Southern California: Southwestern Shifts

In "New Communities & New Realities" USC Annenberg graduate students show how demographic shifts in the Southwest and Mountain West are creating new social dynamics and relations among communities young and old.

  • Farming in the Time of Economic Cholera
    California’s farm lands and its workers grapple with a shift from a labor shortage to a labor glut in a time of decreased consumer demand.
  • Unlocking the Revolving Door: California Prisons
    California’s tough-on-crime laws have resulted in overcrowded prisons and ballooning budgets. A few innovative programs for non-violent women offenders, however, could be the first step to fixing the state’s prison crisis.
  • Rise and Fall of Service Unions in California: A Timeline
    The Service Employees International Union breathed new life into a rapidly decaying labor movement through bringing hundreds of thousands of workers into the movement. Follow the rise and the ‘on hold’ nature of the labor movement in California.
  • California's Tribal Cleansing
    A growing number of California tribes are setting a grim precedent by purging their own members. At stake is who controls both the nation’s richest Indian gaming industry and a powerful new state lobby. Those who have been kicked out are fighting back, but is anyone listening?
  • Pentecostals Ascendant in L.A.'s Little Central America
    Los Angeles houses the largest community of Central Americans outside of Central America itself. More and more, members of that community have traded their traditional Catholic roots for new, Pentecostal lives. Of the 5,000 Hispanic churches within the city, 94 percent are now Pentecostal, and the greater the number of converts, the more that Guatemalan, El Salvaradoran and Honduran contingent will change the identity of Christianity in this southwestern metropolis.
  • Children of Immigrants Face Struggle
    The children of immigrants in California carry the legacy of their parents’ sacrifices and the promise of a better future for themselves and the state. But breaking free from cycles of poverty is a debilitating struggle. Latino youth in both Los Angeles and the iconic farm worker city of Delano face rigid barriers to social ascension.
  • Recession's Impact on California Entrepreneurship
    Tim Kane, senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, talks about what the impact of the recession means for California’s competitiveness as a center of entrepreneurship.
  • Nevada: Battered by a Perfect Storm
    In a state that bet its entire social service infrastructure on booming population growth and seemingly unending tourism, an economic perfect storm annihilated what were once the holy trinity of Nevada tax revenue streams: property, sales, and gaming. Even as population growth held steady at 6 percent annually for a decade and fueled unprecedented prosperity, Nevada’s long and storied addiction to its narrow tax base leaves social services scraping by and keeps the creation of a true safety net as an afterthought.
  • Upstream Battle in the California Delta: Water Fights
    The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is home to the latest battleground over a dwindling natural resource: water. The fight pits the environment and fish against urban and agricultural interests. It’s characterized as the “people versus the fish,” but everyone stands to lose if solutions are not found.
  • Tribeless: A California Indian Fights to Get In
    Mark Lucero found a kind of salvation in his Native American heritage, but when he tried to rejoin the tribe to which his family belonged, he was denied membership. Later, his entire extended family was kicked out after their ancestral legitimacy was challenged. Lucero represents a growing number of California Indians who, once displaced by the dominant white culture, are now being displaced by other Native Americans.
  • The Asian Face of Las Vegas
    A look at the fastest-growing Asian community in America.
  • California Energy: Power to the People
    California is often the first to face challenges over how to best provide the cleanest, most reliable energy to its people. Community fights, environmental battles and the rush to cash in on innovative technologies are shaping the future of California’s role as an energy leader.
  • The Significance of SEIU
    This is a timeline of the Service Employees International Union in California.
  • State of the Union: California Labor Wars
    After decades of break-neck growth, California’s two million-member Service Employees International Union is facing a crisis brought on by a debilitating recession. This package explores the present crises strangling the labor movement and its deleterious effects on working people in California. It includes audio, text stories, a timeline, photos and videos.
  • Gay Rights Fight in Conservative California
    Proposition 8, the law banning same-sex marriages, generates strong feelings in California's most conservative counties.