Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez resigns after racist comments she made were recently leaked.
A Reddit user leaked the audio, which reveals Martinez, who is Latina, insulting a colleague and his son in October 2021. As The Guardian reports, Martinez was talking to fellow council members and a labor leader, when the conversation turned to fellow council member Mike Bonin.
“There is nothing you can do to control him,” she said, referring to Bonin’s three-year-old Black son. She went on to call the child “parece changuito,” i.e. “he looks like a little monkey.” “Let me take him around the corner and I’ll bring him back,” she said, before laughing.
She also insulted the LA district attorney, George Gascón, for being “with the Blacks.”
Another recording captures Martinez saying that she “sees a lot of little short dark people,” apparently referring to Indigenous Oaxacan immigrants, according to The Guardian.
The other council members in the recordings, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, insulted Black voters, prompting laughter from Martinez. “The 25 Blacks are shouting,” Cadillo said. “But they shout like they’re 250,” De León added.
After the conversation went public over the weekend, protestors arrived at Martinez’s home calling for her to step down.
Council Member Mike Bonin also issued a statement, sharing that “it hurts that one of our son’s earliest encounters with over racism comes from some of the most powerful public officials in Los Angeles.”
Martinez apologized for her remarks on Monday, before resigning from her presidency.
“I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments. I’m so sorry,” she said. “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. Therefore, effective immediately I am resigning as president of the Los Angeles city council.”
Karen Bass, the former Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who is running for Los Angeles mayor, issued a statement. “Let me be clear about what was on those tapes: appalling, anti-Black racism,” she said. “The challenges we face already threaten to tear us apart and, now, this hateful and shocking conversation among some of our city’s most powerful leaders could divide us even further.”
