In Wisconsin, more than 12 elections in the last 24 years have been won by less than 30,000 votes—a statistic that has become a talking point among politicians. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by a little over 20,500 votes.

That election after election here is determined by such razor-thin margins underscores the potential influence of young voters. The University of Wisconsin campus at Madison alone has nearly 50,000 students. In the 2022 midterm elections, nearly half of Wisconsinites under age 25 cast a ballot. Months later, in spring 2023, young voters turned out again to elect liberal-favored Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The youth vote is often a driving factor in election results, but young people across the state, feeling their concerns about Palestine and other pressing issues are being sidelined, are flexing their political power in other ways. Some may still go to the polls, but they’re taking action beyond the ballot box, too, pressuring local and national politicians and institutions to enact change, and showing up or their community when the government fails to do so.

The trend has been obvious since Biden stepped away from the presidential race and Kamala Harris stepped in, bolstering her outreach to Gen Z with plans to reach swing states through targeted digital ads, campus visits, and Gen Z-focused social media content.

But such efforts miss the mark when they ignore Gaza. Some might argue that young voters “risk” the future, jeopardizing chances to ensure better policies for climate, health, or housing here in the U.S when they focus on foreign policy in the Middle East, eschewing voting for Harris-Walz to write in an “uninstructed” vote (as it is called it in Wisconsin) when no candidate aligns with their position on Israel’s military violence in Palestine.

But young progressives in Wisconsin—and across the country—aren’t burying their heads in the sand, or deprioritizing homegrown issues. Rather, they see U.S. support for Israel as inextricably tied to these issues at home, and fighting for justice in Palestine as a means of fighting for justice here. There’s a reason why young people championed demands such as “Money for Jobs, School, Healthcare, Housing, and Environment, Not for War!” at the March on the DNC, a march organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC, a collection of grassroots organizations fighting for the same demands.

Activists, including Greta Thunberg, argue that climate justice depends on a free Palestine. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to climate justice everywhere,” said Wisconsin climate organizer Max Prestigiacomo, who is a recent UW-Madison graduate and former alderman. “In a fight to prevent the climate crisis which first and foremost recognizes that the impacts of said crisis—death—will fall on marginalized people worldwide, ignoring the active oppression and genocide in Palestine is complacency.”          

Reproductive justice, too—another issue bringing many young voters out to the polls. “Roe v. Wade got overturned here, we obviously have to fight for a women’s right to choose in the U.S.,” said 25-year-old Danaka Katovich, national co-director of CODEPINK, a feminist grassroots organization, during a protest at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. But “in Gaza, women are having c-sections with no anesthesia. Their children are being crushed under rubble and bombs that say ‘made in the USA.’ We’re here to link those two issues.”

CODEPINK also protested at the DNC in Chicago—just like thousands of young people, including from Wisconsin, who protested both conventions, linking justice in Palestine to climate and reproductive justice but also to immigrant, worker, LGBTQIA+, and women’s rights, and to ending police violence. “What made me come to the march was the genocide in Palestine,” commented Wisconsin student Cesar Moreno at the March on the RNC.

Youth politics beyond the ballot box in Wisconsin traces its history back to UW-Madison, a campus with a rich history of protest, just blocks away from the state’s capitol. It’s not uncommon to see students marching down the street in protest or tabling for causes—regardless of the weather forecast.

“Students have been protesting since the beginning of UW,” Kacie Lucchini Butcher, director of the Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, told campus radio station WUWM in a recent interview, calling UW-Madison students “civically engaged.” The Black Student Strike in 1969 mobilized thousands and eventually led to the development of a Black Studies Department; protests against South African apartheid began in the late 1960s and extended through the 1980s.

A crystallizing moment came in 1968, when hundreds of students protested the presence on campus of recruiters from Dow Chemical, the makers of napalm. Protesters encountered brutal police violence that, the Wisconsin Historical Society records, “politiciz[ed] thousands of previously apathetic students” and transformed the campus into “one of the nation’s leading anti-war communities.”

Community members today draw comparisons between the Dow Chemical protests and 2024’s pro-Palestine protests. Student groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine at UW-Madison have pushed for cutting U.S. military spending for Israel, interrupting a Harris rally in September and threatening to withhold their votes until she met their demands for an arms embargo. In May, students launched a pro-Palestine encampment to demand the university divest from Israel, which was met with police violence and arrests.      

Beyond political protests, students and community members show up for each other when government and local institutions fall short. Whether students are using social media to raise funds for peers in need, starting community campaigns to provide legal support to those arrested at pro-Palestine demonstrations or various grassroots organizations working to support their community, young people are dedicated to dreaming up and building a better world.

Social movements have long leaned on mutual aid—“the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world,” as lawyer, activist, and author Dean Spade puts it—to address community needs. Now, young people are rallying around one another. They feel their elected officials are failing them.

“I think this moment represents a turning point,” said Wisconsin youth organizer Aliya Glasper. “We are depending on our community, our collective power, strength, resolve to resist the current system that exists to work toward a fully liberated world that benefits everyone. A world where the ‘lesser of two evils’ doesn’t exist.”

Young people are ready to be heard. In Wisconsin, in the U.S., and around the world, those in power must listen and react to what we’re saying—not only on November 5th, but every day. And understand that young people are more than their vote.

The post In Wisconsin, Young People Are Thinking Beyond the Ballot Box appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This is a game for when the nights are long
and mom needs a break. You turn out the lights
and roll newspaper into baseball bats.
You close your eyes and scream and flail.
No one can hit anyone with any force this way.
This was my father’s game. Everyone feels like a winner,
like they’ve got something to say about being bad.

King Kong

The game is King Kong. The baby is under my arm
hand wrapped around the barrel of her. No one makes
me feel so animal. More ape. I throw myself into the air.
I climb up to the roof of our house. All the while
I beat my chest. I made the world. The world is safe.
The world is a safe place for you.

A Dangerous Man

Despite the bravado
I am not what you might call
a dangerous man though
I’m handy with a crowbar
I’m not afraid to spend
money to make money
I like watching fights
I don’t understand justice
I’d like to garden all day
maybe raise some fruit
that tastes sweet but also fresh
and think about sugar
and colonization I’d like to sip
tea on the porch and eat
surrounded by loved ones
all of them well fed and happy
and for them I’d do everything
in my considerable power
all the dangerous things
all the quiet violence required.

The post “Bad Doggy in the Dark,” “King Kong,” and “A Dangerous Man” appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Walking needs no publicist. The simplest, most accessible form of exercise has been around since humans first foraged and traveled on the ground.

But today, walking seems to have entered its influencer era.

It’s the subject of countless viral videos, of people doing it silently, collectively, for their mental health, for their physical health, for “hot girl” reasons (lawsuit pending), and yes, even for their gastro needs.

There’s something more to these micro trends than fitness personalities looking to make a quick buck off of brand-name water bottles or $30 socks. A new wave of fitness personalities—many of them women of color, of a variety of body types—have been able to reach people who, due to numerous factors from safety to layers of systemic discrimination, have historically shied away from the activity. This is exemplified by the explosion of walking groups in the U.S. in recent years, with headline after headline chronicling the rise of these meet-ups across the country, which has encouraged hundreds of strangers to come together each week and exercise.

This isn’t the first time a diverse group of influencers has widened the scope for walking. In the 1870s and 1880s, an unlikely assemblage of Americans became some of the nation’s earliest celebrities with the rise of the pedestrianism movement.

These professional walkers traversed hundreds of miles, around tracks and across state lines, to compete in the nation’s first spectator sport. Though the craze was short-lived, it left behind a legacy that challenges the stereotypical face of fitness to this day.

American pedestrianism began with a fateful bet: In 1860, the door-to-door bookseller Edward Payson Weston wagered a friend that Abraham Lincoln would lose the upcoming presidential election. Were Lincoln to win, Weston declared, he would walk the 478 miles from his home in Boston to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration—and he would do so in under 10 days.

After Lincoln won, Weston set out to make good on his promise, publicizing his itinerary in local papers along the Eastern Seaboard. People waited for hours in the cold to watch him pass through their towns. A run-in with a debt collector left Weston four hours and 12 minutes short of his goal; Lincoln, who was following his progress along with the rest of the country, was still so impressed by the feat that he offered to pay the latecomer’s fare home. (The press-savvy Weston demurred, seemingly knowing that the refusal would only earn him more coverage.)

Following the Civil War, Weston took his walking show on the road. Thousands of spectators lined up to buy tickets and place bets on whether he could beat the clock. In a divided country, his walks were a unifying event. “He’s so apolitical, and I think that helped his popularity,” Matthew Algeo, the author of Pedestrianism, told me in an interview. “He could go anywhere and walk, and people wouldn’t object to it.”

Walking was not a popular form of exercise in the U.S. when Weston began staging his exhibitions, but he and the competitors who rose up to challenge him spread “pedestrian fever” among the public. “A Plea for Pedestrianism,” published in the New York Times in 1878, was a typical literary endorsement of leisure walking. The op-ed supplied readers with a sample walk they could do around Staten Island, recommended attire (“easy, yet, stout, laced boots with broad soles and low heels”), what to eat (“a sandwich and some hard-boiled eggs in your pocket”), and how to prepare (“Those not accustomed to much walking ought to practice it moderately during the week before marching a whole day in the country”).

Celebrity, long reserved for royals and political figures, was expanding—allowing pedestrians, or “peds,” to gain real influence as some of the country’s first mass-market stars. They used their platform to promote not just the sport, but also everything from shoe brands to trading cards. They even were the first to sell advertising space on their competition outfits.

One of the reasons pedestrianism resonated with so many, Algeo suggested, is that these athletes took an activity that was relatable—an “expression of the everyday”—and pushed it to the extreme. The result, he said, struck people as “personal,” “genuine,” and “real.”

Professional walkers reflected an array of Americans, too. Because these walking matches were largely unregulated, there were no clear rules excluding certain groups from competition. One of Weston’s greatest rivals was Daniel O’Leary, an Irish immigrant who became “Champion Pedestrian of the World” in 1875 after defeating Weston in a six-day race. O’Leary took multiple athletes under his wing, including Frank Hart (born Fred Hichborn), a Haitian immigrant. Hart became one of the sport’s great stars and winner of the second-ever O’Leary Belt in 1880, where he earned more than $21,000 total, the equivalent of two-thirds of a million in today’s dollars.

Women “pedestriennes” also made a significant impact on the sport. At a time when conventional science held that strenuous athletic activity did lasting harm to female bodies, wiping them of their “vital energies” and their ability to reproduce, athletes like the Englishwoman Ada Anderson rose up as powerful counterexamples, showing what sportswomen were capable of.

“It is good for women to see how much a woman can endure,” Anderson told the New York Sun in 1878.

But there was a dark side to women’s pedestrianism. The sport was largely promoted and organized by men (including one of P.T. Barnum’s own PR people). A majority of women came to professional walking out of desperation, to escape poverty or abusive relationships. Then they pushed their bodies to the limit. They did what men did—24-hour walks, 100-mile walks, six-day walks—but also attempted even more extreme stunts, like walking 3,000 quarter miles over the course of 3,000 quarter hours.

“This was a really tough life,” Harry Hall, author of The Pedestriennes, told me. Women walked in hard-soled shoes, he said, because saboteurs threw rocks, tacks, and glass on their track, hoping to fix race outcomes.

The same laissez-faire setup that had allowed the sport to evolve so organically also led to it becoming synonymous with exploitation and scandal. Pedestrianism saw race fixing, early steroid use, and an extortion attempt that ended with a manager’s suicide. With the rise of bicycle racing in the 1880s, the public moved on, leaving pedestrianism to fade into a historical footnote.

“There was no way pedestrianism was going to last forever,” said Algeo. “But it’s a shame it kind of killed itself.”

Today’s walking influencers have different aims and goals, not to mention more agency, than the stars of the sport a century and a half ago. But both walking waves can be seen as promoting “physical activity in spaces where they’re not traditionally or not as easily done in the past,” as Damon Swift, an exercise scholar at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, told me.

For those looking to hop on the trend today, but aren’t ready to commit to a 10,000 daily step count—let alone a trek from Boston to D.C.—you might find some wisdom in that 1878 Times trend story, which advised readers to “walk as long as [you] like.”

Do just that, it promised, and you’ll return home “healthier and happier.”

The post America’s Earliest Sports Stars Were … Professional Walkers? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

From the TV remote to the group text to the ghoulish glow of the tablet I should have stowed before curling into bed: The world’s abiding awfulness is always just a click away. It’s as omnipresent as the WiFi it rides like a jet stream. It leaps between fellow citizens—a furrowed brow here, passing comment there—like a pathogen, a mood.

You’re aware, I presume, of what constitutes this awfulness? Of the climate crisis, the democracy crisis, and the election that’ll put both on the line. Of rising income inequality and eroding reproductive rights. Of wars. Of everything that’s overwhelming. How it’s everywhere all at once.

How does one cope? There’s drinking (I’ve tried it) and meditation (sleep-inducing), activism (good, if exhausting) and full-on fetal surrender (that didn’t work in 2020). Lately, though, I’ve found a better treatment, something portable, something free: I think about the Earth’s geological timeline and my own tiny lifespan. I zoom out from the crises that define my era and linger on the cataclysms of the past: the dinosaur-annihilating asteroid, the reshuffling of the continents, the first human to speak.

There, in the company of cosmic devastation, today’s headlines recede. Our global sauna cools when I picture woolly mammoths trudging across my driveway. I close my eyes a little longer, and a glacier glows in a living room where the TV speaks of war. I can even forget the faces of this nation’s villains by imagining the molten lava that once swirled across the Earth. They are ash, and I am ash, and our awful era floats away like smoke.

I like how I can access these worlds while buying groceries, commuting, or writing an email—channeling an apocalyptic Walter Mitty as I reimagine geologies where people disappear. It helps to have a reference for each scenario: Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us, notes from an exhibit on fossils, a high school physics textbook. The latter led me to intergalactic finales, star systems collapsing like constellated Fourth of Julys.

Is this a by-product of an ostrich-like retreat into research, reading, and the mind? Perhaps. Let the record show, though, that I still volunteer and vote. As a poet who believes, as Whitman did before me, that poets should be their “age transfigured,” this is how I transfigure mine.

In my latest poetry collection, When the Earth Flies Into the Sun, I often linger on planetary upheavals, sussing out the solace and sublimity that such events allow. (The sublime, Rainer Maria Rilke tells us, is something so beautiful it threatens to destroy us.) Each poem, I hope, distills my peculiar treatment into a tincture. They’re aspirin. They’re escape.

That’s how I found myself imagining, in the book’s title poem, what happens when the Earth finally flies into the sun. The answer: “it will be morning every day.” Other scenarios followed on the page after a short audition in the mind. In a poem first published here at Zócalo Public Square, I write to the first human speaker. In a sequel, I address the last human on earth:

Your end in the end          will come before dawn:

the sun’s just a sun—       your shadow alone will know            that you’re gone.

In the undiscoverable history of human figuration, the sun, I like to think, precipitated our first metaphors. Our shadows, by the same logic, the first personification. As a writer always working to coin new metaphors, I take a perverse pleasure in imagining their extinction. The sun, once again, is “just a sun.” What else tells us that the Anthropocene has come to an end?

Imagination is an asset at such moments of crisis. There’s no hope without it, nor any social justice. Whoever endeavors to change the world must first imagine it anew. But it’s also a balm when those crises overwhelm. In 1942, as the magnitude of awfulness exceeded even our own, the poet Wallace Stevens described his vocation like so: “to help people to live their lives.” Poets achieved this by making their imagination “the light in the minds of others.”

In the oubliette of my insomnia or the shudder of another mass shooting, I try to do the same. I hunch over my desk; I scratch a few lines into my notebook. If I’m lucky, imagination fills a poem’s paper lantern, and—years later, revisions complete—it floats into the world. If I’m not, I can seek solace in one of the many poetry books scattered across the room.

I’m not alone in this second, readerly desire, as recent catastrophes attest. In the months following the attacks of 9/11, W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” attained a sort of pre-viral fame. It helped that the poem opened its lament where so many Americans ended their day: at a bar feeling “[u]ncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade.” The repugnant Muslim travel ban of 2017 returned many readers to Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus.” Putin’s invasion of Ukraine compelled me to recite Adam Zagajewski’s “To Go to Lvov” to my students.

These poems provide a necessary reassurance. That the world has broken before. That we’ve jigsawed it back into shape. Poetry’s marginality—roughly 12% of Americans read it—also suits it to moments of crisis. Now is the time for elevated speech, some part of the populace concedes, because we’ve already tried everything else. Devices, drink, distraction, debate: None provide, as poems do, the hand at the small of one’s back, the rain that cools in the fall.

I used to think that poets had superpowers. That they could lick a finger, hold it up to the wind, and tune into the suffering of the world. But I have come to believe that we’re all capable of registering the world’s suffering. The question that lingers is what to do next. For me, this entails imagining geological sweeps of rock and species, stars and shore. These provide me—and, I hope, whatever readers join me—a detached sort of peace.

The post When the World Seems Awful, I Submerge Myself in the Vastness of the Universe appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On August 15, 1947, my father George Mayer celebrated India’s freedom from 300 years of British colonial rule by flying kites with his friends off Howrah Bridge, over the Hooghly River in Kolkata.

Kites in India are made by delicately attaching colorful tissue paper to dry reeds using lehi, a glue made from boiled white flour. Thin kite strings are made with strong cotton fiber called manja, wrapped tightly around a decorated spindle reel or laddi. As kids taking part in a neighborhood kite fight, we would coat the first few yards of manja with powdered glass, making it easier to “cut” an enemy kite by slicing through their line. We’d send the vanquished kite floating across rooftops, chased by throngs of children.

Once a kite is airborne, flying it requires farsightedness and a complete disregard for the skin on your hands. I learned the art of kite flying alongside my sisters at the hands of our Chowrungee-born father. The skill lies in maintaining a delicate balance between tension and slack. When an enemy kite approaches, go taut to signal engagement and draw it in. Once your foe is in striking range, slack off to force an attack. Then pounce! Reel in the encrusted manja to slice the enemy’s string—a clean cut across its jugular.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, former South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna are Indian Americans at the top of American politics today. They fly different political kites—a mix of colorful stances cutting across the political aisle, engaged in different parts of our government. But they all are the children and grandchildren of people born under British colonial rule who fought for India’s freedom.

Their not-so-distant ancestors in all probability joined my father in flying kites on that August day in 1947. I would guess that they also joined him in passing along treasured lessons about maneuvering kites, steadfastness and drive, democracy and progressivism. This shared political heritage, imbibed from freedom fighter grandparents, inarguably shapes these Indian American political superstars’ visions for America today, even as they vary.

Kamala Harris has spoken of long morning walks on the beach in Chennai with her maternal grandfather, Painganadu Venkataraman “P. V.” Gopalan, “where he would discuss the importance of fighting for equality and fighting corruption.” They talked about principles of democracy, freedom, and equality. Those walks “really planted something in my mind and created a commitment in me,” she recalled in a recent post online. It “led me where I am today.”

Gopalan’s overt support shaped more than Harris’ politics. In the late 1950s, it would have been unheard of for a young Tamil woman to make her own way in the West, as Harris’ mother did when she emigrated to the United States to study medicine. Shyamala Gopalan Harris lived other taboos, too: marrying outside her caste, raising her daughters as a divorced mother. In that era, a father’s acceptance made all the difference—none of this would have been possible without it.

Gopalan was about 15 years older than my father. Both men would have been in the prime of their lives during the final throes of the British Empire. Gopalan was from Thulasendrapuram, a tiny village in the southern Indian rice-growing region of Thanjavur, a place that has witnessed political upheaval for millennia. Some of India’s most beautifully preserved ancient and medieval temples stand in this deeply spiritual place; many remain active sites of worship.

Most people in Thanjavur are Hindu Tamils, but they exist in relative harmony with neighbors sharing many religious traditions. The Church of Our Lady of Vailankanni, a Christian pilgrimage site renowned for miraculous feats of healing spanning hundreds of years, lies just 40 miles east of Gopalan’s village, toward the Bay of Bengal. The ancient Brihadeeshwara Temple also contains ancient Buddhist relics.  When I listen to Kamala Harris speak of her mother, “a brown woman with an accent,” I think about how Shyamala embarked on her “unlikely journey” from this place steeped in respect for different belief systems.

Nikki Haley’s life story is similarly familiar. Haley’s paternal grandfather served in the British colonial army, she writes in her autobiography, and her mother, Raj Randhawa, “lived in a large six-story house in the shadow of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion,” in Amritsar, Punjab. Nearby was Jallianwala Bagh, a garden and popular gathering place with a deep, open well that quenched the thirst of locals, travelers, and pilgrims.

The garden is surrounded by high walls and densely packed housing tenements, with only one narrow passage for access. It was also the site of a notorious massacre on April 13, 1919. On that day, a crowd of around 10,000 gathered, some to protest a draconian British law criminalizing anti-government sentiment, many for the start of the spring festival of baisakhi. An overzealous British officer, nervous about the gathering, commanded his troops to seal the gate and open fire on the unarmed crowd. Hundreds were shot dead. Others perished when they jumped into the well to avoid the hail of bullets.

Gunshot marks on the walls of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, India from the massacre on April 13, 1919. Photo by Moira Shourie.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a grotesque event that marked a turning point in India’s struggle against the British. Laying bare the empire’s barbaric means of subjugation, it galvanized the freedom movement and inspired Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Non-Cooperation Movement that exhorted Indians to lay down their tools and not contribute to the economy in a universal labor strike.

I have stood in that garden and pushed my way through its narrow gate—as has Haley, who visited the grounds in 2014 to honor those who died. Despite pressures from hardline populists, Haley has been steadfast in removing symbols of Confederate power, perhaps because they echo the violence that plagued her own mother’s life in Amritsar. I wonder how else this ghastly episode of colonial violence might have shaped Haley’s views on democracy and how people rise up to fight for it.

India’s struggle for independence also molded Ro Khanna’s grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar. Active in Gandhi’s Quit India Movement, which accelerated Britain’s formal retreat from India, Vidyalankar endured two stints in jail for his actions. He sought to uplift Harijans or untouchables—people at the bottom of the caste system—and founded schools in rural regions for farmers and their families.

He also went on to serve as personal secretary to Lala Lajpat Rai, a key architect of India’s independence who traveled to the U.S. to meet civil rights leaders in 1916. I grew up next door to Lajpat Bhawan, the headquarters of Rai’s Servants of the People Society, formed to instill a sense of public service through wellness and employment programs. My sisters and I went there to buy freshly ground spices, enjoy the street food stalls in the fairs or melas they hosted, and to watch daily outdoor yoga classes where retirees practiced laughter therapy.

Working in such close proximity to Lala Lajpat Rai, I can’t help but believe Khanna’s grandfather imbibed the notion that extreme wealth should benefit the larger community. Today, Khanna represents one of the nation’s wealthiest congressional districts—Silicon Valley, home to tech companies that have a combined market capitalization of over $14 trillion—but he also champions progressive causes like affordable childcare and free public college. Khanna’s politics are likely influenced by his grandfather’s ideals.

Freedom and democracy are not distant concepts to this generation of Indian American politicians, but a living legacy passed down by loved ones who sowed the seeds with their own hands. Harris, Haley, and Khanna understand that a striking kite stands out in a crowded sky. They also understand that a good kite flier must be sharp and ready to cut their losses, must be resilient and able to try and try again, must be able to maneuver around other kites, and must adapt to changing conditions. Much like a good politician.

Harris, Haley, and Khanna are an inter-generational string—manja—giving flight to their versions of these principles of democracy. They should fly their kite not only in celebration but as a banner of freedom, soaring through unknowable skies.

The post How the Shared Heritage of Harris, Haley, and Khanna Shapes Their Politics appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Beginning in April 2025, Zócalo and IAJS will host a year-long, nationwide conversation that addresses this central question through art, public programs, and essays. The project began with IAJS commissioning four original works by a diverse group of prominent artists, rooted in each of four U.S. regions (North, South, East, and West). Zócalo and IAJS will exhibit the four works in partnership with local arts institutions and will host four free public events that explore the themes of the work through presentations by the artists; a panel including scholars, practitioners, and other thought leaders; and a reception based on the theme of the event, providing further opportunity to continue the conversation.

IAJS founding faculty co-directors Tomás R. Jiménez, Professor of Sociology, School of Humanities and Sciences, and Brian S. Lowery, Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, will each moderate two of the four public programs.

“We look forward to partnering with Zócalo Public Square on all aspects of this endeavor, and we hope these events and online materials will inspire other scholars and practitioners to collaborate on solutions to the challenges we face in our country and world,” Jiménez said.

Zócalo will live-stream the events and publish and syndicate multimedia content packages, including essays by leading scholars, artist and speaker interviews, and event recaps.

“It is an honor to be a part of the public introduction of the Institute for Advancing Just Societies, whose mission aligns so well with our own,” said Zócalo executive director Moira Shourie. “We are looking forward to using art and scholarship to catalyze discussions this changing nation urgently needs and to be bringing it to the broader public.”

Zócalo and IAJS conducted a national search for participating artists, and the two organizations are working together to curate the content around the works. Each artist’s work will be housed at and exhibited by IAJS on the Stanford campus.

More information about the commissioned artists and the full schedule of programs will be announced in early 2025.

The post Stanford and Zócalo Team Up to Explore the Future of Race and Ethnicity in America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Nǐ hǎo, jiāzhōu!

Hello, California!

We are the Golden State’s two giant pandas, the first to enter the United States in two decades. And while it’s only been a few months since we departed southwest China for the San Diego Zoo, we’ve already met the governor, celebrities, TV broadcasters who love puns (“Panda-monium”), and thousands of everyday people, some of whom pay $115 to enter the zoo in the early morning and walk around with us for an hour. We now feel so at home in California that we’re wondering how we might take on the responsibilities of citizenship. For example, we hear so many of the people visiting us talking about your November elections.

So, why don’t you let us vote in them, too?

In asking this, we want to reassure you that we are reluctant to get political. Why take sides when we’re more popular than the Padres? (We never strike out, and we’re cuter than Jackson Merrill). The two of us are laidback types; zookeepers describe Yun, a 5-year-old male, as “mild-mannered, gentle and lovable,” and Xin, a 4-year-old female, as a “gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears.”

And like so many of our fellow Californians, we ignore the news. We prefer to spend our time sunbathing, sleeping, and consuming as much grass as we can get our paws on. To clarify, our grass of choice is bamboo—the zoo grows eight species of it because we are picky.

We also must walk a fine line as “envoys of friendship,” in the words of the Chinese government, which loans us out to overseas zoos for $1 million a year. That means we and our fellow panda migrants—including old Sichuan friends who will soon head to the National Zoo in D.C. and perhaps the San Francisco Zoo—are really diplomats. And we represent a difficult client state that bullies its neighbors and inspires retaliatory tariffs and hateful rhetoric from a former-and-perhaps-future American president whose team uses the term “panda hugger” as a pejorative. (Pro tip: even if you love China, it’s best not to hug us—we are real animals, not stuffed bears.)

There are other reasons we might be wise to stay out of the political arena. For one thing, we are non-humans now living in a country that ranks low in the global Animal Protection Index. For another, we are newcomers to an America so deeply infected by xenophobia that a majority of voters support mass deportation of immigrants and their families. (Before JD Vance starts spreading lies about what we eat, let’s be clear—we are herbivores.)

Yet, despite all the ways in which we count as outsiders, we pandas, by our very presence, offer Americans a chance to understand your real challenges.

Try looking at things from our perspective. After all, we, like you, are a vulnerable species trying to survive on an increasingly inhospitable planet (there are fewer than 3,000 giant pandas in the world). We are also living proof that—in this age of moral relativism and lie-based politics—some very important things remain black and white.

Like the fact that true democracy requires the representation and participation of all living things.

Including us.

Sure, your human media is full of phony accusations that foreigners are voting in this year’s elections. They aren’t, but why shouldn’t they be able to? It’s increasingly common around the world for jurisdictions to open up local elections to non-citizens. San Francisco has done so for school board contests, for instance.

If we could vote in San Diego elections, we might cast a ballot for anyone who could stop the constant noise of jets flying low over us here in Balboa Park, as they prepare to land at the airport. Our participation also might raise the question of why we live rent-free in the expanded Panda Ridge complex while the city tears down encampments of the unhoused and allows the loss of hundreds of shelter beds.

Your national constitution has no prohibition against non-citizens voting—states, like yours decide. Unfortunately, California, while claiming to be a democracy defender, has decided to disenfranchise one in six of its adults based on citizenship, even though such people pay taxes, abide by the laws, serve in the military, and raise children who are citizens. California could enfranchise 6 million people by letting non-citizen residents vote.

It also could bring people together across national boundaries and create a framework for global political solutions if it reached agreements of “reciprocal voting” to allow Californians and residents of other states and countries to vote in each other’s elections.

Such a reciprocal system would demonstrate human interdependence. But interdependence on this planet encompasses all living things. Humans are less than 1% of the world’s biomass but have 100% of the world’s democratic rights. Plants are more than 80% of the biomass and are unrepresented, even though humans couldn’t live without them.

Providing representation to us animals and plants is not a new idea. There are efforts around the world to imagine democratic systems for various beings, including the Multispecies Constitution Project at the L.A.-based Berggruen Institute, where this column’s usual author is a fellow.

That project asks questions like: “What sorts of institutions could speak with—rather than for—the trees, the birds, the microbes, and the diverse humans of this planet?” The idea is that by incorporating the intelligence, experiences, values, and interests of other living things into governance, you humans will save ecosystems—and maybe yourselves. Intriguingly, some non-human creatures, like whales, are beginning to converse with you.

If the two of us could talk with you directly, instead of through the imagination of a human journalist, we might chat about the struggles of starting a family in California. We are a couple facing expectations to breed. And yes, San Diego is a great place to mate, and not just for all the sun-kissed humans in the beach-themed bars.

In fact, Yun’s grandparents lived at the zoo in the 2000s and had five cubs together here, including his mother Zhen Zhen. It seems unlikely that we’ll be that fertile. And we can’t know how long we’ll get to stay here, given the conflict between our birth country and our new home country.

But for now, we are Californians. Shouldn’t we have the same rights and responsibilities as all of you?

The post Why California Should Let Pandas Vote appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Nine years ago, when I spotted blood in my ejaculate, I made an appointment to see my urologist. I quickly found myself to be the only woman in the waiting room. A handful of men surrounded me, and I could see the gears turning in their heads, wondering why a person who presented as and looked like a woman was waiting alongside them.

“Is your husband in there?” said the man two chairs to my right. As a transgender woman, passing as the gender I align with is one of the most joyous and validating feelings. For those of us who have gone through male puberty with masculinizing factors, aligning our external social presentation with our innermost core identity of gender requires both effort and luck.

If we were not in a doctor’s office, I would have remained sociable and continued the conversation. But here, I tried to avoid it, hoping to prolong the secret that the urology appointment was for me. “No,” I said with a polite smile.

The waiting room brought up all too familiar feelings: anxiety, uncertainty, and the fear of what the remaining men would say or think if I was outed. It also highlighted one of the core tensions in seeking quality health care as a trans person: We need providers to honor our gender identity beyond the simplistic frame of biology while being attentive to biological needs often linked to sex.

As I approached the front desk, a receptionist inquired if I was checking in on behalf of my husband. A second receptionist—the one I had spoken to on the phone to make the appointment—pulled the first to the side and whispered that the appointment was for me, and that I was a transgender woman.

The first receptionist stammered, apologized for the confusion, and handed me a clipboard to fill out my medical details. I sat back down, feeling incredibly self-conscious. Now the entire waiting room likely knew of my situation, that I—like all of them—had a prostate that needed to be examined.

The expectation of rejection and the cost of self-policing has profound effects on transgender lives. We are forced to live a life of vigilance, knowing our gender can shift in the eyes of the public at any moment. This is exhausting, and it can also have devastating health consequences. In a 2020 survey conducted by the Center for American Progress, 28% of transgender respondents said they had postponed or avoided necessary medical care in the past year out of fear of discrimination. Such fear inspires some trans people to cut off their history, drawing a clear line from the moment they transition and choosing to not look back on their “former” lives. But those lives also contain medical history that our bodies can’t discard.

Because of this, doctors’ visits often feel like a forced “outing,” where we have to disclose our history in order to receive an accurate diagnosis. Despite the legal and professional rules that govern medicine, medical professionals are still, in the end, human. Some are accepting and tolerant, others are indifferent and ignorant, and still others are just plain spiteful.

When I had my hip labrum cartilage repaired, I knew the bottom half of my body would be naked on the operating table, which meant my penis would be out in the open for all the doctor’s assistants to see.  The fact that I’d be under anesthesia and unconscious didn’t deter me from making an effort to boldly declare my womanhood while unclothed. I got a pedicure two days before my surgery and picked a bright fuchsia color—the same one I’ve used for over a decade—that I thought might help minimize the chances of being misgendered by the nursing staff as I waited for surgery.

But the day of the procedure, a snobbish blonde nurse looked me dead in the eye and called me “he” as she handed my medical chart over to my surgical coordinator. I made a polite attempt to correct her, but she kept referring to me as “him” and “he” to the other nurses. Finally, the surgical coordinator came to my side, rolled her eyes, and said with a nod: “I know, I know. Just ignore her. She’s just a bitch.”

Tragically, this experience is routine for trans people seeking health care. In a poll conducted by KFF and the Washington Post, 31% of trans adults reported that a health care provider had refused to acknowledge their gender identity, using instead their sex assigned at birth. Health care providers need to acknowledge our core identities even as we need to divulge our raw and tender histories. And precisely because this process can be so excruciating, it is critical for the transgender community—and the medical sectors that support us—to be consistent and precise with our language around gender, sex, and medicine. We must emphasize that being trans is about being seen for who we are as individuals rather than merely our biology, while also advocating for the quality, compassionate health care that our biology might necessitate.

Underlying all of this is the frustrating reality that doctors are fallible and sometimes misinformed, which means we must speak up for ourselves when the situation demands. Infuriatingly, the 2020 Center for American Progress survey found that one in three transgender respondents had to “teach their doctor about transgender people in order to receive appropriate care.” That was the case when I asked my general practitioner for a full panel of STD tests, only for him to ask if I had sex with men.  I was so afraid to come off as double queer—a transgender bisexual woman who had anal sex with men—that I lied and said I only dated women. “You don’t need the HIV panel if you don’t have sex with men,” he said. I was shocked at his ignorance, and to this day regret not speaking up to inform him that the spread of HIV isn’t restricted to anal male-on-male intercourse. I can’t help but wonder how many additional people he misinformed due to my reticence.

I remembered the cost of remaining silent while at a doctor’s visit last summer, when I needed an X-ray. “Are you pregnant?” the nurse asked.

“No,” I replied, “I can’t get pregnant.”

She looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “How old were you when you had your hysterectomy?”

As good as it would have felt to continue to play along as a woman who was born female and had gone through puberty as one, I instead chose discomfort. When I told her I was transgender, she nodded, thanked me for my transparency, and proceeded to strap the lead vest on my chest.  As the X-ray machine began to whirl, I smiled. It took bravery to own that moment of authenticity. But being honest with my nurse translated into better care for myself—and maybe the next patient she works with, too.

The post For Trans People, a Doctor’s Visit Can Be a Dilemma appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

like the kid who knows

he’s a year too old

to sit on the mall Santa’s lap,

waiting in line anyway,

hedging his bets

to make certain that new dirt bike

is under the tree.

Which is to say, I am aware,

but not sorry,

about my concurrent desperation for

and disbelief in

some heavenly robber baron

peering down at his factory floor

from a high office window,

ready to deliver us non-union

hoi polloi whenever we cry out

for his benevolence. Right now,

I’m praying the woman I love

is not pregnant.

With God, I use the word ruin,

ignore the guilt that comes

knowing I am made in His image.

I told the woman I love

I’d go with her to the clinic,

pay whatever the cost,

but she says, no,

she says, we’re keeping it.

Fear turns every prayer

into a bargain.

Reader, am I more ashamed

of what I’m asking to be done,

or how you can see me

kneeling at the edge of my bed

with the limited omniscience

I’ve given you?

Because if you can see it, God can see it.

Silence, His answer also.

The post I Pray appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

My wife and I live in a rural farming area in Western Pennsylvania. We moved here five years ago because we’re country people, and it’s only 20 minutes from where I grew up and where my mother still lives.

Here we have chickens, a big garden, and a wood-burning stove but no broadband internet, which sometimes makes it hard on my wife, who works from home.

Each week, I commute about an hour to a small liberal arts college in Pittsburgh where I specialize in U.S. labor history. When I drive to work on Monday morning, it feels like leaving one political universe and entering a parallel one. I sometimes wonder whether there might be a political leader who can bridge that divide and speak to concerns in both worlds.

When I turn out of my driveway, I pass old farmhouses, small manufactured homes, and $500,000 “rustic” styled houses. All along the way, I see Trump yard signs, flags, and banners. I remember seeing the signs and flags in 2016—before we had even moved here—and they have been here ever since. One large farm has several Trump flags and a 4 feet by 8 feet Trump-Vance sign. That same sign read “Trump-Pence” until January 7th, 2021, when the owner crossed out Pence’s name with paint, evidently feeling betrayed by the vice president during the January 6th insurrection.

Around that time, my mother’s neighbor put up a “F— Biden” flag. I’m not easily offended, but it did not seem right that Mom would have to see the F-word every time she left home.

In the 2020 election, Trump won 71% of my township’s votes—1,007 votes to Biden’s 401. I can’t say exactly why. I’ve read studies that voting patterns in rural areas like mine are stoked by “deaths of despair,” but I doubt the politics of the full-time farmer or the construction worker down the road are the same as those of the attorney who lives in a half-million-dollar home. One thing they all have in common: The township is 98.2% white. Only one African American lives here.

Next on my drive, labor history. I get on the interstate just over the ridge from Aliquippa, once home to a Jones and Laughlin steel mill that used to employ 10,000. Steelworkers were a key part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s base, and in 1936 he won this county nearly two to one. A historical marker in town reads “NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Supreme Court Ruling,” commemorating a 1937 decision that enshrined union rights in federal law. In its wake, workers here overwhelmingly voted to join the United Steelworkers, ending the company’s dictatorial rule over the town. The union contracts that followed brought steelworkers out of poverty and gave them a 40-hour workweek, sick pay, and pensions.

The last few decades have been hard on Aliquippa. The number of those good union jobs went into sharp decline in the 1980s, and the mill shut down in 2000. As jobs went away so too did many residents, leaving behind empty lots, a depleted local tax base, rising crime rates, and disillusionment. Many who live in the region’s former steel towns blame the industry’s decline on free trade agreements. Trump’s rhetoric about “carnage in the streets” and “getting tough on China” undoubtedly resonate with them. In 2020, Trump won 58% in Beaver County. There were hopes that the natural gas boom would reinvigorate manufacturing, especially when Shell built a plant to process gas for plastics, but the boom never came.

I continue another 25 miles into Pittsburgh. As former mill towns like Aliquippa—and a dozen others—continue to struggle, Pittsburgh has reinvented itself. It is now home to seven colleges and universities, several hospitals, IT and high-tech firms, and an increasingly diverse population.

I exit the highway and drive through Squirrel Hill, where I sometimes see police and armed guards stationed outside the neighborhood’s synagogues—a reminder of the horrific attack on the local Jewish community six years ago. On October 27, 2018, a far-right extremist killed 11 people and wounded 6 in a local synagogue. The week before, the gunman had posted an antisemitic and anti-immigrant message on Gab, a social media network used by hate groups and “alt-right” activists.

Trump condemned the shooting but also seemed to downplay the threat posed by white nationalists and hate groups, which have been on the rise since he announced his candidacy in a 2015 speech, accusing Mexico of sending drug dealers and “rapists” into the U.S. And he continues to use rhetoric that dehumanizes immigrants and stokes fear and hatred.

I then drive across Forbes Avenue, a main thoroughfare that leads to the four-lane Fern Hollow Bridge, spanning a 100-foot-deep ravine. In January 2022, the bridge collapsed with five vehicles on it, including a city bus. Amazingly, no one was killed. Investigations revealed that the concrete piers had deteriorated, and the X-braces had rusted through—evidence of our crumbling infrastructure.

The recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, one of President Biden’s legislative accomplishments during his first year in office, enabled Pennsylvania to start clearing away the rubble and rebuilding almost immediately. The new bridge opened to traffic just 11 months after the collapse, but there continue to be a lot of concerns about the condition of Pittsburgh’s 146 bridges.

Along the tree-lined streets near my college campus, I see yard signs very different from the ones in my rural community. Here, there are signs for progressive Democrats, one that proclaims in several languages that immigrants are welcome, and Black Lives Matter signs.

I’m reminded that in the run-up to the 2016 election, some colleagues, having studied the “FiveThirtyEight” forecasts, were confident—like many people around the country—that Clinton would soundly defeat Trump. I wonder if being surrounded by so many Clinton signs contributed to that certainty.

When I park my car near campus, I undo my seatbelt and pin a button on my shirt that reads “Chatham Faculty United.” Last year, administrators informed us by email of a $12 million budget shortfall, cuts to our 401K match, and more costly health insurance plans. Faculty members began a unionization effort. In one meeting, I told coworkers that Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has been the most protective of union rights of any NLRB in my lifetime. We received letters of support from politicians, including the Pittsburgh mayor, the county executive, and a city councilperson.

Even though 73% of the full-time faculty signed union cards, the university administration refused to recognize the union and hired a law firm to challenge our right to organize. We are now in our seventh month of hearings, and the university informed us that the administration plans to appeal the NLRB decision. It has crossed my mind that the president and the trustees may be hoping that Trump will win and new NLRB appointees will make it harder for us to unionize.

Even though my commute can feel like I’m passing between two very different worlds, I can’t help but think the things that we—on both sides of this divide—have in common.

Undoubtedly, we all have differing views and beliefs, but I also believe that the sharp divide I see today comes from tribalism fueled in large part by political rhetoric. I genuinely think that there are many issues that bind us together: We want stable jobs with good benefits and a voice in our working conditions. We want good infrastructure, including safe bridges in our cities and broadband internet in the country. Maybe most of all we want our family, friends, and neighbors to be safe—and hate-filled rhetoric is not making us safer.

I keep hoping for a politician who will stop along this route and talk—and listen—to all these people and find that common ground.

The post Two Pennsylvanias, One Drive, No Connections? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.