People Over Machines: The Fight Against Dirty Data Centers

And moving right along.

So we talked in framing this discussion, right, that there's a Gallup poll that shows that 7 in 10 Americans oppose an AI data center in their area, with 48% strongly opposed, and yet these facilities are continuously built in black and brown communities, rural and low-income neighborhoods.

So if the opposition is as broad as the data says it is, then why do you believe that the harms still land in these same communities? And what does this tell us about how decisions are truly being made in accordance to what they say as opposed to what actually happens? Yeah.

I mean, I think that the point that you made earlier was such an important one.

You know, there is the narrative that we know needs to be pushed and the solutions that we know need to happen from the, you know, general public's perspective.

But then you have individuals who are putting corporate greed, they're putting their own lining, their own pockets at the forefront.

as opposed to what they're actually hearing from people.

In Memphis and in South Haven, the community showed up in full force saying, we do not want this data center.

We don't want XAI in Memphis.

We don't want it in South Haven.

And despite that, you had individuals who had been elected to go into office to represent the actual concerns and the needs of the people who live there.

And they were like, you don't know what you want.

We know what you want.

Now, even despite that, people have still continued to say, we don't want it.

And they're like, no, no, no.

But you do.

Trust us.

We know best.

And what we've continued to see is this hoarding of wealth in a way that has allowed for some individuals to believe that they are truly above the law.

And so when we started our case, for example, Elon Musk was a billionaire and is now a trillionaire.

And at the same time, where we're fighting to make sure the community's voice is being heard, we're seeing the US Department of Justice, which is supposed to be the entity that fights on behalf of the everyday person, fights to ensure that our collective rights are protected.

Taking the side of a trillionaire in order to ensure that a data center that is polluting community continues to operate.

And so I think that it's it should not be a surprise to us when we have an administration that has.

really demonstrated that authoritarianism and bullying, quite frankly, as the framework of how they go about making many decisions, that this is now what we're seeing when it comes to data center build outs as well.

And so because that's been going, greenlit by this administration we're seeing companies that have embedded themselves with this administration carry out very similar types of mannerisms because they feel that they're going to be empowered to and supported by doing that but one thing that does give me a lot of hope is that, you know, a lot of these individuals are so out of touch with the everyday person.