Four of the poorest, most maligned places in America have become beacons of hope—and burgeoning centers of trust, in people and local government—since going broke in the Great Recession. How did they pull themselves up from an especially low point, and what can the rest of the country learn from them?

This was the subject of 2023 Zócalo Book Prize winner Michelle Wilde Anderson’s The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America, which we honored last night as the year’s best nonfiction book exploring community and social connection at the Zócalo Book and Poetry Prize event.

Held at the ASU California Center in downtown Los Angeles, the program, which also streamed live online, began with a virtual reading by this year’s Zócalo Poetry Prize winner, Paige Buffington, of “From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque.” Then, philanthropist Tim Disney—the sponsor of the program and both prizes—took the stage, where he lauded The Fight to Save the Town as “a moving and important document, and a timely one.”

Anderson received $10,000 in prize money and a pre-solved Rubik’s Cube, emblazoned with the Zócalo logo, for winning this year’s book prize. She announced she would be keeping the Rubik’s Cube, but donating all of her winnings to four organizations she wrote about in her book, and to South L.A.’s Community Coalition. “Because if this book moved anybody, that is because, above all, these people moved me,” she said.

During the 13th annual Zócalo Book Prize lecture, Anderson shared stories from the four places she wrote about: Stockton, California, Josephine County, Oregon, Detroit, Michigan, and Lawrence, Massachusetts. Since the 1980s, these towns and cities and others like them—often older, industrial cities with decaying housing and infrastructure, and high levels of environmental contamination—have grown poorer because of disinvestment from state and federal government and poorer tax bases.

“These cities are broke in part because they’re poor, and their people stay poor in part because their governments are broke,” said Anderson. “This is actually the start of a larger, vicious cycle of decline in which the conditions of poverty undermine the basic trust that is needed for human cooperation.”

But in each place, she found examples of how people and institutions are facing this vicious cycle and finding ways to work together to break out of it. In Stockton, that meant addressing the trauma and mental health effects of violence, segregation, and intergenerational poverty. In Josephine County—one of the most anti-government places in America—that meant saving public services by convincing angry, skeptical voters that it’s possible to build cooperation and trust in government. In Detroit, that meant fighting foreclosures and speculators, and putting property back into local hands. And in Lawrence, that meant forming strong, pan-Latino networks to help residents in the 21st-century economy make a living wage.

“All of these efforts add up to social repair,” said Anderson.

Following the lecture, Alberto Retana, president and CEO of South L.A.’s Community Coalition—which, like many of the organizations in Anderson’s book, engages in ground-up, locally focused work—joined her on stage to talk about The Fight to Save the Town’s inspirations, and how to apply some of its lessons to other communities around the country.

Retana noted that Anderson’s book celebrates what democracy is all about: “people fighting to make something beautiful from something broken.” How, he asked Anderson, did she come to this subject and perspective?

She said she chose to write a “people-centered” book because she’s “really concerned that the way we tell stories about poverty is part of the problem.” Our narratives of poor places feature “crooks in the government and bullets flying everywhere and hell holes … Those narratives reinforce faithlessness that things can be better. So they give outsiders an excuse to stop working alongside people on the ground.”

You can see this dynamic in Los Angeles, a city of 40,000 unhoused people, particularly among the white middle class, Retana agreed. But what, he asked Anderson, is the “heart of the heart of the central solution” to tackling poverty and disinvestment?

“Turning government back toward its people,” said Anderson. “We have to invest in people where they live.” But she cautioned that one community cannot write the playbook for other communities. To the extent that, say, Lawrence has a method to teach the rest of America, it would be “showing up and listening,” and forming tight and supportive networks among people and organizations.

Why center the book on these local networks? Federal and state policy cause many of the problems they are tackling, said Retana.

It’s true that the problems are systemic, and we need federal and state policy changes, said Anderson. But upper tiers of government don’t work without this grassroots level—which creates places for outside funding, policies, and philanthropy to land.

Anderson turned the question back on Retana—whose work is local, after all.

The greatest changes in American history, he said, come from localities up—“whether it’s Ferguson in 2013 or Birmingham, Alabama, in the ’60s, or Los Angeles solving the homelessness crisis in the next few years.” He added, “I really love this book because it recenters the conversation where it really needs to happen: in our backyards, on our blocks, in our living rooms.”

After concluding their discussion, Anderson and Retana turned to audience questions, which largely centered around their advice for people and organizations hoping to effect change locally.

In response to one person who wondered what opportunities community-based organizations might be overlooking, Anderson shared a lesson from Stockton. There, a youth development program gathered all the local youth programs staff together one morning a week for orange juice and doughnuts. “It was an incredible moment for the city’s network-building,” she said—not because spectacularly important plans got made in these meetings, but because they helped people and programs get to know one another and coordinate in an environment of scarcity. “I do think there’s a form of casual coordination that we don’t give enough credit to as a component of social change,” she said.

Last night also kicked off Zócalo’s 20th birthday celebration, and before the program wrapped, Zócalo executive director Moira Shourie took the stage to thank Zócalo’s past and present staff, funders, and audiences for their support over the past two decades, through more than 700 public programs and 3,000 published essays. And then, in true Zócalo fashion, everyone came together for cake and more conversation.

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Mandel, who along with his brothers built a multibillion-dollar company out of a $900 initial investment and has run a successful charitable foundation for 60 years, credits his success to these “A” people. At a Zócalo/Drucker Institute event at MOCA Grand Avenue about leadership and business with Drucker Institute executive director Rick Wartzman, Mandel—author of the book It’s All About Who—explained his blueprint for organizational success, based on the seemingly simple idea that you can’t do anything without a great team made up mostly of “A” people, with some “B” people, and as few “C” people as possible.

How, asked Wartzman, can you tell an “A” person from a “B+”?

Mandel admitted that the system was a bit of an oversimplification. Yet “A” people have certain qualities in common: They’re usually charismatic, articulate, and generally intelligent. When it comes to hiring, Mandel prizes intellectual firepower above all else—then values, passion, and work ethic—and, last and least, experience. Why? Because it’s the only quality on the list that can be taught.

Management consultant Peter Drucker was a huge influence on Mandel’s philosophy. In the 1960s, Mandel was a client of Drucker’s, and when he asked how to grow his company faster, Drucker told him, “‘Put your best person with your biggest opportunity’”—even if it means having a dentist run a brass foundry. “I bought it, and I’ve done it all my career,” said Mandel, going back to 1965. He’s had the equivalent of dentists running brass foundries, but he has yet to have someone fail due to a lack of experience.

Why, asked Wartzman, can’t more organizations manage to hire great people, even if they pay lip service to similar philosophies?

It’s impossible, said Mandel, to run an organization with only “A” people—and “B” people have an important role to play. However, it’s the “C” people that bring a company down, and in most institutions they hang on “because it’s painful to terminate people.” Mandel said he always asks people if they have any employees they wouldn’t hire if they knew what they know now. Almost everyone says yes, but explains that the person can’t be fired. “Who are your clients?” asks Mandel in response to such a statement. “Is it more important to serve your clients or to be nice to your employee?”

Mandel said he hates firing people—everyone hates firing people—but sometimes it has to be done. “The mission of people who lead any organization, for-profit or not-for-profit, is to do the best they can for their clients,” he said. “Therefore they should get as many ‘A’s as they can get and have no ‘C’s. That’s the goal, and it’s not easy. No one ever said leadership was easy.”

Mandel believes that customer service is the secondary lever that organizations can pull in order to become great. But he doesn’t mean simply using the expression “customer service”—it’s about defining what that means and measuring your criteria for serving clients successfully. Mandel pointed to Lexus as a company that understands customer service; he abandoned his Ford station wagon for a Lexus and was stunned by the level of service. “They treat me like royalty,” he said—and it’s the same for all their customers. “What’s so secret that every car dealer doesn’t do it?”

Wartzman asked Mandel to talk about what he learned in the nonprofit world that helped him run his for-profit company, and vice versa. Mandel explained that he brought classic organizational skills to nonprofits, but what was more valuable was what he learned from the nonprofit world. For example, he said, as a young CEO at his own company, he learned a valuable lesson after becoming chairman of a local United Way chapter. After he was appointed, he asked the outgoing chairman to critique his first board meeting. Mandel thought it had been a great success, and his colleague agreed that a lot had been accomplished. However, he pointed out, Mandel hadn’t chaired the meeting—he’d dominated it, not giving any board members credit or ownership. The revelation “hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Mandel, who realized that he’d been dominating every meeting he ran. At his own company, his employees had no choice but to agree with him; in the nonprofit world, people didn’t have to like everything he said. He realized he should change all of the meetings he chaired—and became a better colleague as a result.

Where do Mandel’s philosophies, asked Wartzman, fit into corporate culture today? Is there any hope for leaders when their success seems to ride on meeting short-term goals?

“I’m discouraged by the power management has given to the financial analysts,” said Mandel, pointing to compensation structures for executives that tie their future to a single quarter’s earnings report. He and his brothers owned a majority of their company and never had to worry about being fired. But most business leaders have to do whatever it takes in the short-term to keep their jobs. Often, they are trapped by their boards.

Asked about what he might do about an “A” employee who was failing, Mandel said that he has only terminated two “A” employees.  Usually, such employees can be counseled in some way. They have the mental capacity and self-confidence to learn—and to change.

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