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IS DATA CENTER RESISTANCE A NEW VEHICLE FOR MULTIRACIAL DEMOCRACY?  
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Chandra Russo and Shawna McCown
September 9, 2026
Convergence
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_ Anti-data center sentiment, from Kentucky to Michigan, is proving
to be an effective way to overcome racial divisions and carve out new
winning coalitions. _

, Featured image by Jared Rodriguez.

 

When it comes to data centers, Americans are increasingly polling
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a Dr. Seuss book. We would not like them here or there. We would not
like them anywhere.

Across partisan lines, politicians have gotten the message. Sure,
Trump has called those who oppose data centers “backwards and poor
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Yet many other Republicans are warning that not taking a stronger
stance
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against data centers will cost them the midterms
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Meanwhile, leading voices
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suggest that opposing data center construction could be _the_ issue
that can salvage the Democratic party
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This is people power at its finest. By getting in the way of billions
of dollars’ [[link removed]] worth of data center
construction, communities are demanding democracy
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from a political system that has long felt out of touch and
unresponsive.

These grassroots efforts could be nurtured into something politically
transformative that lasts long past this November–an oppositional
force in the face of democratic backsliding. Doing so will require
harnessing the resistance fomenting in predominantly white
communities, particularly in conservative strongholds, such as rural
communities and the US South, a region that will likely determine the
political future
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of the nation.

As is often the case in fights for multiracial democracy, Black
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Indigenous
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and communities of color
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have been at the forefront of the data center opposition. Yet a
diverse and often unlikely swathe of Americans have come together to
keep data centers out. The tactics themselves lean conventional–with
residents relying on petition drives
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and swarming municipal zoning meetings
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to force moratoriums. What is highly unconventional is the sheer level
of shared outrage
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as well as the coalitions being forged.

If left unaddressed, the data center resistance movement remains
vulnerable to the powerful forces mobilizing against it. And we would
lose a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring a critical mass of
white people into a multiracial movement of the many. 

At the border of Mississippi and Tennessee, historically Black
neighborhoods in Memphis have joined forces with majority white
communities
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in South Haven, MS to fight the infrastructure required for Elon
Musk’s AI. In swing states like Michigan
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we see “Stop the Steal” activists working alongside the Democratic
Socialists of America. Meanwhile, across the hundreds of communities
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standing up against data centers, it is low-income people, those who
have increasingly withdrawn from traditional political activities
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are leading the charge
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At the same time, history teaches us that there is nothing inherent_
_to the data center resistance that ensures it will remain a
democratic force, capable of placing a check on the outsized power of
the few and distributing such power instead across diverse majorities.
Plenty of important efforts in this vein–from workers’ struggles
to tenant organizing–have been thwarted when elites find ways to
stoke internal factionalism, particularly by race-baiting white
participants. 

Turning vulnerability into oppurtunity 

Extreme Right idealogues and tech investors are sowing racist
narratives that the Chinese are behind
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US data center opposition. Politicians that have made the regulation
of data centers central to their campaigns–such as Abdul El-Sayed
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in Michigan and Justin Pearson
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in Tennessee–have faced Islamophobic
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and anti-Black attacks
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Other times, communities are pitted against each other. Last year,
when a largely white community defeated Big Tech’s plan for a new
data center in their area in the state of Georgia, the data center
plan was moved to a Black community in South Carolina
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instead.

If left unaddressed, the data center resistance movement remains
vulnerable to the powerful forces mobilizing against it. And we would
lose a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring a critical mass of
white people into a multiracial movement of the many. 

But there are ways to hedge against these risks. For several years
now, we, the authors, have been involved in efforts to bring more
white people into multiracial struggles for real material change, one
of us as a frontline participant, the other as a researcher. We have
found a promising path forward: confronting the conditions of
precarity created by the billionaire class and political elites and
doing so by naming their reliance on racism.

Take, for example, Kentucky People’s Union (KPU), which has been at
the helm of a housing justice campaign in Ashland, KY. Through this
work, participants learn to build grassroots political power by
knocking on doors, collecting signatures, showing up to offer
testimony at various government bodies, and even running their own
people for office. KPU also studies the history of how white racism
has destroyed alliances between those who would otherwise hold common
cause and shares this history with participants.

If we use this opportunity to talk about the political uses of racism,
we can invite more white people living under conditions of increasing
precarity into a multiracial movement that serves majorities.

Ashland is an opportune place for such organizing. Once the home of a
major steel plant
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proud union tradition, Ashland
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and the surrounding region have been economically and environmentally
decimated by the coal industry
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alongside state abandonment begun in the 1970s, This, coupled with a
decades-long attack on organized labor has left Ashland with few if
any progressive groups and organizations. Communities like this across
much of rural America and the US South have long been written off,
particularly by Democrats, dismissed as part of Hillary Clinton’s
proverbial “basket of deplorables.” Like people living under
increasing precarity everywhere, those in this region are certainly
vulnerable to capture by extremist right forces. But most are likely
to remain disengaged from politics altogether
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KPU invites poor and working people in this region back into the
political process_. _In so doing, they draw on_ _a long tradition of
Appalachians who have fought back
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against the powerful, building working people’s power across racial
lines. And right now, that organizing is being channeled into a heated
fight against a new data center.

In May 2026, people in Ashland and its surrounding area learned that
the company TeraWulf’s hyperscale data center is in the works to
become their new neighbor. One of the largest such facilities proposed
to date, TeraWulf’s supercomputing facility would require one
gigawatt of electricity per year, what would otherwise power 800,000
homes
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on an already overburdened grid. Meanwhile TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager, a
billionaire from NYC, builds restaurants adorned with crystal
chandeliers serving $100 meals
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Prager does not need more wealth; this region sorely does.

Resistance to the TeraWulf data center is creating two interwoven
opportunities. The first is to continue to build the infrastructure
for democratic engagement in a poor, rural region of the U.S. south
where it is sorely lacking. The second is to combat race-baiting and
xenophobia head on. Indeed, TeraWulf is motivating poor and working
people who have never attended a local council meeting, much less a
political rally, to speak out against the extractive industries that
have long used this region as a sacrifice zone. 

Inviting people in by telling the truth

While the resistance in Ashland has been organic, not led by any
particular organization local or otherwise, it offers the perfect
opportunity to help those in a predominantly white region get really
clear about who is to blame for their suffering. KPU is joining this
fight, and other local organizers, particularly white ones, can also
get ahead of those who would cynically deploy racist tropes to keep
working people divided and weak. That means being crystal clear: it is
not immigrants that are taking jobs; it is billionaires, automation
and AI. The racialized poor are not ruining the local tax-base; that
destruction is in the hands of large corporations and their polluting
industries. 

Data center resistance is winning many of its immediate fights. But it
can accomplish something bigger. If we use this opportunity to talk
about the political uses of racism, we can invite more white people
living under conditions of increasing precarity into a multiracial
movement that serves majorities. Imagine a new slate of local groups
demanding poor and working people of all races have a voice in the
decisions that impact their lives. This is not a radical concept; it
is the practice of multiracial democracy.

 

_Chandra Russo is a sociologist at Colgate University, a member of the
Scholar Strategy network and the author of __White Flank: Organizing
White People for Racial Justice_
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organizes for racial and economic justice in a rural, predominantly
white community._

_Shawna McCown is an educator, musician, and community leader,
organizer, and activist._

 

_Convergence Magazine a magazine for radical insights – helping
people who animate movements for social, economic, & environmental
justice understand the balance of power and asking crucial strategic
questions about what we need to do today to make the impossible
possible tomorrow._

 

 

* Data Centers
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* AI
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* Racism
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