Part 123: An October "Political Gift" – How Los Angeles Lost the Acoustic War

Published October 24, 2024.

Oct 24, 2024

Photo of Baba Akili, an activist with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles speaking on Wednesday October 23 at LAPD Headquarters by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

To say that Los Angeles is more divided than ever is an understatement. Perhaps no time more since the 1992 riots and the 1965 Watts “Rebellion” has the City of Angels been so stricken by divisionism. Ground zero is the Council District 14 race between Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado. A career politician, Kevin de León is in fact of mixed ancestry, Guatemalan and Chinese, but more identifying with Mexican-American culture, and Ysabel Jurado is proudly Filipina. The two have clashed across 3 in-person debates, at least 2 virtual forums, and now a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles (BLMLA) billboard at 1050 N. Soto Street, which read “KDL Must Go,” has been vandalized. The reason that the display even exists is because of racism, but not quite like you would expect. Rather, it’s the product of the scandal that seems to never end in Los Angeles, the LA Fed Tapes scandal, named after the location of the illegal recording that precipitated mass outcry in October 2022, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (the LA Fed).

Along with former City Council President Nury Martinez, former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, and the former President Ron Herrera, the group had discussed how to build up Latino political power at the expense of just about everyone else, and most expressly African-Americans. California Attorney-General Rob Bonta launched an investigation into the discussion of redistricting and indeed seemingly into the process itself, which has stretched more than two years now without producing a meaningful result. Indeed, Bonta seemed to blindside the Los Angeles City Council in closed door sessions, which reportedly concluded that Latino representation was insufficient, including with regards to De León’s district. Now here was Kevin de Leòn, the day after the passing of legendary Los Angeles Dodgers Pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, dressed in a Dodger Blue jacket, wagging his tongue and waving his arms up as if he’d gotten away with the political crime of the century in not only surviving calls for his resignation, including from President Joe Biden, but now having assailed his opponent Ysabel Jurado effectively through the media.

According to Spectrum News journalist Kate Cagle, it was not no coincidence that a new recording had emerged of Ysabel Jurado saying “Fuck the Police” and referencing popular songs to such an effect. First reported by the Westside Current, soon the story was in the paper of record, the Los Angeles Times without any questions being asked as to the source of the recording. Jurado didn’t apologize, instead standing her ground, with NBCLA headlining the matter as a “political gift” for Kevin de León who reportedly had trailed Jurado according to union and internal polling. That was before he received an infusion of cash from non-Los Angeles labor unions in California and the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), which along with other public safety unions and the “Blue Wave Democratic Club” bankrolled independent expenditures for him in the form of door-hangers, and now digital web ads.

According to UnrigLA, the digital web ad campaign against Jurado costs $145,250 more dollars on top their prior expenditure in excess of $100,000. The big spending from the powerful police union represents yet another major political move for the LAPPL. Previously in the race for Nury Martinezs’ successor, spending by LAPPL was widely credited with knocking reformer Marco Santana out of the primary election top two, with Imelda Padilla, a former employee of Martinez winning election to City Council. Last Wednesday, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles gathered in front of LAPD Headquarters across First Street from City Hall for a “Stop Cop Nation - National Day of Action” including a press conference, speakers at City Council, their weekly “End Police Associations” rally, and a rally to keep the “Black Student Achievement Plan” at the Los Angeles Unified School District. The BSAP was recently the subject of a successful legal challenge from a conservative group, Virginia-based Parents Defending Education after a July 2023 complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights alleging reverse-discrimination.

Undoubtedly, overt racism is on the rise in America, and that includes in Los Angeles with it’s balkanized landscape. That our political systems, policing systems, and now even our public education systems are being subverted by those with bad intentions is no longer a surprise. Sadly, since the summer of 2020 following the killing of George Floyd, the reaction to Black Lives Matter has largely been white retrenchment, with an ascendant Latino and Asian middle class following along in the interest of political-economic gain. Councilmember Kevin de León is undoubtedly aware of this, as were the backers of Rick Caruso, who sought to become Mayor of Los Angeles with a deluge of money, more than $104 million dollars in spending only to fall to Karen Bass. That Caruso then blamed “identity politics” when asked about his loss wasn’t really that astounding. Taking to Twitter, formerly known as X, to again criticize Mayor Karen Bass’s “leadership,” noting the city’s declining finances, “rising crime, fewer police, more drugs on the streets, and a growing homelessness crisis.” Caruso stated that “Residents of Los Angeles deserve a better LA,” but it’s not clear what exactly he would do differently as mayor.

Defeating Karen Bass in the 2026 elections clearly is a major goal of the right. Her success was a major black eye for the right in Los Angeles led by Caruso. Whom many go to great lengths to avoid discussing openly. Preferring to focus on an easier, more convenient, more remote target: former President Donald Trump. It’s not just the Make America Great Again crowd though that has led the resurgence of racial division in Los Angeles, but rather a softer, more moderate white elite. Simply put, little has changed in the city as far as spatial division. Where you live in Los Angeles matters, and our neighborhoods are deeply divided, with gentrification by hipper, wealthier whites being a major subject of complaint in Latino neighborhoods and in African-American neighborhoods by Latinos. Playing to racial divisions works, and with anger at a maximum level, the LA Fed Tapes were undoubtedly a crowning achievement of race-baiting. The two accused leakers, both Latino have now been cleared of any crime, and Kevin de León hasn’t even been asked by any other journalists whether he’ll continue with his civil lawsuit. De León’s shameful attempt to dismiss my questioning of him by trying to cast me as a gadfly was typical.

Simply put, Kevin de León knows who he can mess with and who he can’t. The man is a bully, and so in backtracking from apologizing about his racist remarks his behavior has in fact become more shameless. It’s not secret that African-Americans are more subject to police brutality, as Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizer Prof. Melina Abdullah reminded the assembled press, that out more than a thousand shooting by the LAPD, only 2 cases had resulted in prosecution. Abdullah stated, “we have to frame things correctly, they are the violent ones, out of a sea of lies and dreams, they are the ones who commit terror.” A somewhat controversial figure for her outspoken advocacy, and currently the Vice Presidential nominee to independent Presidential candidate Cornell West, Abdullah was later escorted away from the City Council podium by a Latino LAPD officer who pleaded with her ‘I don’t want to touch you.”

Watching this I almost wished he’d given her a hug instead. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson who has made amends with Kevin de León ignored the mother of Grechario Mack holding his ashes after being killed in 2019 by LAPD officers who did not follow protocol in shooting the man on the ground in the back. All I could do after the meeting descended into a chaos in response to a number of gadflies using racist, agitating language was to speak with another Latino LAPD sargeant that it might have made a difference if any of the Councilmembers had shown any respect to the aggrieved mother, and that it would get worse were Councilmember De León to be elected. The look on his face was resignation.

The LAPPL didn’t respond to a request for comment on if their spending on De León had any chance of deepening racial division. There’s absolutely no question that Los Angeles has become more divided than ever, and despite the LA Fed Tapes scandal, De León isn’t out of the race yet as Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano noted in his weekly Instagram Live on Tuesday nights. Last March, De León had excluded Arellano from his primary night celebration, when he came in behind Ysabel Jurado. Strangely, perhaps not so much, De León had refused to be interviewed for the Los Angeles Times endorsement, who in turn backed Jurado, despite now controversially blocking an endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, which resulted in Editorials editor Mariel Garza resigning her position. Garza stated, “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent.” She continued in interview with Sewell Chan of Columbia Journalism Review, himself a former LA Times employee by stating, “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”

Former LA Times reporter Matt Pearce, who also serves as President of Media Guild West, and also now writes on Substack, when asked whether Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong had sought to influence coverage of the LA Fed Tapes replied, “No, he did not.” Still it’s hard to forget the cryptic tweets I received from Soon-Shiong’s activist daughter Nika Soon-Shiong after the scandal quoting former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” The younger Soon-Shiong who has been the topic of news coverage from Politico suggesting that she has previously interfered in endorsements at the newspaper has also been among those accused of leaking the LA Fed Tapes by former Councilmember Gil Cedillo in La Opinión. Sadly, politics in Los Angeles has undoubtedly become like team sports jokingly, and in fact reductionist.

We are increasingly a nation of close minds, uncritically accepting things when we should question. So when something brave like Mariel Garza resigning from the Los Angeles Times, people notice! In response in an X post, Shoon-Shiong who amassed billions in biotech, wrote “So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.” He continued, “The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.” Soon-Shiong concluded, “In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.” Soon-Shiong sought to shift blame to the Editorial Board. In response posted to the same platform, the L.A. Times Guild leadership wrote about the wave of cancellations, “A healthy democracy is an informed democracy,” adding “We are perssing for answers.” Sadly, I don’t think those cancelling their Times subscriptions will shift over to supporting my Substack! Rather, these will simply be more journalism dollars lost in the ether.

This follows the resignation of top editor Kevin Merida from the newspaper last Winter. So rest assured Los Angeles, you’re in good hands, and even as concerns have swirled over whether X has helped to promote an increasingly racist dynamic across the country, if not the world, remember that traditional media, much less social media aren’t everything, and in this increasingly digital struggle for a decent future that we’re all in this together. Admidst widespread fears that the 2026 Presidential election will end in violence, it’s important to remember that it can happen in Los Angeles too. In fact, the appalling tactics of subversion have already been heard in Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights when Ysabel Jurado accused Kevin de León’s associates of having followed her 15-year-old daughter at a shopping mall. This went unreported in news coverage, and yet only days later we find out that a De León staffer was the source of the controversial tape from Jurado. Funny how that works out?

Did this same staffer follow Ysabel Jurado’s daughter? It remains unclear. For his part, Councilmember De León defended the actions of his staffer, telling the Los Angeles Times: “He got the answer that we’ve been asking [during] five consecutive debates as to why she wants to abolish the police.” For her part, Jurado didn’t apologize for the remark, calling the LAPPL ad, “just noise.” Many referenced the matter back to the LA Fed Tapes, but no one outside of myself has seemingly bothered to do any deep diving into the matter, whether reporting deep details from the civil case lawsuit or much less interviewing the attorney’s. Jurado, herself a working mother as a tenants right attorney isn’t alone. An attorney for Karla Vasquez wrote in email response and De León’s lawsuit: “This civil suit is a travesty and done only to create soundbites for continued press coverage.” Again denying responsibility for the leak of the LA Fed Tapes, he wrote, “The accusations by Mr. DeLeon are not only unfounded but hurtful to a working mother who has had to divert her time and money from her family to defend herself.”

Will Kevin de León win re-election or gone down as a number of commentors have openly desired? That remains to be seen, but for my part, I’d like the truth about what happened in Los Angeles in October 2022. Asked if the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office was satisfied with an inconclusive investigation a spokesman didn’t immediately respond. For his part, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s press office wouldn’t confirm or deny whether Kevin de León was party to closed door discussions about a settlement over redistricting, writing: “Hi Zach, we are unable to comment on an ongoing investigation.” Asked for comment about the matter, a spokeswoman for Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson didn’t respond, nor for past President Paul Krekorian, whom De León had previously credited for allowing him back onto Council Committees. One thing is for sure, Los Angeles City Council is perhaps more chaotic than ever, and as far as the role of recordings in local politics, we’ve entered a brave new electronic era of October Surprises in the so-called City of Angels.

Link: Attorney General Bonta: California Department of Justice to Investigate Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Process

Link: State attorney general wants L.A. to redraw council districts, confidential document says

Link: Kate Cagle Tweet RE: Kevin de León

Link: Kevin de León staffer prompted Ysabel Jurado’s ‘F— the police’ comment

Link: L.A. council candidate takes heat for saying ‘F— the police’ while discussing LAPD spending

Link: Why Ysabel Jurado's F-word controversy is ‘political gift' for Kevin de León

Link: Los Angeles Police Protective League TV Ad Twitter Post

Link: LAUSD's Black student achievement program upended, targeted by conservative Virginia group

Link: Rick Caruso Twitter Post RE: Karen Bass

Link: LAPD officers get rare official rebuke for killing man in mall

Link: Black Lives Matter Los Angeles

Link: Column: Kevin de León takes a page from Trump’s playbook at Boyle Heights debate