Name: Why Isn’t America Awesome at STEM Education? by Zócalo Public Square
Duration: 1 h 3 min 43 s
Description: The World Economic Forum currently ranks the U.S. 52nd in the world in the quality of its math and science education. ASU science education scholar Dale Baker and Change the Equation CEO Linda Rosen discuss the importance of funding in improving American STEM education.

Live from Sherwood Elementary in Salinas, CA: Agriculture worker and student José Anzaldo, agricultural consultant James Nakahara, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas executive director & co-founder Mily Treviño-Sauceda, and retired farmworker attorney Juan Uranga visit Zócalo in “America’s salad bowl” to discuss what it would take to make life in California sustainable for the people whose work helps sustain us all. This is the sixth event of the “What Is a Good Job Now?,” co-presented with the James Irvine Foundation. This discussion is moderated by Los Angeles Times staff writer Rebecca Plevin.

This program is part of Zócalo's series "What Is A Good Job Now?" supported by the James Irvine Foundation.

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#farmworkers #agriculture

What Is A Good Job Now? In Agriculture

Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: Zócalo convenes two back-to-back panels moderated by KQED correspondent and co-host of “The California Report” Saul Gonzalez to discuss when and how protest makes a difference. 

The first panel features scholars and thinkers who can offer larger context for the current moment: urban journalism professor Danielle K. Brown, constitutional law professor and former director of the ACLU LGBT Project Matt Coles, and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh.

The second panel features practitioners who have engaged in historic protests in Los Angeles and beyond: co-founder of the day laborer band Los Jornaleros del Norte Pablo Alvarado, Los Angeles Police Department former assistant chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, and immigrant rights and labor justice activist Victor Narro. 

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events. 

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#farmworkers #agriculture

When Does Protest Make A Difference?

This program is in Spanish. For a version with English audio interpretation, please visit: https://youtube.com/live/A9zQSsOYdhk

Zócalo Public Square y la Universidad de Guadalajara transmiten en vivo desde la feria de libro LéaLA en la LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes en el centro de Los Ángeles. Únete a una conversación moderada por Alfredo Corchado, editor ejecutivo del PUENTE News Collaborative, con Irasema Coronado, directora y profesora de la School of Transborder Studies de Arizona State University; Anita Herrera, artista, curadora, y consultora cultural; y Víctor Zúñiga, profesor de sociología en la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.

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¿México y Estados Unidos se están convirtiendo en un solo país?

Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: A panel of civically engaged Gen Zers and young millennials from across the political spectrum visit Zócalo to stand up and speak for themselves: progressive political digital media specialist Annie Wu Henry, youth civic engagement advocate Ava Mateo, and former Iowa State representative Joe Mitchell, moderated by Christian Paz, senior politics reporter at "Vox." 

This program was co-presented with LAist 89.3, Los Angeles Local News Initiative, Boyle Heights Beat, and CalMatters, with generous support from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

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Will The Real Young Voters Please Stand Up?

Live from the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, CA: 
Child Care Law Center executive director Maisha Cole, child care worker and administrator Juanita Gutierrez, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo, and Child Development Consortium of Los Angeles executive director Lisa Wilkin visit Zócalo to discuss what a good job looks like in the field right now, and their vision for a more sustainable and nurturing future. This discussion is moderated by Rebecca Gale, staff writer with the Better Life Lab at New America.

This is the last and seventh program of the “What Is a Good Job Now?” series, co-presented with the James Irvine Foundation. 

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What Is A Good Job Now? In Child Care

Actors and athletes alike dress up and stage plays to entertain large audiences. Why is queerness so readily exhibited and accepted in the theater and still so taboo on the field? Can history show us how song and dance can break through the rigid heterosexuality ubiquitous in American sports? What if we made sport a place to play with gender and sexuality, and give voice to our authentic selves—to who we are as a people, community, nation, team?

Theater-maker Taylor Mac and former NFL player, LGBTQ+ advocate, and singer Esera Tuaolo join Zócalo and ASU 365 Community Union for a conversation around song, sports, and making queer history. 

This program was co-presented by Zócalo Public Square and ASU 365 Community Union.

Is Sport the Final Frontier for Queer Acceptance?

Live from the Natural History Museum Commons Theater in Los Angeles, CA: 
Artist Tanya Aguiñiga, paleobotanist and curator Regan Dunn, climate mobility scholar Liliana Gamboa, and New Nomad Institute co-founder Badruun Gardi discuss what it would take to build a more interconnected, resilient, and nomadic world on the international, community, and individual levels. Moderated by New York Times international correspondent Simon Romero. 

This program is co-presented by Zócalo Public Square and Carnegie California, in partnership with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Flavors from Afar. 

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ to read our articles and learn about upcoming events. 

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How Can Our World Rethink Climate Mobility?

Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: 
As coalitions, partnerships, and allegiances shift and emerge, Zócalo and an alliance of partners convene two back-to-back panels to discuss how we might best ally to survive this moment in history. 

The first panel explores how alliances are rebuilding Los Angeles in the wake of January’s fires, and features Altadena business owner Nadeerah Faquir, Center for Cultural Innovation president and CEO Angie Kim, climate action strategist Nina Knierim, and California Community Foundation president and CEO Miguel Santana, moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano.

The second panel explores state, national, and global governance as a new U.S. administration takes power, featuring American diplomat Nina Hachigian, immigrant rights advocate Angelica Salas, and global democracy expert Laura Thornton, moderated by Zócalo columnist and Democracy Local founder Joe Mathews.

This program was co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, ASU Mechanics of Democracy Lab, UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, California Humanities, Los Angeles Local News Initiative, LA2050, KCRW, and Los Angeles Times.

What Alliances Do We Need In Perilous Times?

America’s high-poverty cities and counties have suffered for decades, enduring skyrocketing inequality, the opioid epidemic, rising housing costs, and widespread disinvestment. Governments have offered a variety of failed solutions, from luring wealthy outsiders to slashing public services. But four communities are turning inward instead: Stockton, California; rural Josephine County, Oregon; Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Detroit, Michigan. In these diverse places—all of which went broke in the wake of the Great Recession—locals are building networks and trust in one another and their institutions, to promote health, wealth, and opportunity. In Stockton, this meant designing organizations to help residents cope with trauma. In Josephine County, people convinced freedom-loving, government-averse voters to increase taxes. Lawrence is building a new model to secure living wages. Detroit is battling to stabilize low-income housing.

What did these strategies look and feel like on the ground? How can other struggling places borrow from their playbooks? And what can the rest of the country do to support towns as they try to help themselves? Stanford Law School’s Michelle Wilde Anderson, winner of the 2023 Zócalo Book Prize for The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America, visits Zócalo to talk with Alberto Retana, president and CEO of South L.A.’s Community Coalition, about how a place with the odds against it can draw on historic strengths and resilient residents to thrive.

Zócalo Public Square is proud to award the 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize to Paige Buffington for her poem "From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque."

The 2023 Zócalo Book and Poetry Prizes are generously sponsored by Tim Disney.

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2023 Zócalo Book Prize: How Does a Community Save Itself? With Michelle Wilde Anderson

This program is inspired by "Coatlicue & Las Meninas: The Stanford Edition" (2007/2025) by Mexican American artist Pedro Lasch, commissioned by IAJS and on view at Asheville Art Museum from April 16 to July 13, 2025. 

Asheville Art Museum associate curator Jessica Orzulak and artist Pedro Lasch discuss the work’s larger themes, including how mirrors encourage viewers to reflect on the movement of people, ideas, and objects across time and space. Then, a panel featuring Stanford IAJS founding faculty co-director Tomás Jiménez, philosopher and ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah, immersive journalism and extended reality (XR) pioneer Nonny de la Peña, and immigrant integration advocate Federico Rios will discuss the ways Americans, old and new, see ourselves in each other.

This is the first program in “What Can Become of Us?”, a collaboration between the Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies (IAJS) and Zócalo Public Square, envisioning new perspectives on migration, America’s diverse communities, and how people come together across differences. 

Timestamps: 
00:00 - Intros 
04:06 - Artist Talk: Pedro Lasch, Jessica Orzulak 
32:11 - Panel: Tomás Jiménez, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Nonny de la Peña, 

Visit https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ for more programs and essays in the series. 

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How Do We See Ourselves In Each Other?

The World Economic Forum currently ranks the U.S. 52nd in the world in the quality of its math and science education. ASU science education scholar Dale Baker and Change the Equation CEO Linda Rosen discuss the importance of funding in improving American STEM education.

Why Isn’t America Awesome at STEM Education?

Zócalo Public Square’s podcast connects people to ideas and to each other through an innovative blend of ideas journalism and live events. Listen to conversations on topics ranging from politics and science to art and pop culture.

Why Isn’t America Awesome at STEM Education?

Zócalo Public Square

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