Boston mayor Michelle Wu said Wednesday that an email inviting city-council members to an “electeds of color” holiday party was sent by mistake, after the email leaked and caused an uproar on social media.
Wu told reporters that the email was intended for the city council’s minority members and was sent to the entire council in what she described as an “honest mistake.”
“We had individual conversations with everyone so people understand that it was truly just an honest mistake that went out in typing the email field,” she said.
Denise DosSantos, Boston’s director of city council relations, had originally sent the email to the entire city council, which is composed of six minority and seven white members. The white members had their invitations withdrawn shortly after the first email was delivered.
“I wanted to apologize for my previous email regarding a Holiday Party for tomorrow,” DosSantos wrote in a follow-up email obtained by the New York Post. “I did send that to everyone by accident, and I apologize if my email may have offended or came across as so. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”
Wu said the holiday party was an annual tradition intended to celebrate diversity.
“I’ve been a part of a group that gathers, representing elected officials of color across all different levels of government in Massachusetts,” Wu said, according to WCVB. “A group that has been in place for more than a decade, and the opportunity to create a space for people to celebrate and rotate who hosts.”
“It is my intention that we can, again, be a city that lives our values and create space for all kinds of communities to come together,” she continued. “I think we’ve all been in a position at one point where an email went out, and there was a mistake in the recipient.”
Wu, a committed progressive who ran on a platform of climate justice, education equity, and “closing the racial wealth gap,” defended the party as an annual tradition. After the November election, the Boston city council retained its progressive majority, with four Wu endorsees winning seats.
Over the summer, the Boston city council and Wu battled over the proposed police budget, with left-wing members proposing deep cuts and Wu rejecting them. In June, the council introduced a plan to slash $30 million in funding for the city police department.
“Everything progressive that comes through here — not just this body, not just the handful of you who vote it down — the mayor votes it down too,” Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, one of the minority members on the council, said, according to WBUR. “I will continue to support progressive policies that uplift and move our city in the right direction.”