0:04

You're listening to Imperfect

0:05

Paradise from LAist Studios.

0:07

I'm Antonia Selegido. This is

0:09

part two of our series Nuri and

0:11

the Secret Tapes, an exclusive look

0:14

behind the scenes of the LA City Council

0:16

tape scandal.

0:18

In last week's episode. And

0:20

there's more, she called your son

0:22

a monkey. And that's

0:25

kind of when I lost it.

0:26

Nuri Martinez has just announced she is

0:28

resigning from her LA City Council

0:31

seat.

0:33

Much of the shock of the scandal was hearing

0:35

someone like Nuri Martinez, who

0:37

people once viewed as a progressive, saying

0:40

the things she said.

0:42

I

0:42

identified a lot with her because

0:46

I felt like we were unapologetically

0:48

Latina.

0:50

I am a child of the working poor.

0:52

And this is why I champion issues of

0:54

the working poor.

0:57

Nuri was known for fighting on behalf of the

0:59

working class and immigrant families. But

1:02

now she's known for something very different.

1:06

Her words just confirms how

1:08

racist the other Mexican

1:11

can be towards indigenous

1:12

people.

1:16

We're going to tell you where Nuri came from and

1:19

how her upbringing and her family's experiences

1:21

shaped her political views and ambitions.

1:25

She treated homelessness

1:27

as a problem for housed people.

1:31

I had conversations with Nuri and I said, Nuri, you know if

1:33

we do this, you know what's going to happen. You know a bunch

1:35

of black people are going to get arrested. My

1:37

politics come from my lived experience.

1:40

That's it. I know what it feels like

1:42

to be poor.

1:44

And we're also going to get into the fights happening

1:46

within the LA City Council in the weeks

1:48

and months leading up to that secretly recorded

1:51

conversation. And now

1:53

we're actually

1:54

rivals. And Nuri,

1:57

I think, took it as me proactively making

1:59

a statement against her. to her and took it as a very strong

2:01

criticism. Our relationship

2:03

deteriorated and we got pretty low.

2:06

That's coming up on

2:09

Imperfect Paradise from LA Studios.

2:20

Tanya Hernandez is a scholar on anti-blackness

2:23

in the Latino-Latinx community. And

2:25

something she said to me has been a kind of

2:27

guide in how we're approaching this story.

2:30

She talked to me about how she saw the

2:32

reaction to the tape scandal. Certainly

2:35

people who are feeling

2:38

harmed want an

2:40

immediate kind of response. And

2:42

so having people resign

2:45

and be dismissed and removed, that's a

2:47

very immediate and visual way

2:49

of saying we've addressed the source of the problem. But

2:52

here's what I find so unsatisfactory

2:54

about that, is that it treats

2:57

this as if it were

2:58

only about Nuri Martinez and the others.

3:01

That

3:02

it's only about them as individuals and

3:04

now that we've taken care of the bad apples

3:06

in the group, there is no

3:09

more need for discussion. What

3:11

really is needed here is a much more holistic

3:13

way of understanding that this is

3:15

deeply entrenched within our communities.

3:18

To me, for this story, that means

3:21

understanding the cultural forces and political

3:23

history that shaped Nuri's worldview. That's

3:26

what we're going to get into in this episode. In

3:29

the next episode, we'll get into the specific

3:31

racist things she said on the tapes.

3:34

All right, you good to go? Let

3:36

me know when we're rolling.

3:38

We're rolling?

3:39

Nuri showed up

3:42

to our offices on an early morning

3:44

in August. Nuri and I

3:46

were in a dark, quiet audio booth. She

3:48

brought a notebook where I could see pages of notes

3:51

with phrases underlined. So

3:53

I've been thinking about this conversation a lot,

3:56

have you?

3:57

I think that before I had a good time,

3:59

I was going to do a video.

3:59

to do the podcast, this interview was seriously

4:02

giving me anxiety.

4:02

I really need,

4:05

for me, some type

4:07

of closure and at least to begin

4:10

to tell my story and what

4:12

this has done to me as a person and

4:14

I also think of the people who are just never

4:16

going to accept my apology but who really

4:18

haven't and will probably never

4:21

forgive me. And so for that I carry

4:23

a lot of sort of shame and guilt and

4:25

it is very nerve-wracking. But nevertheless,

4:27

I felt really good about making my decision

4:29

to talk to you today. So

4:32

it is what it is.

4:35

Nuri was born in 1973

4:38

in the San Fernando Valley. Her

4:40

parents were from Zacatecas, Mexico.

4:43

Her dad had come to the U.S. first but returned

4:45

to Mexico to marry her mom. They've

4:48

journeyed back to L.A. because my mom

4:50

did not want to

4:50

be in Mexico anymore. She didn't want to ranch her

4:52

life. They came back illegally. They

4:54

crossed the border illegally and so then

4:57

she ended becoming a seamstress

4:59

for a while. My dad was a dishwasher.

5:02

My dad never drove a day in his

5:04

life and he would often take the

5:06

bus and he would work six

5:08

days out of the week.

5:10

Their story intersects with the story

5:12

of so many migrants who moved

5:14

to Los Angeles in the late 20th century.

5:18

When I was five years old, my mom had convinced

5:20

my dad she wanted a house. They finally bought

5:22

a small little home in Pacoima,

5:24

which is where she still lives. At

5:27

the time when we moved to Pacoima,

5:29

it was considered the only areas where

5:31

really Black and brown people were able

5:33

to purchase property at the time.

5:36

In the decades before Nuri's family bought their

5:38

house in Pacoima, the neighborhood had been a landing

5:41

pad for Black people fleeing the segregated

5:43

South. Racial covenants stopped

5:45

them from buying property in other parts of

5:48

L.A. County. But that percentage of

5:50

Black families would start to dwindle around

5:52

the same time that more and more Mexican migrants

5:54

were moving in.

5:56

I believe we actually purchased

5:58

our home for one of the last...

5:59

white families on that block

6:02

in 1978. There were still

6:05

some African American families

6:08

in my neighborhood but it was already becoming

6:11

more and more Mexican immigrants more than

6:13

anything.

6:15

For a lot of immigrant families

6:17

from Mexico or other places in Latin America where

6:19

there's this much smaller black community being

6:22

amongst black communities is new. Do your

6:24

parents talk about civil rights growing up? Was that

6:26

something that you talked about?

6:28

No, my parents didn't really were

6:30

not involved in the civil rights movement and speak

6:32

the language. I think they were just here under

6:34

the shadows of never being caught by immigration and

6:36

getting deported. In fact, my

6:38

father got deported while my

6:40

mother was in labor with me. He had

6:43

gotten deported the day before. My mom

6:45

goes into labor. She can't find my dad

6:48

and a couple of days later he appears because

6:50

he crosses the border illegally again.

6:53

Nuri's father would not be deported

6:55

again. Her parents would eventually become

6:57

US citizens.

6:59

Nuri had a typical first-generation

7:02

bicultural upbringing. At

7:04

home, everything was in Spanish.

7:07

My father and I used to watch novellas before

7:10

we went to bed. We would love novellas. Mexican

7:12

soap operas are the best thing. We

7:15

love them growing up and that's why I think

7:17

I speak so well Spanish because I used to watch these

7:20

with my dad and you know we

7:22

would always be crying.

7:24

They also started watching a recently launched

7:26

national channel that was specifically aimed

7:28

at families like theirs. Spanish

7:30

dominant Latino families in the US.

7:33

Univision. Because

7:34

one of the things that I would love to do when my dad

7:37

got home and we had dinner was watch

7:39

Jorge Ramos on Univision and Marielena

7:42

Salinas. And they used to anchor the 630 news

7:45

and it was the national news for Univision

7:48

and my dad and I would watch that religiously

7:50

every single day. And

7:53

I was always intrigued about all this stuff

7:55

that's going on in other countries that was going on in our country

7:57

and I remember I was a fifth grader and we

8:00

were doing a mock presidential election

8:02

in class. And I remember I got home, you know, waiting

8:04

for my dad. We were watching TV. And I turned

8:06

around and I said, dad, que es somos, democratas

8:09

or repúlicanos? And

8:11

he said, well, the best way I can

8:13

describe it to you is that Republicans

8:16

tend to be rich. Democrats

8:19

tend to be poor. That's what your dad

8:21

said to you? Yeah, my dad said to

8:22

me. And I was like, so that's it?

8:24

And I said, well,

8:26

we're poor, right? And he goes, yeah, we're

8:29

poor. We work, you know, really hard or whatever. So,

8:32

dad, I declare that we're going to be Democrats.

8:35

For the past 50 years, Latino

8:37

voters have always sided more strongly

8:39

with Democrats in presidential elections.

8:42

But in the 80s, it wasn't so obvious

8:45

that was the direction Latinos were trending. Many

8:47

Latino families then and still today

8:50

hold conservative values, like being anti-abortion,

8:53

because of religious views. But

8:55

at least in California, something happened that

8:57

would solidify the majority of Latinos as

9:00

Democrats for decades.

9:01

Prop 187. The 1994

9:08

ballot initiative would deny a broad

9:10

range of social services to undocumented

9:12

immigrants.

9:13

California's then-governor, Republican

9:15

Pete Wilson, made Prop 187

9:18

a part of his re-election campaign that year.

9:20

And he paid to air a now infamous ad

9:23

that depicted migrants like monsters

9:25

in a horror film.

9:26

They keep coming. Two million

9:28

illegal immigrants in California. The

9:31

federal government won't stop them at the border.

9:33

It requires us to pay millions to

9:35

take it.

9:38

Hundreds of thousands of Latinos

9:41

came together to protest the ballot

9:43

initiative. It still

9:44

passed. But it was later struck

9:46

down for being unconstitutional. And

9:49

ironically, the initiative ended up strengthening

9:52

Latino power in the state as it galvanized

9:54

a new generation of Latino organizers

9:57

and leaders, including council

9:59

members.

9:59

and having the day on the other

10:02

council members on the tape.

10:05

But not Nuri. Her political

10:07

ambitions weren't sparked on the streets,

10:09

but rather at home. When

10:11

Nuri was growing up, her family lived across

10:14

the street from a factory run by Price Pfister

10:16

that made products like shower heads and faucets.

10:19

And the jobs there were good jobs. It

10:22

paid about 15 bucks an hour. It

10:24

had health insurance,

10:26

which we had never had growing up. It had

10:28

a pension and it was a union job. And

10:30

for all those four reasons, my mom insisted

10:33

that she needed to get a job there. So

10:35

my mom, after her seamstress job every day,

10:37

she would literally walk across the street to Price

10:39

Pfister and go to the HR department

10:42

and would put an application in for every

10:44

single day.

10:45

This went on for three years. Eventually,

10:48

her mom got a job working the graveyard

10:51

fifth on the assembly line, fitting parts

10:53

together. Nuri says it changed

10:55

their entire life. But

10:57

it wouldn't last.

10:59

When I was in high school, I remember walking

11:01

into my mom and dad's bedroom and my mom

11:03

was sitting at the edge of her bed crying.

11:06

She's just crying and sobbing and sobbing. I

11:08

thought somebody had died. I thought something had happened to my

11:10

dad. I'm like, what happened,

11:12

mom? And she couldn't even get the

11:14

words out of her mouth. And basically, the

11:17

company had said that they were gonna shut down

11:19

and they were gonna move to

11:22

Mexicali, to Mexico.

11:23

And I'm like, well, why? And my

11:26

mom was like, well, because they signed NAFTA.

11:28

NAFTA, or the North American Free

11:31

Trade Agreement, was a landmark trade deal

11:33

between Mexico, the US, and Canada.

11:35

One critique of the deal was

11:37

that it would make it easier for US companies

11:39

to move their manufacturing plants to Mexico,

11:42

where labor was cheaper, and would result

11:44

in the loss of thousands of US jobs.

11:48

And she goes, I need to know who the mayor is.

11:50

And I need to know who the governor

11:52

is, because we need to tell them 2,000 or 2,500 people

11:55

work here. And

11:58

that's when I began to ask my high school.

11:59

teachers, my government teacher in particular,

12:02

like how do we get a hold of these people?

12:04

And I started to notice two

12:06

things. The majority of the people in

12:09

office didn't look like me, and there was very

12:11

few women. So there's two observations

12:13

I made. And what my mom essentially

12:15

ended up doing

12:16

with predominantly women

12:18

who actually were doing the organizing to try

12:21

to save their jobs, women and some of the

12:23

workers went on a hunger strike. And that

12:25

lasted for a couple of weeks to

12:27

try to keep their jobs there. Eventually

12:30

the company slowly

12:32

shut down, and in the course

12:34

of, I want to say, seven or eight years, it was completely

12:37

gone.

12:40

This, Nastia and her mom's

12:42

work to save her and her colleagues' jobs was

12:44

very political awakening. It

12:47

wasn't a battle against Prop 187,

12:49

not that Henry didn't care about that. Her

12:52

interest in politics specifically

12:54

sprang from a desire to help working-class

12:56

people like her parents.

12:58

And she would keep developing her political ideas

13:01

in college when she enrolled in

13:02

Cal State North City.

13:08

We took a socialism class,

13:12

which I thought socialism was horrible,

13:14

and other people in the class defended

13:16

aspects of it, and she was one of them.

13:19

She would always end up more on the working

13:21

person side.

13:23

This is Nuri's friend from college, Stuart

13:25

Waldman, who now leads a business advocacy

13:28

organization in the San Fernando Valley.

13:30

I got to know her through politics. I

13:33

started the San Fernando Valley Young

13:35

Democrats with Tony Cardenas

13:37

and Alex Padilla and a bunch

13:39

of folks.

13:41

Today, Tony Cardenas is a congressman

13:43

representing the San Fernando Valley, and Alex

13:45

Padilla is a U.S. Senator representing

13:47

California. After

13:52

graduating in 1996, Nuri

13:54

worked as an HIV counselor at a health

13:56

clinic near where she grew up.

13:58

Then, she decided to run for office.

13:59

for office for the first time. In 2003,

14:03

she campaigned to be on the San Fernando City

14:05

Council

14:05

and won. It's

14:07

so fulfilling, especially when you get to

14:09

represent the community that saw you grow up, neighbors

14:12

that raised

14:14

you. In 2007, on top of her San

14:16

Fernando Council position, she became

14:19

the executive director

14:20

of Pocoima Beautiful,

14:22

an organization headed by women that

14:24

worked to clean up environmental disasters

14:26

that were left when big manufacturing companies

14:29

like Price Pfister left the area. Martha

14:34

Dina Arroyo, a longtime environmental

14:36

justice advocate in Los Angeles, worked

14:38

with Nuri at the time. I

14:42

identified a lot with her. I felt

14:45

like we were unapologetically Latina.

14:47

We

14:48

were ourselves, we were bold,

14:50

and we were bright. And I mean bold

14:52

and bright, both in brains, but also in how

14:54

we presented ourselves.

14:56

Martha made it clear that she doesn't identify

14:59

with Nuri anymore.

15:00

The words she spoke were so

15:03

full of cruelty and anger and pain,

15:06

and caused

15:07

anger and pain. This was not

15:09

what I expected from her.

15:12

Martha says that for a lot of working-class

15:14

women in the environmental movement, the

15:16

entry point is all about safety,

15:19

protecting families in their homes.

15:22

It's about where we live, where we work, where we play,

15:24

where we learn, all of those things.

15:26

And so it is usually women

15:28

who sort of rise up from

15:30

the community level

15:31

because it's impacting,

15:32

you know, this deeply sacred idea of where

15:34

we live and where we can't be safe.

15:37

This idea of being protected in your

15:39

own home really informs Nuri's worldview,

15:42

and eventually her policies. Even

15:45

when she was a little kid, she felt responsible

15:47

for her family's safety.

15:50

Both of Nuri's parents would come home from work in

15:52

the early hours of the morning, and she'd

15:54

stay up late, watching for her mom through

15:56

the window. And

15:57

I was so worried about her other time.

16:00

As I got older, I would just open

16:02

the front gate

16:04

and leave that open for her so she wouldn't have to fuss

16:06

with the key in case somebody tried to rob

16:08

her or somebody was following her. I

16:11

would do that with my dad too. I

16:13

have the worst imagination

16:15

when it comes to something bad happening. I just think

16:17

the worst all the time.

16:21

After San Fernando City Council, Nurey

16:24

ran for the school board in Los Angeles and

16:26

also won. She was pregnant

16:28

with her daughter during the campaign. She

16:31

was on the school board for four years when a seat

16:33

unexpectedly opened up for LA City Council

16:36

in 2013. She later said

16:38

that she didn't even have to think about running. She

16:41

knew she was going to.

16:45

There are way fewer City Council members

16:47

in Los Angeles than most other cities. LA

16:50

only has 15, whereas New York City has 51.

16:54

So each member in the council has quite a big

16:56

share of power. They each represent

16:58

roughly a quarter million people and together

17:01

helped manage a 13 billion dollar budget.

17:04

So Nurey got to work, knocking on doors.

17:07

It was probably one of the hottest summers, one

17:10

of the most humid summers in the valley, but

17:12

I was able to win by over 10

17:14

points in the general election. Nurey

17:17

Martinez, who I do this morning, much

17:19

congratulations.

17:22

Ladies and gentlemen, Council

17:25

member Nurey Martinez.

17:33

Nurey was the second ever elected

17:35

LA City Council member in Los Angeles,

17:38

the first in 20 years.

17:40

When she got sworn in in 2013, she

17:43

wasn't just the only woman on the City Council,

17:45

the mayor, the city attorney and the controller

17:48

were all men. Most of the other

17:50

Council members hadn't supported her when she ran.

17:52

But despite feeling like an outsider,

17:55

Nurey was determined to make it work.

17:58

I was

17:58

elected on a special.

17:59

election, 18 months later I was

18:02

going to be back on the ballot and run again. And

18:05

so what I quickly figured out is I need to make

18:07

as many friends on this council as possible because

18:09

I need to deliver for my constituents.

18:12

Nuri told me a story that I think really

18:14

illustrates how she worked to win over

18:16

her fellow council members. It took

18:18

place that first holiday season when she was

18:21

on the council. I remember

18:23

one time I was sitting around just looking at everyone

18:25

and I'm like, God, these guys really don't know how to dress. And

18:28

I like fashion. I remember I made an observation

18:30

and I'm like, why would he think that tie

18:33

matches that suit? Oh, that's

18:35

just a terrible tie. The colors are off.

18:37

They needed help when it came to fashion.

18:41

It occurred to me like, why don't I get these guys

18:43

ties? I will go to the mall

18:45

and pick out a tie based on

18:47

their personality because I've gotten to know them a little bit.

18:49

And so I picked out a tie for each

18:52

of the members. And

18:54

that's what finally broke the eyes. We came

18:56

back from our winter recess in January

18:58

of 2014. They

19:00

all came back on the very first day with the

19:02

Nuri tie. Every single one

19:05

had a Nuri tie and they called it the Nuri

19:07

tie. As a city

19:09

council member, Nuri focused on what she

19:11

calls quality of life issues. Things

19:14

like cleaning up pollution, building perks,

19:16

fixing sidewalks, and fighting sex

19:19

trafficking on a notorious street in

19:21

her district.

19:22

Everybody wants what the nice neighborhoods

19:25

have, which is nice, safe neighborhoods to live

19:27

in and good schools for your kids to go

19:29

to. Everyone wants the same thing.

19:32

Along the way, she started to get a reputation

19:35

for a certain style of communication.

19:37

Here's Stuart Waldman again. She

19:39

was very blunt and held

19:41

people's feet to their fire. And I

19:43

mean, she's very brash.

19:46

You can hear what Stuart's talking about when

19:48

you listen to Nuri addressing the council about

19:50

dockless scooters in the summer of 2018, a

19:53

year after they were first introduced to LA. Thank

19:56

you, Mr. Chair. So, I don't

19:57

have any dockless bicycles or scooters

19:59

or anything. any of that fancy stuff you guys got in

20:01

your districts. We're just simply

20:03

trying to cross the street without getting killed, just to

20:06

put it all in perspective. She

20:09

spoke like she was raised in Pocoima.

20:11

This is veteran Democratic strategist, Mike

20:14

Trujillo, who grew up in Nuri's part of the Valley.

20:17

And anyone that was raised in Pocoima, they

20:19

all sound like they're raised in Pocoima. A

20:21

little bit Valley, a little bit Street,

20:24

and depending on whether English

20:27

or Spanish was your first language at home, you

20:29

would come out with an accent. And honestly,

20:33

I think she's proud of that,

20:35

and she should be. I think the proof is in

20:37

the pudding. She got elected.

20:40

Nuri used her brashness to her advantage

20:43

on the city council. The council had

20:45

a reputation of voting unanimously

20:47

almost 100% of the time, and

20:49

ironing out disagreements in meetings before

20:52

the vote. And so the people with the power

20:54

became those who were able to read the room and

20:56

persuade in those meetings. Herb

20:59

Wesson, the first black city council president,

21:01

was known for being good at this. And

21:03

he saw that Nuri was good at it too. He

21:06

appointed her to a leadership role.

21:08

What I would have to do is whip votes for him. I

21:10

know I was very instrumental in passing the

21:13

minimum wage ordinance. Him and

21:15

I worked on that together,

21:16

and I did a lot of behind the scenes

21:19

work, and I loved it.

21:21

Mike Bonin, the council member who along with

21:23

his son is derided in the tapes, was

21:25

sworn in one month before Nuri.

21:27

Mike was elected to represent LA's West

21:29

Side, which is a whiter and wealthier part

21:31

of the city. So he and Nuri

21:34

came up on the council together. Initially,

21:36

they seemed to be very aligned policy

21:38

walls.

21:40

So we started out good, and we, in my first couple

21:42

years, we were co-sponsors of the $15 minimum

21:44

wage, and we worked together very closely

21:47

on that. We worked together

21:49

on a few low-wage worker issues. And

21:52

she and Mark Quies and I were really the three

21:54

council members who were big on addressing

21:58

traffic violence.

21:59

work together really well on that.

22:01

Nuri was also very close with Councilmember

22:04

Marquis Harris Dawson, one of the three

22:06

Black council members at the time. He

22:08

felt like he could relate to her because of the parts

22:10

of LA they grew up in.

22:12

This just put it, that part of town has a lot in common with

22:14

South LA. So you

22:16

get along well. We were both allies.

22:19

On the council, we were both allies of Council

22:21

President Wesson.

22:23

So we tracked together

22:25

quite a bit because of his leadership.

22:30

Why did you want to be City Council President?

22:32

I never thought I was going to be. When I was on the City

22:34

Council, I never looked at

22:36

Herb Wesson as like, oh my god, that's the job

22:38

that I want. I want to lead all these people

22:40

in this council. Never, never,

22:42

never, never. But

22:43

then five years into Nuri's time on the

22:45

council, President Herb Wesson brought

22:47

up the idea that she could someday

22:49

be Council President. Herb Wesson

22:52

confirmed this story, by the way, as

22:54

well as all the other stories Nuri told me about

22:56

her journey to become president.

22:58

And I said, you think I could be Council President?

23:00

He goes,

23:00

yes. He said, you really

23:02

have this great way of

23:05

looking at the bigger picture and just

23:07

knowing where people are going to be at. And

23:10

that's a really good trait for being a really good

23:12

Council President. It's like, oh, you think? And I was

23:14

like, you do. You do. You

23:17

just got to simmer down on the, you know, you

23:19

get really like, because I would get mad. And I

23:21

get fired up really quick.

23:22

Being a Council President, you got to

23:24

check that. Because

23:25

you got to be friends with everybody. And I'm like, oh, I don't

23:27

know if I can do that. And he goes, well, you're going to have to check

23:30

that, because everybody here is going to have

23:32

to be your friend. I said, OK. But

23:34

it was never personal. I would get fired up

23:36

over issues that I cared so much about. At

23:39

the time, there was rumors that Marquis

23:41

had thought that wanted to be Council President. So

23:44

I said, was Marquis going to run?

23:46

He goes, he hasn't talked to me about it. But I'm going to

23:48

say the same thing I'm going to say to you. Whoever

23:51

can get to seven votes, I will be your

23:53

eighth.

23:55

In other words, Noreen Marquis

23:57

went to both groups and tried to get seven votes.

24:00

from fellow council members. And whoever

24:02

was able to do that, Herb would support.

24:04

He wasn't going to take sides. And

24:07

so Marquise, who was one of Nuri's

24:09

closest friends on the council,

24:10

became her opponent.

24:13

Then our relationship deteriorated, and

24:15

it got pretty low.

24:17

Coming up, the tensions

24:19

on the council deepen. Stay

24:22

with us.

24:34

Sometimes all the intrigue around Britney Spears'

24:36

personal life obscures the fact that she's one of the most

24:38

innovative and signature pop stars of her generation.

24:41

I'm DJ Louis XIV, host of the podcast

24:44

Pop Pantheon, and I'm partnering with LAist

24:46

for a live taping of my show, where we'll

24:48

get into Britney's forthcoming memoir, as well

24:50

as what makes her such an indelible pop figure,

24:52

with a panel of mega fans and scholars.

24:55

And stick around for a special Britney-themed dance

24:57

party after the show. It's on November 2nd

25:00

at the Crawford in Pasadena. Tickets at

25:02

laist.com slash events.

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26:16

This is Imperfect Paradise. I'm Antonia

26:19

Sadeghi. Being

26:21

council president comes with a lot of power.

26:24

You're essentially the gatekeeper, the person

26:26

in charge of deciding what issues make it into

26:28

the agenda and therefore what gets voted

26:30

on.

26:31

You basically set the tone for the city council.

26:34

And the council is the most powerful body

26:36

in Los Angeles because we

26:39

are not set up the way New York and Chicago

26:41

is where the mayor is actually has more

26:43

power and control of the legislative body.

26:45

It doesn't work like that in the city. The power

26:47

is with the city council. So it's a very powerful position.

26:51

And as Marquise Harris-Dawson and Nury Martinez

26:53

competed for the presidency in 2019, Mike Bunin

26:56

was firmly on one side.

26:59

I was

27:00

very early in Marquise's camp. Marquise

27:03

was my closest political ally.

27:05

We were very aligned on

27:07

pretty much everything. And I encouraged him

27:09

to run for president when Wesson was stepping down.

27:13

And I was extremely

27:15

loyal to him. And when he

27:18

decided he didn't think he had the votes, he

27:20

and Nury came to my office and

27:24

she asked for my support. And

27:27

I looked at Marquise and I said,

27:29

are you releasing me from my

27:31

commitment? And he said, yes. And I think she

27:33

was surprised that I took that extra step.

27:35

But she also saw, all right, you're really

27:38

loyal to the people that you're with.

27:41

I thought it was weird because

27:43

I had had individual conversations with all the members

27:45

and the fact that Mike would only

27:47

meet with me with Marquise present. I

27:50

was like, OK, so here there is an

27:52

alignment now. There is a coalition maybe

27:54

building. And so that was always sort of in the back of my head. And

27:56

as any politician, you have to be wary

27:59

about that. You have to careful with that, that the coalition

28:01

doesn't grow larger, that it doesn't grow

28:03

angrier.

28:06

Nuri was elected City Council President

28:08

in December of 2019. The vote was unanimous.

28:12

She took office a month later. She

28:14

was the first ever Latina in the role.

28:17

I had set forth a family's

28:19

first agenda. It was

28:22

actually my speech that I gave on the council floor

28:24

the day I was voted in as council

28:26

president.

28:28

Nuri was wearing a white dress with a sparkly

28:30

embroidered

28:30

collar and red lipstick.

28:32

She stood at the speaker's podium in front of

28:35

a full house and began to speak.

28:38

I am a child of the working poor.

28:41

And this is why I champion issues

28:43

of the working poor. And

28:45

my main priority is to create a family's

28:48

first agenda for every single child

28:50

and family in our city. Our

28:53

family first agenda has to start

28:55

with ensuring that our Homeless

28:57

and Poverty Committee are tracking

29:00

and housing families as a top

29:02

priority.

29:04

It was January 14th, 2020. Almost immediately,

29:09

Nuri would have to pivot away from her planned agenda.

29:13

I was elected by my peers and

29:15

the pandemic literally shut down the city two

29:17

months later.

29:22

Just having to pull

29:23

us through something so

29:26

scary and the uncertainty

29:29

of how we were going to function as a city, let alone

29:31

the public scare that we were having every

29:33

single day that

29:34

we went into work was daunting and really,

29:36

really hard.

29:39

Over the next two years, the formerly

29:41

unanimous council started to

29:44

fracture both publicly and

29:46

privately. Everyone was a Democrat,

29:49

but now deep divisions began

29:51

to emerge between the progressive and moderate

29:53

wings of the body. Instead

29:55

of debating about housekeeping issues like

29:57

paving streets and picking up trash. council

30:00

members were debating how to keep people from

30:02

getting a deadly virus and losing their

30:05

homes.

30:06

Those divisions and interpersonal

30:08

feuds would become the backdrop

30:10

for the secretly recorded conversation.

30:18

The first fracture appeared in the spring

30:20

of 2020 around the cancel rent

30:23

movement. Besides getting

30:25

sick, the scariest thing about the pandemic

30:27

for many people was loss of income.

30:30

People were really afraid

30:31

to get evicted. And so there was

30:33

a really huge movement to

30:35

try to get us to cancel rent. And

30:39

because

30:39

I held tight and because I did not know

30:41

whether that was legal or not, and I actually got legal

30:43

advice

30:43

from several people, including

30:45

our city attorney, it wasn't something

30:47

that was legally feasible.

30:50

There was then a dispute about how to

30:52

do renter protections, and I was fighting

30:54

for a more aggressive strategy and she

30:56

was aligned with the city attorney on it.

30:59

Mike Bonin became a vocal critic

31:01

of how Nuri was handling renter protections.

31:04

Early into the pandemic, the council was supposed

31:06

to vote on those protections. Then

31:08

Nuri canceled the meeting because the city's IT

31:10

department hadn't yet figured out how to run

31:13

council meetings on Zoom. Mike

31:15

was on the phone with a reporter when he found out.

31:17

I'm like, I don't think we should cancel the meeting. I said, I'll go

31:19

in a hazmat suit. We're supposed to vote on renter protections.

31:22

I will be there on Tuesday. We got to be there. This is

31:24

crazy. And Nuri,

31:26

I think, took it as me proactively

31:29

making a statement against her and took it

31:31

as a very strong criticism. It

31:34

increased tension and a number

31:36

of activists got very angry with her

31:38

and the people who voted for the less

31:41

aggressive ordinance.

31:43

Nuri said this is where the division

31:45

began. She felt Mike was implying

31:47

she didn't care about renters. Ultimately,

31:54

no major city would end up canceling

31:57

rent, including Los Angeles. Instead,

32:00

May of 2020. The council would

32:02

enact limited rental protections that meant

32:04

people could challenge evictions in court. But

32:07

for a group of activists and certain council

32:09

members, including Mike, it didn't feel

32:11

like enough.

32:12

What I got was an avalanche of

32:15

protesting.

32:16

They ascended on my home at

32:18

six o'clock in the morning, literally within those

32:20

two weeks. My cell phone

32:22

number was posted on Twitter. So

32:24

I had thousands and thousands of voicemail

32:27

messages calling me every

32:29

name in the book, threatening

32:31

me because I wouldn't cancel rent.

32:34

And then the next thing that happened is they tweeted my

32:36

address. And so I had people

32:39

showing up in cars at literally six

32:41

in the morning, honking, cursing,

32:45

yelling obscenities into bull

32:46

horns.

32:50

Another issue that put pressure on Nuri's leadership

32:52

was the push to defund LAPD. How

32:54

did you experience

32:57

the George Floyd murder personally?

32:59

And then how did that political moment

33:01

impact the city council and your role within

33:04

it? There

33:05

was council president at

33:07

the time of the George Floyd

33:09

civil unrest, particularly in Los Angeles.

33:12

And I took some shots for it. The police

33:14

department wasn't happy with me after

33:16

I co-introduced a motion

33:18

to cut the police budget by $150 million.

33:20

That was not a popular

33:23

thing at the time, especially with law enforcement and

33:25

more of my conservative part of my district. But

33:27

I did it as an ally to

33:30

the African American members who asked me

33:32

for help on that motion. And we introduced

33:35

it together.

33:36

But a year later, the council voted to add

33:38

some money back into the police budget.

33:41

Latinos in my district do

33:43

support the police. There is

33:45

a growing number of Latino police officers within

33:47

the department.

33:49

Do you see that as a place where there is

33:52

potential animosity or friction between the

33:54

black community and the Latino community in Los Angeles?

33:56

I never saw it that way.

33:57

No, in fact, I heard from African-Americans

34:01

in different parts of the city that are also

34:03

pro-police. Just like I heard

34:05

Latinos who don't necessarily think

34:08

policing is a way to resolving every single

34:10

community issue in their

34:11

district, in our communities. And so

34:14

in my district when there was this

34:16

whole debate over

34:18

how much we cut the police department, there

34:20

was a pushback that you know in my district

34:22

they want law enforcement, they want it present,

34:24

they want to be able to call 9-1-1 and have a black

34:27

and white show up in a reasonable time to

34:29

deal with their issue. They tend to be

34:31

more conservative on issues, including

34:33

homeless issues

34:34

and quality of life issues altogether.

34:37

That last point about homelessness

34:40

and quality of life would turn out to be the

34:42

most challenging issue of all for Nury

34:44

and the council.

34:45

If we do this you know it's gonna

34:46

happen. You know a bunch of black people

34:48

are gonna get arrested. That's

34:50

coming up on Imperfect Paradise. Imperfect

34:56

Paradise

35:02

Sometimes all the intrigue around Britney

35:04

Spears' personal life obscures the fact that she's

35:06

one of the most innovative and signature pop stars

35:08

of her generation. I'm DJ Louis XIV,

35:10

host of the podcast Pop Pantheon

35:13

and I'm partnering with LAist for a live

35:15

taping of my show where we'll get into Britney's

35:17

forthcoming memoir as well as what makes her

35:19

such an indelible pop figure with a panel

35:21

of mega fans and scholars. And stick around

35:24

for a special Britney themed dance party after

35:26

the show. It's on November 2nd at the Crawford

35:29

in Pasadena. Tickets at LAist.com

35:31

slash events.

35:35

We're

35:35

back. You're listening to Imperfect

35:37

Paradise from LAist Studios. Over

35:41

the course of the pandemic, homelessness

35:43

in LA, like many West Coast cities,

35:45

skyrocketed. In the fall of 2021,

35:48

Nury and the other moderates on the Council voted

35:51

in favor of maintaining a ban on homeless

35:53

encampments near schools, parks, daycares,

35:56

and libraries.

35:57

The way she saw it, her district and

35:59

other poor districts mostly made up of Latino

36:02

immigrant families were bearing the brunt of

36:04

the homelessness crisis. But

36:06

for the more progressive council members, including

36:09

Marquis Harris Dawson, the ban on homeless

36:11

encampments effectively criminalized

36:13

homelessness. And it was another

36:16

example of the city cracking down on the

36:18

most vulnerable.

36:20

I had conversation with Nuri and I said, Nuri, you know, if

36:22

we do this, you know what's going to happen. You know, a bunch

36:24

of black people are going to get arrested. We all

36:26

know that. Even LAPD

36:28

will tell you that that's what's going to happen. We

36:31

just went through that with the war on drugs. Why

36:33

would we do it again? And

36:35

basically it came down to while people

36:38

are complaining. Well,

36:40

if people are complaining, I get that then solve

36:42

the problem. Like you have a problem

36:45

of homelessness. You don't have a problem of people

36:47

sleeping on the street.

36:48

The city controller reported that over the last 11

36:51

years, nearly 37,000 people have been arrested

36:55

for violating this ordinance. A

36:57

disproportionate number were black over 40%

37:00

of all arrests in a city that's less

37:02

than 10% black. Here's

37:04

former council member Mike Bonin again.

37:07

She treated

37:11

homelessness as a problem

37:14

for housed people.

37:16

What Mike Bonin told us was that

37:18

he said that

37:19

you see homelessness as a problem for people with

37:22

homes. What do you think about

37:24

that character? With people with homes. You

37:27

mean with the people with homes in my district?

37:29

Like the homelessness issue is a problem

37:31

for homeowners. The homeowners in my district

37:34

work really hard to have that little home.

37:36

People on Sun Valley, people

37:38

who own homes on Sun Valley are housekeepers.

37:40

Our hotel workers, our

37:42

janitors, our construction workers. They're

37:45

the people who

37:46

rely on for the city to move forward.

37:48

They're the working class. They just happen

37:50

to own a home. Like my parents. My

37:52

parents are not millionaires. They bought their

37:55

home in 1978 and they paid it

37:57

off. My parents were not wealthy. That's

38:00

almost like saying the working

38:02

class

38:03

should be punished

38:05

because they happen to own a home in a little

38:07

something that they can probably leave to their

38:10

children and their grandchildren and for that reason

38:12

they don't deserve clean streets or a clean neighborhood.

38:15

Are we being serious?

38:17

I asked council member Marquis Harris Dawson

38:20

to break down what he understood Nuri's

38:22

ideological position to be.

38:24

I always think of her as what we call in the Black community a bootstrapper.

38:27

Right? So there's this whole notion of Booker

38:30

T. Washington versus Du Bois. Du Bois would say

38:32

the system holds people back and we need

38:34

to work together to change the system. And

38:36

Booker T. Washington would say, forget the

38:39

system, let's have our own farms, let's do

38:41

our own thing because that's never going

38:43

to work. And if

38:45

that means going along with them on some stuff,

38:48

let's go along with it, right? Because it's

38:50

never going to work for us anyway. And

38:53

that's kind of how I think of Nuri's

38:55

politics. So

38:57

there were times when she would defend the status

38:59

quo to protect

39:01

a set of people from her group who

39:03

had figured out a way to

39:06

thrive within the status quo, even

39:08

though the status quo was hurting

39:10

the vast majority of people.

39:15

Current LA city council member, Yunisi

39:17

Zamanis, who's one of the more progressive members

39:19

on the council, describes Nuri's ideology

39:22

this way. I think her

39:25

ideology is reflective

39:26

of like, we need to fight for the hardworking

39:29

folks. And I'm with you on that. But

39:31

it doesn't mean that we can't fight for everybody else

39:33

too. I

39:37

asked Nuri about this.

39:39

I also see this as a story about

39:41

Latinos as a growing demographic. As

39:44

Latinos become more

39:46

powerful because there's more of them, as they

39:49

start to acquire more wealth,

39:51

there's a fear that maybe they would assimilate and

39:53

not ally themselves with the most marginalized

39:56

communities, that they would just advance within

39:58

the system that exists that already does. not serve

40:01

those who are most marginalized. Do you

40:03

see that as a possibility for the Latino

40:05

community? Is that a concern for you?

40:08

On the City Council, it's different because we don't look

40:10

at necessarily polarizing issues at

40:12

the national level. The Council gives you

40:14

a very small glimpse of

40:17

what people care about at a very local level.

40:19

These are people who get up early in the morning,

40:21

go to work, and sometimes get home,

40:23

change clothes, and go to their second job. All

40:26

they want to be able to do is

40:28

be able to go home and feel safe.

40:31

That's what Latinos want in general.

40:34

Have a group of school-centered

40:35

kids too. Have enough

40:37

to hopefully one day acquire the American

40:39

dream which is buying a home that's so not attainable

40:41

anymore. Have some generational

40:43

wealth for their children and their grandchildren, right?

40:46

And

40:47

in my opinion, that's in my district, that's

40:49

mostly what Latinos spoke to me about. Those are

40:51

the types of issues they cared about. They

40:54

weren't so much about this other national conversation

40:56

about the left of left.

40:58

My parents are progressive,

41:01

and we were raised to be progressive and take care of

41:03

other people and take care of our community and

41:05

look out for one another. My politics

41:08

come from my lived experience. That's it.

41:11

I know what it feels like to be poor. So

41:13

I'm not going to get drawn

41:16

into these politics of people who often

41:18

don't have the same lived experience.

41:20

Just because you're some fancy writer,

41:22

you written a book or a white paper and you're going to come

41:24

and tell me how to lead. I

41:27

don't take what to them.

41:30

Nuri told me that she did not shy away

41:32

from disagreements with her fellow council

41:34

members.

41:35

She didn't always work to resolve the conflicts

41:37

before the vote the way her lesson had. She

41:40

wanted council members to debate in public.

41:45

But some people found Nuri's confrontational

41:47

style to be unproductive. They

41:49

thought she was using her power as a gatekeeper

41:51

of the city's council agenda to punish

41:53

people she disagreed with. Here's

41:56

Councilwoman Nithya Rahman, one of the

41:58

more progressive council members. who

42:00

often found herself at odds with Nuri.

42:03

Things that I thought would be a

42:05

no-brainer would take weeks, even months,

42:07

to get put on the agenda. And

42:10

at some point it just felt like,

42:13

you know, we had so many examples

42:14

where even the

42:16

most basic things would take a long time to

42:18

get put through the council,

42:21

and we couldn't always find any reason for why

42:23

those delays would happen.

42:26

Hillel Aaron is a reporter who covers local

42:28

politics in Los Angeles, and

42:30

he began reporting on Nuri when she was on the school

42:33

board. He told me that he saw her change

42:35

after joining the city council, and especially

42:38

after becoming president.

42:40

She had this meanness about her. She seemed

42:42

to take it out on different people. To

42:45

me, she seemed like she had already learned by

42:47

then how to be an operator, how

42:50

to kind of control votes and

42:52

push political strategies.

42:55

Do you think being city council president made

42:58

you like a harder person?

43:00

A hundred percent. It made me a harder

43:02

person because I had to defend myself. I developed

43:04

a wall because no matter how

43:07

you looked at things, no matter the politics

43:09

of the council, somebody always wanted my job.

43:13

Then, in the summer of 2021, the

43:15

politics of being on council became

43:18

very personal for Nuri, and

43:20

very scary.

43:21

In June of 2021,

43:24

two men got onto my property, spray-painted

43:26

my driveway, and then poured

43:29

some acid fluid on top of my

43:31

personal car that's like 20 feet

43:33

away from my daughter's bedroom. Can

43:36

you imagine if that thing would have blown up?

43:38

But

43:41

I heard very little outcry when that

43:43

happened to me.

43:44

It's like it almost felt that the two and a half

43:47

years of being council president and

43:49

all these protests and all this criticism

43:52

just became normal. I just needed to take it.

43:54

Nobody cared.

43:55

Nobody cared that I had people

43:58

protesting me at six in the morning. Nobody

44:01

cared that people were protesting me at seven o'clock

44:03

in the evening. Nobody cared that two

44:05

guys walked onto my property and

44:07

poured some acid fluid on my personal

44:10

vehicle. It didn't matter.

44:13

Nuri had started to feel paranoid,

44:16

like people were out to get her. By

44:20

the fall of 2021, the tension

44:22

on the LA City Council reached a boiling point,

44:25

just as they launched into the once-in-a-decade

44:26

process of redistricting.

44:29

The way it works is once every ten years,

44:31

a City Council-appointed commission redraws

44:34

council boundaries to reflect new census

44:36

data.

44:36

And for incumbents like Nuri,

44:39

this process is live or die. You

44:42

can lose huge numbers

44:42

of voters who support you, or you

44:45

can gain them.

44:46

Redistricting was the reason Nuri,

44:48

Kevin, Gil, and Ron were meeting that

44:50

day in October of 2021 when

44:52

they were secretly recorded. They

44:54

didn't like one of the maps that was being proposed.

44:58

Nuri says that the months of tensions,

45:00

of deepening divisions and growing distrust,

45:03

the stress of people throwing acid on her car

45:05

and protesting outside her house, that

45:08

she brought all of that into the room, that

45:10

it set the stage for their conversation.

45:14

I've thought about that particular day,

45:17

God, a thousand times, if not more. I

45:20

was so frustrated and so angry, and

45:23

so alone and so abandoned by

45:26

everyone, particularly other members.

45:29

I understand the frustration, but I think

45:31

there's a difference between being

45:33

frustrated and saying things that are insensitive,

45:36

like you said. I think that there are

45:38

a lot of sort of

45:41

internal biases that

45:43

we as Latinos hold in the community that

45:45

people picked up on. And they wanted to use

45:47

it as an example to talk about this larger conversation

45:50

about race.

45:51

Do you think there's an anti-Blackness problem in

45:54

the Latino community?

46:00

I don't know. I

46:02

don't know if the

46:04

leaked tapes

46:05

have...

46:11

I can't... I don't know. I

46:13

mean, that's a really good question.

46:19

Next week on Imperfect Paradise,

46:21

we

46:21

press Nuri to address the racist comments

46:23

she made in the secretly recorded tapes.

46:34

This episode of Imperfect Paradise was written

46:36

and reported by me, Antonia Serejnina.

46:39

Kathryn Mailhouse is the executive producer

46:41

of the show, and Shana Naomi Krochmal

46:43

is our vice president of podcast. Emily

46:46

Guerin is the senior producer.

46:47

Our story editor is Meg Kramer.

46:50

Minju Park is our producer. She also

46:52

scored our series.

46:54

Ali Bianco and Rebecca Kass are

46:56

our interns.

46:56

Our editorial team also

46:58

includes Tony Marcano, Frank Stoltz,

47:01

Megan Garvey, and Kristen Muller. Fact-Tricking

47:04

by Kaitlyn Antonio. Mixing

47:06

and theme music by Ysac Kelly. Music

47:09

by Jay Valle, Xmanana, and Joseph

47:11

Pinoñez at Secondhand Sounds. This

47:13

podcast is powered by listeners like you.

47:16

Support the show by donating now at laist.com

47:19

slash join. This podcast

47:21

is supported by Gordon and Donna

47:22

Crawford, who believe quality journalism

47:25

makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

47:40

This program is made possible in part by the

47:42

Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a

47:45

private corporation funded by the

47:46

American people. Thank

47:50

you.