Illustration by Zócalo/Nick Yang. 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 and social cohesion. Zócalo is grateful to screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney for his continuing sponsorship of our literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Poetry Prize. Our mission is to connect people to ideas and to each other, which is why we have honored authors who explore these themes for over a dozen years now.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/08/zocalo-book-prize-2023/inquiries/prizes/

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Democracy vouchers—or 'democracy dollars,' as they're called in Oakland—aren't a panacea—but the idea, first pioneered in Seattle, can help make campaigns fairer, writes Connecting California columnist Joe Mathews. Courtesy of AP Newsroom. Would our democracy work better if all of us were campaign donors? That's the proposition posed by democracy vouchers, an idea with Seattle origins that has reached the Golden State. This fall, voters in the city of Oakland will decide whether to distribute four vouchers, worth $25 each, to city residents ahead of future elections.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/27/oakland-democracy-dollars-fairer-elections/ideas/connecting-california/

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A production of Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich. 'In the face of an avalanche of lies, how should the artist respond?' USC professor Oliver Mayer asks, looking to German playwright Bertolt Brecht to understand how difficult it is to write hard truths, and how the stage may offer a way forward. Courtesy of Lake Crimson/Flickr. What can we do? As we stare at a broken world, malignant and sense-deadening, what response—as thinking, feeling people—are we left to have? What action can we take? No matter who we are, it seems that we are stuck, our ability to make positive change stalemated, our governing system overheated thanks to the mounds of sand thrown into its gears over decades by prevaricators and other malefactors.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/29/bertolt-brecht-five-difficulties/ideas/essay/

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During a performance of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, actor David Strathairn, playing the titular character, watches an interview from the 1985 documentary Shoah in which the real-life Karski recounts his efforts as Polish Resistance fighter during World War II. "The play," writes Justine Jablonska, "is a powerful reminder of Karski's principles—truth and valor in the face of forces more powerful than you." Photo by Rich Hein. A man leaps into the air. The theater audience gasps, then relaxes as he safely lands.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/19/polish-resistance-fighter-jan-karski/ideas/essay/

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Trevor Noah's joke about President Biden's mangled withdrawal from Afghanistan at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Association dinner is one of the many pointed jabs that suggest how political comedy is finally evolving beyond "crypto-racist cringe," writes Ali M. Latifi. Courtesy of AP Images. This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/ASU Gammage event 'What Can We Laugh About?' this Thursday, September 15, at 7PM PDT. Register to attend in-person or online here. A joke can be the best way to present real-life issues.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/14/afghanistan-war-american-comedy/ideas/essay/

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Photo by Jamie Biver. Bassem Youssef is a political satirist who was the host of Al-Bernameg, an Egyptian satire TV show that aired in the wake up the Arab Spring. Included on TIME magazine's most influential list in 2013, he's also the subject of the documentary film Tickling Giants. Before sitting down for the Zócalo/ASU Gammage event 'What Can We Laugh About?,' Youssef sat down in our green room to talk about his career before comedy, what inspires him, and fighting Jon Stewart. What is your favorite Egyptian dish? Stuffed grape leaves—especially if you put yogurt on it.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/23/political-satirist-bassem-youssef/personalities/in-the-green-room/

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Iranian protestors have launched a movement to end discriminatory laws against women and imagine a new path forward, argues professor Catherine Z. Sameh. This Risograph print of a Rosie the Riveter-like Iranian woman reflects this transnational call for equality. Courtesy of Ghazal Foroutan. This essay publishes alongside Zócalo/Goldhirsh Foundation's event 'How Can Women and Girls Win in Iran?' tomorrow, Tuesday, December 6 at 7PM PST. Register to attend in person or online. The feminist uprising in Iran—sparked by the beating, arrest, and death in police custody of Mahsa (also known by Jîna) Amini, a young Kurdish Iranian woman accused of 'improper hijab'—is generating previously unimagined ideas, images, and possibilities.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/12/05/iran-new-revolutionary-figure-feminist/ideas/essay/

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In September 1921, as part of the largest armed labor uprising in American history, members of the Red Neck Army surrendered their arms to the U.S. Army. While the battle stayed alive in miners' families, the stories being 'passed down around kitchen tables and on front porches,' it has largely been forgotten in collective memory, writes Kenzie New Walker. Courtesy of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, collection of Kenneth King. 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 of coal camp life.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/01/coal-miners-labor-uprising-blair-mountain/ideas/essay/

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In this collage, Anh Diep blends photos of their research, their own tattoo, and the hands of a tattoo artist and a doctor as an homage to 'The Creation of Adam.' The background is a microscope image of macrophages that they photographed for their PhD research. Illustration by Anh Diep. Tattoos and medicine may seem an unlikely pairing, but medical tattoos are nothing new. Religious tattoos of ancient Egyptians honored the gods and, possibly, directed divine healing to ailing body parts. Circa 150 CE, Galen, a Greek physician working in the Roman Empire, tattooed pigment onto patients' corneas to reduce glare and improve their eyesight.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/22/tattoo-vaccine-medicine-art/ideas/essay/

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Photo by Jamie Biver. Kristina Wong is a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. She's a performance artist, comedian, writer, and elected representative who has been presented internationally across North America, the U.K., Hong Kong, and Africa. Before taking part in 'What Can We Laugh About?,' she chatted in our green room about Koreatown's permanent yard sales, why she uses Shark Tank in theater workshops, and the joys of being a food bank influencer. Your mutual-aid volunteer coalition, the 'Auntie Sewing Squad,' has made more than hundreds of thousands of masks since the start of the pandemic—what is the most memorable material you've used? We have a lot of fabric stories from [Sweatshop Overlord, which comes to San Diego this week].

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/23/comedian-and-pulitzer-prize-finalist-kristina-wong/personalities/in-the-green-room/

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Your hometown autocrat might become the next Putin, Duterte, or Erdogan. But you and your participation in local government can ensure they never rise in power, writes Democracy Local columnist Joe Mathews. Courtesy of AP Images. Want to join the global fight against authoritarianism? Then participate in your community's local government. Because authoritarians do not teleport fully formed from Jupiter into the leadership of nations. They have to learn how to rule anti-democratically here on earth, usually at the local level.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/20/how-can-you-spot-and-stop-authoritarians-vladimir-putin/ideas/democracy-local/

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If the viral Change.org petition that made the rounds this summer to 'MAKE INSTAGRAM INSTAGRAM AGAIN' is any indicator, Instagram's lurching attempts to try to become more like TikTok haven't been going well. Synonymous with the highly edited lifestyle post, Instagram has long functioned like a high school in a John Hughes movie: accruing 'likes' is a popularity contest for visibility—except that if you're voted 'prom queen' on the platform it can translate to some serious brand and sponsorship deals.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/26/vaudeville-tiktok-variety-theater/ideas/culture-class/

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Thirty years ago, General Motors employees crowded to sign the last car they'd ever assemble at the plant. The so-called "Last Camaro" became a "memento of what that plant had meant to them and their community," write Andrew Warren and Tim Moore. Courtesy of Leonard Stevenson. 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 in its 44 years of operation manufactured 6.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/29/van-nuys-valley-general-motors-last-camaro/ideas/essay/

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Comedians—from Shakespeare's fools to Dave Chappelle—have assumed the mantle of public intellectuals, argues editor-at-large Solomon Moore. They both disrupt and uphold the status quo, but in the end, they're also just joking. Illustration by Be Boggs. This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/ASU Gammage event 'What Can We Laugh About?' tonight, Thursday, September 15, at 7PM PDT. Register to attend in-person or online here. One of Shakespeare's conceits is the wisdom of clowns. From Feste in Twelfth Night to the Fool in King Lear, they speak truth to power, but tell it slant and do so at their peril.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/15/comedians-america-public-intellectuals/ideas/essay/

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Zócalo contributing editor José Gonzalez Vargas reflects on the growing chasm in the Venezuelan diaspora. Courtesy of AP Newsroom . American media covers only two types of the 7 million-plus immigrants who have left Venezuela in the past decade. The first consists of the refugees and asylum seekers who walked across the border after perilous journeys through South and Central America, pressing their luck in a country with ever-increasing immigration restrictions. Last fall, Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott turned the plight of nearly 50 of these Venezuelan immigrants into a cruel political theater when they loaded them in buses and planes to move them outside of their states.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2023/05/01/two-venezuela-diasporas/ideas/essay/

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Stockton, California (above) is a prime example of disinvestment in local government and people—but recovery is possible. Columnist Joe Mathews reads Zócalo Book Prize winner Michelle Wilde Anderson's The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America . Courtesy of AP Newsroom . If California wants to curb poverty, its local governments must become richer. That may be the most important lesson of the recent history of Stockton, as recounted by Stanford Law School professor Michelle Wilde Anderson, a scholar of poverty and local government, in her Zócalo Book Prize-winning book , The Fight to Save the Town .

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2023/05/30/the-fight-to-save-stockton/ideas/connecting-california/

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Boxing has big pictures ( Raging Bull , Creed ), big personalities (Muhammad Ali, the original G.O.A.T.), and big spectacles (pay-per-view fights adorned with flashing lights, raucous crowds, and stylized ring entrances ). You might be forgiven for thinking that being a professional fighter translates into making big money. But the challenges contemporary boxers face are not only physical and mental, but overwhelmingly financial. This begs the question: What does boxing owe its champions? This was the title of last night's Zócalo program , presented in partnership with UCLA College, Division of Social Sciences and ASU Global Sport Institute.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2023/05/24/boxing-isnt-only-a-labor-of-love-its-work/events/the-takeaway/

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From left to right: Gustavo Arellano, Kristina Wong, and Bassem Youssef. Photo by Jaime Biver. Fittingly, the Zócalo/ASU Gammage event 'What Can We Laugh About?' last night opened with a joke from Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, who was moderating: 'Knock knock.' The prompt audience reply came in unison: 'Who's there?' Arellano: 'Zócal-OK, we can now laugh.' There was playful booing from the in-person audience—a packed house at the ASU California Center in downtown Los Angeles—but, though the joke bombed, it set off a wide-ranging, alternately funny and serious conversation around our comedic zeitgeist.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/16/humor-and-comedy-make-us-human/events/the-takeaway/

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L.A.'s new Sixth Street Viaduct (pictured above) and San Francisco's new Presidio Tunnel Tops are "both expensive new public spaces that double as bridges and as spectacles," writes columnist Joe Mathews, but their debuts couldn't have been more different. Courtesy of AP Images. 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 tore the wrapping paper off a beautiful civic gift.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/30/los-angeles-sixth-street-viaduct-san-franscisco-presidio/ideas/connecting-california/

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Courtesy of Rodney Gomez. Rodney Gomez is the author of four books, most recently Arsenal With Praise Song, recipient of the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. He has been awarded fellowships from the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, as well as the de Groot Foundation. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, Gomez was the 2020-2021 poet laureate of McAllen, Texas. Gomez, who will be curating September's poetry selections, chatted with us in the green room where he shared the surprising joy of fatherhood, the best place for inspiration, and how the pandemic reshaped his view on reading and writing poetry.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/02/september-poetry-curator-rodney-gomez/personalities/in-the-green-room/

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Britain's late Queen Elizabeth II and her son King Charles III together in June 2022. Political scientist Matt Qvortrup argues that the newly appointed king would do well to adopt his mother's talent for "maintaining the sense she was above the fray," making her a symbol of unity in divisive times. Courtesy of AP/Jane Barlow. If the British monarchy is to survive, it needs someone who is as bland as Queen Elizabeth II. You would look in vain for any controversial statements made by the queen during her lifetime.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/12/queen-elizabeth-virtues-of-vanilla/ideas/essay/

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Anh Chang Ho and others work in an orange orchard in citrus-rich Riverside, California, site of the first Koreatown in the United States. USC professor Edward T. Chang and researcher Carol K. Park spotlight the forgotten history of Pachappa Camp where the bustling community lived in the early 1900s, and which served as a gathering place for Korean Americans fighting for nationhood abroad. Courtesy of Korean American Digital Archive, USC Korean Heritage Library. How did we forget about the first Koreatown, USA? In the early 20th century, Korean Americans flocked to Pachappa Camp in citrus-rich Riverside, California, to gather, live and work together, and keep the Korean identity alive.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/10/03/korean-americans-riverside-california/ideas/essay/

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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 will begin accepting submissions for our 2023 competition on November 14, 2022. The deadline for entries will close on January 23, 2023 at 11:59 PM PST. There is no fee required to enter the contest. We are on the lookout for that rare combination of creativity and clarity, excellence and evocation. The prize interprets 'place' in many ways: A location may possess historical, cultural, political, or personal importance, and may be literal, imaginary, or metaphorical.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/08/zocalo-poetry-prize-2023/inquiries/prizes/

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Our search for alien life is fueled by wonder, writes astrobiologist Charles Cockell. Courtesy of NASA. This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/Experience ASU event 'How Should We Prepare for Aliens to Arrive on Earth?' tomorrow, Tuesday, September 27, at 7PM PDT. Register to attend in-person or online here. The most memorable taxi ride of my life occurred when I stepped into a cab driven by a man named John, back in 2016. We fell into a conversation about our lines of work. He told me how much he enjoyed his job.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/26/astrobiologist-alien-life/ideas/essay/

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Historian Adam M. Sowards traces the impact of two 1872 environmental laws on the national landscape and questions: "How can we square Ulysses S. Grant's contradictory imperatives—to protect the natural world at all costs versus to exploit it without concern?" Courtesy of GPA Photo Archive/Flickr (CC BY 2.0). If you know where to go in Death Valley National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias Park and Preserve, Glacier Peak Wilderness, or Bears Ears National Monument, you might come across the remnants of a tramway or a pile of mine tailings or a rusted tank.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/10/27/national-parks-mining-laws-conservation/ideas/essay/

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Photo by Stephanie Blakeman. Trevor Albertson is the president and superintendent of Lassen Community College in Susanville, California. He is an honorably discharged Air Force veteran, and has taught at several institutions, including the U.S. Air Force Academy and the University of California. Before joining the panel for the Zócalo/California Wellness Foundation event 'What Would the End of Mass Incarceration Mean for Prison Towns?,' he sat down in our green room to share with us his hidden talent, what attracted him to small-town California life, and the advice he'd give to his younger self.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/08/26/lassen-community-college-president-trevor-albertson/personalities/in-the-green-room/

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Historian Bennett Parten traces an oft-forgotten story from U.S. General William T. Sherman's march through Georgia in 1864: the incident at Ebenezer Creek where the American case for reparations began. Illustration by Be Boggs. Americans get Sherman's March all wrong. Ask anyone who's seen Gone with the Wind, and they'll tell you that U.S. General William T. Sherman's roughly 250-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah marked the swan song of the Confederacy. They'll recall the burning of Atlanta, a panoramic scene in the film that made cinematic history, and they'll regard Sherman as most Georgians still do, as the man who laid waste to the state by slashing and burning his way to the coast.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/10/31/shermans-march-reparations/ideas/essay/

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When it came to the title question of the Zócalo/California Wellness event, 'Can Rural Education Survive the 21st Century?,' the panelists were of one mind. Speaking to the live audience in downtown Bakersfield, their answer was a resounding 'yes.' But the discussion focused on a more specific query: How can rural education thrive? In answering that, three veteran educators from different rural parts of California—Connie Stewart of Cal Poly Humboldt, Julie Boesch of the nonprofit California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, and Tim Taylor of the Small School Districts' Association—offered several suggestions as they shared the stage at the Bakersfield Music Theatre.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/10/07/california-rural-education/events/the-takeaway/

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The fate of the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds is up in the air, along with the future of beloved events and traditions, such as the World's Ugliest Dog Contest. To avoid a community-wide fight over the property's future, city leadership turned to direct democracy for help. Columnist Joe Mathews reports. Courtesy of AP Images. I went to Petaluma to learn what might become of the world's ugliest dogs. The Sonoma County city also showed me the future of California democracy. That future arrived with an unsexy name– the Petaluma Fairgrounds Advisory Panel, a version of a type of democratic body that is gaining popularity from Japan to Ireland.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/09/13/petaluma-fairgrounds-democracy/ideas/connecting-california/

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