Southern California

My Late Uncle Jim’s Life of Tomorrows

He Found Meaning and Wisdom in Looking Ahead

When I think of my Uncle Jim, I often remember him as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Jim Mathews, who died earlier this summer at age 77, loved to perform in community theater productions near his home in San Mateo. He sang in many shows and took on many roles, but his signature was playing the former president in the musical Annie, that classic Depression story about an orphan girl taken in by a rich capitalist, Daddy Warbucks.

Late in the show, Annie and Daddy Warbucks go to the White House, where FDR is …

by Joe Mathews |

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Look to California to Understand Jim Crow

The Violence Black Americans Face Today Is Rooted Everywhere—Including the Nation’s Most Progressive State

by Lynn M. Hudson |

This essay was published alongside the Zócalo public program “How Does the Inland Empire Strike Back Against Hate?,” presented in partnership with California Humanities, …

How Two Chicana Nerds Wrote Their Way Back to Oxnard

Michele Serros and I Did Everything We Could to Escape Our SoCal Hometown—Only to Find It Lived Within Us

by Cristina Herrera |

Growing up as a Chicana nerd, I never thought I’d write a book about myself, much less about Oxnard, where I grew up. This humble city on the Southern California …

No Sleep for Those Under the ‘Jet Superhighway’

A Stealth Change in Flight Patterns to Hollywood Burbank Airport Has Impacted a Huge Stretch of L.A.

by Julia Bricklin |

It starts around 6:45 a.m.—a faint, faraway boom, followed by a low growl that makes my stomach tighten and hands clench. Within seconds, the growl turns into a low rumbling, …

Which California Baseball Team Has the Worst Owner in Pro Sports?

The Oakland A’s and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Are in a Race to the Bottom

by Joe Mathews |

In California, a land blessed with more than its fair share of winners, we learn our most important lessons by dwelling among the losers.

So, in this final week of the …

A Mid-Century Playbook for Saving Progressive American Education

Fifty Years Ago, Parents United to Get the Far-Right John Birch Society Out of Their Schools

by Matthew Dallek |

This May, an email landed in my inbox. The correspondent, who’d come across my new book on the John Birch Society, wanted to share how members of this far-right anticommunist …


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