Zócalo Public Square

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called California’s looming budget crisis a fiscal armageddon waiting to strike. Now, as major cuts are inevitable, doomsday seems to have come to California, particularly to its poorest. The one-million-plus Californians on CalWorks, the state’s main welfare program, could lose monthly income. Support for those who care for disabled Californians is set to be sla...

Pete Wilson’s California wasn’t too different from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. The state’s education system lagged behind the rest of the country, interest groups had a tight grip on Sacramento, healthcare costs were rising, and the economy was the worst it had been since the Great Depression. While Wilson may be best remembered for his more controversial stances—like supporting Proposition 187, whic...

Mexico and the United States share a centuries-long history, a dynamic border region and a vibrant economic relationship. The interconnectedness of the U.S. and Mexican economies is undeniable. When the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented on January 1, 1994, the two neighbors, along with Canada, created one of the world's richest and largest trading blocs. Mexican-Americans are an...

Swine flu, a contracting economy, rising unemployment, a wild and bloody conflict with drug traffickers, the constant threat of natural disasters and ransom kidnappings—Mexico faces several serious challenges. Since the contested 2006 presidential election there, the country has suffered crisis after crisis, constantly testing the Mexican people’s ability to realign their everyday lives. Some seek...

From sleek laptops to shiny new cars, objects enthrall us. Objects seem capable of manipulation and seduction, building and sustaining a desire for design, even over performance, function and a fair price. Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum London and author of The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects, visits Zócalo to explore the power of design and what it me...

Is God good or bad? In both the Bible and the Koran, God’s mood seems to swing randomly between belligerence and benevolence. But the scriptures, read carefully, reveal a subtle pattern in these moods, a pattern that is key to understanding the evolution of the great monotheistic faiths. In an era when the perceived divisions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam spark violent conflict, underst...

Forty years ago, California's higher education system was the envy of the nation. It´s bold strategy welcoming any resident who wanted to learn led to a doubling of enrolled students, and sparked similar efforts across the country. California ranked high among other states for its share of working adults with a bachelor´s degree. But that figure has declined sharply in the decades since. According...

Los Angeles is the homeless capital of the nation, with 73,000 homeless men, women and children living on our streets on any given night. Though the number of homeless in Los Angeles has declined over the last few years, it has not declined as sharply as populations in other cities, like New York, which has fewer homeless but has devoted more funding to the cause. What can Los Angeles learn from c...

Though both Iraq wars aimed to reign in Saddam Hussein, and both were run by men named Bush, the two conflicts were drastically different in planning and implementation. The first was a necessary war of limited scope that won broad international support and was well-executed. The second was a war of choice. Its ambitions were broad, its strategy poorly conceived and implemented. Richard N. Haass,...

Will a new model or medium rise to do what newspapers have aimed to do for decades--pursue accuracy and objectivity, doggedly investigate stories, act as a check on power? Or will the demise of newspapers mean a radical shift in what we know and how we know it? Zócalo hosts a panel--including former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll, Slate founder Michael Kinsley, San Francisco Chronicle...

Tens of thousands of American soldiers have suffered injuries in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, and mental health problems. Zócalo hosts a panel of medical and military experts -- including Jennifer Sinclair, sister of an Army captain who served in Iraq, Army Major Gen. (Retired) Paul E. Mock, David Webb, chief of environmental and military medicine...

Los Angeles and Las Vegas are cities founded on fantasy—narratives of youthful glamour, the languor of palm and pool dotted landscapes, the ease of private automobile transport, the promise of self-invention and easy fame and power. They share city plans designed according to car culture. And they grow toward each other as they expand into the Mojave Desert. But reality has hit both cities: water...

From his first concert piece, written when he was 17, to his expansive, 19-movement, 4,000-measure opus “Epitaph,” Charles Mingus built a remarkable legacy as a jazz bassist, band leader, and composer. Thirty years after his death, Zócalo hosts a panel -- featuring music and culture journalist Oscar Garza, music producer Hal Willner, writer Emory Holmes II, Mingus contemporary and friend William "...

The troubles of Africa today are severe and wide-ranging. The continent is more dynamic and its problems more intricate than that, blocked by bottlenecks at the international, national and individual levels. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai—founder of the Green Belt Movement, author of The Challenge for Africa and longtime environmental and democracy advocate—visits Zócalo to discuss her...

Despite proclamations of a flat world, the utility of soft power, or the start of the post-American era, power still matters. It’s still about carrots and sticks, and the U.S. still has it. Washington has wisely used its power at critical moments over the last 50 years to preserve American and global security, and the U.S. today remains an indispensable leader because it alone can galvanize coalit...

Discovering John Fante is like tasting garlic for the first time. He is a quintessential Los Angeles writer. H.L. Mencken, John Steinbeck, Charles Bukowski, Robert Towne and Francis Ford Coppola number among the many fans who swear by Fante, who might have turned 100 this year. A panel of fans and scholars -- including Fante biographer Stephen Cooper, KCRW’s Frances Anderton, Esotouric co-founder...

craigslist.org may be the only site where you can get anything you need for life cheap, or even for free. The free community classifieds service, launched as an email listserv for San Franciscans in 1995, helps over 50 million monthly users find homes, jobs, cars, stuff, spouses, friends and flings. The site's simple design and old age (in Internet company years) hasn't kept it from being at the p...

craigslist.org may be the only site where you can get anything you need for life cheap, or even for free. The free community classifieds service, launched as an email listserv for San Franciscans in 1995, helps over 50 million monthly users find homes, jobs, cars, stuff, spouses, friends and flings. Founder Craig Newmark visited Zócalo to talk about the web and social change, net government transp...

We live in an age of obsession. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern. But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category — a pathology. Its current form, known as OCD, has been cited by the World Health Organization as the fourth most common mental disorder in the world. How did OCD reach epidemic level when a mere 45 years ago it was...

Students of means have always had an advantage getting into college — they attend the best high schools and study under the best teachers — but have the scales become too imbalanced in favor of the wealthy? As the economic downturn crimps the student loan market and makes college even harder to afford, a panel of higher education experts -- including Los Angeles Community College District Board Pr...

From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to fearful mistrust of capital markets, powerful psychological forces seem to be endangering the global economy. Are so-called “animal spirits” — the term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom that led to the Great Depression and the psychological shift that pulled us out of it — behind today’s financial crisis? George Akerlof, a Nobel laurea...

If any single mood characterizes the emotional climate of the 21st century, it’s anger, particularly media rage—indignant cable news pundits, rancorous bloggers and the apoplectic comments they engender. Our society appears to be choking on the bile of its own discontent. Dick Meyer, author of “Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium,” and Time magazine writer Lev Grossman visit...

Following up on last year's panel on the Writers Guild of America strike, Zócalo’s panel of Hollywood and high-tech experts -- including AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, actress Kathryn Joosten, actor Ron Ostrow, UCLA’s David R. Ginsburg, Veoh Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Dmitry Shapiro and TroyGould entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel -- explores how Hollywood wi...

Despite tallies of Facebook friends or Evites in inboxes, loneliness happens. It can strike us while we’re dining at a table of one, taking a long solo journey, or even while we’re with family and friends. The lonely feel more depressed, more deeply addicted, and are more easily angered. Why does loneliness hit and why does it hurt? Humans have evolved, thanks to the long period of abject dependen...

It's all but certain that the state government will run out of money this year. Even if the legislature and governor somehow reach an agreement on budget cuts or tax increases, any solution likely will come too late to prevent a cash crunch. This is uncharted territory for California. What happens if the state goes broke? A panel of California’s top fiscal and economic experts — including State Co...