California’s Powerful, but Obscure, Answer to the COVID Jobs Crisis

You May Never Have Heard of Your Local Workforce Development Boards, but They Know How to Move the State Forward

We can bring jobs back to California, and we can do it right now. The latest employment numbers should provide the sense of urgency. An additional 287,354 new unemployment insurance claims were filed just for the week ending June 20, bringing the total to more than 6.7 million claims filed in California since mid-March, and $33.5 billion in unemployment benefits paid. Our California economy is now surviving in good part on unemployment insurance payments.

To understand how to respond to the current predicament, Californians should turn to the front lines of …

A Letter From Bogotá, Where Hunger Can Feel More Threatening Than the Virus | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Letter From Bogotá, Where Hunger Feels More Threatening Than the Virus

Delivering Fruit by Bicycle, an Expat Pedals Across the Sprawling Capital City and Tries to Imagine What the Future Will Look Like

Earlier in the spring, while riding my bike and delivering fruit around Bogotá, Colombia, I passed by dozens of customers lined up patiently, resignedly, outside a bank on a main …

Why Today’s Social Revolutions Include Kale, Medical Care, and Help With Rent | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why Today’s Social Revolutions Include Kale, Medical Care, and Help With Rent

In the Pandemic, Community Organizations Have Returned to Their Roots in Mutual Aid and Self-Determination

When I needed to donate a box of vegetables recently, I called a nonprofit in my neighborhood in Queens, New York, that organizes low-wage immigrant workers. As we arranged the …

Live on Twitter: Will Anyone Ever Be Able to Afford to Live in California? with Jerry Nickelsburg and Erika Aguilar | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Will Anyone Ever Be Able to Afford to Live in California?

Housing Affordability Is a Long-Term Problem, but COVID Could Help Reset the Conversation

On June 24, the UCLA Anderson Forecast predicted a difficult economic future for California and reported that the U.S. economy is in a “Depression-like crisis.” What does this mean for …

Where I Go: From Northeast London Back to Duluth | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Where I Go: From Northeast London Back to Duluth

In Our Newly Delimited World, I Became a Terranaut of the Local

For me, as for millions, lockdown has been a masterclass in ways of escape. And even as “easing” widens horizons, I can’t see it catapulting us back to a time …