Senator Alex Padilla calls on the racist three to resign. Yesterday protestors gathered in front of Martinez’s home to blare her racist comments on a loop from a loudspeaker
I would say there are really two things going on here, one is the way Latinos becoming politically powerful in Los Angeles has lead to specifically white or light-skinned Latinos becoming political representatives of powerful districts in places like Los Angeles. If you speak Spanish and spend enough time around people like this, you will generally hear them say horribly racist things about people of color, including other Latinos, as in the tape released here where they refer to indigenous southern Mexicans as “little brown people” and “tan feo”. One thing that this really reminds me of is the current scandal about workplace racism in the large warehouses of the Inland Empire, particularly the language used is almost identical to that used by the latino warehouse management about black workers.
Then there’s the other thing, which is all the elections that are fast approaching, and redistricting. I’m not as qualified to talk about the little political intrigues there, because I don’t live in LA anymore or follow the politics closely enough to fully explain it, but there are currently some very serious fights between various groups of city council members over districts and upcoming elections, and they seem to be very focused around the racial demographics of these districts and how they will come into play during future elections. I’m almost positive that that’s why Padilla is making this statement, because he’s up for re-election.
Then there’s the reason and method by which this statement was recorded and leaked, which is a bit suspicious in my opinion. There’s a mayors race coming up pretty soon, and iirc the leaked conversation was posted to Reddit with a caption saying something like “looks like city council is in bed with organized labor” or something to that extent. So I would not be surprised if this leak was an attempt to create infighting between the dominant liberal political bloc in Los Angeles, create splits between black and Latino communities, and make the endorsements of establishment organized labor useless politically, or even harmful. That’s not to say that these people shouldn’t be held to account for the frankly disgusting things they’ve said (I’m particularly disgusted with DeLeon, who I met when he was running to try and replace Diane Feinstein, and who seemed to at least have the rhetoric of a legitimate “berniecrat”. Apparently, he’s just as racist as other light-skinned Latinos in SoCal, which is extremely disappointing, because we need young, progressive latino political leaders desperately who are actually legitimately committed to the cause), but I think it is important to be aware of the context that this recording is being disseminated in, because it will almost certainly be used in attack ads in the coming elections, if it isn’t already.
I mean, if we’re really going to be honest, the whole project of “representation” for minority groups within Los Angeles politics has failed spectacularly, and this is just one sad example of that. What they’ve done is just elect a bunch of white Latinos, a token gay white guy, a few token black people, etc, to fit the racial demographics of each district, but these people are generally not truly progressive or anti-racist activists in any way, they are all professional politicians, businessmen, and the like; in general, people who are continuing with more of the same in politics, just with a black, Asian, gay, or spanish-speaking face. I mean, they even made a latino dude the sheriff, and somehow he seems to be even worse than the previous white dude. It’s almost as if we can’t vote our way to equality in a fundamentally corrupt and racist political system! Who woulda thunk it??
Well, Gil Cedillo and the Latino Caucus did manage to get Villaraigosa as mayor 2005-2013, which was an absolute shambles, so much that they lost City Attorney – who contracting runs through – to Carmen Trutanich, a Republican(!), so they couldn’t even get the usual spoils from it. All they managed to do was waste the opportunity of the new city charter – explicitly designed to centralize power – while the council adapted.
Well, as I understood it it was also about the eastside labor-latino scene (and cliques) starting to elbow out the Westside Jewish-professional one in city party and government structures, how’s that coming along?
