EDITOR’S NOTE: Multimedia journalist Taylor Torregano spoke with a local business owner who wants Kevin de Leon to resign. Click the arrow above to watch the video.
LOS ANGELES (CNS) — City Councilman Curren Price Tuesday denied being invited to the October 2021 meeting between three of his colleagues and a top county labor official that led to the City Hall racism scandal, after embattled Councilman Kevin de León said on a radio show that Price was “supposed” to be at the meeting.
The conversation among de León, fellow council members Nury Martinez and Gil Cedillo and Ron Herrera, president of the LA County Federation of Labor, included racist comments and discussions over favorable redistricting, and led to the resignations of both Martinez and Herrera. De León and Cedillo have both defied widespread calls for resignation, with de León conducting the latest of a round of interviews on Tuesday morning with Tavis Smiley on KBLA 1580.
“The former council president, she called for the meeting,” de León said. “We came. Ironically speaking, Curren Price was supposed to be in that meeting too.”
Price, who was elected the council’s new president pro tempore on an 11-0 vote Tuesday, responded during a briefing after the council meeting that he was “very surprised” by de León’s claim.
“I certainly was not invited to that meeting,” Price said. “I didn’t know about the meeting.”
Price accused de León of throwing him under the bus out of desperation.
During the conversation, Martinez made racist remarks aimed at Councilman Mike Bonin’s 2-year-old Black son. De León then compared Bonin’s handling of his son at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade to “when Nury brings her little yard bag or the Louis Vuitton bag.” De León also referred to Bonin as the council’s “fourth Black member.”
Throughout the recording, the officials expressed frustration at what they believed was an over-representation of Black voters in Los Angeles.
When Cedillo dismissed Black voters by saying “the 25 Blacks are shouting,” de León responded, “But they shout like they’re 250.”
When pressed by Smiley if the conversation would have gone the same way if Price, who is Black, had been in the room, de León said “no.”
During the hour-long interview — the longest interview he has conducted so far — de León reiterated that he does not plan to resign and attempted to apologize for his participation in the meeting. He called the Black community “the community that I’ve aggrieved, I’ve hurt the most” and said he felt a sense of embarrassment and shame.
De León was absent from Tuesday’s council meeting. When Smiley asked how the councilman could claim that he isn’t resigning because his district needs a voice when he isn’t representing them at meetings, de León took a lengthy pause.
“I’m trying to allow some time to heal,” he said. “I’m trying to allow some time to not be part of the chaos at this moment. That’s what I’m asking for right now.”