L.A.’s Broken Politics

In the struggle for civil rights and racial justice, it turns out that hating Donald Trump is the easy part.

But the city of Los Angeles has been roiled by a much more complicated controversy regarding race relations in the most demographically diverse community in the history of our planet. When three members of the City Council and an influential local union leader were caught on audiotape expressing a series of hateful ethnic slurs toward their political rivals, Angelenos were put to a potentially difficult test.

The four power brokers, caught talking about how to apportion Council districts according to a system of racial spoils that would benefit their own communities, were all of Latino descent. While most of us have become sadly accustomed to racially-charged insults being hurled at members of underrepresented minority groups, the fact that these epithets came from leaders of a historically marginalized community added a new and knotty twist. Would Los Angeles hold these transgressors accountable with the same vehemence as if the bigotry had come from a more expected source?

To their credit, the people of Los Angeles did not flinch from their responsibility. Council President Nury Martinez and Labor Federation president Ron Herrera quickly resigned and Councilmembers Kevin De León and Gil Cedillo seem likely to follow before too long. Their personal and political biographies did not protect them from widespread condemnation and revulsion.

Not all of our political leaders have met these challenges nearly as impressively. While Senator Alex Padilla led a parade of elected officials, including President Biden, in calling for the councilmembers’ ouster, California Governor Gavin Newsom was conspicuous in that his criticism did not include a call for the members to step down. Mayor Eric Garcetti did call for them to resign, but has kept an extremely low public profile as a leaderless City Council has careened through its first week since Martinez’ departure.

Garcetti may be playing a key behind-the-scenes role during this local government crisis, but his lack of visibility has been noticeable during this critical time. The mayor may also think that since he will be leaving office in a matter of weeks, he longer has the ability to rally the public toward a common set of goals and a recommitment to civic unity. I would disagree.

After a day’s hesitation, both mayoral candidates did call for the councilmembers’ departure and both voiced the necessary words about reconciliation and healing. But Karen Bass and Rick Caruso sounded as if the city’s most harrowing public challenge in a generation was simply a talking point for their respective campaigns. Both quickly repackaged the crisis as another proof point in their existing narratives – Bass as an experienced community organizer and Caruso as a can-do outsider – and both rushed to position themselves as the leader whose past experience could make things right. Both Bass and Caruso said all the right things: neither truly seized the moment.

Which leaves it to the rest of us to figure out how to piece a broken city back together. Although Martinez did make a passing reference to Jewish interests (including a familiar slur), it would be easy for our community to watch from the sidelines as black and brown leaders try to repair the damage. As a privileged older white man, I’ll admit some uncertainty about whether there is a useful role for me in these efforts at all.

We are living through one of the most exciting experiments in human history, to see if an unprecedented diversity of peoples can overcome our differences.

But I certainly hope there is, and so should you. We are living through one of the most exciting experiments in human history, to see if an unprecedented diversity of peoples can overcome our differences and work together toward common objectives. The lesson I’ve learned over the last two weeks that we are much further from that goal than I thought we were.

Which means there is work to be done, and the Jewish community here needs to be part of the solution. There was once a time when we played an important role in these efforts, but that was many years ago. The question now is whether we decide to step up again.

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. Join Dan for his weekly webinar “Politics in the Time of Coronavirus” (www/lawac.org) on Tuesdays at 5 PM.