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'It's an Environmental Issue, It's an Anti-War Issue, They're All Connected Here': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed CODEPINK's Melissa Garriga ([link removed]) about data centers for the June 5, 2026, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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US News: Polls and Protests Show Americans Are Turning on Data Centers

US News & World Report (5/21/26 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: A story in US News & World Report was headlined ([link removed]) “Polls and Protests Show Americans Are Turning on Data Centers." The piece outlined grassroots opposition to the data centers used to power artificial intelligence, noting excessive use of water and energy resources ([link removed]) , and noise and other pollutions that are being shown to lead to health problems ([link removed]) .

But while that critical information about impacts shapes the article, the frame of it gave me pause. “Americans are turning on data centers” suggests that the fast—you might say frantic—pace of rolling out this massive new phenomenon was embraced up until now ([link removed]) , and people are now changing their minds. In reality, people are responding in real time ([link removed]) to something they've never had an opportunity to learn, much less speak, about.

But then, the tell is in the lead: "The data centers are coming! The data centers are coming!" And then the framing that follows: “AI data center construction brings a new wave of NIMBYs.”

Now, the article gives no evidence that people opposing data centers in their communities would be happy with them in someone else's backyard. Maybe they are self-interested and public-minded. Maybe they see their lives as connected with those of others. Maybe they think, if they have to be the canaries in this particular coal mine, they're going to do it, without letting corporate news media tut-tutting distract or deter them.

In the face of an avalanche of billionaire PR ([link removed]) about "inevitability," our guest is among those working to help us see the human beings at the sharp end of what we’re told is a data center boom. Melissa Garriga ([link removed]) is communications and media relations manager at the feminist grassroots organization, CODEPINK ([link removed]) . She joins us now by phone from Mississippi. Welcome to CounterSpin, Melissa Garriga.

Melissa Garriga: Hey, Janine. Thanks so much for having me on today, and this is just a perfect time to be talking about this. I can't wait to get into it with you.
Common Dreams: The Harm Data Centers Cause Isn’t Only Local

Common Dreams (5/1/26 ([link removed]) )

JJ: I want to talk through the piece that you wrote a few weeks back—which I found, as I say, void-filling. I saw it headlined ([link removed]) “The Dark Side of the Data Center Boom,” but I preferred another headline ([link removed]) that I also saw: “The Harm Data Centers Cause Isn't Only Local." And I appreciated it for a number of dots that it connects,

But let's just start where you start, which is that a majority of the new data centers—67%—are being built in rural areas, and three-quarters of those are in Midwestern and Southern towns.

I feel like rural America, for a lot of pundits and media, is kind of a rhetorical device: It's where “real Americans” live. But when those people speak up, the story shifts. It's meaningful that this is where they're starting out, yeah?

MG: Yeah. It's absolutely meaningful. And you first have to realize why this is happening. You have the elected leaders, the governors and whatnot of these states, who are like these pick-me girls for Big Tech industry, right? Because they want to be a part of that billionaire class.

But what they're doing is they're using the vulnerabilities of their communities—the need for economic growth, the lack of job opportunities—and they're using these needs of their communities to say, "Hey, come here. We're going to bring jobs. We're going to provide economic growth and you're going to be a part of this great new tech frontier."

But it's at the actual expense of these communities. Nothing that they're doing, by bringing them to these rural areas, is to benefit these rural areas.
NBC: Elon Musk's makeshift AI power plant generates sound and fury in Mississippi

NBC News (2/26/26 ([link removed]) )

JJ: And folks are not buying it. I think that might be what's surprising people. I've had guests tell me, "Don't sleep on the South." Organizing is happening, and so folks are responding, and it's important.

MG: Yeah. Like here in Mississippi, there was one that was built recently ([link removed]) , and rather quickly, and I think this was before all the negative effects became well-known. But it was the frontline communities there that started saying, "Hey, this is what's happening with these centers. This is what's happening when they're being built here where you live." And so, yeah, it's very much people realizing for themselves; and they're not naive and they're not dumb, and we're not lazy here in the South. We understand what we have to do, and part of that is getting organized as communities. And now you see this big pushback, and it's happening more and more.

JJ: And what we're also seeing is folks saying—and that's why I love the headline—“The Harm Data Centers Cause Isn't Only Local.” Folks in Mississippi, folks in the South and in the Midwest, are not just saying, although they are completely legitimately saying, they don't want these data centers in their backyard, for the harms that they're causing. But they also recognize that there are connections, and this is the thing that your piece lifts up that I've not been seeing elsewhere, and that is the connection between the products and the producers of what's going on in these data centers, and why it has global implication. If you could just talk us through that.
Al Jazeera: DR Congo to establish US-backed paramilitary guard for mines

Al Jazeera (4/27/26 ([link removed]) )

MG: Yeah. So I mean, something that we like to say at CODEPINK is that these data centers are products of war and products for war. And so essentially what that means is that they are used in war, right? There's an infrastructure that provides war surveillance, and for the targeting of where these bombs are going to be dropped in these communities across the globe. And so in that sense, they're products for war.

But they're also products of war: The demand to keep these data centers going, the demand to keep the infrastructure up, is these huge volumes of critical minerals, as well as fossil fuels, and the need for these critical minerals that's driving US warfare on resource-rich regions like in Iran or in Venezuela. And also not always mentioned in this conversation, but absolutely should be, is the US-backed warfare in the Congo ([link removed]) as well.

And so it's a double-edged sword there, because they are needed to make war, and then, the war itself –going into these regions, under the guise of regime change–is needed to get the resources to run these data centers.

JJ: I think the fact that media talk about it as though it were somehow in the ether helps us to forget that, as you say, they require raw materials, including fossil fuels, and people want to separate their fossil fuel conversation from their AI conversation, and you just can't disconnect that, right? That's the connection.

MG: Exactly, exactly. It's an environmental issue, it's an anti-war issue, they're all connected here.

JJ: And folks are recognizing that. And I have to say, I have seen coverage of community pushback. I've seen videos ([link removed]) of folks saying, "This is the sound that I hear every night from the data center." And yet it still is presented as though these are a handful of NIMBYs, as this otherwise strong piece referred to people, as people who don't want it in their backyard.

And that plays into the idea of Southerners and rural people as kind of dumb, and they don't understand their place in the world, and how important this really is. And I guess I just want to destroy that myth, because folks do recognize the connection between what's happening there and what's happening in the world.
WaPo: Amid data center protests, a billionaire and the Trump administration see a foreign plot

Washington Post (5/29/26 ([link removed]) )

MG: And I'm so glad that you're pushing back on that narrative, that all of us here in the South are just these dumb rednecks, if you will. We live and breathe just like everyone else. You don't have to be a genius even to see, though, what these data centers are doing, right? It's noise. They can hear the noise. They can see the pollution. They can feel the impacts of increased energy bills, right? So that whole narrative is just extremely invalid.

And like you said, it's not that they don't want them in their backyards, but they see that this isn't good for the United States in general. It's not good for communities in general, whether it's in a city environment or a rural area. And I think that's what they're trying to say, and I think that's why there's this collective voice across the country. It's not “not in my backyard,” it's “not here, period.”

JJ: And the activism is happening and it's working, right? What can you tell us about what folks are doing and the impact that it's having? Certainly people are not staying silent.

MG: Yeah. One thing I just want to note, too, that's really interesting is how organic this activism is, and that's why it's having the success that it's having. And just recently, Kevin O'Leary, who is the one who has this data center that's the largest one that's supposedly going up in Utah, is trying to paint the activism ([link removed]) as just, like, a foreign influence campaign, right? They're specifically bringing CODEPINK in there, because they love to throw that accusation around ([link removed]) with us, and basically saying that we're influenced by foreign governments, which is absolutely not true, and because of that, we are driving this data center resistance across the country.
CODEPINK's Melissa Garriga

Melissa Garriga: "It's not just local ecosystems that these data centers are affecting, but it's also driving death and destruction across the globe."

But that's absolutely not true as well. We have no connection to this grassroots pushback that's happening. We're just out there trying to provide the narrative, and also trying to explain, which the article is trying to explain, that it's not just our backyards here in the United States. It's not just local ecosystems that these data centers are affecting, but it's also driving death and destruction across the globe.

And so, yeah, all of these local communities that are banding together, they are seeing success. I don't think this is going to be an easy fight, though. I think it's going to take a lot, because just as quick as some of these are getting shut down, others are popping up, right? But I do think that there seems to be just a large—I haven't seen this type of pushback across the country in a while, and it's very inspiring.

JJ: It is inspiring. And I just want to further us on the international aspect of it, the human-to-human, across borders aspect of it seems very important. I know that it's something that CODEPINK, of course, is doing all the time, is saying, “The choices that you are making politically here in the US are connected to what is happening to human beings similarly situated in other countries.” And obviously we can talk about it with fossil fuel extraction, sanctions, all kinds of things, but I do see those international connections being made. And for me, that's super inspiring.

MG: It is. I think this is a general trend, too. The country itself is shifting to more of an anti-war sentiment ([link removed]) these days than perhaps there has been in the past. And so people are making these connections, not just with data centers, but with government spending, and how the Pentagon budget is growing, but their communities are being deprived of resources and safety nets here at home.

And so I think that people can see that, OK, these data centers, they need these minerals, right? And where are we going to get these minerals? Oh, well, we're going to have to go to these other countries and get them. And how are we going to do that? Well, it looks like we're going to invade and bomb these countries, and have to kill these innocent people, in order to gain control of this sovereign nation's resources.

And people are seeing that very easily; everything is very exposed these days. And so I think that's another reason why this pushback is happening the way it is.

JJ: I think so, too.

And I want to ask, a lot of times when you hear the conversation, the idea is, well, we need transparency. We need to know who's doing what and where. And I want to put a pause on transparency as an end in itself, because there are a lot of things that we know that are happening, and we still don't stop, or we don't have the levers to stop. The information that we get, obviously that's point one, but then we have to be able to use it.

And so it brings us back to how this conversation is showing up the way that people can speak. They can show up and say, "We don't want this. " And then the local board ([link removed]) just says, "Yeah, we're doing it anyway." So it's also a conversation about political process, and public participation in decision-making, right?

MG: Right. It's absolutely showing us that the illusion that we have this democracy here in the United States is just that: It's an illusion. And then, of course, we use this whole idea that we have to go protect democracy abroad, when we honestly don't even have it here at home, in the real sense.

So, like I said, there's a lot of contradictions being heightened right now, and yes, the more we know, the more we can push back, and the more organized people are getting, but that doesn't mean that power's just going to concede, either. And so there has to be some systematic changes, of course.

But I think we're getting there. I think our country is getting there, and the more that we unite around these issues and the more that we take a more internationalist approach, I think the quicker we're going to get there, and the more success we're going to have.
Wired: US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows

Wired (5/26/26 ([link removed]) )

JJ: I think that we both probably are already on some lists, but as of this week, we've learned that people who have critical questions about artificial intelligence or about data centers, we're going to go on a list ([link removed]) for opposing them, and we're going to be called "terrorists." And it's part of what we're already saying ([link removed]) , but being unafraid is—we really have to tell folks, we really do have to accept, that some things that you want to say, and that you need to say, are going to get you put on a list. And I understand why that scares people, but here's where we are in 2026. How do you respond to people who think it's just too scary to sign up with you? It's too scary to come out to a protest. What are your thoughts on that?

MG: I do understand that entry points to activism are different for everyone, but I don't want to just sit here and preach like there's nothing scary to be put on a list, because obviously it is. And people have different risk factors, and some people have more privilege than others. Some people can possibly go to jail, and it doesn't have that huge of an impact as someone else.

But I think that there is safety in numbers, and are they going to put all of us on a list? And then, at that point, what does that even mean?

And, yes, it's scary, but I think what's scarier is not saying anything. What's more frightening to me is none of us are going to do anything about it, and then what future does that leave our children? I have two boys who are 19 and 21, and they're entering this adulthood stage of their life, and the idea of getting married and having children and buying a home and just in general thriving in life, that whole idea is almost questionable, like, is that even possible, right?

And so if we don't push back now, if we don't stand up now, OK, I'm on a list. Well, so is my neighbor. So is everybody on my street, right? And if we don't utilize the numbers that we have, to me, the future's more frightening if we just let things go, and if we just let this billionaire class and these tech giants win.
Reuters: Taiwan May exports hit second-highest value by month on strong AI demand

Reuters (6/9/26 ([link removed]) )

JJ: I absolutely agree. I will only ask you, finally, because I'm a media critic, what would you like to see? I've seen a lot of independent, courageous reporting on this. I've seen a lot of less courageous reporting from mainstream media, and I'll just address the idea that a lot of coverage speaks matter-of-factly ([link removed]) about “the growing demand for artificial intelligence,” “the growing demand for AI.” So how are we going to deal with it, and how is the public—and I feel like the frame is already off, but I would ask you, finally, what would you like to see more, or less, in terms of media coverage of this set of issues?

MG: Yeah. I think that there just needs to be a really honest conversation in the media about, is any of this necessary? And I can't remember, I think we spoke about this before, but there's this idea out there that this is happening, and you have to get on board. But who's pushing that idea, right? Where is that coming from? Why is it happening? And then, is it necessary for it to happen?

And I think I can safely argue that it's not necessary. Most of these things that AI is providing, we already had that before. We already had means to do these things before. It's not giving us something new. It's not giving us a new technological edge, right? It's not fulfilling this lack of something that the country didn't have.

And so I think I would love to see more media frame it in that way, instead of “this is happening, it's time to get on board, you don't want to be left behind,” more questioning of “why is this happening, it's not necessary.”

JJ: All right, we're going to end it on that note for now. Melissa Garriga is communications and media relations manager at CODEPINK. Thank you so much, Melissa Garriga, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MG: Of course. Thanks, Janine.


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