Leaked audio from LA’s city council holds a warning for Democrats

IT IS ONE thing to think that politicians probably behave differently behind closed doors. It is quite another to hear the crude strategy deployed by America’s power brokers to get what they want. Sound from one such smoke-filled room was unearthed this week. A leaked recording revealed three Hispanic Los Angeles City Council members and a labour leader making racist and disparaging remarks about African-Americans, Jews, Armenians and indigenous people as they discussed local redistricting efforts. Nury Martinez, who was City Council president at the time, was the ringleader. At one point she refers to the black son of a fellow council member as a “changuito”, or little monkey.