John,
Surveillance in Texas is not just about policing. It is becoming permanent infrastructure.
Across the state, cities are being pushed to adopt ALPR systems, AI-driven policing tools, and surveillance platforms that depend on massive data storage, constant processing, and long-term private contracts.
What makes all of this possible — and what is rarely discussed — are data centers.
Data centers are water-intensive, energy-intensive, and largely unregulated at the local level. They are being fast-tracked into Texas communities at the same time we are facing an escalating water crisis: drought, aquifer depletion, and failing infrastructure.
This is not coincidence. It’s political economy.
Surveillance technologies require data centers.
Data centers require water.
And communities are rarely asked to consent to either.
Ground Game Texas organizes against ALPR and mass surveillance because we understand this as a systems issue, not a single policy fight. Surveillance expands quietly, city by city, contract by contract, until it becomes irreversible.
That is why coalition-building is the strategy.
To stop this expansion, we need environmental justice advocates, digital rights organizers, water defenders, labor groups, and local residents organizing together before these decisions are locked in for decades.
To do that work at the scale this moment demands, we are raising $60,000 to hire a full-time organizer dedicated exclusively to this fight.
This organizer will spend every day building cross-movement coalitions, intervening early in local decisions, and preventing communities from being locked into decades-long surveillance and infrastructure contracts without public consent.
These systems are advancing full-time. Our response has to match that reality.
If you’re able, monthly gifts help us staff this work without interruption.
This is about who gets to decide how Texas’s resources — data, water, land, and people — are used.
In solidarity,
Ground Game
P.S. We’re raising $60,000 because these systems are expanding full-time. Resisting them part-time isn’t enough.
Ground Game Texas is a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Paid for by Ground Game Texas. Contributions to Ground Game Texas are not tax deductible.
PO Box 383 Manchaca, TX 78652-9998 | [email protected]
