Recorded conversation reveals power struggle in Los Angeles politics

The Los Angeles City Council chamber became a raucous floor for protest on Tuesday, as an hourslong cavalcade of speakers furiously demanded that three Latino council members immediately resign over a secretly recorded private discussion that involved rac insults and slurs.
Latino residents said they were betrayed their own leaders. A Black speaker said she wanted “an investigation into all decisions that have affected Black people” in Los Angeles. A white council member whose Black child was the target of rac comments tearfully told his colleagues how he and his husband were both “raw and angry and heartbroken and sick.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for the departure of the three council members in the nation’s second-largest city. “He believes they should all resign,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said. “The language that was used and tolerated in that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling.”
The recorded conversation involving some of Los Angeles’ top power brokers exposed the racial and ethnic factions that have come to dominate politics in California. But it also highlighted the political impatience among leaders of the city’s largest ethnic group: Latinos, who make up roughly half of the city’s population but who hold only four of its 15 City Council seats.
The recording was a conversation among Nury Martinez, the council president; Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, council members; and Ron Herrera, the leader of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, that took place in October 2021 during intense negotiations over City Council redricting.
Martinez is heard comparing the Black child of Councilman Mike Bonin to a “changuito,” Spanish for little monkey, and joking with de León that Bonin carries the child around like a designer handbag. Those were only two of the offensive comments in the 80-minute recording, which included ugly remarks describing recent migrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and disparaging remarks about the trustworthiness of white liberals and a councilwoman who is of South Asian descent.
News of the recording was first reported on Sunday the Los Angeles Times; Monday night, Herrera had resigned from the labour federation and Martinez had relinquished her leadership post on the City Council, although she resed calls for her to leave the council entirely. Cedillo and de León also have resed calls for them to step down from their council seats.