Residents of the small enclave east of LA not only killed their city's proposed 250,000 square foot data center, they pushed city council to ban them altogether
We have tried organizing to get our city council to not approve an ill-advised single-family home subdivision or to stop a deal allowing Flock cameras on our town square. Both efforts failed because the Republicans on Council had their minds made up from the go. Would love to know what has moved the needle in other communities, because I feel like if data centers come calling in my county, the even more conservative County Board will roll out a red carpet for them.
Hey Toni, I'm one of the organizers with the group, so I could try to lend a few insights on what worked well for us. It sounds like you have a tough Council in your area. What we've found is that in Monterey Park and in the San Gabriel Valley more largely, different municipalities have varying levels of "we care what our residents think." In Monterey Park, the Council is definitely a bit more savvy, less conservative, and has some interest in listening to residents. That being said, they did have to be pushed quite strongly.
We organized several hundred residents to multiple city council meetings, giving hours and hours of public comment to the Council. The group organized a petition that gathered thousands of signatures, did a teach in for hundreds of residents, connected with several local and national media outlets that covered the story, had a huge social media presence, and did neighborhood canvassing for weeks to get the word out. I don't know how much that matches with your experience in your community, but it was clear that our group had a lot of success because we reached and mobilized a LOT of people week after week for several months.
We do have less sympathetic municipalities around the SGV, and we're taking different tactics with them. We're working to push other organizations like school boards, community improvement groups, civil society groups, water and power organizations, to back data center bans in an effort to put pressure on intransigent Councils. The more they look like the bad guys for not doing what everyone else is doing, threatening their re-election or political career generally, the more pressure is on them to change their minds.
Hi Nicholas - this is VERY helpful. We're a smaller county NW of Chicago - semi-rural, mostly red but there's a good number of progressives here, too. There was some good organizing around the Flock cameras but they didn't go to the press, do canvassing, or leverage other local groups and orgs. This is so good to know for the future.
There is a City Council member who has said, when people show up to speak out against something, "This doesn't sound like a typical resident" or--my favorite--"I don't care what you people think!" to the HUNDREDS who came out to oppose the subdivision that's going to be bad for the water table and decimate some very old oak trees. The County board is worse--and those are the folks who concern me re: welcoming in data centers, if it comes to that. It could be that IL bans them before that, but this is still good know-how for future citizen action. Thanks again!
Hey Brian, thanks so much for covering this! I think I was sitting behind you at the meeting and I didn't even realize :) We've been fighting hard and the group organizing against the proposal is incredibly skillful and strategic. And residents are very well-researched and passionate. I feel that you captured this really well
Hello, and my pleasure. A truly impressive organizing campaign, and will certainly be following along in June! Feel free to drop a line anytime, too. All the best
This feels like the luddites stopping an automated loom factory in their city and calling it a victory. What you need is openai to go bankrupt. That'll cause a wave
That said, I'll certainly celebrate the demise of OpenAI - a real possibility, as it's both hugely capital-intensive and hugely unprofitable - along with, I hope, much of the rest of the "AI" industry.
Remember when municipalities used taxpayer funds to help build sports stadiums despite all the evidence that these were a net cost to the municipality, and did little to improve local employment?
Data centers are similar, but we already know that they are driving up electric power prices and, in the case of the use of local gas-fired power plants, increasing local pollution. In the Southwest, the water shortage argument should be used to block them. I suppose teh only plus compared to a sprawling Amazon fulfillment facility is that they don't increase local traffic and road wear.
However, I read that many of these datacenters are proposed, but not getting built, as part of the money-go-round. A case in point is OpenAI's datacenter in teh UK that was promised to teh government but has not even broken ground. Apparently, this is the case in teh US too - claimed construction that isn't.
Maybe the datacenters will prove as expensive dead weights like the rise of office space in the Dot.com boom that was unfilled after the bust, some of which were converted into residential apartments and condos.
Any technology change - faster, cheaper, smaller computational devices, smaller models, AI operating on edge devices- will make these datacenters the decaying factories of the Rust Belt.
Best to think ahead, rather than follow the mania to "build, baby, build."
I suspect that for many of the people pushing this foolishness, thinking ahead just means planning to retire on their ill-gotten gains before the money-go-round comes to a crashing halt.
I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. It was definitely not a hotbed of radicalism. It probably still isn't. If data centers can be banned there, they can probably be banned in much of the USA (to the extent the USA is still a democracy, not just a thinly disguised plutocracy).
Silicon Valley - not so much the place as the culture - is dominated by "libertarians", which mostly means affluent, self-styled "self-made" men who think of politics as some irritating noise they shouldn't have to pay attention to. Predictably, therefore, they're botching this push for data centers. They're used to getting whatever they want by just throwing money around. Perhaps it will now occur to some of them that it isn't working in this case. Maybe they'll sponsor propagandists to try to turn data centers into a culture-war issue, depicting opposition to data centers as "woke" or some such bullshit. That gambit has proven quite effective for other purposes. However, I suspect it won't work very well in this case, if only because it's too late: too many people have already decided how they feel about "AI" and data centers.
We have tried organizing to get our city council to not approve an ill-advised single-family home subdivision or to stop a deal allowing Flock cameras on our town square. Both efforts failed because the Republicans on Council had their minds made up from the go. Would love to know what has moved the needle in other communities, because I feel like if data centers come calling in my county, the even more conservative County Board will roll out a red carpet for them.
Hey Toni, I'm one of the organizers with the group, so I could try to lend a few insights on what worked well for us. It sounds like you have a tough Council in your area. What we've found is that in Monterey Park and in the San Gabriel Valley more largely, different municipalities have varying levels of "we care what our residents think." In Monterey Park, the Council is definitely a bit more savvy, less conservative, and has some interest in listening to residents. That being said, they did have to be pushed quite strongly.
We organized several hundred residents to multiple city council meetings, giving hours and hours of public comment to the Council. The group organized a petition that gathered thousands of signatures, did a teach in for hundreds of residents, connected with several local and national media outlets that covered the story, had a huge social media presence, and did neighborhood canvassing for weeks to get the word out. I don't know how much that matches with your experience in your community, but it was clear that our group had a lot of success because we reached and mobilized a LOT of people week after week for several months.
We do have less sympathetic municipalities around the SGV, and we're taking different tactics with them. We're working to push other organizations like school boards, community improvement groups, civil society groups, water and power organizations, to back data center bans in an effort to put pressure on intransigent Councils. The more they look like the bad guys for not doing what everyone else is doing, threatening their re-election or political career generally, the more pressure is on them to change their minds.
Does this seem helpful at all?
Hi Nicholas - this is VERY helpful. We're a smaller county NW of Chicago - semi-rural, mostly red but there's a good number of progressives here, too. There was some good organizing around the Flock cameras but they didn't go to the press, do canvassing, or leverage other local groups and orgs. This is so good to know for the future.
There is a City Council member who has said, when people show up to speak out against something, "This doesn't sound like a typical resident" or--my favorite--"I don't care what you people think!" to the HUNDREDS who came out to oppose the subdivision that's going to be bad for the water table and decimate some very old oak trees. The County board is worse--and those are the folks who concern me re: welcoming in data centers, if it comes to that. It could be that IL bans them before that, but this is still good know-how for future citizen action. Thanks again!
Hey Brian, thanks so much for covering this! I think I was sitting behind you at the meeting and I didn't even realize :) We've been fighting hard and the group organizing against the proposal is incredibly skillful and strategic. And residents are very well-researched and passionate. I feel that you captured this really well
Hello, and my pleasure. A truly impressive organizing campaign, and will certainly be following along in June! Feel free to drop a line anytime, too. All the best
This feels like the luddites stopping an automated loom factory in their city and calling it a victory. What you need is openai to go bankrupt. That'll cause a wave
Every little bit helps.
That said, I'll certainly celebrate the demise of OpenAI - a real possibility, as it's both hugely capital-intensive and hugely unprofitable - along with, I hope, much of the rest of the "AI" industry.
Remember when municipalities used taxpayer funds to help build sports stadiums despite all the evidence that these were a net cost to the municipality, and did little to improve local employment?
Data centers are similar, but we already know that they are driving up electric power prices and, in the case of the use of local gas-fired power plants, increasing local pollution. In the Southwest, the water shortage argument should be used to block them. I suppose teh only plus compared to a sprawling Amazon fulfillment facility is that they don't increase local traffic and road wear.
However, I read that many of these datacenters are proposed, but not getting built, as part of the money-go-round. A case in point is OpenAI's datacenter in teh UK that was promised to teh government but has not even broken ground. Apparently, this is the case in teh US too - claimed construction that isn't.
Maybe the datacenters will prove as expensive dead weights like the rise of office space in the Dot.com boom that was unfilled after the bust, some of which were converted into residential apartments and condos.
Any technology change - faster, cheaper, smaller computational devices, smaller models, AI operating on edge devices- will make these datacenters the decaying factories of the Rust Belt.
Best to think ahead, rather than follow the mania to "build, baby, build."
I suspect that for many of the people pushing this foolishness, thinking ahead just means planning to retire on their ill-gotten gains before the money-go-round comes to a crashing halt.
My Earth Day 2026 poem just dropped.
It blends nature, UFOs, cryptids, and something deeper.
🌎 What does Earth Day mean to you?
https://rabbithole360.substack.com/p/celebrating-earth-day-2026-the-strange?r=7omeon&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
More of this, please - lots and lots more.
I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. It was definitely not a hotbed of radicalism. It probably still isn't. If data centers can be banned there, they can probably be banned in much of the USA (to the extent the USA is still a democracy, not just a thinly disguised plutocracy).
Silicon Valley - not so much the place as the culture - is dominated by "libertarians", which mostly means affluent, self-styled "self-made" men who think of politics as some irritating noise they shouldn't have to pay attention to. Predictably, therefore, they're botching this push for data centers. They're used to getting whatever they want by just throwing money around. Perhaps it will now occur to some of them that it isn't working in this case. Maybe they'll sponsor propagandists to try to turn data centers into a culture-war issue, depicting opposition to data centers as "woke" or some such bullshit. That gambit has proven quite effective for other purposes. However, I suspect it won't work very well in this case, if only because it's too late: too many people have already decided how they feel about "AI" and data centers.