Today, advocacy organization MediaJustice releases, The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, the first comprehensive, regional analysis of data centers across the South with original research and case studies from Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. The new report reveals how tech corporations like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, who have spent more than $100 billion on data center construction just this summer, are draining the region economically and environmentally.
“While Big Tech wants the public to believe that the AI boom and rapid data center growth marks progress, our communities are being sold out in the process. Data centers consume the electricity of entire cities, drain billions of gallons of drinking water, and siphon off public resources through subsidies and tax giveaways—all while delivering very few permanent jobs or local benefits. This is a crisis of a lifetime that deserves our immediate attention and organizing.” said Steven Renderos, Executive Director of MediaJustice.
The report grounds today’s AI-fueled data center boom in the South’s longer history of environmental racism, disinvestment, and union busting. It draws connections to “sacrifice zones” like Louisiana’s Cancer Alley and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – placing this new boom in its political and historical context. The report also highlights local resistance and partners leading the fight.
“The South has long been a site of both corporate extraction and fierce political resistance. At a time where Big Tech is rapidly expanding data centers in Black, brown and working class communities that drain natural resources, energy and clean water, organizers across the region are actively rising up, fighting back and halting data center projects from being constructed in their communities.” said Jai Dulani, Senior Research Specialist of MediaJustice.
To learn more about The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South and to hear from local organizers across the South about their organizing efforts to stop data center construction, register to attend the live report launch on September 17.
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MediaJustice builds power to challenge how corporations and governments use media and technology to shape our collective future. We connect movements fighting corporate control, analyze how tech enables harmful policies, and amplify community-led alternatives to surveillance and extraction.
