Young column: My town’s a DEI bastion; throw the book at us

As with so much that we’ve observed over the last 100-plus days, this stretches credulity ‘cross an ocean wide and long.

Let’s just say Stockholm ignores this command, just as — say — it would refuse an order to buy the commander-in-cheap’s golden sneakers or pave streets with his meme coins. What penalty?

I ask this because the city where I live, Fort Collins, Colo., and the place where I work, Front Range Community College, could not be more devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion. And neither is trying to hide it.

My college beholds equity – another word for fairness in the face of disadvantages — as a bedrock principle. Hell, it just held an “Equity Summit” to reaffirm it. Talk about living dangerously.

Admittedly, the school has a way to go, inclusion-wise, as does our city, but my college has boosted its diversity dramatically, particularly Hispanic enrollment, in 2023 attaining the status of Hispanic-Serving Institution. That’s a designation established by the Department of Education before blowhards bent on destruction took over.

I hesitate to bring these things to the government’s attention, but attitudes in my town can be summed up by this placard in my doctor’s office:

“This place respects all aspects of people, including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, religion and ability.”

This would seem to be a suitable statement for a government of and by the people. Now, forget that. Ours is a government of and by the ruling junta.

And, so, I keep expecting a crackdown by the feds where I live.

I imagine the criminalization of DEI, and — soon enough — arrests by masked anti-difference officers from Homeland Security’s new office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Crimes Enforcement: DEICE.

Consider:

A crosswalk connecting city offices in our town is painted in rainbow colors. You know what lifestyles this means Fort Collins encourages. Many.

When will Kristi Noem arrive by helicopter with an industrial sand-blaster to be photographed removing all offending colors?

At the college where I teach, the Sexuality and Gender Alliance Club recently raised funds with Drag Queen Bingo Night. Reportedly, it was a blast. No doubt Homeland Security has been duly briefed.

Amy Parsons, president of Fort Collins-based Colorado State University, my alma mater, joined hundreds of college presidents in a letter denouncing the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” they now face.

Did she commit an arrestable offense?

Over at the community college, on teaching days when I have the time, I take my lunch to a peaceful space designated as the Multicultural Center.

It’s where organizations for marginalized groups convene, and where students who just want a chill spot to hang out do so. A counselor is there with an open-door promise that anyone – any gender orientation, any color or creed – can have an audience.

That would include undocumented students worried about coming home to find their loved ones deported.

I am waiting for embarrassing U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert to show up with pamphlets of damnation, as if she could ever throw stones.

I promise you – nothing this administration does relative to all these matters is connecting with the young people I serve.

Those who advance its bigotry-driven agenda are on the wrong side, the dark side, of history.

But for now, this moment when one man’s power lust seeks to blot out the sun, we await the ways he will try to force all of us to be just like him.

Call ours a Sanctuary City for civility.

So, come on, DEICE: Bring all your masked enforcement might to our fair (and just) community.

If DEI’s against the law, we will break it. Come and get us, Coppers.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.