WASHINGTON, July 18 — Opponents of the rapid buildout of data centres held 142 protests across 42 states in the United States (US) on Saturday in the first nationwide effort to channel anger at the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure expansion that has ramped up over the past year and roiled local politics.
The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party. She compares growing opposition to data centres to the right-wing populist movement that emerged in 2009 to protest what it saw as excessive taxation and government overreach.
Protesters rallied against what HumansFirst calls the “unaccountable” buildout of data centres and “unacceptable infringement on our liberty.”
In Fredericksburg, Virginia, one young man carried a sign reading, "We thrive on water not data." In Atlanta, a small knot of protesters wielded signs reading, "Georgia never voted for hyperscale AI data centres."
Right Turn Strategies president Chris Barron, who is handling press relations for HumansFirst, said that nationwide and city-specific counts of protesters were not immediately available.
Local organisers told Reuters that attendance was lower than expected in some rural areas and major cities such as Atlanta, Georgia. But HumansFirst praised the efforts of community activists.
"We were thrilled with the turnout," Barron said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in June revealed that opposition to data centres is among the few issues uniting Americans across ideological lines, with just a third of Americans approving of the pace of data centre construction in the US.
Only 14 per cent of respondents would support a data centre being built in their community to support artificial intelligence projects for technology firms such as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI.
"The data centre industry is continuing to work with policymakers, stakeholders, and residents to ensure data centres strengthen, not strain, the areas where they operate — while mitigating any negative impacts to households and businesses," said Data Centre Coalition president Josh Levi, whose organisation is the industry's association and lobbying group.
Red and blue states represented
Although HumansFirst co-founder Amy Kremer compared her current efforts to the Tea Party movement’s early days in 2009, she said the anger against data centres is nonpartisan.
"They just woke up one day and found out they are going to have this monstrosity in their community, and they do not want it," she said, predicting that data centres will be a defining issue in November’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.
Kremer has criticised Republicans for giving Big Tech a "free pass," but she and some organisers also said they do not support policies like moratoriums on data centre approvals, like the one adopted by the Democratic state of New York.
Demands made by organisers from the groups involved include transparency in the development process, protection of resources and environmental health, community benefits such as the creation of well-paying union jobs, and a way to hold developers accountable if they break their promises.
The Republican stronghold of Texas, a hotspot for data centre development, hosted 18 protest events, the most of any state. The battleground state of Georgia had 11 rallies.
Democratic-dominated California had eight, while the swing state of Pennsylvania and the Republican-leaning states of Florida and Indiana each had seven.
A volunteer at the event, Jake Watts, 26, said that Saturday's Atlanta protest, one of a number of similar actions this month, attracted about a dozen participants who travelled from smaller towns in Georgia where the largest data centres are being built.
Left-leaning Ivan DelSol, 54, helped lead a protest in the California desert's Imperial County, where a proposed data centre project could use 984 million litres of water per year from the Colorado River.
"It is dystopian that you would use this much fresh water for AI," he said, later adding that around 50 people attended despite temperatures that soared above 38°C.
Although water is frequently cited as a top public concern, especially in water-stressed regions, the data centre industry says its water use is not as significant as that of other industries.
In Tyler, Texas, first-time activist and self-described "political nomad" Eva Cardona, 31, organised a protest that also drew about a dozen people.
"I have been hearing about unregulated AI, and the rapid growth was alarming me. I wanted to do something more hands-on than just your standard Facebook post," she said.
