Target: Greg Barbaccia, Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States
Goal: Prevent mass purge of information deemed diversity-friendly from government databases and websites.
Los Angeles recently celebrated Jackie Robinson, the first man to break the color barrier in baseball. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense commemorated this iconic athlete by “mistakenly” removing an article about him and his military service from its website. Other Black service members’ stories (including the famed Tuskegee Airmen) were similarly deleted from the department’s website portals. The National Park Service created its own controversy when it was forced to restore references to Harriet Tubman that had suddenly gone missing from its web page on the Underground Railroad. Also omitted from the page were references that underscored the Underground Railroad’s reason for being: slavery.
The aforementioned are just two examples of the thousands of documented pieces of data that have been scrubbed from federal databases since the president’s inauguration. Other purges have targeted Native American war heroes, female military members, LGBTQ+ Americans, and even a war bomber plane that happened to have the word “Gay” in its name. Science and health federal sites have also suffered massive purges, especially in articles that discuss uncomfortable topics like climate change. Even the mention of certain words can put data on the hit list, if now-banned words and phrases are found like racism, social justice, transgender, inequality, biased, prejudice, Native American, Black, female, and equal opportunity. All of these outrageous actions are disguised as a war against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
But the war against DEI has become a war against history and truth. Sign the petition below to demand this nation’s leaders stop undermining its legacy and its values.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Mr. Barbaccia,
Likely conservative estimates put the number of data sets removed from data.gov at over 8,000 and counting. Iconic American figures like Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson, everyday American heroes from all walks of life, and science and history themselves are being diminished, demeaned, and dismissed by the day. When an article intended to educate a population about its own heritage cannot even invoke simple words for fear of a purge, then that population loses more than information. It loses itself.
The United States of America was never supposed to be an Orwellian Big Brother society shaped by doublethink, Newspeak, memory holes, information incinerators, and thought criminals. Honor your mission to keep government open and accountable and to preserve and protect America’s information-sharing capabilities. Speak out against the politicization and the targeting of truth.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: US Air Force
