Two days after leaked audio recordings exposed three Los Angeles City Council members and a top L.A. county labor official using offensive and racist language during a meeting last year, President Joe Biden joined the mob calling for the top L.A. officials to resign.
Biden’s remarks, echoed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a press conference Tuesday, come after Democrat Nury Martinez resigned as president of the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera both resigned on Monday.
Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden believes all politicians — including Democratic leaders — should be held accountable for racist language.
“The President is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned,” Jean-Pierre said. “He believes that they all should resign. The language that was used during that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling.”
The conversation with Martinez and Herrera, which The Los Angeles Times reports took place during an October 2021 meeting, focused mainly on the once-a-decade city redistricting process at the union federation’s offices, councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León.
The Los Angeles Times reports the redistricting meeting — which was set up to discuss how the city would redraw council district boundaries over the next ten years — geared toward helping Latino political leaders maintain their power, reelect Latino members, and protect economic interests.
According to the U.S. Census, approximately 48% of residents are Hispanic or Latino, with an 11.8% Asian population and an 8.8% Black population.
According to The Associated Press, the California Legislative Black Caucus said the recording “reveals an appalling effort to decentralize Black voices during the critical redistricting process.”
However, during the meeting, Martinez could be heard making racist statements about a fellow council member Mike Bonin, a gay white man, a gay white man, and his adopted black son, saying her colleague “handled his young Black son as though he were an accessory” and describing the colleague’s son in Spanish as “like a monkey.”
She later referred to Bonin as a “little b****” and said he raises his child like a “little white kid.”
Councilmember de León compared Bonin’s handling of his child to Martinez carrying her Louis Vuitton handbag. He later referred to Bonin as the council’s “fourth black member.”
“Mike Bonin won’t f***ing ever say peep about Latinos,” de León said. “He’ll never say a f***ing word about us.”
On Tuesday evening, the city council held a meeting but faced mobs of outraged protestors demanding the councilmembers to resign immediately.
Bonin, who eventually had a moment to speak once the noise settled, admitted his discomfort and lack of interest in attending the meeting.
“I really do not want to be here today — I want to be home with my family right now,” he said, according to USA today. “Public officials are supposed to call us to our highest selves, and these people stabbed us and shot us and cut the spirit of Los Angeles.”
Bonin issued a statement Sunday calling for the City Council to remove Martinez as president.
“We are appalled, angry, and absolutely disgusted that Nury Martinez attacked our son with horrific racist slurs, and talked about her desire to physically harm him,” Bonin wrote in a statement on Twitter. “It’s vile, abhorrent, and utterly disgraceful.”
The closed-door recorded conversation also exposed Martinez remarking about Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón after his name was mentioned.
“F*** that guy,” Martinez said. “He’s with the blacks.”
Leaked audio also revealed Martinez referring to Oaxacan immigrants living in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles as “little short dark people.”
Following Martinez announcing her resignation as City Council president while keeping her seat as a councilmember, she said Tuesday that she would take a “leave of absence” from the council, according to The Los Angeles Times.
“This has been one of the most difficult times of my life, and I recognize this is entirely of my own making,” Martinez said in a statement, according to FOX LA. “At this moment, I need to take a leave of absence and take some time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents, and community leaders.”
“I am so sorry to the residents of Council District 6, my colleagues, and the City of Los Angeles,” she added.
Thom Davis, the chair of the Executive Board of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents 800,000 workers across 300 unions, in a statement to The Los Angeles Times, said the board also calls on those elected officials who were present to follow President Herrera’s example by immediately resigning as well.
“Racism in any form has no place in the House of Labor,” Davis said. “It is unconscionable that those elected to fight for our communities of color would engage in repulsive and vile anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Asian, and anti-Oaxacan remarks that pit our working communities against each other.”
“These sentiments will not be tolerated by our organization or those who we represent,” he added.
Los Angeles City Council members heard in the leaked audio face mounting pressure to resign from the Biden Administration, other sitting L.A. councilmembers, council candidates, and local political groups.
According to USA Today, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the California Democratic Party, multiple labor unions, and current mayoral candidates are among those pushing for the resignations.
