Clarence Page writes: 'Our best ideas often come out of freewheeling discussions. Unfortunately, so do some of our worst inclinations.'
A group of demonstrators supporting Mayor Harold Washington pickets against Ald. Eddie Vrdolyak outside City Hall before a City Council meeting in 1983.
In an uproar that reached all the way to President Joe Biden’s White House, the City Council members who can be heard in an audio recordingThe central figures in this October 2021 conversation were City Council President Nury Martinez — who has since resigned from the council — and two fellow council members, as well as a labor ally.
This is hardly a new hazard. Rather, it is well grounded in decades of navigations and manipulations by a multitude of racial, religious, ethnic and other demographic groups jockeying for power in U.S.cities.Right. My memory flashed back to Harold Washington’s ultimately successful campaign in 1983 to become Chicago’s first Black mayor.
Los Angeles is proud of its image as a city of people too cool to hate. But Martinez, as captured in the recording, sounds like she’s out to grab all the clout she can and redraw council districts to benefit Latino leaders.