Angelenos call for resignations and reforms at town hall on racist audio leak
Updated at 12:04 p.m.
A record number of members walked out of the Los Angeles City Council’s public hearing on the racist audio of councilman Mitch O’Farrell and other community members ranting against the Chinese community, including the Chinese American Museum at USC.
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who had been sworn in earlier in the night, stayed, and later spoke to the audience. Garcetti told them that they were not alone and that they should feel hope.
“I know what I feel when I listen to you,” Garcetti told the crowd. “We shouldn’t be afraid of what the Chinese American Museum means to you. We shouldn’t be afraid of what you mean to me.”
He gave a thumbs up and left the room.
The L.A. City Council on Monday night voted unanimously to table O’Farrell’s resolution to remove him from the public meetings where he makes racist comments about the Chinese community he says is a “cancer.”
A day after the comments were released, his fellow council member Gil Cedillo and councilwoman Jan Perry attended one of his meetings.
The recording, which O’Farrell and Cedillo said included racist comments about Asian immigrants, was released the night O’Farrell held a forum about whether it would be better if the Chinese American Museum at USC was moved in from the parking lot.
The Chinese American Museum at USC opened in 1998 as a gallery of Chinese art. It is now a museum honoring Chinese culture and has become a popular attraction for Chinese-Americans and also many other people.
The Chinese Americans and others who attended the meeting were in the gallery to support the museum’s efforts to preserve its location, said John R. K. Wong, the museum’s deputy executive director.
“What we saw at that forum was not what we had anticipated,” Wong said. “We’ve been trying for many years — since the museum opened in 1998 —to try to work with him to be more respectful.”
He said O’Farrell’s remarks were not made as a joke or as some sort of racial incitation.
“That’s not what