New at Zócalo

  • News & Notes

    Margita Thompson and Michael Woo Join Zócalo’s Board of Trustees

    Welcome the Former Governor’s Press Secretary and Cal Poly Pomona Dean Emeritus to the Public Square

    We are excited to announce two new members of the Zócalo Public Square Board of Trustees: former California gubernatorial press secretary Margita Thompson and Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental …

  • Culture Class

    Hot Girl Summer Is a Utopian Notion

    We’ll Never Reach Its Coconut-Scented Siren Call, But That Shouldn’t Stop Us From Trying

    by Jackie Mansky |

    Here in Southern California, the Santa Ana winds are blowing, summoning us back to school, back to our routines, back to our lives.

    The potential that once hung so heady in …

  • Prizes

    The 2023 Zócalo Book Prize Honors Explorations of Community

    We’re Looking for the Best Nonfiction Books on Human Connection

    Since 2011, Zócalo Public Square’s annual book prize has recognized the U.S.-published nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness …

  • Prizes

    The 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize Celebrates Poems of Place

    No-Fee Contest Submissions Accepted November 2022–January 2023

    Since 2012, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize has recognized the U.S. writer of a poem that best evokes a connection to place. Zócalo is currently accepting submissions. The deadline …

  • Connecting California

    Will California Get SMART About Mass Transit?

    A New Train Could Help Battle Climate Change, Serve Expanding Metro Areas, and Create a Northern California Mega-Region

    by Joe Mathews |

    If this train is so SMART, why can’t I find it?

    That’s the question I asked myself in Larkspur, in Marin County, after arriving on the ferry from San Francisco one …

  • Poetry

    by Jose Hernandez Diaz

     

    I’m smacking around a piñata shaped like a palm tree. It is southern California, mid-summer. The palm tree piñata is swinging back-and-forth beneath the bright summer sun. It is my …

  • Essay

    Going Back to Blair Mountain

    The Largest Armed Labor Uprising in American History Is Finally Getting the Remembrance It Deserves

    by Kenzie New Walker |

    For most people, the memory of the largest armed labor uprising in American history is unknown, buried beneath the dirt of West Virginia’s Blair Mountain alongside bullet casings and relics …

  • Essay

    The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search Was 2,500 Years in the Making

    Democracy Requires Equality Before the Law—And That Includes Ex-Presidents

    by Asha Rangappa and Jennifer Mercieca |

    “All Americans are entitled to the evenhanded application of the law,” Attorney General Merrick Garland assured Americans on August 11, 2022, following the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at …

  • Connecting California

    A Tale of Two California Bridges

    L.A. Was Too Hot for the Sixth Street Viaduct, While San Francisco Played It Cool at the Presidio

    by Joe Mathews |

    Nothing reveals the character of a city more than the way it opens a present.

    California saw as much this summer, as our two most distinguished municipalities—Los Angeles and San Francisco—each …

  • Essay

    The Valley’s Last Camaro

    In 1992, General Motors Shuttered Its Van Nuys Plant—But Not Before Union Workers Left Their Mark on the Final Car They Produced

    by Andrew Warren and Tim Moore |

    Improbably, the best monument to the old General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California, sits in a garage in Jamestown, North Dakota—the final car produced at the facility that …