Editor’s note: Native Americans are leading the resistance to data centers, along with the NAACP and hundreds of local communities targeted for establishment of these facilities. Communities are often surprised and steamrolled, in the same way ICE detention centers and administrative centers are sneaked into local neighborhoods.
Below is an edited appeal from Judith LeBlanc, of the Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund
It’s Black Climate Week, a time to recognize that all communities have a stake in protecting Mother Earth, and that Black and Native communities aren’t just surviving the climate crisis, they’re helping to solve it.
Due to environmental racism, Big Tech and AI data centers are overwhelmingly placed in Black and Native communities, particularly in the South, Southwest, and Great Plains. As part of pushing back, our partners at Honor the Earth created a map tracking proposed data centers in Indian Country.1 You can click the image to learn more:
- Data centers use up, evaporate, and poison our water–hundreds of billions of gallons of drinking water. They’re on the rise, and many exist in water-scarce areas. This water is not replaceable.
- Data Centers raise the temperature of rivers and over time will destroy and disrupt the hydroscape. That will endanger fish, vegetation and our sacred places and medicines along the rivers.
- Data centers also rely on fossil fuels and produce toxic air pollution that endangers our health, contributing to racial health disparities. Already, majority-Black communities’ cancer risk from industrial air pollution is more than double that of majority-white communities.
- Powered by dirty fossil fuels that cause climate change, data centers also use a huge amount of energy, driving up already-unaffordable electric bills by nearly 300%.
- Data centers take up massive amounts of land, and are often proposed near Tribal lands.
Despite these costs to our communities and Mother Earth, at least 37 states are still enabling the dangerous rise of data centers,2 handing over billions in tax breaks. We can’t let corporate polluters profit at Mother Earth’s expense, and we won’t let them abuse our health and use our taxpayer dollars to do so.
For example, Georgia will likely lose at least $2.5 billion on tax exemptions for data centers this year. Texas has given Big Tech corporations more than $1 billion in tax breaks, Virginia $1.6 billion, Illinois gave one Microsoft data center more than $38 million in tax exemptions, and Oklahoma requires over $1.2 billion in new power generation, with costs passed to consumers. These handouts…are huge hits to public tax revenue that should instead be used for essential human services.
Memphis Community Against Pollution. Photo: KeShaun Pearson
Communities of Color and Native communities are succeeding in blocking data centers–from Texas to Michigan to Georgia to North Carolina to Virginia and beyond.3
Communities are getting more organized, and in just four months last year, advocates blocked or delayed nearly $100 billion worth of data center projects in the U.S.4
In response to the growing movement against data centers, more state lawmakers are trying to limit tax breaks or other incentives, or introducing policies to pause these projects. Black communities are responding to the threat to the environment.5 Many are winning, but the drive to stop data centers requires a unified movement across Turtle Island.
In order to achieve the scale and pace of change that we need, U.S. governors and other officials need to hear from their constituents who oppose data centers.
The UN just released a report declaring the beginning of a new era of “global water bankruptcy,” because many water systems can no longer be restored to prior levels. Access to clean air and water are human rights for all. But data centers are depriving us of our essential resources and our rights. They’re pillaging our sacred relatives, the water sources that keep us alive.
Hawwih (thank you in Caddo) for taking action.
We will not be bullied by corporate polluters that try to desecrate Mother Earth and our health for profit. We will keep building political power, self-determination, and justice for all.
Judith LeBlanc (Caddo), Executive Director
1 Proposed Data Centers in Indian Country
2 From Mississippi to Maryland, Black Communities Are Taking On Big Tech, and Black communities are leading the resistance against AI data centers
3 Q2 2025 UPDATE: 125% Surge in Data Center Opposition
4 Data center tax breaks are on the chopping block in some states
5 The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South
The NAACP also has recommendations and other resources for groups pushing back against data centers.