Where Local People Build Local Change

2023 Book Prize Winner Michelle Wilde Anderson Says Strong Communities Need New Narratives, New Networks—And Investments in the People Who Already Live There

Four of the poorest, most maligned places in America have become beacons of hope—and burgeoning centers of trust, in people and local government—since going broke in the Great Recession. How did they pull themselves up from an especially low point, and what can the rest of the country learn from them?

This was the subject of 2023 Zócalo Book Prize winner Michelle Wilde Anderson’s The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America, which we honored last night as the year’s best nonfiction book exploring community and social connection at the …

by Sarah Rothbard | June 16, 2023

The Fight to Save Stockton

In the Once-Bankrupt City, a Stanford Scholar Finds That People Are Poor Because Their Governments Are Poor

by Joe Mathews | May 30, 2023

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 …

Stop Using Homelessness to Hate on California

A Tradition as Old as the State Itself Has Caused Lasting Damage

by Joe Mathews | June 28, 2022

In California, homelessness is a long-running crisis. And it is a human tragedy for an estimated 160,000 unhoused people.

But homelessness is also incredibly useful for anyone who wants to complain …

To End the Stigma Around America’s Poverty Crisis, Teach It in the Classroom

Instruction on the Nature, Extent, and Causes of Poverty Will Challenge Entrenched Narratives Around It—And Open the Door for Policy Change

by Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox | April 28, 2021

Just as our ignorance of science puts us at risk from disease or environmental disaster, our ignorance of poverty creates real dangers for people and societies. Which is why, just …

The Modesto Girls are a Family Miracle

How Five Sisters (and Their Brothers) Survived Childhood and Stuck Together in Stanislaus County

by Joe Mathews | September 4, 2018

California changes too fast. The new so quickly replaces the old. People come and go with a blur. I often feel like you can’t count on anything staying here anymore.

But …

The 1992 Horror Film That Made a Monster Out of a Chicago Housing Project

In Candyman, the Notorious Cabrini-Green Complex Is Haunted by Urban Myths and Racial Paranoia

by Ben Austen | August 17, 2018

In the 1992 horror film Candyman, Helen, a white graduate student researching urban legends, is looking into the myth of a hook-handed apparition who is said to appear when his …

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