Want to Resist a Data Center? These Organizers Share How They Did It.
Organizers from #Tennessee, #Wisconsin, and #Arizona share strategies for resisting data centers in other communities.
The prolific construction of massive data centers that house the physical computing power for artificial intelligence (AI) is galvanizing resistance in localities across the United States. Communities are fighting back against the billionaire tech and financial power behind these projects and their numerous harms, from their noise and pollution to their hyperconsumption of water and electricity.
Truthout has been covering the corporate interests behind the data center boom and local resistance to data centers. In this roundtable, we brought together representatives from three campaigns across the U.S. to share their experiences and lessons from taking on data centers and AI infrastructure in their areas.
KeShaun Pearson is the leader of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), based in Memphis, Tennessee, which is focused on fighting for environmental and climate justice in the predominantly Black community of southwest Memphis that’s most impacted by the concentrated pollution from nearby toxic release facilities. MCAP is currently campaigning against Elon Musk’s polluting xAI Colossus supercomputer. Tricia Boehlke is an organizer with No Data Center in DeForest, which recently succeeded in halting a proposed data center that was pushed by a private equity-owned company in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Lee Ziesche organizes with the Tucson Democratic Socialists of America and the No Desert Data Center Coalition, which has been taking on Project Blue, a huge data center proposed in the Tucson, Arizona, area. The campaign against Project Blue won a victory when Amazon recently pulled out of the project, but its developers are again trying to advance it.
This roundtable has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Derek Seidman: What’s some initial advice you’d offer to people looking to organize against a proposed data center in their area?
KeShaun Pearson: Activate your community as quickly as you possibly can and inform as many people as possible. These projects move with an urgency and speed by developers that we haven’t seen before. They’re steamrolling our communities and our elected officials. Also, if they’re talking about one data center, remember that it’ll likely be two or three. That’s something I wish Memphis Community Against Pollution knew earlier, because now there are three sites for the xAI project her
Tricia Boehlke: The number one thing is to start going to public meetings. You need to get ahead of it. Get open records requests as soon as you can, because you don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors. Talk to your board members individually because they’re likely getting misinformation from staff and not hearing from the public. Also, find people who you can connect with. Get a Facebook group going and pull together volunteers so that you’re not alone.
Lee Ziesche: Talk to literally everybody you know. By the time your community finds out about the data center, they’ve been working on it for years. It’s urgent to get the word out. And find your local experts. We have amazing people in Tucson who know about water and energy and were able to combat the propaganda of these companies.
Figure out your levers of power. Who or what locally has the ability to say ‘no’? This varies by state or town. Also, reach out to people who have fought data centers. So many communities are fighting back now. There are a lot of brilliant people with creative ideas and information to share. You’re not alone.
How did you get the word out about the data centers in your areas?
Pearson: One of our biggest movers was social media. Post far and wide on Facebook, Instagram, and other accounts. Spread the word beyond your network. We also printed documents to hand out. We knocked on doors and talked to people at grocery store parking lots. Don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth and face-to-face conversations.
Boehlke: We learned that interaction on social media is what really drives things. We made our Facebook page into a public group. It gained 4,400 followers, which is huge for us. Find volunteers to help screen and administer the page. We used hashtags and QR codes to help people share things that ended up going viral. Local businesses also put up signs to get the word out.
Ziesche: We made short videos on social media to combat all the propaganda. That was huge for us. We were at every festival in Tucson talking to people and handing out flyers, making sure people were showing up to public meetings. Also, once we realized that the big “public meetings” about the data center were propaganda sessions, we held our own events to expose the disinformation and present the truth and discuss next action steps.
What’s important for others to know about how you build coalitions and alliances to take on data centers?
Boehlke: We just brainstormed whoever we knew that we could contact and who might be helpful. We created a volunteer survey asking about experiences and skills. We got the word out and found experts who lived in and outside of our community. We reached out to other No Data Center groups in Wisconsin and made a statewide coalition.
Pearson: We’ve been blessed to have been in coalition with environmental justice groups since 2020 when we fought the Byhalia Connection Pipeline. We’ve literally been meeting together for six years. Do the power-mapping work and figure out who the experts are in your area. You want to meet often and also set your ground rules. We noticed that patriarchal dynamics manifest themselves in coalitions, so there’d be meetings happening outside of meetings to set standards of respect and how to move in a coalition in a way that is intentionally different from mainstream culture.
Ziesche: The major issue in Tucson that reaches everybody is water. We’re in a desert, so that got people onboard quickly. There are environmental justice communities in Tucson whose water has been poisoned by the military-industrial complex here that have been fighting for clean water for decades. Recognizing the base and the social networks that already exist is important.
Also, Tucson is a border community. Understanding that the data center was part of the web of surveillance that’s targeting our immigrant communities here was really important to center. Energy affordability was also a huge issue. If you can’t afford energy in the summer in Tucson, you literally die. We were able to grow a huge base of people who realized the data center was going to impact their lives.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your organizing?
Ziesche: We’re almost entirely volunteer-run. It’s been challenging to keep that going day after day. We’re trying to figure out how to sustain this fight for the long term. It’s also been a challenge to get our expertise taken seriously. Many local elected officials don’t know much about data centers or how our grid or water system works, but they take corporations and private utilities to be experts. We’ve had to continually show that there’s expertise in the community and in people’s lived experience.
Pearson: Everybody who’s fighting a data center will face the challenge of misinformation. The other side runs very expensive disinformation campaigns to resign people to the idea that the data center is just going to happen. You have to be prepared for that and intentional about combating it. They’ll also do everything they can to keep the talks around the data center clandestine. They’ll work behind closed doors with legislators who support them. In Memphis, we had to pass a resolution just to have our first-ever public hearing about an air pollution permit. You have to try to create public spaces for the public to be heard to bolster the support that you have.
What are important lessons you’ve learned from your campaigns?
Ziesche: I wish we would have known earlier that the data center was coming. It makes a huge difference if you can get ahead of it. Keep an eye on your planning boards. You have to be meticulous to catch these things. And how you present information is also really important. Make resistance to the data center part of local culture. For example, Tucson has amazing artists who created gorgeous posters that we put everywhere.
There are so many things wrong with these data centers, and you don’t want to overwhelm people. Figure out three or four main things to focus on. They can be diverse things, but simplify the message. Your top line messaging should focus on what’s going to move people in your community and what will move elected officials or the people with the power to stop it.
Also, there are these supposed rules of decorum, but don’t be afraid to make elected officials uncomfortable. We had these meetings where like 900 people would show up. We didn’t control everybody there, and plenty of people were standing up and yelling when they knew they were being lied to. Making them a little uncomfortable can be helpful.
You’re all taking on very powerful corporate forces. What keeps you motivated?
Boehlke: The community resistance on both sides of the aisle is so enormous. This feels like the one thing that is connecting everybody together. I’ve connected with other people I otherwise would’ve never talked to. I learned how to be an activist fighting this data center. I saw how a small group of people can make a difference. If you’re dedicated, even if you’re just everyday people, you can fight and win against something that seems so impossible.
It’s like there’s a big fish, but then there’s a school of little fish that come together to become an even bigger fish. That’s the visualization that I always have. We’re just little fish, but we’re all pulling together to become the bigger fish.
Ziesche: This fight is about whether Tucson will be livable in the future. Will it be too hot here for people to live here? Will people be able to afford their electric bills with these data centers here? It’s also a test of our power. Are we powerful enough to come together as a community and stop this?
Every community has a different story of an extractive industry that came in and took from it and leaves behind nothing but harm. We’re told these data centers are inevitable — that they’re the future, and we’re standing in the way of “progress.” But we know the truth. We know who is going to benefit from them. It’s Big Tech, the surveillance industry, the war industry, the fossil fuel industry. It’s not our community. At the end of the day, this is about whether we have a say over the future of Tucson. And we do not think that future is in data centers.
Pearson: This is a life-or-death struggle for many people. The preciousness of life is being eroded. These AI billionaires and data center investors have decided that there are some communities that ought to be sacrificed on the altar of their progress. But I believe our lives are so much more valuable than the profits of companies that have built an extractive ecosystem across our entire world, where people are suffering to service these data centers and these AI models.
In Memphis, we carry this environmental exploitation in our bodies. Our families live 10 to 13 years less than our counterparts just miles away. Our youth have higher than the national average rates of respiratory illnesses because of asthma. We have experienced grief and loss. I buried both of my grandmothers in their early 60s. They were these giants of character and integrity that I lost because they were raised in the wrong zip code. xAI is perpetuating that same harm.
But the hope I have is rooted in the truth that evil cannot persist forever. These data center projects are not the end-all and be-all. We have seen them fail. I believe that we’re shaping a new future right now with our very lives and work. I am committed to seeing that come to fruition.
▻https://truthout.org/articles/want-to-resist-a-data-center-these-organizers-share-how-they-did-it
#résistance #exemples #data_centers #centres_de_données #AI #IA #intelligence_artificielle #USA #Etats-Unis
