Commentary: We live in a world the L.A. City Hall audio leak scandal wrought. Thank God
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Set us as preferred If I ever need to humble myself — if my head inflates with grand visions of becoming the next Steve Lopez or Bill Plaschke — I pull up the transcript of the secret recording that upended Los Angeles politics after The Times broke the story exactly four years ago.It’s like a modern-day version of “Ozymandias,” except far more vulgar, nowhere near as poetic and a better warning against hubris than anything Shelley could have penned.“The thing for us is to exercise our power,” said then-City Councilmember Gil Cedillo, about halfway through an hourlong conversation he was having with three of the city’s most powerful political figures.Oh, did they ever — and nowhere near the way they intended.
California A bombshell recording has thrown L.A.politics into chaos.
What was really being discussed? L.A.Times reporters and columnists pick it apart, line by line.Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, the president of the City Council and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, respectively, quickly resigned for their roles in the racist, homophobic drivel on the recording.
Cedillo — who was finishing out his term — and Councilmember Kevin de León refused to step down, besmirching their well-earned reputations as progressive lions.The L.A.they sought to create — where Latinos ascend at the expense of the Black community, and anyone who gets in the way is crushed — never came to be.
And the recording that exposed their machinations ultimately destroyed the type of ethnic politicking that made the careers of too many self-serving power grabbers, including this quartet.The transcript of their back-and-forth now reads as prophecy — and we’re far better for it.Much of the discussion, which happened in October 2021 at the headquarters of the L.A.
County Federation of Labor, was devoted ...