Just three days after President Donald Trump moved to end federal DEI initiatives, the town of Enfield, Connecticut, ended its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee in a town council vote along party lines. The DEI committee was just three years old, having been created in 2022 after a man allegedly threatened and hurled a racial slur at a local teen football player out raising funds for his team.
But Republican Enfield Mayor Ken Nelson says the town's decision was not influenced by the Trump Administration.
“DEI? It was on the agenda to be removed before President Trump was sworn in,” Nelson said.
Democratic Town Councilor John Santanella, while acknowledging that the move was planned before the presidential inauguration, sees broader political forces at play.
“It's pretty coincidental,” he said. “But, I just think that this is a tide of Republicanism that is everywhere in the country at the moment.”
Republican mayor: DEI Committee was 'non-functional'
Enfield’s DEI Committee last met on Sept. 9, 2024. Its final scheduled meeting, on Nov. 18, was cancelled.
Mayor Nelson defended the council’s decision to end the committee, arguing it had effectively “imploded” on its own.
“The committee has been non-functional for over a year,” Nelson said. “Some of the members never returned after the first meeting. In the last eight months, we've received two applications, and there were only two remaining members left. So even with all four members, they did not have a quorum to have a legal meeting.”
According to Nelson, the DEI committee never sought help from the town council, further demonstrating its lack of viability.
“The [Enfield] DEI [Committee] has never once come to the town council and asked for any help or support,” he said. “So the DEI committee imploded. You know, out of the town of 42,000 people, three came to the council meeting to speak against us disbanding it.”
Democratic council member: Republicans set the committee up to fail
Santanella disputes Nelson’s characterization. He argues that Republicans on the council failed to appoint new members to the committee, ensuring its demise.
“There were people who left the committee for a whole host of reasons, but there were a handful of people that were remaining on the committee and wanted to see it remain in existence,” Santanella said. “And like many things that the Republicans have heard, it falls on deaf ears, and they were pre-determined to dismantle this committee for months now.”
He contends that the Republican-led council had no real interest in reviving the committee.
“We had people applying to be on the DEI committee. They [the Republicans] didn't put those people forward for consideration by the council. And so, the membership flailed, and they had no interest in building the committee into a fully functioning committee.”
Was the inactivity justification for disbanding?
Nelson pointed to the fact that the committee could not hold legal meetings due to a lack of quorum, suggesting that the town had little interest in maintaining it.
“We have other committees in Enfield that don't have enough people to have a quorum, and we're not dismantling those,” Santanella countered.
Santanella acknowledged the small turnout at the council meeting where disbanding DEI was on the agenda, but argued that it didn’t justify the decision.
“That is true. There were only three people that showed up at that meeting,” he said. “We had a public hearing on the budget a couple of years ago where only one member of the community came and spoke about the budget. That doesn't preclude us from doing the common-sense right thing.”
He pointed to past instances where large public turnout did not change Republican decisions.
“Hundreds of people showed up in protest when they were going to take down the pride flag,” Santanella said.
Enfield Town Hall flag controversy
The Enfield Town Council voted in January 2024 to ban all flags from town property, except for the American flag, the state flag and assorted military flags. Mayor Nelson said the move repealing the town’s previous flag policy that allowed a pride flag to be displayed on town hall during Pride Month was made to keep the town from getting sued.
“It had nothing to do with the pride flag,” Nelson said. “It had everything to do with a Christian flag that was denied by Boston.”
Nelson cited the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court "Shurtleff v. City of Boston," ruling that found the city of Boston in violation of a private organization's First Amendment rights by denying their request to raise a Christian flag outside city hall, after the city had allowed other groups to raise flags there.
“Taxpayers need teachers. They need police officers. They don’t need to get tied up in a lawsuit because I was given the option of choosing which flag I personally wanted on the building,” Nelson said.
Santanella thinks Nelson is being disingenuous.
“There are dozens of communities in the state of Connecticut that fly the pride flag, and they're not getting sued,” Santanella said.
Differing views on the value of DEI
Beyond disagreements over the DEI committee’s viability, Nelson and Santanella differ fundamentally on the value of DEI initiatives.
Nelson does not support the broader DEI framework, arguing that race and gender should not be factors in hiring or policymaking.
“To me, it's insulting to think that you have to give one particular group of people a boost,” he said. “That's ludicrous.”
When pressed on whether bias still plays a role in hiring decisions, Nelson conceded that discrimination exists, but maintained that laws already address such issues.
“I'm not going to say everybody is [free of bias], but there's always bad people in every group,” he said. “Whoever puts that person in that situation should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Santanella, however, sees DEI as a necessary safeguard.
“At the end of the day, what is DEI? It's not about favoritism, it's about equal access,” he said. “What is wrong with that idea?”
