Zócalo Public SquareEvents – Zócalo Public Square

Will the Real Young Voters Please Stand Up?

Anna Gasparyan — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:05:22 +0000

Young millennial and Gen Z voters could be a mighty force in the 2024 presidential election, with Gen Z alone accounting for over 40 million potential voters. It’s no wonder both major political parties are attempting to mobilize this group, half of whom don’t identify as Democrats or Republicans. But turnout among young voters has always been low, and their trust in institutions, officials, and the media is in decline. Can viral trends and funny TikToks incentivize young people to flock to the ballot box? How do these voters swipe through a constant barrage of information, and pause to consider what matters to them? What do they really want to hear from candidates?

A panel of civically engaged Gen Zers and young millennials from across the political spectrum visit Zócalo to stand up and speak for themselves: progressive political digital media specialist Annie Wu Henry, youth civic engagement advocate Ava Mateo, and former Iowa State representative Joe Mitchell.

Don’t miss out on voter engagement activities hosted by Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs before and after the conversation.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary beverages and sweets from SusieCakes.

Zócalo Public Square values audience safety. During events at ASU California Center, as bag searches are not permitted, only clear bags (maximum size 12” x 6” x 12”) and small clutches (maximum size 8 ½” x 5 ½”) are allowed in the venue. Zócalo may be able to provide a limited number of clear bags to help accommodate guests. Questions? Ask us at events@zocalopublicsquare.org.

The ASU California Center is inclusive and accessible for all. A platform wheelchair lift is available at our main entrance via Broadway (ground level). Upon checking in for the event, please inform Zócalo staff if you need assistance, or contact events@zocalopublicsquare.org for additional information.

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Are the U.S. and Mexico Becoming One Country?

Anna Gasparyan — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:31:10 +0000

Our politics and news are all about the borders and divides that separate the U.S. and Mexico. But in real life, we’re becoming more alike. Some 37 million people living in the United States today trace their roots to Mexico. They are part of a giant diaspora so intertwined with American life that its political, cultural, educational, and economic impacts are felt in every corner of the country: In the Sara Lee pies and Thomas’ English muffins manufactured by a Mexican-owned bakery conglomerate. In the music, acting, and camera work of our favorite movies. In fights for social justice playing out in legislative halls.

Migration is a process of constant exchange. As communities mix, they create new versions of themselves, shaping the politics, economies, and cultures where they land—and forging new connections between where home was, and where it is now. ASU School of Transborder Studies director and professor Irasema Coronado; artist, curator, and cultural consultant Anita Herrera; and Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León sociology professor Víctor Zúñiga visit Zócalo Public Square and the Universidad de Guadalajara at LéaLA book fair at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles to explore the ways these dynamics unite the United States and Mexico today.

This program will be held in Spanish, with simultaneous English interpretation.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to stick around and experience Herrera’s “Diaspora Dialogues: Family Party” art installation at our reception immediately following the conversation. Complimentary small bites and beverages will also be provided.

En Español:

¿México y Estados Unidos se están convirtiendo en un solo país?

Moderado por Alfredo Corchado, editor ejecutivo y corresponsal, PUENTE News Collaborative.

Nuestras noticias y política se enfocan en las fronteras y divisiones que separan a los Estados Unidos y México. Pero en la vida real, cada vez nos parecemos más. Unas 37 millones de personas que viven en Estados Unidos tienen raíces en México. Son parte de una diáspora tan entrelazada con la vida estadounidense que sus impactos políticos, culturales, educativos, y económicos se sienten en cada rincón del país: En los pays de Sara Lee y panecillos de la marca Thomas distribuidos por una empresa mexicana. En la música, actuación, y cinematografía de nuestras películas favoritas. En las luchas por la justicia social que tienen lugar en los pasillos de gobiernos estatales y federales.

La migración es un proceso de intercambio constante. Mientras las comunidades se mezclan, se crean nuevas versiones de sí mismas, moldeando la política, la economía, y la cultura de donde se encuentran, y forjando nuevas conexiones entre sus hogares anteriores y actuales. Únete a una conversación de Zócalo Public Square y la Universidad de Guadalajara para explorar cómo estos fenómenos unen a los Estados Unidos y México. El evento se llevará a cabo durante la feria de libro LéaLA en la LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes en el centro de Los Ángeles, y participan Irasema Coronado, directora y profesora de la School of Transborder Studies de Arizona State University; Anita Herrera, artista, curadora, y consultora cultural; y Víctor Zúñiga, profesor de sociología en la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.

El evento será en español, con interpretación simultánea al inglés.

Después del evento, Zócalo invita a nuestra audiencia presencial a apreciar “Diaspora Dialogues: Family Party,” una instalación de arte de Anita Herrera, y una recepción especial con comida y bebidas.

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When Does Protest Make a Difference?

Anna Gasparyan — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 19:15:27 +0000

American history credits protest with ending segregation and the Vietnam War, securing women the right to vote and the LGBTQ+ community a path to equality, and building one nation out of 13 colonies. It’s a national tradition enshrined in the Constitution and fiercely protected by the legal system. But protest can also be violent, messy, and contested, and frequently ends with the status quo remaining in place. How—and perhaps when—can you know if a protest is working, or has worked? What makes some protests more effective than others, and how do protestors balance the desire for peace and the attention force receives?

Last spring, protests led to a number of outcomes on college campuses, from clashes with administrations, police, and counter-protestors to divestment agreements. With students and faculty returning to campuses across the nation, Zócalo will convene two back-to-back panels moderated by KQED correspondent and co-host of “The California Report” Saul Gonzalez to discuss when and how protest makes a difference.

The first panel will start at 7 p.m. PDT and feature scholars and thinkers who can offer larger context for the current moment: urban journalism professor Danielle K. Brown, constitutional law professor and former director of the ACLU LGBT Project Matt Coles, and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh.

The second panel will start at 8 p.m. PDT and feature practitioners who have engaged in historic protests in Los Angeles and beyond: co-founder of the day laborer band Los Jornaleros del Norte Pablo Alvarado, Los Angeles Police Department former assistant chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, and immigrant rights and labor justice activist Victor Narro.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages.

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How Does the Inland Empire Strike Back Against Hate?

Anna Gasparyan — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 20:17:18 +0000

In the 1920s, Southern California’s Inland Empire was a bucolic place, dotted with small towns set amid orange groves. It was also a growing outpost for the Ku Klux Klan, whose members subjected the region’s minority residents to exclusion, harassment, and violence in following decades. Today, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, and anti-LGBTQ movements persist, with hate crimes again on the rise, alongside a new generation of domestic extremist groups.

The Inland Empire exemplifies an ongoing tension between hate and resistance, harboring grassroots movements that have banned lessons about race in public schools at the same time as it celebrates the opening of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture. This duality makes the region a perfect place to grapple with the history of hate in California, and understand past and present efforts to strike back and fight for justice. Can the region’s battles against discrimination chart a path forward for the rest of the state, and nation?

Zócalo and California Humanities welcome California State Assemblymember Corey A. Jackson, Mapping Black California project director Candice Mays, and ACLU SoCal Senior Policy Advocate and Organizer Luis Nolasco to discuss hate’s impact on the Inland Empire, and highlight efforts to resist.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages.

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What is a “Latino”? With Héctor Tobar

Anna Gasparyan — Sat, 04 May 2024 09:30:59 +0000

Is “Latino” a race or an ethnicity? Is it European or American? Is it a source of strength or of subjugation? And does it bring people together—around shared histories of migration and resilience—or is it born from racial ideas about “the other,” borders, and national identity? Journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar is a professor of English and Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine, a native Angeleno, and the son of Guatemalan immigrants. He 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,” which wrestles with these questions and many more around identity, history, and culture. Tobar visits Zócalo to discuss the epic journey the book took him on—across the country, to Guatemala, and back again—and the epic American journeys that define the “Latino” experience.

Zócalo Public Square is proud to award the 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize to Melanie Almeder for her poem “Coyote Hour.”

For the first time in Book Prize history, Zócalo will host Zócalo Reads: a reading hour led by 2024 Zócalo Book Prize winner Héctor Tobar, at 6 PM, at The Hoxton, Downtown LA. We will provide 40 free copies of Our Migrant Souls for Zócalo Reads attendees. Space for Zócalo Reads is extremely limited; register for free on Eventbrite. You do not need to attend Zócalo Reads to attend the Book Prize Event.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages. Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore will sell copies of Tobar’s book during the reception.

The 2024 Zócalo Book and Poetry Prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

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What Makes a Great California Idea?

Anna Gasparyan — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 18:53:33 +0000

California has been Tomorrowland since long before Walt Disney opened the theme park version—and its greatest inventions have changed the world for the better. But its government often seems stuck in the past. And the Capitol’s dominant interests are more focused on maintaining their current power than investing in big, California-grown ideas—which appear to be more perilous than promising. Artificial intelligence defies regulation or control. Fighting climate change with big batteries, wind farms, and plant-based meat means mining for rare minerals, altering wild landscapes, and threatening the state’s agricultural and food processing industries. Social experiments seem equally risky: Despite their potential to alleviate long-standing inequalities, universal income and wealth-building programs, reparations, and criminal justice reforms are politically challenging and economically fraught.

Does this state still have the stomach—not to mention ambition, educated populace, and political will—to enact big ideas? And do its leaders, entrepreneurs, and everyday residents possess the ability to distinguish between good and bad ideas, and to pursue systemic changes that also mitigate harm? XPRIZE Foundation CEO Anousheh Ansari, Public Policy Institute of California 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 visit Zócalo at the CalMatters Ideas Festival to discuss the state of new ideas in the Golden State.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages.

This free program will be on the opening night of the CalMatters Ideas Festival. Event registrants are not required to purchase tickets to the festival to attend this event.

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Is Car Culture the Ultimate Act of Community in Crenshaw?

Anna Gasparyan — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 18:10:52 +0000

Crenshaw Motors Ford. Majestic Pontiac. O’Connor Lincoln-Mercury. In the 1950s and ’60s, car dealerships lined Crenshaw Boulevard, ready to serve the neighborhood’s rising Black middle class. Cars and Crenshaw have gone together ever since. To this day, enthusiasts drive their custom lowriders to “the Shaw” most weekends, looking to show off sleek chrome details and roaring engines, and to take part in this long-standing social ritual. But can Crenshaw Boulevard remain one of the most robust cruising scenes in the nation—stuck between repeated attempts by law enforcement to shut down lowrider parades and a new California law seeking to protect car culture in Crenshaw and beyond? And in what ways have Black Angelenos used car culture to advance the idea of “Sankofa,” the African concept of retrieving valuable knowledge from the past to build the future?

Artist and sculptor Charles Dickson and Destination Crenshaw founding lead historian Larry Earl visit Zócalo to discuss Dickson’s sculpture, “Car Culture,” which will be on permanent display in Sankofa Park, and how monumental public art projects and cruising scenes throughout Southern California can bring people together across zip codes.

6 PM: Panel discussion

7 PM: Post-event reception

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages.

This program is made possible by a generous contribution from Akieva and Martin Jacobs.

What Connects Us? A new transit stop and open air museum in South Los Angeles invites a neighborhood, city, and world to consider Black history, Black art, and Black success—and the ways they tie communities together. Zócalo Public Square and Destination Crenshaw partner on a new program series.

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How Do You Grow a Rose from Concrete?

Anna Gasparyan — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 18:02:41 +0000

When the people of Crenshaw found out that plans for a new Metro line called for the train to cut through the heart of their neighborhood—without stopping—they were angry and disappointed, but they weren’t surprised. Los Angeles has a long history of destroying South Los Angeles without taking local input into account. In 1963, the I-10 highway tore through the area. And in 2011, the city chopped down 119 trees to make a path for the space shuttle Endeavour.

This time, residents and local leaders responded by transforming the danger of Black erasure into a celebration of Black cultural permanence. They convinced the city not only to add a Metro stop in their community but to leverage its construction into the creation of what is anticipated to be the world’s largest open-air Black public art project. When complete, Destination Crenshaw will be home to artworks by Los Angeles artists like Charles Dickson, Maren Hassinger, Alison Saar, and Kehinde Wiley. Its architecture, streetscapes, and landscape designs are firmly rooted in Black identity, from African giant star grass—which was used as bedding on slave ships and has come to symbolize Black resilience in America—to Sankofa Park’s namesake bird, which represents the need to look to the past to build the future.

Architect Gabrielle Bullock and Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson join Destination Crenshaw senior art advisor V. Joy Simmons on the Zócalo stage at Crenshaw High School to discuss Destination Crenshaw’s genesis and design.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites and beverages.

This program is made possible by a generous contribution from Akieva and Martin Jacobs.

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Can a Football Stadium Be a Black History Museum?

Anna Gasparyan — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:42:22 +0000

In February 2022, SoFi Stadium marked two milestones. The first was hosting the Los Angeles Rams’ home field victory in Super Bowl LVI. The second was opening an exhibition of the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection. En route to the bathroom or on a beer run, visitors to the stadium’s second level may find themselves taken off guard by letters from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, photographs of L.A.’s early-20th-century Black firefighters, formal portraits of 19th-century Black men and women, and works by major Black artists.

What does it mean to juxtapose this experience with watching professional football players—over 50% of whom are Black—go to battle on the turf below? What have the Kinseys chosen to display, and why at SoFi? And how are other people and organizations, in fields from fine art to poetry, using Black narratives to inform and enrich our understanding of history and contemporary life in unexpected ways?

Artist and Bloom & Plume founder Maurice Harris, sports agent and former NFL player Jacques McClendon, and poet aja monet visit Zócalo and Kinsey Collection at SoFi Stadium to discuss what one of the world’s largest private collections of Black art and historical objects is doing at one of the world’s grandest football stadiums, why it matters, and where similar efforts are scoring big.

6 PM: In-person audience members are invited for a last, best chance to join a guided tour of the Kinsey exhibition, which leaves SoFi at the end of March

7 PM: Conversation, in-person and online

8 PM:In-person audience members are invited to join us for a reception with KCRW DJ Novena Carmel, complimentary snacks and beverages, and open exhibition viewing

Parking for the event is free of charge.

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Would Parliamentary America Have More Fun?

Arianna — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:07:02 +0000

With the 2024 election season upon us, Americans feel political despair. The president and his leading challenger, a former president, are deeply unpopular. Huge majorities, in both parties, tell pollsters that the two-party system is broken. For many, the prospect of engaging in upcoming political contests evokes downright dread.

So, where can we find the inspiration and ideas to fundamentally repair our democracy, climb out of this political rut, and turn the mood around? In other democracies around the world, says Maxwell L. Stearns, constitutional law professor and author of the new book Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy. Stearns visits Zócalo to outline a three-part plan to turn the United States into a multi-party parliamentary democracy that could make our politics less maddening, more collaborative—and perhaps even more fun. What are the legal, constitutional, and political steps needed to modernize American democracy and reignite civic zeal and joy? And how different might the U.S. look if governed by a parliament of multi-party coalitions?

This program is part of Zócalo’s inquiry, “Can Democracy Survive This Election Year?,” an editorial and event series about voters’ experiences around the world in 2024, the biggest election year in history.

Zócalo invites our in-person audience to continue the conversation with our speakers and each other at a post-event reception with complimentary small bites by Gingergrass.

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