An official for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California mocked elderly white people at a city council meeting last week, telling them they had “five years left.”
Rialto, California, held a regularly scheduled city council meeting last Tuesday after a city councilman apologized for planning an event to discuss the possibility of Rialto becoming a “sanctuary city.”
Luis Nolasco, a community engagement and policy advocate for the ACLU of Southern California, stood up to speak at the city council meeting and attacked many of the white people present, saying they are not actual residents of Rialto.
Nolasco said, “This is my town.”
He said that the important part of the sanctuary city discussion is “who are the people we are talking about.”
The ACLU official said that “the people in this room are not representative of Rialto. Sorry to break it, but growing up here white people were the minority.”
“The reality is that black and Latinos are the majority of the city, and that is representative of the city, and that’s going to continue to be the case for future generations,” Nolasco, 26, added.
The city of Rialto is 72.4 percent Latino, according to a 2015 Census estimate.
“It’s kind of mean for me to say it but these people have probably like five years left,” Nolasco said while gesturing to the white attendees at the meeting. A video of the meeting shows that several of them were elderly.
The ACLU official said that Latinos and blacks are “the future,” and that “we don’t want to see an America that is hateful.”
The ACLU of Southern California told The Daily Caller Tuesday that Nolasco’s comments were not consistent with the ACLU’s stated policy but they support his right to freely express his opinion.
“Everyone in America has a Constitutional right to free speech, and the employees of the ACLU of Southern California are no exception. However, we wish to make clear that Luis Nolasco was not speaking on behalf of the ACLU at the Rialto City Council meeting and his statements are not consistent with our stated policy. Nevertheless, we support his right to freely express his personal opinion to his elected representatives,” the civil liberties group said.
According to his LinkedIn, Nolasco has been with the ACLU of Southern California since 2014 and is also the co-founder of the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition.
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