L.A. Council president resigns after racist remarks
The president of the Los Angeles City Council resigned from the post Monday after she was heard making racist comments and other coarse remarks in a leaked recording of a conversation with other Latino leaders.
Council President Nury Martinez issued an apology and expressed shame.
“In the end, it is not my apologies that matter most; it will be the actions I take from this day forward. I hope that you will give me the opportunity to make amends,” she said in a state- ment. “Therefore, effective immediately I am resigning as President of the Los Angeles City Council.”
The statement did not say she would resign her coun- cil seat. There was no imme- diate response to a call and
email sent to her spokes- person.
Martinez said in the recorded conversation that white Councilmember Mike Bonin handled his young Black son as if he were an “accessory” and described the son as behaving “Parece changuito,” or “like a mon- key,” the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
“I see a lot of little short dark people,” Martinez said in reference to a particular area of the largely Hispanic Koreatown neighborhood.
“I was like, I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came (from), how they got here,” Martinez said, adding “Tan feos” — “They’re ugly.”
The recording’s content rocked the political establishment just weeks before elections for the mayor’s office and several council seats.
Bonin and his husband, Sean Arian, had issued a statement calling for the resignations of Martinez and two other council members who were involved.
“The entirety of the recorded conversation ... displayed a repeated and vulgar anti-Black sentiment, and a coordinated effort to weaken Black political representation in Los Angeles,” they said.
The conversation was recorded in October 2021, and others present were Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera, the Times reported. The overall discussion was about frustrations with redistricting maps produced by a city commission.
The Times reported that the approximately hourlong audio was posted on Reddit by a now-suspended user, and that it was unclear who recorded the audio and whether anyone else was present at the meeting.
Martinez initially issued an apology after the Times article appeared online.