Former Los Angeles city councilmember Mike Bonin delivered a talk titled “What I Heard: Living through L.A.’s Racist Tapes Scandal” to the Occidental community Oct. 12. According to the Bonin and the LA Times, the scandal, which broke in October 2022, featured LA County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera and a trio of LA city councilmembers — Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León — making racially charged remarks about Bonin and his adopted Black son in two secretly recorded tapes in October 2021. On the tapes, Martinez described Bonin’s son as “like a monkey” in Spanish, and de León compared Bonin’s showing off his son to the way Martinez does when she carries a designer handbag.
According to Professor Peter Dreier of the Politics and Urban and Environmental Policy (UEP) departments, Bonin has written about the scandal, but Oct. 12 marked his first time speaking about the incident and its aftermath.
“He was also talking politically about the potential for LA to be a very progressive city, and he is quite hopeful,” Dreier said. “Despite all the tensions and the controversy and some of the corruption, he is quite hopeful that there is a new generation of activists in the community who want to run [for public office in LA].”
During his talk, Bonin said that his relationship with Martinez had been collaborative and amiable before the tapes were made public.
Dreier said that all three of the councilmembers on the tapes were left leaning.
“Mike’s point is that although the media framed this as a racial tension between Blacks and Latinos, it was really a handful of Latino elected officials and one labor leader who were trying to hold onto power — their own power — because they were not very supportive of the two new Latino activists that are now on the city council, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo [Soto-Martínez],” Dreier said. “And he also made the insight that there are new members of the city council who are part of a multiracial coalition, and that he is somewhat optimistic about the possibilities of a progressive, multiracial coalition becoming a majority on the LA City Council.”
According to Dreier, this new progressive, multiracial coalition on the Council includes Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Hugo Soto-Martínez and Katy Young Yaroslavsky. Dreier said that with the exception of Young Yaroslavsky, all members of this progressive bloc previously worked as community or union organizers.
“The future looks pretty positive in terms of getting activists to run for office and getting them elected. And then they work together to formulate policies to make the city more livable and more egalitarian. And that is really what Mike’s message was,” Dreier said. “I think the scandal, the controversy, the tensions, the corruption, those things are sort of background noise and important to discuss. But at the end of the day, Mike’s message was, ‘You can run a city on love, you can run a city on hate.'”
Politics major Lelia Pedersen (sophomore) attended Bonin’s talk and said that she was floored by his experience. Pedersen said she found his endorsement of other progressive candidates as he was on his way out of office interesting.
“He could have been very bitter and then had nothing to do with [LA politics] anymore,” Pedersen said. “It was impressive to see that, but I do think it’s kind of been a theme. And I think you kind of have to have that optimism, or else what you’re doing is all for nothing.”
Dreier said that Bonin will teach a class next semester on reimagining the police and the criminal justice system, cross-listed between the politics and the UEP departments.
“Students in any major can take it, they don’t have to be majoring in politics or UEP,” Dreier said. “Because of who Mike is, he knows everybody. So the guest speakers in the class are going to be extraordinary.”
Ansel Jeffries (senior), an Economics major and UEP minor, said he would take Bonin’s class in the Spring if he was not graduating this semester.
“I think it’s cool to have an ex-city councilmember [teaching], because rather than just complaining about politics, it kind of gives you a feeling like you can control politics and be on the inside of it,” Jeffries said.
Dreier said that LA’s city council, made up of 15 representatives, is small considering the city’s size. Chicago and New York have city councils made up of 50 and 51 members, respectively. Dreier said that not all LA politicians become greedy for power — despite the fact that according to a June 2023 LA Times article on corruption at city hall, four LA councilmembers have been indicted on corruption charges in the past four years.
“It is not inevitable that people — when they get into positions of political power — become selfish and greedy and want to grab power for themselves. A lot of them want to get power for their constituents, to use the power they have to help the poor, or help the working class, or to help the environment. And for many years — particularly Kevin de León — he was very progressive and so forth, but he got power hungry. And that doesn’t always happen to people,” Dreier said. “I’ve worked with a lot of politicians. It did not happen to Mike Bonin.”
Contact James Miller at jmiller4@oxy.edu
This article doesn’t even mention that close to 50K Los Angeles residents signed the petition to recall him. As one of the 5 proponents of the Bonin Recall & an Oxy alum, this article makes my blood boil. Why no mention of how he destroyed the west side of Los Angeles? He was the worst councilmember in modern Los Angles history. Ask people who used to work for him, ask people who live in CD11. I would never send a kid to Occidental if they are getting losers like Bonin to teach. So disappointed.