To: The United States Senate
Stop HR 482 & SB 103 Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2017
Rep. Gosar, Paul A. [R-AZ-4] has proposed a new bill HR 482 and SB 103, which represents a direct attack on the collection, storage, and distribution of geospatial information, antiracism work, and affordable housing. The goal of this bill is to eliminate data used to support social change, which clearly stands at odds with the pursuit of knowledge about human geography, including census data. This bill would prohibit a significant amount of academic work on race, racism, and fair housing in the US, as well as GIS research more broadly, all of which work towards social justice.
Why is this important?
The proposed bill will undermine academic research working on social and racial justice topics. Not only would the creation of new Federal geospatial databases on racial disparities be prohibited, so too would access to existing geospatial information of this sort and the use of Federal funds from agencies such as the National Science Foundation to study such data. As written, this represents a direct attack on the ability of geographers and others to produce actionable and policy-relevant research on racial disparities in this country.