When a Southern California city council proposed building a giant datacenter the size of four football fields last December, five residents vowed to stop it.
Through a frantic word-of-mouth campaign, the small group raised awareness of the proposed facility in Monterey Park, a small town east of Los Angeles known as the country’s first suburban Chinatown.
No Data Center Monterey Park organizers – working closely with the grassroots racial justice group San Gabriel Valley (SGV) Progressive Action – held a training and rally that drew hundreds of participants, knocking on doors and distributing leaflets on busy streets.
He emphasized how the computer system facility would put a strain on the power grid, increase energy rates and create noise pollution. A petition Nearly 5,000 signatures were soon collected. All materials were shared in English, Chinese and Spanish – a concerted effort to reach Monterey Park’s diverse population, which is two-thirds Asian and one-quarter Hispanic.
In just six weeks, the community won. City leaders issued a 45-day moratorium on datacenter construction and pledged to explore a permanent ban.
“It’s like the third act of an Oscar-winning movie,” said Steven Kung, co-founder of No Data Center Monterey Park.
In the past year, a domestic revolt against datacenters has united a fragmented nation, activating local board meetings in farm towns and middle-class suburbs from coast to coast. Local communities delayed or canceled Projects worth $98bn From late March 2025 to June 2025, according to research from the group Data Center Watch, which has been tracking the sites’ protests through 2023. More than 50 activist groups in 17 states targeted 30 projects during that time period, stopping two-thirds of them.
The movement against these facilities has also united oddballs, bringing together NIMBYs and environmentalists in Virginia, “Stop the Steal” activists in Michigan, and organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America.
“There is no safe place for the datacenter,” said Mikel Villa, principal analyst at Data Center Watch, a research project run by AI security company 10A Labs. “Protests are happening in very different communities.”
Bipartisan dislike of datacenters
Datacenters have exploded in states with abundant land, cheap power and generous tax breaks. Although these features power everything from streaming services to artificial intelligence, which act as an engine for our digital lives, few people want sites that drain huge amounts of water and energy, driving up energy costs. A November Morning Consult Poll found that a majority of voters support banning datacenter construction near where they live and say “AI datacenters” are partly responsible for rising electricity prices.
Willa said there’s a nail in it media coverage From national outletProtests, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, helped turn local campaigns against datacenters into a movement. “The proliferation of hubs has become a hot topic nationally, reinforcing local dynamics,” Villa said.
In Indiana, a datacenter hub More than 70 featuresLocal communities are fighting another 50 projects and have halted at least a dozen in the past year, according to data from Citizens Action Coalition, an Indianapolis-based consumer and environmental advocacy nonprofit.
“It’s like an insurrection in the heartland,” said Bryce Gustafson, who works with the Citizens Action Coalition. “There is an incredible amount of opposition, bipartisan and non-partisan, against these datacenters.”
He said the datacenter rebellion in Republican stronghold Indiana was based on a strong backlash against solar projects on agricultural land in recent years, which many residents felt threatened the state’s rural character. The same concerns over land privatization and technological overreach spilled over into the fight against datacenters, as conservatives and environmentalists joined forces to hold town halls, conduct promotional trainings, and file lawsuits to block development.
“For many Hoosiers, datacenters have become a physical expression of their distrust of big tech, the elected officials who embrace them, and the system that allows it all to happen,” Gustafson said.
As the midterms approach, local battles against AI infrastructure are beginning to change the situation at the state and federal level. In Virginia – the datacenter capital of the world with more than 600 facilities – Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned reduce utility bills By ensuring that AI companies are paying their “fair share” of electricity costs rather than passing them on to consumers. Progressive lawmakers Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib have publicly endorsed calls for A datacenter moratorium. GOP leaders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, have also introduced bills to regulate AI.
The fate of datacenters is in the hands of the community
In Monterey Park, concerns over the proposed datacenter are primarily about its economic, environmental, and public health impact. facility will provide employment 14 on-site diesel generatorswhich the researchers said produced “ambient air pollutants”, such as nitrogen oxides, which are linked to many respiratory diseases, including asthma and lung cancer.
Organizer Hrag Balian said No to Data Centers Monterey Park took inspiration from organizing in other communities, including protests in Virginia and Pennsylvania, that have halted projects. “None of us had any experience doing this, so seeing patterns and similarities has been really helpful.”
Kung said the main tenet of the group’s organizing strategy was to build coalitions with various community organizations in the Greater San Gabriel Valley area, such as SGV Progressive Action, the Asian Youth Center, and the Montebello Teachers Association. All of these community groups organized their own members to attend and testify at the January City Council meeting. “It’s a decentralized movement,” Kung said.
Andrew Yip, a community organizer with SGV Progressive Action who helped create flyers and organize rallies, said the campaign was successful because residents were able to put aside their differences and rally around a single cause: stopping a development that would impact their livelihoods.
“This is about community members stepping up to take care of each other,” Yip said.
For Monterey Park organizers, the fight is far from over. Rather than kill the proposed facility themselves, City Council members are considering putting the decision before voters on the November ballot. Kung said the move would put the onus on residents to develop a “long, long awareness campaign” about the datacenter for the remainder of the year. In the meantime, organizers have continued to engage new neighbors, collect signatures for petitions and attend council meetings.
“We won, but there is still a lot of work to do,” Kung said.
