Event Rundown
Jim Newton, "Earl Warren and the Californiaization of America"
| Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The work of Earl Warren and the Warren Court is widely known and fiercely debated for its impact on far-flung fields such as racial equality, privacy, police procedure and voting rights. Less appreciated is that body of work as an expression of Warren’s upbringing – as the leading edge of a period of history in which California shifted from recipient of American problems to crafter of the nation’s future. When he went to the court in 1953, Warren was 62 years old and the most dominant political figure of his generation in California politics. He was not an ideologue but rather a man of experience, and thus the conscience that guided the nation’s new chief justice at that critical moment was one molded from his upbringing in California. Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times City-County Bureau Chief and author of Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, argues that over the 16 years that Warren held his post in Washington, he exported to the nation the values of California Progressivism and the experiences of a Bakersfield boyhood. His remove from the North-South battles over racial segregation helped Warren to break a potentially catastrophic division in Brown v. Board of Education. His insistence on police professionalism was matched by his fury over crime and vice, both products of his early California politics, and that unusual hybrid gave rise to the court’s new paradigm in those fields. Warren is remembered – fondly by some, with irritation by others – as perhaps the most consequential chief justice in American history. He may also be regarded as the man who launched the Californiaization of America.
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The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Mexican culture has always been central to Los Angeles. But only in the last dozen years or so has L.A. become a vital center of Mexican cuisine, bristling with restaurants presenting the regional dishes of practically every state in Mexico, as well as with creative restaurants showcasing the best of Mexican cuisine.
Z??calo has gathered together some of the best and most innovative chefs in Los Angeles, including Gilberto Cetina of the splendid Yucatecan restaurant Chichen Itza, ...
Dirty Business: Should the Porn Industry Be Saved?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Los Angeles' dirty little economic secret is its $12-billion-a-year pornography industry, located primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Competition from amateur porn on the Internet, piracy and other pressures are cutting into profits. The question is: Should we care? How much should the industry's health risks weigh against its economic value? And how important is the issue of morality when we're talking about jobs, sales receipts, and tax dollars? Zócalo brings together a panel of ...
Can We Solve L.A.'s Gang Problem? A Conversation with Gang Czar Jeff Carr
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The City of Los Angeles spends over $150 million annually on youth development and anti-gang initiatives, but last year gang crime increased 15.7 percent over the previous year. Gang membership also increased to nearly 40,000 and according to the Los Angeles Police Department over 56 ...
Girls Gone Mild: Have Roles for Women in Hollywood Gone Soft?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Does Hollywood misunderstand women or is it the other way around? Responding to the recent onslaught of studio films featuring unemployed, socially maladjusted men and the bland (and usually blonde) bombshells who love them, Los Angeles Times film critic ...
Francisco Goldman, "The Art of Political Murder in Central America"
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Critically acclaimed novelist Francisco Goldman visits Zócalo to discuss the themes of his first nonfiction book, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? While telling a story as rich in human drama, enigma, and surprise as any novel, Goldman explores the murder of Guatemala’s leading human rights activist, Bishop Juan Gerardi. Known in Guatemala as “The Crime of the Century,” the Bishop Gerardi murder case, with its unexpectedly outlandish ...
