In their quest to shore up power, four Latino leaders managed to set back the city’s multiracial progress, and Latino representation.
[TW: Racism, Hate Speech]
Christian Paz at Vox:
Protests and calls for two city council members to resign continued into a sixth day in Los Angeles, after a leaked audio recording of racist and bigoted comments by four of the most powerful city leaders appeared on social media last Sunday.
First brought to national attention by the Los Angeles Times, the audio recordings captured former Council President Nury Martinez, along with two Latino council colleagues and a top Latino labor leader, making racist and incendiary remarks about Black, Indigenous, Armenian, Jewish, and gay people in the city — including fellow council members.
Martinez resigned after being forced to apologize and facing pressure from local, state, and national leaders, including President Joe Biden, to give up her seat. Ron Herrera, the labor leader in the recording of an October 2021 meeting, also resigned his post as president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor this week.
The two other participants, council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, have resisted calls to resign. Cedillo’s term is up later this year, after losing to a left-wing challenger this summer, but de León’s term isn’t up until 2024.
The news seemed to come out of nowhere, rocking a city in the closing weeks of a mayoral race whose two candidates have connections to the four figures on the tape. And now the council’s work is at a standstill, leaving the citizens of Los Angeles without a fully functioning city government, especially given the mayor, Eric Garcetti, is awaiting Senate confirmation for an ambassadorial post as candidates vie to succeed him. Protesters managed to shut the body down this week, and its interim president, Mitch O’Farrell, has said it will not meet until Cedillo and de León resign.
The leaders at the center of the controversy, and their statements
The officials captured in the recording were meeting to talk about redistricting in the city. It’s a once-in-a-decade process in which an independent commission offers the council recommendations for divvying up the city’s neighborhoods for council seats. All four discussed ways to consolidate their own power while mocking others on the council, including Mike Bonin, a gay white council member representing the city’s Westside, whose young Black son Martinez said “parece changuito” (seems like a monkey).
Martinez, who sparked controversy even in her resignation letter, used the most offensive language. A longtime Angeleno politician and community leader from a heavily Mexican American region of the San Fernando Valley, she complained about Bonin’s son, saying the politician treated the boy like an “accessory.”
Attacking LA District Attorney George Gascón, she said he was “with the Blacks,” and she demeaned Latinos from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, many of whom are from Indigenous communities, referring to “little short dark people” who live in a section of the city’s Koreatown that the group wanted to carve up.
“I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came out of,” Martinez said. “’Tan feos,” she added, shorthand Spanish for “they’re ugly.”
Responding to her, Cedillo remarks, “Puro Oaxacans. Puro Oaxacan Korean. Not even like Kevin. Little ones.”
In another clip, de León suggested to Martinez that Bonin uses his son for show: “Just like when Nury brings her Goyard bag or the Louis Vuitton handbag.”
“Su negrito, like on the side,” Martinez replies, referring to the child using a derogatory word for a Black person. Martinez goes on to suggest the child needs a “beatdown” for being raised “like a little white kid.”
They continue on in the clips, making insulting comments about the city’s Jewish and Armenian communities and their prominent leaders, as they talk about the best way to shore up voting power for themselves, and to make future elections difficult for progressives and rival politicians.
The Los Angeles City Council has been in the news, as three Latinx council members (Gil Cedillo, Nury Martinez, and Kevin de León) and a labor leader (Ron Herrera) are under fire for their racist conversations directed at several ethnic groups (esp. Blacks, Indigenous Peoples, Armenians, and Jews).
Martinez has resigned, while Cedillo and de León are still on the council.
