Zócalo Public Square (Audio)

Or are they not powerful enough? Politicians and reformers often complain about the power of teachers' unions to dominate elections -- from local school boards to the governor's race -- and frustrate their plans to improve education. Yet teachers still don’t have the power to receive pay commensurate with their education, the institutional support and instructional resources they need, or even -- at least in Los Angeles -- accurate paychecks. Now a rising generation of teachers' union leaders in the state say the labor organizations must add to their power and reach by tackling broader social and governmental problems that hurt schools. Zócalo assembles a distinguished panel to examine the promise and limits of the power of the teachers’ unions: Joshua Pechthalt, a vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, is part of a group of one-time union dissidents who have risen to power with an eye towards more aggressive organizing around issues that extend far beyond union contracts; Mikki Cichocki, a board member of the California Teachers Association, the largest teachers' union in the country, will offer thoughts on the statewide picture; David Tokofsky, a former school board member in LAUSD, offers his perspective as someone who has fought with and against big teachers' unions; and Steve Barr, founder and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, discusses the role of unions in the charter school movement. They discuss how unions can support—and block—education reform.

In Los Angeles, you can eat Chicago-style deep dish pizza and New York-style steaks, Buffalo chicken wings and Philly cheesesteaks, Southern barbeque and Seattle salmon. But try to find a restaurant boasting Los Angeles cuisine anywhere in the world. Nobody thinks of McDonald's, Johnny Rockets or the Caesar salad as coming from Southern California. They think of them as coming from America. L.A. Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold asked, what is Los Angeles food? Providence Restaurant’s Michael Cimarusti, Palate Food & Wine’s Octavio Becerra, and Angeli Caffe’s Evan Kleiman consider how the ports, the produce, the people and the tacos shape L.A. food.

Worldwide, there are more slaves today than ever before, and as the first person in recorded history to witness negotiations for the sales of human beings on four continents, journalist E. Benjamin Skinner has gone inside the modern slave trade like no one else. In his book, A Crime So Monstrous, Skinner weaves a vivid narrative of slaves, traffickers, survivors and liberators. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, and The Netherlands, he has produced a vivid testament and moving reportage on one of the great evils of our time. His journey led right back to the United States, where some 50,000 are slaves—including countless numbers held in hidden bondage right here in Los Angeles. At the heart of the story are the slaves themselves. In his Zócalo lecture, Skinner bears witness for them, and for the millions who are held in the shadows. (This event was sponsored, in part, by The California Wellness Foundation.)

The garment industry provides more than 50,000 jobs in Los Angeles County, including many that are tied to a commercial underground where safety rules don't apply, there's no minimum wage, and a labor pool of illegal immigrants keeps quiet about violations out of fear of deportation. Legitimate garment makers, meanwhile, face a disadvantage in battling underground competitors who skip workers compensation payments and other safety standards, and often shift locations suddenly in order to stay a step ahead of the state’s handful of inspectors. How big and dangerous is this floating world of the garment underground? Miguel Morales of the Garment Worker Center, a Downtown-base advocacy group, Garment Contractors Association Executive Director Joe Rodriguez and T.A. Frank, New America Foundation fellow and editor at The Washington Monthly, visit Zócalo to sort it out. (This event was sponsored, in part, by The California Wellness Foundation.)

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989—or 11/9—many Americans turned their attention away from foreign policy, and only re-awakened to world affairs on 9/11, even though trends that led to that day—failed states, religious extremism, terrorism—were brewing during the happy-go-lucky, self-congratulatory 1990s. Derek Chollet, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and James Goldgeier, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, brilliantly mapping the forces that shaped the post-Cold War era, discuss how the legacy of the 1990s is vital to understanding the challenges faced by the Obama administration, and why foreign policy is more difficult when it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

Novelist and literature professor Philippe Claudel makes his directorial debut with the powerful yet subtle “I’ve Loved You So Long,” about secrets and the possibility of being reborn. In perhaps her most nuanced and soulful film performance to date Kristin Scott Thomas sets the tone for the story that focuses on two long estranged sisters who are trying to reestablish a relationship. Smart, intense, psychologically textured, and clearly written with a novelist’s eye, “I’ve Loved You So Long” (to be released by Sony Pictures Classics on October 24) is a story about the power of forgiveness and the universal need to reach out beyond ourselves.

Gustavo Arellano, the unofficial mascot of Orange County, talks to an L.A. crowd about their southern neighbor (he was surprised anyone showed up). From its settling by the Spaniards to today's popular television shows, residents of Orange County, California have always imagined their homeland as Eden on the Coast, a respite from urbanization, where one only needed to work, vote Republican, and hate Mexicans to partake in the American Dream. But behind this bucolic veneer is a more complex picture. OC Weekly staff writer Gustavo Arellano unveils the truth behind the OC (don't call it that) by discussing his new book, Orange County: A Personal History, a history of the biggest little county in America as seen through four generations of his Mexican family.

Shamim Sarif brings her award-winning debut novel, "The World Unseen," to the screen for a sweeping tale of forbidden love in unforgiving times, inspired by her grandmother's stories of 1950s South Africa facing the birth pangs of apartheid. Distributed byRegent Releasing on November 7th, "The World Unseen" offers what the British Film Institute has called "a rare combination of intricate character study and engaging narrative" along with a compelling statement about the individual's quest for fulfillment against a backdrop of social coercion, violence, and pain. She discusses the film with lead actress Sheetal Sheth and KPCC’s Shirley Jahad. he film with lead actress Sheetal Sheth and KPCC’s Shirley Jahad.

Washington may resuscitate the credit market, but will U.S. politics ever be the same? Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and New York Times columnist, explores the impact of what he has called, "the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression" on politics, parties, and people. Will the drive for tighter regulation dissuade the Reagan faithful?

Why are poor countries poor? It's certainly not for lack of effort or interest. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, most of Africa remains as desperate today as it was half a century ago. That's because much of that aid is lost to the grabbing hands of corrupt governments and destroyed through clashing warlords and civil strife. Edward Miguel, U.C. Berkeley economist and co-author of Economic Gangster: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations, explains how the twin evils of violence and corruption keep nations in poverty. He argues that before we can help poor nations, we must first understand the violent, lawless thugs who have wrought havoc throughout the developing world. And to understand these gangsters, he says, we must first get inside their heads.

Reihan Salam is a strange Republican. He doesn’t drive and he loves Los Angeles. But he has a cure for what ails the GOP: breaking out of its demographic box and applying progressive ideas to housing and healthcare. The associate editor of The Atlantic and co-author of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream explains himself.

Thanks to medical advances, we now live longer, but living longer doesn’t necessarily make death any easier when it comes. Forget the good life, what in this world makes a good death? How does culture affect our choices? Palliative care offers some relief to suffering, yet it is our uncertainty about the end of life that keeps our dread alive. Experts visit Zócalo to share first-hand accounts and clinical insight: Dr. Susan Stone, the Director of Palliative Care at the Los Angeles County Medical Center; Dr. Betty Ferrell of the City of Hope National Medical Center; and moderator Dr. Michael Wilkes, Vice Dean for Medical Education at UC Davis, join us for an evening of big questions that demand courage, compassion, and a dash of wit. (This event is made possible by a generous grant from the California HealthCare Foundation.)

Since the attacks of September 11th, the United States has tried to build new border defenses to keep out terrorists without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad, which have always contributed to our country’s dynamism. But have these new measures cut America off from the world and discouraged the globe’s best and the brightest from coming here? Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Edward Alden visited Zócalo to assess the real effects heightened national security measures have had on both Americans and the world at large. Author of The Closing of the American Border, a book James Fallows has called “outstanding and important,” Alden chronicled the tragic stories of many innocent immigrants who have been upended by post-9/11 restrictions, and the offered a more sensible middle road for preserving American security and American ideals.

Europe has received a wave of immigration from the global south in recent decades, similar in scope to the US—but very different in its results. Many immigrant and second-generation communities, particularly those hailing from the Muslim world, have astronomical unemployment rates and a thin connection to European identity. Some have produced riots and terrorism. If Europe has an Islam problem, whose fault is it? Is Islamic belief and culture incompatible with Western institutions? Or is there such a thing as “Islamophobia,” poisoning immigrants’ efforts to integrate on European terms? Christopher Caldwell, who writes for the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and The Weekly Standard, visits Zócalo to talk about themes from his upcoming book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

We can be forgiven for thinking of Dashiell Hammett as a San Francisco writer. The Maltese Falcon takes place in Northern California, where Hammett somehow transformed himself from a tubercular detective for the Pinkerton Agency into a novelist for the ages. But Hammett’s roots in Los Angeles run deep. Here, in the 30s, he worked on several pictures while under contract to the studios. Here he began his lifelong affair with Lillian Hellman. And here he returned frequently over the years to visit his beloved daughters. Zócalo and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs brought together a panel of writers, family members, and scholars to culminate L.A.’s month-long celebration of this great California novelist. Among the mysteries discussed, if not solved: Why did Hammett fall creatively silent for the last three decades of his life? Why is there no movie version of ‘The Red Harvest’? How did he influence the L.A. Noir scene? And the ultimate, unanswerable question: Hammett or Chandler?