A leaked recording of crass, racist comments that led to the Los Angeles City Council president resign from the position also gave an unvarnished look at the City Hall’s racial rivalry and the sometimes hidden struggle to seize and maintain political power in a changing city.
Former Council President Nury Martinez, a Democrat, resigned and apologized on Monday.
However, Martinez has not resigned her council seat. She announced on Tuesday that “I need to take time off and take the time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents and community leaders.”
Her recorded comments, including mocking the black son of a white councilman, came during a closed-door discussion with other Latino councilors and a Latino labor leader about protecting their political power while redrawing district boundaries, known as redistricting. . The once-a-decade process can pit one group against another to gain political advantage in future elections.
The white councilor, Mike Bonin, issued a statement with his husband calling for the resignation of Martinez and others involved in the discussion, describing it as “a concerted effort to weaken black political representation in Los Angeles. “
The California Legislative Black Caucus said the recording “reveals a terrible attempt to decentralize black voices during the critical reclassification process.”
Blacks and Latinos often build alliances politics, but tension and rivalry between groups separated by race, geography, partisanship or religion have a long history in Los Angeles and, indeed, the country. The friction can spill over into housing, education and jobs – even prisons – and the spoils of political power.
“Essentially, those two communities went after the same pie crust,” said Michael Trujillo, a senior Democratic adviser from Los Angeles.
Martinez failed to appear at the start of a city council meeting on Tuesday, where several dozen protesters chanted in English and Spanish that she and the others involved should resign. The protesters in the lone gallery in the ornate Council Chamber were about a dozen, mostly Latino members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which describes itself as a social and racial justice group.
“Hey hey, ho ho, Nury Martinez has to go!” howled protesters. “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Utilities!”
A woman raised a sign that read, “Nury ur time is up Resign.” Another protester waved a sign that read ‘Take out the trash’.
On the blasphemous recording, the group discussed the city’s redrawing of Council district boundaries, as well as the need to re-elect Latino members and protect economic interests within Latino districts, reported the Los Angeles Times, which held the recording. got.
“When you talk about Latino districts, what kind of districts are you trying to create?” Martinez asked at one point. “You’re just going to create poor Latino districts with nothing?”
On the recording, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor president Ron Herrera expressed the need to exercise caution in a district administered by a black councilor charged with federal corruption. He warned the black community could see it as “a hostile takeover.”
“Because they’re coming after us politically,” Herrera said on the recording.
Herrera resigned Monday night. Thom Davis, chairman of the federation’s board of directors, said in a statement Tuesday calling on elected officials involved in the conversation to do the same.
The recording has surfaced at a time when crude political discourse has become commonplace across the country, often laced with baseless accusations or conspiracy theories, but in this case involving members of the same party.
Jaime Regalado, former director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, said the recording reveals the nature of political infighting that often takes place out of public view.
“What we hear on the tape is that everyone else is doomed, especially the African American community,” he said.
“A lot of it goes back to when Latinos started organizing and taking political power. That meant breaking down the door to City Hall,” Regalado said.
Black politicians “try to protect what they have. At the same time, you can understand Latino desires for equality” in the Council given the growing Latino population, he said.
In 2005, when Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa became the first Latino mayor in more than a century, he had to overcome fears in the black community that if elected, black people would be kicked out of government jobs and replaced by Latinos. When he was a candidate, Villaraigosa spoke of overcoming the “black-brown divide” that violence can create.
Black leadership is concerned about the potential loss of seats in the black American house in Southern California amid changing demographics.
In LA, the Latino population has been growing for decades and now represents about half of the population. The black population is about 9%. Latinos have long said their representation on the council is below their share of the population, while blacks have maintained an outsized representation despite making up a relatively small proportion of city residents. The heavily Democratic city gave rise to a prominent line of black politicians, including former Mayor Tom Bradley and Democratic US Representative Maxine Waters.
Fernando Guerra of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University called the racist language “horrific,” but added that the recording underlined the reality of politics. Once power is gained, “don’t give it to anyone else.”
“There is a political axiom that power is not given up, but taken,” he said. Despite the friction, “there is not a single case of a Latino taking a black seat of a major position in LA” like Congress or the legislature.
The dispute has cropped up in the city’s race for mayor.
U.S. Representative Karen Bass, who is running for mayor against fellow Democrat Rick Caruso and could become the first black woman to hold office, said Latino Council members “close the gap between our city’s black and Latino communities.” stir up”. She also called on those involved to resign.
Caruso has promised to address the dysfunction at City Hall, and the reveal of the recording could play into his overall message. He also called for the resignation of those involved.
He called it “a heartbreaking day.”