness around how they speak Spanish and claimed it for themselves: They are “No Sabo” kids. They have also turned the bureaucratic term DACA on its head, with unDACAmented and DACAmented.

On a more sobering note, Tobar thinks his students “are living in an age with less opportunity than we grew up in. And of more difficult choices.” But they also have an “incredible ease with multiculturalism,” he said, recounting how many of them write about their interracial relationships and families.

“They want to learn more,” said Molina. “They expect those stories to be out there.”

“They’re less tolerant of the erasures, I hope,” said Tobar.

Illustration by Soobin Kim.

That hopeful note is central to Our Migrant Souls, which chronicles the pain of Latino history but also the celebration. “What do we need to do to keep that hope alive, to keep the story of Latinos as one of hope?” asked Molina.

“It’s personally never allowing my curiosity to be totally satisfied,” said Tobar, who has found inspiration in queer history. It’s about “embracing the idea that somebody’s going to surprise you in as many positive ways as negative ways,” he said. He added, “There’s lots of accusation, there’s lots of name-calling. But let’s go beyond that and let’s imagine the future we want to create and what that might look like. That to me is the lesson behind this journey of exploration.”

In the audience Q&A, Tobar dug deeper into the multitudinous meanings of “Latino,” and offered more hopeful visions of the future.

“There’s going to be another term later, right?” asked one audience member, echoing Tobar’s argument that “Latino” denies African and Indigenous roots. “What’s going to be next [and] how can we influence the development of that next term?”

“My own personal project now is to understand the roots of Los Angeles and its Indigeneity,” said Tobar. It’s a difficult project—he hasn’t been able to pin down the roots of his own Indigenous heritage—but he believes “Indigeneity has shaped our way of being in Los Angeles. I think that’s one of the ways we can think about what Latino means. It’s absorbed so much indigenous and African culture. It’s our job not to treat it as something exotic but as something that’s as much of our being as the Pilgrims.”

After the Q&A, speakers and audience members gathered for Guatemalan food from Casa Chapina and signature cocktails and mocktails from Vucacious. It was the evening’s second opportunity to mingle and talk. Before the program’s official start, a smaller group of audience members gathered at The Hoxton, across the street, for Zócalo’s inaugural “reading hour,” Zócalo Reads.

Tobar read an excerpt from his book, and then audiences sat and read quietly, or had conversations with strangers about what the border means in their lives, why they love/hate the words Latino or Chicano, and more.

The post Héctor Tobar Peers Deep Into ‘Our Migrant Souls’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But as Zócalo’s California columnist and democracy editor Joe Mathews, who moderated the event, reminded the audience, the ideas that come out of the state aren’t all good. Sure, some are “earth-shatteringly great”—like the earthquake early warning system—but others are “apocalyptically dangerous”—American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer spent many years at UC Berkeley and Caltech before developing the atomic bomb.

XPRIZE Foundation CEO Anousheh Ansari, Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) president and CEO and retired Chief Justice of California Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, and founding director of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace California Center Ian Klaus joined Mathews on stage for the conversation, which was co-presented by CalMatters.

XPRIZE, the nonprofit that organizes multi-million-dollar competitions to support scientific innovation that benefits humanity, is itself a California idea, Mathews pointed out. He asked Ansari to speak about the inspiration behind the XPRIZE.

Back in 1994 when the first XPRIZE for space exploration came together, the idea was to set a bar for innovators that was “audacious but achievable,” said Ansari.

It took 10 years for Mojave Aerospace Ventures to win that first $10 million purse by being the first private organization to reach space on a reusable, crewed spaceship twice within a two-week period. But it proved to be an industry game changer, and “reduced the cost of access to space exponentially,” said Ansari.

Moving on to Cantil-Sakauye, Mathews asked, what does PPIC do? “Produce ideas? Inspire ideas? Refine ideas? Keep the crazy ideas off the road and keep them from ruining the state?”

“All of the above,” Cantil-Sakauye answered.

“I call us a research think tank-plus,” she continued. “We do a lot of outreach. We do a lot of public events. We do a lot of convening of diverse voices. We like a good civil rumble in a safe space to find out what are the issues, [and] what should our researchers look at?”

Finally Mathews turned to Klaus, who explained what the oldest think tank in America dedicated to international peace is up to in California. Peace “isn’t a California idea,” Klaus said, but “it’s one that resonates here.”

The panelists then discussed what’s in the water in California that inspires so many bold ideas.

There’s a notion here, Ansari observed, that failure is not a bad thing. “Experimentation happens and that’s where you have innovation,” she said. “That’s why you get some unique, extraordinary ideas coming from California.”

Cantil-Sakauye echoed Ansari on Californians’ lack of “fear of failure,” adding that California’s great diversity contributes to this trait as well. There’s “no fear of speaking up and trying ideas and not being so self-conscious about being out there and being who you can be because it’s so diverse,” she said of the state.

Klaus concurred, adding, “The movement of ideas and the movement of people and the movement of goods is something that we’re all engaged with. That leads to a comfort in being wrong. With things that are different. And having to be on the edge.”

But are we too eager to fail—do we push ourselves too far with our ideas? Mathews asked the panel. He pointed to the artificial intelligence boom coming out of Silicon Valley today as one example.

“It comes down to whether we choose to be responsible about how we innovate,” said Ansari. She called for more regulation to help create the guard rails the tech industry needs for healthy innovation.

“The guard rail for me is litigation,” Cantil-Sakauye said. “I worry that our policymakers, our courts will never catch up with technology.” She recalled a time “when courts had computers and didn’t know what to do with them and put them in corners because they just didn’t want to plug them in and figure them out.” But she was optimistic that California’s love of intellectual property and regulatory action might act as meaningful guardrails for A.I.

During audience questions, the panel was asked about Hollywood films that have inspired great ideas. Mathews spoke about the impact of the film Born in East L.A., inspired by the true story of an American citizen who’s deported to Mexico, on the state’s concept of immigration.

They also discussed California trends they’re looking toward for innovation. “I’ve seen a boom in climate tech and conservation tech,” said Ansari.

One of the final questions of the night began with an observation: A lot of innovation comes from so-called outsiders, like people with disabilities. But these same people can often feel alienated and unengaged from big conversations. “How do we do a better job engaging and harnessing those voices to be part of the solution?” the audience member asked.

“In my experience, belonging is local,” said Cantil-Sakauye. “It’s neighborhood- and community-based.” We need to start civics education and engagement in elementary school, she said, and bring together “diverse groups of students on projects with adult volunteers in the community,” like working together to clean up a park. “It starts small,” she said, “but that’s where agency comes from. And that’s where inspiration together comes from.”

The post The State of Golden State Innovation appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

A smaller model of Dickson’s sculpture made its way to the ASU Herald Examiner Building on 11th and Broadway last week, to go on view during the Zócalo and Destination Crenshaw public program “Is Car Culture the Ultimate Act of Community in Crenshaw?”

The project’s director of public art programs Heather Heslup and lead historian Larry Earl joined Dickson for the conversation, which touched upon the storied history of Black Angelenos and their automobiles, and why the car continues to represent a beacon of freedom and mobility for the Crenshaw community today.

Earl offered an overview of the car’s significance for Black L.A., citing the work of his friend, the historian Alison Rose Jefferson, author of Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era. Jefferson’s family personally experienced the power of the automobile driving to Los Angeles from the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. “The car is an essential aspect of the migration,” Earl said.

Once families like Jefferson’s made it to L.A., Earl said, the car became synonymous with economic uplift and leisure, as it allowed people to drive downtown for work, or to the beach for pleasure. The mid-century rise of the custom car—as people started to use the vehicles as a vehicle for self-expression, showing off their artistry and engineering prowess—launched the cruising scene down Crenshaw on Sundays, he added. People could show off their personalized lowriders, and share how they’d tricked them out. Car clubs, and a deeper communal culture, came next. (“You know we like a coordinated outfit,” Earl quipped to audience laughter, referring to the clothes car club members wear.)

Dickson said that he has always been struck by the possibilities of expression and empowerment that cars represent. “When I went to teach at grade schools, I’d always tell them that the automobile is a rolling sculpture,” he said.

If you think about it, the artist continued, cars allow anyone “to be the sculptor, to be the painter, to be the technologist.” They’re also something, Dickson added, that brings together different cultures. “The Latino culture has certain kinds of paint,” he said. “You can leave it to the brothers to have big, giant wheels. Texas, they have extensions on their wheels that come out this far,” Dickson said, widening his arms.

Dickson said that he took all of this into account with his design for “Car Culture.” Six-and-a-half years in the making, the stainless steel sculpture showcases figures inspired by the West African Senufo culture, who are adorned with a crown of vintage cars. Dickson positioned a futuristic “Star Trek”-like engine, replete with a crystal, on the very top of the sculpture. Tying all of these elements together is a fiber optic cable which, Dickson said, represents the connection between these forces of “motorized possibilities.”

“Car Culture” is currently being installed at Destination Crenshaw’s Sankofa Park. Heslup drew a connection between the concept of Sankofa, an Adrinka symbol that translates to “return to your past,” and Dickson’s work.

Illustration by Soobin Kim.

“I think that your process and practice embody the idea of Sankofa Park,” Heslup said. She nodded to the loss of giants of the Black L.A. art scene, like John Outterbridge and Charles White, who were themselves mentors to Dickson. “You hold on and carry elements of them into your work now,” said Heslup.

During audience questions, one person asked what the panel hopes historians will say about Destination Crenshaw 100 years from now. “That Black folks and their allies got together to stamp a space that was so unique that it provided a model for the entire world,” said Earl.

Another asked Dickson what it was like to see the first part of his sculpture installed last month at Sankofa Park. “I’ve done a lot of public art things, but I think it’s pretty much the pinnacle of what I’ve done so far,” he said.

And finally, someone asked how one might become a Destination Crenshaw artist without having a resume like Charles Dickson’s.

Our intention is to engage artists from all levels, Heslup answered, noting that artists can apply now for consideration to be part of the project through Destination Crenshaw’s “RFQ” (Request for Qualifications) system online.

The post What If We Saw Cars Like Rolling Sculptures? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“We are the hub of a community,” asserted Crenshaw High School principal Donald Moorer, who opened Thursday’s Zócalo event. It was the first in a series partnering with Destination Crenshaw, the organization behind the 1.3-mile-long public art and infrastructure project being erected along Crenshaw Boulevard.

The event was an invitation for panelists and audience members to consider the community stakes of the ambitious project—which includes pocket parks and original artworks by Alison Saar, Maren Hassinger, and Kehinde Wiley—and what it means for Black history, Black art, and Black success.

The event’s title, “How Do You Grow a Rose From Concrete?,” was inspired by the famous Tupac Shakur poem, “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.” And as the project’s concrete is still being laid, some of the visionaries behind it took the stage at Crenshaw High: architect Gabrielle Bullock, Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Destination Crenshaw senior art advisor V. Joy Simmons.

They took turns asking one another questions, co-moderating the event—a format that held true to the sense of co-creation, collaboration, community, and contribution that all of them hope Destination Crenshaw will instill in each person who finds themselves in its midst.

Simmons asked the councilmember, a “son of South Los Angeles” whose mother was one the first people to graduate from Crenshaw High, what the Crenshaw Corridor was like when he was growing up. “The thing I remember most,” he said, “was that there was always motion.” Whether it was cars bouncing on hydraulics, young people doing the latest dance moves, entrepreneurs sweeping in front of their storefronts, or churchgoers coming and going, Crenshaw is “where life happens, where we witness what others are doing.”

When Crenshaw got wind that L.A. Metro was expanding a new train line and potentially cutting through their neighborhood—without stopping—Harris-Dawson was part of early efforts to win a Leimert Park station.

“This train could be a knockout punch” for the neighborhood, he said, transforming real estate, safety, and its connection to the rest of the city. For Harris-Dawson and others, one aim was undeniable: “We set out to do a project that would make us permanent in the City of Los Angeles. So no matter what happens going forward, there’s not going to be a situation where you get to say we were never here.”

That spirit of visibility—to be seen for what Crenshaw is—is one of the main reasons the train will be overground. In those earlier days, at the same time that Crenshaw community members were fighting for the train to be underground, Beverly Hills was fighting for it to stay above. Harris-Dawson asked why, and learned that they wanted to display what they had to offer: their shops, businesses, restaurants, museums, landscapes. Crenshaw could do that, too.

Drawing on an understanding that people will oppose what you do to them and embrace what you do with them, Harris-Dawson got community buy-in from businesses, neighbors, and leaders along the way. In fact, the construction site was able to get over 70% of its workforce from local hires, Destination Crenshaw president and COO Jason Foster noted later.

“I want the people of South Los Angeles to feel like it’s theirs,” Harris-Dawson said, just as other Los Angeles areas like Boyle Heights and Chinatown feel a sense of ownership over their neighborhoods. He also hoped that because consumers of Black culture would have to come to Crenshaw to experience this cultural project, the neighborhood could prosper.

“This project for me is a gift,” said Bullock, who co-led the design for Destination Crenshaw. Like Harris-Dawson’s efforts, the architecture firm Perkins&Will gave the people of Crenshaw power in design voice, she said. “In the end, we are merely interpreters.”

Bullock has been involved with other large-scale projects that highlight Black America: the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the National Center of Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; and Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas.

How does Destination Crenshaw compare? Simmons asked.

Because the project’s origin is in the community and will represent them, Bullock said, it is unique.

At one of the first “visioning workshops,” where community members were encouraged to bring an artifact or object that meant something to them related to Crenshaw, LA Commons founder and community leader Karen Mack brought in an image of the Sankofa bird, whose turning head is meant to symbolize the need to look to the past in order to move forward.

Hence, Sankofa Park will be the largest gathering area at Destination Crenshaw. The park itself has elements shaped like the bird, and on its highest viewing deck, you are able to look back and see where you’ve come from. “It’s about storytelling,” Bullock said.

The story Destination Crenshaw tells was important to Simmons, too. As the art and exhibition advisor, she selected artists who told a generational story of Crenshaw—ranging from in their 20s to 96 years old. There will be a sculpture on car culture by Charles Dickson (who will join the second event in this series, on May 31). And the RTN Crew will once again adorn the Crenshaw Wall with a new incarnation of mural art. Simmons noted that since at least the 1970s, the retaining wall has captured traces of the community through art, serving as a sort of public canvas. “I wanted us to understand that we are not a monolith,” she said of her selections.

All the panelists shared what they hope people will feel and take away from this project: that people feel seen, feel the intentional work put into it, and go away with a sense of the excellence of Black Los Angeles.

Many members of the in-person audience had deep roots in Crenshaw, which was made clear during the Q&A period that followed the talk. One questioner was the daughter of a former principal of Crenshaw High, another was a community historian.

One audience member asked where the late Crenshaw rapper Nipsey Hussle was in all of this. The name Destination Crenshaw, in fact, was inspired by Hussle, who thought it should be called that to mark the historic Los Angeles community as such: a destination, in bloom.

The post For Crenshaw, By Crenshaw appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On the rarified second level of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, amid premium owner suites and premium beer sales, there’s an Angela Davis quote plastered on a wall.

“Our histories never unfold in isolation,” reads the excerpt from the scholar and activist’s 2015 book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. “We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And often we discover that those other stories are actually our own stories.”

The quote is part of a temporary exhibition by the Kinsey Collection, one of the world’s largest private troves of African American art and history, which has taken up residence at the sports and entertainment venue. It was the inspiration for Zócalo’s public program there last night, which asked: Can a football stadium be a Black history museum? The conversation was presented in partnership with the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection at SoFi Stadium and California Humanities.

At first, the panel, made up of a poet, an artist, a former football player, and the chief curator of the Kinsey Collection, prevaricated around the framing question.

It’s certainly random, Maurice Harris, the founder of floral design studio and coffee shop Bloom & Plume, finally said. But soon the panelists leaned in. During the conversation, they made a case for why it matters to bring history—especially history that’s all too often left out of textbooks—to spaces like this, in order to meet people where they are and make these stories as accessible as possible.

The program began with a poetry reading by panelist aja monet. Before reciting “An ode to Black skin,” monet commented on an original Phillis Wheatley collection of poetry hanging on display nearby. For those who might not know, Wheatley, she explained, was the first published African American woman poet, who wrote at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write in the U.S. “What a treat we all get to witness this in a stadium,” she said.

Khalil Kinsey, the moderator, started off the discussion then by explaining why he and his family brought Wheatley, alongside other known Black luminaries and names that have been lost to history, to SoFi Stadium.

Kinsey said that he and historian Larry Earl, who co-curated the show, first thought about the people of Inglewood. Since SoFi opened its doors in 2020, many locals have seen the towering, futuristic venue (which remains the most expensive stadium in the world) as a symbol not of uplift but of displacement and erasure, ushering in a wave of gentrification that promises to transform the area.

We wanted to reflect communities here, and place them “boldly” in this structure, said Kinsey.

Illustration by Soobin Kim.

The two curators also thought about football itself.

An estimated 70% of NFL players today are Black, but it was only three years ago that the NFL ended “race-norming” in dementia testing, a practice rooted in eugenics, which assumed that Black players started out with lower cognitive function than white players. Currently, the league is facing multiple racial discrimination lawsuits.

By putting Black stories in a football stadium, Kinsey said, he and Earl hoped that the exhibition could be a “small part of lending a broader view of humanity for the athletes on the field.” This is an experiment for both SoFi and the Kinsey Collection, he added. “But we were eager to see its effectiveness because we’re terribly interested in improvement.”

Kinsey asked the panelists to share their reactions to the exhibition.

“When I see African American art in a stadium, what it means for me is access, opportunity, joy,” said Jacques McClendon, a sports agent and former NFL player. “Football has an immense platform and immense responsibility,” he added. And, having spent a career in football stadiums, he knows that these venues can be more than a place for sports. “They can be community centers,” McClendon said, gesturing around the room at people in the audience.

monet said that it took her a moment to wrap her head around what she might add to the conversation—“A poet in a football stadium?” she joked. But then, she said, she started to think about how poets can help people find the layers and dimensions in the world around them. “Poets can see a forest in a tree, or a museum in a stadium,” she said.

Noting the pervasiveness of white history on structures, institutions, streets, in the U.S., she said, “it’s on us to try and be committed to broaden and expand and include what makes America ‘America,’ and what makes Black people a part of that story.”

Harris spoke about how he sees the exhibition at SoFi in parallel with his own work, running a bespoke floral design studio and a coffee shop.

There are a lot of hurdles in getting people to go to a museum, he noted. “If you can find a way to show folks something they weren’t expecting in a place they were already going, I think that’s really moving the needle and pushing the conversation forward.”

That’s why he opened a coffee shop, he said. It offers him a means of sharing his arrangements in a more public space to make beauty more accessible. “For so long, especially as folks of color, we’ve just been in survival mode. We don’t have time to make it pretty. We should have time to do nothing for a second. To smell the roses.”

That’s something that artists can help with, monet agreed. “How can we democratize art so people understand they are the artists of their own lives? Imagine what beauty we could create—the things that could be possible.”

In-person audience members and those on the live YouTube chat had a chance to ask the panelists questions at the end of the discussion.

One person wanted to know what the future of the Kinsey Collection might be, since it departs SoFi next week.

We’re beginning conversations about how to give it a permanent location in Los Angeles, said Kinsey.

The final question of the night asked how people can do more to capture and amplify local stories here in Inglewood.

Kinsey spoke about the power of momentum. “I think that we’ve been denied the power of momentum. Things that continue. And that as a result of continuing, they build, they grow, they speed up, they accelerate.” But this can only happen, he said, if you’re consistent and moving forward. “I’d encourage you to just start. You’ll be surprised at the signs that appear along your path just by keeping your head down and staying focused on that mission.”

People stayed late after the discussion for a reception with KCRW DJ Novena Carmel that gave audience members the chance to eat, drink, talk, and dance together. Many also took the opportunity to get one last look at the traveling exhibition, named the “Myth of Absence.”

“When this closes: white walls,” Kinsey said, touching on the collection’s departure during the discussion. “It’s going to feel different. And the people who have been here will always notice that.”

The post Why Shouldn’t Phillis Wheatley’s Poems Show Up at an NFL Game? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In a week when a federal labor rule went into effect making it easier for app-based gig workers to be classified as employees (with significant pushback), and a month after the largest-ever DoorDash, Lyft, and Uber driver strike, Zócalo and The James Irvine Foundation presented “What Is a Good Job Now?” In Gig Work. Part of a series exploring low-wage work across sectors in California, the conversation struck at (and in) the heart of the app-based gig economy: the Bay Area.

The panel took place at the New Parkway Theater in downtown Oakland and featured Sergio Avedian of The Rideshare Guy, Gigs CEO Allen Narcisse, and The Workers Lab chief research officer Shelly Steward. CalMatters economy reporter Levi Sumagaysay, who has covered gig work for over a decade, moderated.

“Uber did not invent freelancing,” Sumagaysay reminded the crowd at the outset of the night. Contract gig work stretches across industries, and has for a long time.

While the app-based companies did revolutionize the way independent contractors gig, with their easy-to-use interfaces, Steward reiterated Sumagaysay’s point. Whether arranged via an app or not, people have always been piecing together full- and part-time work.

“We talk about this idea of traditional work. This vision of a full-time career at one employer with a pension at the end,” said Steward, who researches the intersection of technology and work. “But that was never the norm. It was the norm for white men for a couple of decades in the middle of one century.” Recent technological developments and the modern gig economy have brought visibility to age-old issues for workers.

Narcisse, who worked at Lyft and served as general manager of UberEats, chimed in. Gigs, a company he founded in 2022, lists jobs with varying degrees of flexibility and skill levels, roles for baristas, cashiers, and delivery drivers alike. The point is to help gig workers find quality work. “We focus on the 86 million blue-collar workers in the U.S. and the opportunities they might seek,” he said.

The remaining panelist was Sergio Avedian, a driver with more than 10,000 rides under his belt who had built a following through his advocacy work and as a contributor to the podcast and website The Rideshare Guy. Sumagaysay asked him what the biggest concerns for gig workers are.

The complaints have been the same for the past three or four years, Avedian said: earnings, safety, and unjust firings. Not a day goes by where you don’t hear about a driver being carjacked, shot, or even killed, he said. And when drivers raise concerns—for example, about AI or self-driving cars replacing their jobs—they have no recourse through traditional HR departments and can be unjustly fired.

As for earnings, in 2016 Avedian brought in around $60/hour, which, he pointed out, is what a plumbing contractor might make. Since then, his paychecks have diminished.

Earnings, more and more, are dictated and controlled by the algorithms that app-based companies use to determine and set pricing, Avedian said. He noted that this kind of dynamic pricing is infiltrating many kinds of companies, even a burger chain like Wendy’s—for better or worse, but probably not to workers’ advantage.

These algorithms are related to the gigification of everything, Steward said. Technologies matching people to jobs and customers to services sound great. But if lowering worker conditions and increasing worker risk are necessarily part of the deal—or the whole point of the deal—that’s a problem.

So, why does Avedian continue to drive? Sumagaysay asked. “It’s a fun thing to do,” Avedian said. Besides the fact that he enjoys meeting people, the job has taken him to places in Los Angeles he’s never been, despite having lived there for over 30 years. But, ultimately, Avedian would not recommend anybody take on the gig of a rideshare driver. Yet he understands why people turn to this work.

“What matters is the conditions that they’re facing,” Steward said. Workers want substantial benefits and protections—access to parental leave and workers’ compensation. “This work fits into broader context where both W-2 employment and gig, rideshare, and independent contractor work are suffering a job quality problem.” In other words, bad W-2 jobs are forcing people to turn to rideshare jobs. “We need to lift the floor for all of that work, to give workers more agency and control in their lives.”

The battle has been going on too long, Avedian said, and legislators need to get involved. Lately he has been talking to CEOs and senior leaders of app-based rideshare companies and urging them to drive a mile in his shoes—not just as a PR stunt—and try to really understand the nature of the work.

Is there a happy middle, or a good model out there? Sumagaysay asked.

Avedian pointed to Seattle, Washington. There, a group of drivers created a non-traditional union, the Drivers Union, which got the ear of the city council and convinced it to pass the highest mandated rates for drivers in the country. The group gave up collective bargaining rights but received benefits like paid time off and sick leave. Drivers remained independent contractors, not employees, so many companies like Uber and Lyft came on board.

The work that drivers do is crucial to society, Narcisse said. They fill transportation gaps, including helping fellow hourly workers get to their own gigs. It is important not to lose sight of those bigger impacts of the industry.

As the conversation closed, questions poured in from the online chat and the in-person audience.

One participant posed a big question to Steward: What, then, is the future of work?

Her reply: “The future will be what people will make it.”

The post The App Economy Is the Past—And Not Necessarily the Future appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.