Inside the room: The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, annotated by our experts on race
In an effort to expose a series of racist and sexist remarks made by officials at City Hall, a group of high-profile African-American leaders and activists secretly recorded audio of them over several months.
The recordings will now be played before members of the City Council, who will then vote to release the recordings to the public. Members of the group have not been able to publicly identify the individuals or what they were discussing, and the recordings include racial slurs, threats of violence and racially charged comments, according to their own accounts and those of others.
Here’s a look at how the recordings made by L.A. Citizens Assembly came to be, what their intentions were and who they are. We also offer expert analysis of the footage.
How did the recordings start?
In February, according to the group, it was leaked to them by a man who recorded city officials making racially charged comments and threatening to expose them publicly. This man told the activists that he recorded himself discussing the matter with city staffers and city council members.
We have obtained an audio recording of the city council meeting. Afterward, someone who we will call Mark — though we have no idea how he found the activists — posted the audio to Facebook, and the activists then made the audio available online to anyone who wanted to listen to it.
The leaks began on March 5, during a council meeting, according to the activists. The audio recordings are not from the same meeting, but they appear to be from the same council meeting.
Council member Paul Koretz, who serves on the Public Safety Committee, was the only politician to publicly condemn the recordings.
“I listened to them and they were vile,” he said at a news conference in March. “I was appalled by them.”
The recordings, which we’ve been reviewing and editing, are from a number of meetings. The activists recorded with them are: Council member Paul Koretz (who served as L.A.’s LGBTQ liaison, according to the City Council), councilwoman Nury Martinez, councilman Mike Bonin, councilman Mitch O’Farrell and councilman Joe Buscaino, who later became the council president pro tem.
There were other councilmembers at that meeting also recorded on the phone,
