Will Young Americans Finally Rock the Vote?
After Decades of Research, We Know How to Get New People to the Polls. We Just Don’t Always Do It
Twenty years ago, I published Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy …
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Reading Animal Farm in Zimbabwe
From Minority White Rule to Dictatorship and Beyond, Orwell’s 1945 Novel—Now in a New Translation—Has Proved Prescient
I began to notice Animal Farm references start to proliferate in Zimbabwe in 2008 …
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The Losing A’s Found a Winning City to Host Them
West Sacramento Is on a Hot Streak. Other California Cities Should Watch
The Oakland A’s are baseball’s biggest losers. But their new temporary home—West Sacramento—is one …
What Makes an Inclusive Public Square?
A Space With the Right Infrastructure Can Support, Welcome, and Empower Everyone
The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective hopes. Ideally, the public square provides room to solve the problems we face. It is also where new, thorny issues often arise.
This “Up for Discussion” is part of Zócalo’s editorial and events series spotlighting the ideas, places, and questions that have shaped the public square Zócalo has created over the past 20 years.
For this fourth installment, our contributors think about how we might foster a public square that welcomes everyone—from its physical characteristics to its ethos …
How Do We Find Connection in the Public Square?
On Forming Bonds Over Bars, Benches, Books, and Breakfast
The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective hopes. Ideally, the public square provides room to solve the problems we face. It is also where new, thorny issues often arise.
This “Up for Discussion” is part of Zócalo’s editorial and events series spotlighting the ideas, places, and questions that have shaped the public square Zócalo has created over the past 20 years.
Here, our contributors consider the rich building blocks of the public square: personal connections. In our segmented, often lonely world, they are shaking off the blues on the dance floor …
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I’m Proud to Be Un-American
A New Poll Shows the Rest of the Country Hates the Golden State—And That’s a Good Thing
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California’s High-Speed Rail Dreams Could Go “Whoosh”
The Golden State Seems Primed to Repeat the Mistakes and Miscalculations of Indonesia’s New Bullet Train
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California Is Full of Sh–t
And So Is Zócalo’s Regular Columnist. Inspired by the Oscar-Nominated American Fiction, I’m Taking Over This Column to Deliver Hard Truths
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What the Wonkapocalypse Can Teach Us
An Immersive Experience Gone Wrong Shows Us the Perennial Emptiness of Carefully Curated Escapes from Reality
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Cowboy Boots Were Made for Everyone
For Over a Century and Half, the Footwear Has Carried the Story of a Nation
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Why We Hunger for the Holiday Special
Every December, an Age-Old Format Warms the Winter Night
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The Foundation for a Shared Tomorrow Is Built on Hard Truths
Panelists for ‘How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?’ Help Us Imagine How to Pave a Hospitable Path Forward
Confronting America’s history is like fixing or maintaining an old home: acknowledging the parts that are in disrepair, and those that are rotten to the core. This is the metaphor historian William Sturkey opened the fourth and final program in the Zócalo/Mellon Foundation series “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?,” …
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Artist Maurice Harris
‘I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing’
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Poet aja monet
The Energy You Bring to a Word Can Heal or Harm
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Agent and Former NFL Player Jacques McClendon
There’s Nothing Like ‘Rocky Top’
