Bricia Lopez has welcomed people of all walks to dine at her family’s popular restaurant on the Indigenous-influenced food of her native Mexican state of Oaxaca — among them Nury Martinez, the first Latina elected president of the Los Angeles City Council.
The restaurant, Guelaguetza, has become an institution known for introducing Oaxaca’s unique cuisine and culture to Angelenos, attracting everyone from immigrant families to Mexican stars to powerful city officials such as Martinez.
But now after a scandal exploded over a recording of Martinez making racist remarks about Oaxacans such as Bricia Lopez, the 37-year-old restaurateur and cookbook author said she feels a tremendous sense of betrayal.
Martinez resigned from her council seat Wednesday and offered her apologies. But the disparaging remarks still deeply hurt the city’s immigrants from Oaxaca, which has one of Mexico’s large indigenous populations. Sadly, many said, they are not surprised. Both growing up in their homeland and after reaching the U.S., they say they’ve become accustomed to hearing such stinging comments — not only from non-Latinos but from lighter skinned Mexican immigrants and their descendants.
Following Martinez’ departure, two other Latino City Council members also are facing widespread calls to resign since the year-old recording surfaced of them mocking colleagues while scheming to protect Latino political strength in council districts. Martinez used a disparaging term for the Black son of a white council member and called immigrants from Oaxaca ugly.
Bricia Lopez said she heard such racist comments growing up in California but had hoped they would be a thing of the past and that young Oaxacan immigrants would not have to hear them.
Oaxaca has more than a dozen ethnicities, including Mixtecos and Zapotecs. The southern Mexican state is known for famously hand-dyed woven rugs, pristine Pacific tourist beaches, a smoky alcohol called Mezcal and sophisticated cuisine including moles — thick sauces crafted from more than two dozen ingredients.
A racist drunk man berated fellow straphangers and screamed racial slurs on a subway train this weekend until a group of angry commuters decided they’d had enough — pushing him out the door when the train made a stop and even tossing soup at him, a video captured by a rider shows.
The white man, who was openly drinking a can of Lime-A-Rita on the L train as it barreled through the tunnel toward Brooklyn just before 2 p.m. Saturday, was already in the middle of a fit when rider Joshua Pyne turned a camera on him and caught him yelling about his First Amendment rights. He repeatedly uttered the N-word.
“I talk s–t because I know I can,” the racist drunk man shouted. “I’m a lawyer. I went to NYU Law.”
Before Pyne started up his camera, the man got into a spat with a group of black teenagers at the 1st Avenue stop, he said. Once they got off the train, the racist drunk referred to them as “stupid n—–s,” which prompted one woman to spit on him and a guy to try to get him to stop yelling.
But that’s when the jerk doubled down and kept screaming.
A racially diverse group of riders on the car tried to get him to calm down and quit yelling, but he repeatedly refused. As the train pulled into Bedford Avenue, some of the riders stood between the man and his shopping bag, which he had left on a seat.
He told them they couldn’t take his property, but they continued to hold him back.
“F–k your bag, dude,” one guy told him.
The crowd then shoved him out the door onto the platform. A man kicked him several times and the woman who spat on him threw soup at him, which landed all over his arm.
The end of the incident wasn’t caught on video, but Pyne says a cop walked up and the racist drunk man started arguing with him while the train continued on its way. The man never got his bag back.
“Everyone on the car felt pretty demoralized,” said Pyne.
Joe Biden has called for the resignation of three LA city council (Los Angeles) members who were caught on tape making racist comments in a meeting last year.
The profanity-laced recordings, which emerged on Sunday, document three Latino city council members and a labor leader discussing the city’s redrawing of council district boundaries amid the redistricting process, as well as the need to re-elect Latino members and protect economic interests within Latino districts.
The recordings capture the then LA city council president, Nury Martinez, mocking the Black son of a white councilman, and her and the council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León crudely discussing Black voters and the Indigenous residents of certain LA neighborhoods.
Martinez stepped down as council president and apologized on Monday, saying she was ashamed of her racially offensive language in the recording of the meeting. Martinez, the first Latina to hold the title of president, also said she would take a leave of absence from the council.
Cedillo and de León have apologized but have not vacated their seats.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday Biden thought all three members should resign.
“The president is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned, but they all should,” she said. She called the language in the recording “unacceptable” and “appalling”.
Previously, many of California’s top politicians, including the governor, Gavin Newsom, US senator Alex Padilla, and the outgoing LA mayor, Eric Garcetti, had encouraged the members to “take responsibility”.
The president of the Los Angeles county federation of labor, Ron Herrera, who also took part in the meeting, stepped down from his position on Monday evening.
Demonstrators filled the LA city council chambers on Tuesday for the first meeting since the story broke, chanting in protest over the trio’s remarks and demanding their resignation. Speakers urged the council to investigate the redistricting process in light of the council members’ comments and address racism in its ranks.
Saturday’s Donald Trump rally in Nevada naturally featured some extremist comments, chief among them a false—and racist—tirade from Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who claimed that Democrats are in favor of “reparations” because they are “pro-crime.”
Tuberville’s speech also called for an end to food stamps, education reform, and closing the border. “No, they’re not soft on crime, they’re pro-crime. They want crime!” Tuberville said to the fringe crowd.
“They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!” The remarks at an event intended to promote Stop the Steal loons like Adam Laxalt, a Senate candidate, drew the ire of an army of critics on social media.
Among them was MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who likened the Alabama senator’s comments to the rhetoric of segregationist figures like George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
Tommy Tuberville is an American retired college football coach and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Alabama since 2021. Before entering politics, Tuberville was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He was also the head football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 1998, Texas Tech University from 2010 to 2012, and the University of Cincinnati from 2013 to 2016.
Ordinarily, when Sen. Tommy Tuberville generates national headlines, it’s because he’s said something foolish about subjects he really ought to know. Shortly after getting elected nearly two years ago, for example, the Alabama Republican flubbed the basics of World War II. The former college football coach also struggled with how recent presidential elections have been resolved.
A few months later, he misstated the three branches of the United States government. Earlier this year, Tuberville made the case that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to acquire “more farmland,” which really didn’t make any sense.
But in each of these instances, the GOP senator’s rhetoric made him appear foolish, not sinister. As the Associated Press reported, the Alabaman’s message took a toxic turn at a rally over the weekend.
A small group of Los Angeles city council leaders faced shame and castigation after an audio recording of racist remarks at a private meeting surfaced Sunday.
The most egregious remarks were uttered by City Council President Nury Martinez, who seemed to verify the 2021 recording by apologizing to constituents. She likened a colleague’s son, Black and 2 years old at the time, to an animal and seemed to imply that the county’s progressive district attorney shouldn’t be supported because he may be popular with Black Angelenos.
The audio from a political strategy meeting attended by a handful of Latino Democrats on the council was first reported Sunday by the Los Angeles Times. It had surfaced on a Reddit discussion board this month but was deleted. The source of the recording is unknown, and NBC News hasn’t determined whether it has been edited.
The meeting, apparently about political strategy and redistricting, was attended by Martinez and council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, as well as Ron Herrera, the president of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. All are Latino Democrats.
The remarks about the child, the son of departing council member Mike Bonin, concerned his behavior at a parade in 2017, when he was 2. Martinez used a Spanish term to refer to the boy as an animal.
Martinez also dismissed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, a justice reform advocate who is reviled by law-and-order politicians and has survived two Republican-led recall attempts, as unworthy of the support of the people in the room.
“F— that guy. He’s with the Blacks,” she said.
De León, a San Diego-raised politician who rose to statewide prominence as a legislator and then unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Los Angeles, weighed in on Bonin, who is gay, by suggesting he treated his son like a fashion accessory — a handbag.
Martinez asked why Bonin allegedly thinks he’s Black, and De León responded, “His kid is.”
A video of a Denton racist landlord reportedly threatening a tenant with a gun went viral earlier this month. Now, that landlord is under arrest.
It happened in the 2000 block of Scripture Street near the University of North Texas at a house shared by the homeowner and his tenant. The tenant recorded a confrontation with the homeowner earlier this month. It’s unclear what happened before the camera started recording.
Video of the incident is now part of an investigation by Denton police which visited the home twice on the afternoon of September 9.
The first was for a civil disturbance. Police said the homeowner reported the tenant was attempting to use the kitchen without having paid for kitchen privileges.
By phone, the homeowner, 68-year-old Phillip Young, told NBC 5 that the tenant, who is a student, threatened him before the video started.
Officers determined no offense occurred and left.
Then, about four hours later, they returned when the tenant reported the homeowner was threatening him with a gun.
“What are you going to do? Are you going to shoot me?” asked the tenant.
“We’ll see what I do,” replied the racist landlord.
Denton police said the tenant initially didn’t want to press charges and that no probable cause could be established on the scene.
“The parties agreed to separate, and the case was referred to detectives,” wrote Denton police in a press release.
Detectives reviewed the case, and in a follow-up, said the tenant said, “He felt threatened and would assist in prosecution if charges were filed.”
As for the homeowner, Denton police said after initially saying he did not intend on shooting the tenant, the homeowner sent an email to detectives this past Monday and, “Admitted he did think about shooting the tenant.”
By phone, Young told NBC 5 that he never pointed the gun at his tenant. Wednesday morning, Young was arrested at the Denton Police Department.
A social media post began circulating Oct. 1, showing an Accomack County high school student posing with a racist homecoming poster, asking a fellow student to homecoming with the words: “If I was Black I’d be picking cotton but I’m white so I’m picking you for hoco.”
It would seem she said yes, the pair smiling together in the photo sparking outrage online. The post has since been deleted.
That anger spurred the high school student’s family business in Chincoteague to issue an apology on its social media page the following day. Parents said their son “made a mistake that he will regret for a lifetime.” Steamers Restaurant and Sports Bar’s post went on to say the eatery was reaching out to customers and colleagues alike to apologize for his actions. The parents say they’re “dealing with it at home with hard conversations and appropriate discipline.”
Accomack County Public Schools remained closed Monday because of “inclement weather and potential flooding” as rainfall continues in the wake of Hurricane Ian. The district did not offer comment by Monday evening.
Using large signs to ask people to homecoming and other school dances has been a trend for quite some time. Today, racism seems to trend as well.
Similar iterations of this very homecoming poster have already been documented. This September, Pine-Richland School District outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, saw the same words on a poster; in August, an Ohio school district saw nearly identical phrases on another gone viral; last school year, a student in Kansas did the same; the year before a group of four students was photographed holding two similar racist homecoming posters, also in Virginia. Similar behavior has been seen in “proposals,” since 2018. The list continues, as simple searches yield additional results.
A British shopper was shocked to find Black skincare products were security tagged, meanwhile more expensive skincare products for white skin appeared to be untagged at a Tesco store in Essex, UK. The video garnered thousands of views in just one day, with comments denouncing the store as “racist,” while others claimed the decision was “data-driven.” The supermarket has since apologized for the security locks, adding that the products “should clearly not have been security tagged in this way” and that they have been removed.
In 2018, a California woman sued Walmart in federal court for discrimination over the policy, saying she felt humiliated having to ask a store employee to unlock the beauty products case on three visits to the store, including to buy a comb that cost $0.48.
The woman, Essie Grundy, said she went to a Walmart in Perris, Calif., in Riverside County to buy body lotion by the beauty brand Cantu when she noticed that all of the products “targeted at African-Americans” were locked in a glass case, “from the middle of the aisle to the end.”
Ms. Grundy, who was represented by the lawyer Gloria Allred, dropped the lawsuit in November, court documents show.
Reached on Wednesday night, Ms. Allred would not say if there was a settlement in the case, which was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice — meaning it cannot be brought back before the court. She said that “the matter was resolved.”
Walmart did not comment on the resolution of the lawsuit.
Ms. Grundy declined to comment on the policy change.
CVS and Walgreens have also faced criticism for locking up skincare products sold to black people.
A Walgreens spokeswoman wrote in an email on Thursday that the company was also discontinuing that practice.
“We are currently ensuring multicultural hair care and skincare products are not stored behind locked cases at any of our stores, which has been the case at a limited number of our stores,” the spokeswoman, Emily Hartwig-Mekstan, wrote.
CVS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday night.
Where available, recent data still points to disproportionately high death rates faced by Black people, at the hands of law enforcement, in different countries.
While more people have been made aware of systemic racism and concrete steps have been taken in some countries, the Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights called on States to demonstrate the greater political will to accelerate action.
“There have been some initiatives in different countries to address racism, but for the most part they are piecemeal. They fall short of the comprehensive evidence-based approaches needed to dismantle the entrenched structural, institutional and societal racism that has existed for centuries, and continues to inflict deep harm today,” said Nada Al-Nashif, who will present the report to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.
The report notes that poor outcomes continue for people of African descent in many countries, notably in accessing health and adequate food, education, social protection, and justice – while poverty, enforced disappearance and violence continues.
It highlights “continuing…allegations of discriminatory treatment, unlawful deportations, excessive use of force, and deaths of African migrants and migrants of African descent by law enforcement officials”
“Families of Black people continued to report the immense challenges, barriers and protracted processes they faced in their pursuit of truth and justice for the deaths of their relatives”, the report says.
It details seven cases of police-related deaths of people of African descent, namely George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (US); Adama Traoré (France); Luana Barbosa dos Reis Santos and João Pedro Matos Pinto (Brazil); Kevin Clarke (UK) and Janner [Hanner] García Palomino (Colombia).
While noting some progress towards accountability in a few of these emblematic cases, “unfortunately, not a single case has yet been brought to a full conclusion, with those families still seeking truth, justice and guarantees of non-repetition, and the prosecution and sanction of all those responsible,” the report says.
Al Jazeera reveals how the Labour party created a hierarchy of racism that discriminated against Black, Asian and Muslim members.
Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) reveals how a British political party that claims to embrace progressive values created a hierarchy of racism that discriminated against its Black, Asian and Muslim members. Interviews, internal documents and social media messages shared by the most senior staff in The United Kingdom’s Labour betrayed a racist culture where abuse was aimed at their own colleagues, councillors and political leaders.
The Labour Files, an I-Unit investigation based on 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Party dating from 1998 to 2021, exposes how the party’s campaign to present a tough image of anti-Semitism, while ignoring other forms of discrimination, drove many staff to resign.
The Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists, and trade unionists. The Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. The party holds the annual Party Conference, at which party policy is formulated.
The Party currently forms the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, having won the second-largest number of seats in the 2019 general election. The leader of the party and leader of the opposition is Keir Starmer. Labour is the largest party in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), being the only party in the current Welsh government.
The party is the third-largest in the Scottish Parliament, behind the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Conservatives. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, and holds observer status in the Socialist International. The party includes semi-autonomous London, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish branches, however it supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland, while still organising there. As of July 2022, Labour has around 415,000 registered members. one of the largest memberships of any party in Europe.