Everybody Hates Data Centers, Native Americans 'Honor the Earth' 🌎

- 'Everybody Hates Data Centers.' (Photo).

Anarchists, union activists, Indigenous organizers, and disgruntled Trumpists find themselves side by side in the fight. By Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Truthout, June 5, 2026. Ed.
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Between 4,000 and 5,000 data centers are actively humming in the U.S. right now, draining energy and, in the case of some of the hyperscale ones, consuming as much as 5 million gallons of water per day. Even this does not satisfy the demand cultivated by the tech industry, however:

At least 3,000 more data centers are under construction or planned, prompting a diverse grassroots mobilization against their construction. Indigenous people are resisting continued attempts to exploit their land, air, and water. Rural white folks, some of whom voted for Donald Trump, are now going door to door, outraged about rising electricity costs and water shortages.

Opposition to data centers has put labor unions in motion, with the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the Univ. of Michigan using the slogan “AI is not inevitable,” seeing artificial intelligence as a dystopian force made possible through data centers. These efforts represent the front line in the struggle against attempts by high-tech billionaires to create a dismal world in which they hold all the power and the rest of us serve their interests.

Honor the Earth. “There’s this big techno-feudal battle happening right now. We’re watching an Empire crumble, right?” Krystal Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne anti-data center organizer with the activist group Honor the Earth, told me. “Technology is the last frontier, and whoever has the most advanced generative AI has the power at this moment.”

Native Americans are some of those leading the organizing against data centers, from VA and upstate NY, though MT, the Dakotas, AZ, & OR.

According to Honor the Earth, a national Indigenous sovereignty organization, there are currently at least 106 data centers being proposed on or near Native land...

https://truthout.org/articles/everybody-hates-data-centers/