Ex-official’s online remarks spur backlash
Silver Lake council member resigns after rant about Mexicans and other immigrants.
Last week Karen Speitel joined that long — innumerably long — list of people who decided to harness social media to shoot from the hip, only to become yet another casualty of the Internet age.
The former Silver Lake neighborhood councilwoman unleashed a withering backlash — including on Yelp — after she railed on Facebook against Mexicans and immigrants in the country illegally.
In the posts, since deleted from Facebook, Speitel said that she’s been in L.A. “a loooong time and the distruction [sic] I see all over is from Mexicans. All other immigrants make pockets of this city nice. Go To Chinatown. It’s clean and fun.”
The comment was captured in a photo published by CBS2. The blog Eastsider LA captured a separate rant in which she wrote: “All illegals should have to work like slaves for free for every single legal citizen who came here the right way.” She went on to describe immigrants without legal documents as “sneaky, lawless dregs” who turn the United States into “the same third world nation they came from.”
The comments quickly spread across the Silver Lake community. Some said Speitel’s rant was particularly insensitive and out of touch given the area’s history as a Latino neighborhood that had increasingly been gentrifying, with more working-class residents priced out.
Speitel was pressured to resign. But that hasn’t quieted critics, who have criticized her digitally and in person.
People have visited her local Pilates studio to confront her in person, while others have gone onto her Yelp page to bash her business.
On Monday, five women clad in yoga pants pointed their feet to the sky, under the watchful eye of Speitel, who guided them through Pilates exercises. A sticker affixed to the door of the small studio on Sunset Boulevard, across the street from a Mexican meat market, proudly reads: People love us on Yelp.
After her 9:30 a.m. class , a tearful Speitel declined to comment. The studio has been open two years this month.
Speitel responded to some of the Facebook comments that targeted her business, saying: “I feel terrible for causing this much pain and will be reaching out to the community in some sort of way to try to prove to you that I never meant to hurt anyone the way I have. And to try and do something to help heal even just a tiny bit of the pain I’ve caused. If you can ever forgive me I will be very grateful to you.”
Though Speitel’s former colleagues condemned her comments, some said the backlash has gone too far.
“I think there’s a difference between supporting what someone says versus supporting their right to say [even egregious, and ill-conceived] comments,” said Matthew Desario, a Neighborhood Council member. “I agree that Karen’s apology was not ideal, and while I believe her comments were ignorant and hurtful, the price she is paying is severe. Imagine if any of us messed up for 45 seconds and everyone you worked with for years abandoned you, your only source of income was threatened, and you faced eviction from your lease and expulsion from your business by your partners.”
Speitel’s comments were part of an exchange with other people on Facebook, said Seamus Garrity, the council’s vice chair. Speitel resigned from the council Thursday and sent an apology letter to CBS2, which published it.
“I know people have different opinions on immigration but, in my personal opinion, they were dehumanizing. Grotesque,” Garrity said. “If I were in her position, I would’ve apologized immediately and tried to demonstrate how my comments were misconstrued. And then I would’ve never showed up again.”
In a letter to the board before its meeting Wednesday, Speitel said she was not going to resign. It was only after criticism at the meeting and media coverage that she relented. She let the board know in an email Thursday that she had stepped down, Garrity said.