Angelenos call for resignations and reforms at town hall on racist audio leak
SALT LAKE CITY — During the hour-long town hall event earlier this week, dozens of white residents of a majority minority community in Salt Lake City repeatedly discussed the public release of a recording in which they aired their racial views, calling it a “f—ing racial thing.” In addition to voicing their opposition to the tape’s release, people calling for changes in the city government also showed up at the meeting.
The recording was taped by a black man and was made within minutes of a white man who had been involved in a fight over a parking spot in the middle of a Salt Lake City neighborhood.
The recording, released during an hour-long town hall meeting Thursday, April 4, made claims that people were “looking for opportunities to get shot or shot at” and “shoot first and ask questions later.” “They say ‘the problem with black people is that we have guns’ and we have a gun here,” the recording quoted a white man as saying. “And I don’t care.”
The recording was made and posted online by a young black man who said he was recording the event so he would be able to show his friends what his side of the story looks like. Because of the recording, other people who attended the town hall called for resignations, and Mayor Jackie Biskupski said in a news release that she’d “no longer be comfortable working with any elected official, no matter their race, who does not support our city being a place that reflects all of our values and our community’s values.”
“We need to have an open dialogue, not a closed one,” said Biskupski in the release. “I’m here today to assure you I understand how deeply this affects you, the residents, our