Los Angeles’ rising Latina leader on the fallout from leaked racist tapes: ‘They took us back decades’

Eunisses Hernandez, an incoming council member, is grappling with what it means to gain power in an unequal system

In 2014, Eunisses Hernandez, a young Latina activist, watched as a Los Angeles politician was sworn in as the first Latino leader of California’s state senate in more than a century.

“I got chills the whole time,” Hernandez recalled on a recent Monday afternoon at a restaurant in Highland Park. The background of Kevin de León, the child of working-class immigrants who had now won serious political power in the state, reminded her of her own family, and of herself. She was confident that De León, a longtime activist for immigrants’ rights, was “going to help us pass better laws”.