The Brief

Before her political career ended in disgrace, former L.A. city council president Nury Martinez was known as a tough-talking champion for the working poor and immigrant families. But after audio recordings were leaked in October 2022 that included her and other Latino leaders making racist and disparaging remarks, she became the poster child for anti-Blackness and colorism in some Latino communities.

About Episode 2 — The Rise and Fall

Episode 2 of the LAist Studios podcast Imperfect Paradise: Nury & the Secret Tapes explores Martinez’s background and her political career, and delves into the tensions roiling the L.A. city council in the months leading up to the secretly-recorded meeting.

In this episode, LAist Studios host Antonia Cereijido details how Martinez’s upbringing shaped her politics and leadership style.

Why you should listen

The tapes exposed problems that have long plagued L.A. politics. A year after the scandal, issues persist over anti-Black racism and colorism within the Latino/Latinx community, Democratic Party divisions, and the struggle to define Latino political power.

Growing up 

Martinez grew up in the northeast San Fernando Valley, the child of immigrant parents from Zacatecas, Mexico. Her mother was a seamstress and her father was a dishwasher. When she was 5, her family purchased a home in Pacoima from one of the last white families on the block — by the late 1970s, the area was becoming a landing pad for Mexican immigrants. Martinez’s parents were undocumented, and her father was deported several times.

A flower shop on Van Nuys Blvd in Pacoima, the neighorhood of L.A. where Nury Martinez grew up.

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While other Latino politicians of her era were galvanized by the 1994 passage of Proposition 187 — which would deny a broad range of social services to undocumented immigrants — and the subsequent vilification of migrants from Latin America by then-Governor Pete Wilson, that was not Martinez’s experience. Her political ambitions weren’t sparked on the streets, but rather at home.

Martinez’s interest in politics began in the fifth grade, when her class was doing a mock presidential election. She asked her father to explain the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. According to Martinez, he responded, “The best way I can describe it to you is that Republicans tend to be rich, and Democrats tend to be poor. And I said, 'so Dad, I declare that we're gonna be Democrats'.”

After many years of being a seamstress, Martinez’s mother had finally gotten a job on an assembly line at the Price Pfister plant in Pacoima, manufacturing shower heads and faucets. It was a union job with good wages and benefits. After the passage of NAFTA in 1992, the company announced it was outsourcing.

“I remember walking into my mom and dad's bedroom, and my mom was sitting at the edge of her bed crying. I am like, ‘What happened? Mom?’ And she couldn't even get the words out of her mouth,” Martinez recalled. “The company had said that they were gonna shut down and they were gonna move to Mexico.”

At this point, Martinez’s mother, and other employees of Price Pfister, began to organize to keep the company in Pacoima. Martinez said she began to notice how few of the elected officials they contacted were Latino and how even fewer were women. This, she later said, was her political awakening. Her interest in politics sprang from a desire to help working class people like her parents.

"My politics come from a lived experience. That's it," Martinez said. "I know what it feels like to be poor."

Running for office and developing her style 

Martinez first ran for public office in 2003, when she campaigned to be on the San Fernando City Council. Then, she served on the L.A. Unified School District board. Finally, in 2013, she ran for a seat on the L.A. City Council and won. She was the second-ever elected Latina city councilmember in Los Angeles, the first in 20 years. When Martinez was sworn in, she wasn't just the only woman on the council. The mayor, the city attorney and the controller were all men.

Former L.A. city council president Nury Martinez with belongings from her council office, now stored in boxes in the living room of her home.

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Martinez quickly developed a reputation for being a blunt, brash communicator. In 2018, when dockless scooters were first introduced to L.A., she flatly reminded her fellow council members that her largely working-class constituents did not care about them.

“I don't have any dockless bicycles or scooters or any of that fancy stuff you guys got in your districts,” Martinez told the transportation committee. “We're just simply trying to cross the street without getting killed, just to put it all in perspective.”

Mike Trujillo, a veteran Democratic strategist who grew up in Martinez’s part of the San Fernando Valley, said voters felt she reflected them.

“She spoke like she was raised in Pacoima,” he said. “A little bit Valley, a little bit street. I think she's proud of that, and she should be. She got elected.”

Martinez used her brashness to her advantage on the city council, helping her whip votes behind the scenes for then-council President Herb Wesson. But it became a liability once she became council president in January 2020.

Nithya Raman, one of the more progressive council members who often found herself at odds with Martinez, thought Martinez was using her power as gatekeeper of the city council’s agenda to punish people she disagreed with.

“Things that I thought would be a no-brainer would take weeks, even months to get put on the agenda,” Raman said. “We had so many examples where even the most basic things would take a long time to get put through the council. And we couldn't always find any reason for why those delays would happen.”

Martinez’s bid for the council presidency had also put her at odds with former allies Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Mike Bonin — divisions that would deepen during the pandemic.

Divisions emerge during the pandemic 

We interviewed multiple current and former L.A. city council members for this podcast, and they all agreed that being on the council during the COVID-19 pandemic was incredibly difficult. Instead of debating about housekeeping issues like paving streets and picking up trash, council members were debating how to help keep people from contracting a deadly virus and losing their homes. Deep divisions began to emerge between the progressive and moderate wings of the body about issues like whether to cancel rent, and protesters took to the streets.

Many Los Angeles city council meetings were held remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Dec. 15, 2020 meeting, new city councilmembers from even-numbered districts took the oath of office. Top row, L-R: John Lee, Nithya Raman, Mark Ridley-Thomas; middle, L-R: Paul Krekorian, Kevin De León, Gil Cedillo; bottom, L-R: Nury Martinez

“They descended on my home at six o'clock in the morning,” Martinez recalled. “And they were relentless. My cell phone number was posted on Twitter. So I had thousands and thousands of voicemail messages calling me every name in the book, threatening me, because I wouldn't cancel rent.”

The growing homelessness crisis in L.A. was another point of tension. In the fall of 2021, Martinez and the other moderates on the council voted in favor of maintaining a ban on homeless encampments near schools, parks, daycares and libraries.

The way she saw it, her district and other poor districts (mostly made up of Latino immigrant families) were bearing the brunt of the homelessness crisis. But for the more progressive council members, the ban on homeless encampments effectively criminalized homelessness, and it was another example of the city cracking down on the most vulnerable.

"I had conversations with Nury and I said, 'You know, if we do this [encampment ban] a bunch of Black people are gonna get arrested. We all know that. Even LAPD will tell you that that's what's gonna happen. We just went through that with the war on drugs. Why would we do it again?'" Harris-Dawson recalled.

But for Martinez, the safety and quality of life of her working class constituents was most important.

"The homeowners in my district would work really hard to have that little home," she says in the episode. "People in Sun Valley are housekeepers, hotel workers, janitors, construction workers, they're the people who we rely on for the city to move forward. They don't deserve clean streets or a clean neighborhood? Are we being serious?"

Deteriorating relationships

Over the next two years, relations on the council deteriorated, and Martinez found herself more and more frustrated and isolated.

Being council president, Martinez said, “made me a harder person because I had to defend myself. I developed a wall because no matter how you looked at things, um, no matter the politics of the council, somebody always wanted my job.”

Then, in the summer of 2021, two people walked onto Martinez’s property, spray painted her driveway and vandalized her car, dumping what looked like acid onto it. The political disagreements on the council suddenly felt very personal to Martinez.

“Can you imagine if that thing would've blown up?” Martinez said. “But I heard very little outcry when that happened to me. It almost felt that the two-and-a-half years of being council president and all these protests and all this criticism just became normal. I just needed to take it. Nobody cared. It didn't matter.”

By the fall of 2021, the tension on the L.A. city council reached a boiling point — just as the council launched into the once-in-a-decade process of redistricting, or drawing new council district boundaries based on new census data. For incumbents like Martinez, this process is live or die. You can lose huge numbers of voters who support you, or you can gain them.

Redistricting is the reason Martinez, council members Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, and labor leader Ron Herrera were meeting that day in October 2021 when they were secretly recorded. They didn’t like the maps that were proposed for Cedillo’s district, voicing concerns that his constituency would be diluted and he would lose his seat.

Protestors demonstrate outside L.A. City Hall calling for the resignations of councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and Council President Nury Martinez in the wake of a leaked audio recording on October 12, 2022 in Los Angeles.

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And the months of tensions, of deepening divisions and growing distrust, the stress of people throwing acid on her car and protesting outside her house — Martinez says she brought all of that into the room, that it set the stage for their conversation.

“I've thought about that particular day, God, a thousand times, if not more,” Martinez said. “I was so frustrated. It's so angry and so alone and so abandoned by everyone, particularly other members.”

But there is a difference between being frustrated, and saying insensitive, racist things.

In the next episode of Imperfect Paradise: Nury & The Secret Tapes, which will be released on Wednesday, Oct. 11, we press Martinez to respond to the worst things she said on the secretly recorded tapes.

Listen to the latest episode

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Before the L.A. City Council tape scandal, Nury Martinez, the former council president, was known as a champion of working class immigrants. After, she became the poster child of anti-Blackness and colorism in the Latino community. Host Antonia Cereijido examines how Martinez's upbringing influenced her politics and the divisions that emerged within the council under her leadership, leading up to the secretly-recorded conversation.

Nury & The Secret Tapes: Part 2

Before the L.A. City Council tape scandal, Nury Martinez, the former council president, was known as a champion of working class immigrants. After, she became the poster child of anti-Blackness and colorism in the Latino community. Host Antonia Cereijido examines how Martinez's upbringing influenced her politics and the divisions that emerged within the council under her leadership, leading up to the secretly-recorded conversation.

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Boyle Heights families of school age children impacted by the warehouse fire have until Wednesday afternoon to apply for $250 cash assistance payments.

The money comes from the LAUSD Education Foundation’s “compassion fund,” a mixture of donations from individuals and the California Community Foundation.

“ There's tremendous stress and anxiety about how to pay for rent, food [and] childcare,” said Sadie Jefferson, the executive director of the independent nonprofit that frequently supports LAUSD students and programs.

Jefferson said families are reporting asthma flare-ups, missed work and a lack of access to their homes.

An estimated 13,000 Los Angeles Unified families live within two miles of the Boyle Heights warehouse fire. The fire started on June 17 at a refrigerated warehouse owned by a company called Lineage and burned for eight days. The blaze filled the air with acrid smoke and there’s been reports of foul smells, pests and concerns about water-quality as the clean-up continues.

How it works

Families can apply in-person on Wednesday July 8 from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at:

• Sunrise Elementary School— 2821 E. 7th St. 
• Humphreys Avenue Elementary School— 500 S. Humphreys Ave.
• Belvedere Middle School— 312 N. Record Ave.

The application requires families to provide a student’s ID.

Families can also connect with district counselors and other resources at those same schools.

Jefferson said the foundation will support more families if more donations to the compassion fund come in.

The foundation started the compassion fund in 2025 to support families in the wake of widespread immigration enforcement actions throughout Southern California.

Jefferson said the Foundation has distributed nearly $900,000 in cash gift-cards from the fund and that most families make less than $20,000 a year.

 ”We wanted to make sure that people had the dignity of choice on how to use the funding in a way that made sense for their families,” Jefferson said.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The IOC advised Olympic sports bodies on Tuesday to end a three-year program vetting Russians for neutral status ahead of qualifying events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The move was expected since the International Olympic Committee advised two months ago that athletes from Belarus, Russia's military ally in the full military invasion of Ukraine, should be allowed again to compete with their full national identity.

"The IOC stands in solidarity with the Olympic community of Ukraine, which the Olympic movement has supported since the beginning of the war, and will continue to do so," the Olympic body said in a statement after a meeting of its executive board.

The IOC eased entry requirements to its own events for Russian athletes and teams while provisionally lifting its suspension since October 2023 of the Russian Olympic Committee.

The terms of that suspension — imposed when the Russian Olympic body incorporated regional sports councils from occupied regions of Ukraine — no longer applied, the IOC said.

Just 32 athletes from Russia and Belarus competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics as approved neutrals, and combined to win five medals. The Russian team had more than 300 athletes at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and won 71 medals.

The IOC did not yet approve letting Russian athletes and teams compete with their flag and anthem. That decision will come "at an appropriate time," it said.

The next Olympic competition is the 2026 Youth Summer Games in Dakar, Senegal opening Oct. 31.

The IOC said to "address the lack of confidence in the global sporting community relating to the return of Russian athletes to international competition," those athletes must give multiple doping controls and be part of a recognized testing program.

The IOC said it will continue to "not organize IOC events in Russia or invite Russian government or state officials to its events."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Businesses impacted by the Lineage warehouse fire have access to recovery resources.

Inclusive Action, the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce and the Hustle & Heart Collective have launched the Boyle Heights Fire Relief Fund for Small Businesses, which will provide financial assistance to brick-and-mortar businesses and street vendors directly affected by the fire.

Resources may also be available through the city’s BusinessSource Center, which offers grants, business advising, financial counseling and other services.

Boyle Heights Fire Relief Fund for Small Businesses

The program aims to award grants to 500 affected small businesses and vendors in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles near the Lineage facility.

Who qualifies?

• Brick-and-mortar businesses
• Street vendors
• Home-based businesses

Grant amounts:

• Street vendors: Up to $1,000
• Brick-and-mortar businesses: Up to $3,000

Eligible ZIP codes:

• 90022
• 90023
• 90033
• 90063

Application requirements:

• Business website and email address (organizations will assist applicants who do not have these).
• Proof of address, utility bill and lease agreement (if applicable).
• Street vendors can upload photos of their business if they do not have traditional business documentation.
• Number of employees.
• Applicants will be asked how they plan to use the grant funds.

For additional information, visit the frequently asked questions page.

Apply by July 13 at inclusiveaction.jotform.com/261790764235059

Small Business Recovery Services

Through the city’s established BusinessSource Center, NEW Economics for Women, impacted businesses will have access to recovery resources to help stabilize operations and retain jobs, including:

• Small business recovery grants of up to $1,000 for eligible businesses directly impacted by the fire
• Industrial air purifiers for severely impacted businesses
• One-on-one business advising
• Assistance applying for disaster relief programs
• Access to capital and micro-loan opportunities
• Business continuity and recovery planning
• Commercial lease and financial counseling
• Marketing and customer recovery strategies
• Technical assistance with permitting and regulatory requirements
• Referrals to additional local, state, and federal business assistance programs

More recovery assistance

Visit the city’s Boyle Heights Recovery Updates website for more resources available to displaced workers and other employment services.

For Saizana Evans, manager of the Nile restaurant and bar in Inglewood, proximity to SoFi stadium has been a blessing over the years.

“The A$AP Rocky [concert] recently was good [for business] … Shakira was over here recently, that was great,” he said.

But when asked how those events compared to the influx of customers before and after recent World Cup matches, he was quick to respond.

“Definitely World Cup … definitely better,” he said.

One night particularly memorable so far, he said, was when Bosnia fans showed up for their team’s match against Switzerland.

“They were loud, and it was a joy to watch and to see them, like how they were supporting their team,” he said.

And, he added, “they are drinkers as well.”

While L.A. may not have run out of beer, as Boston reportedly did when Scottish fans visited, the region has been boosted by those who prefer to watch the games on a big screen with a beer in their hands.

“The excitement is palpable, not only in Inglewood, but throughout, and I think where you see it show up the most is in our bars and our restaurants,” said Maria Salinas, president and CEO of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce.

Crunching the numbers

As SoFi Stadium hosts the last of eight FIFA 2026 World Cup matches on Friday, and the tournament ends in less than two weeks, Southern California businesses will be looking at lessons learned.

“We expect to see an increase in spending when it comes to food and beverage,” said  Stephen Cheung, president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.

He said his group plans to do a study of the economic effects of the World Cup on Southern California. To do that, his group plans to buy data from phone carriers, credit card companiesand others — without personal information — to see activity in and around bars and restaurants and other locations during matches.

“We should be tracking hotel data, and Airbnb data, so we can see whether there's an increase during the World Cup,” as well, he said.

The goal is to give public and private groups information about what kind of business activities are the most popular during the tournament.

“We want to make sure that we have competitive industries that can bring good investments and good jobs here locally,” Cheung said.

And that’s something businesses will be looking to do as the 2028 L.A. Olympics approaches.