“We’re concerned about what’s happening with these large data centers and the amount of electricity that’s going to be required,” said Luz Velez, a member of PUSH Buffalo, speaking out about plans to build a 2.2 million-square-foot, hyperscale data center in New York’s Genesee County. “We’ve got to stop thinking like this. We need to know that large corporations need to pick up their fair share!”
Velez was one of the PUSH Buffalo members and allies who rallied at 250 Delaware Street in downtown Buffalo on August 11 to protest the rapid expansion of data centers in New York State and nationwide.
While New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed a statewide moratorium on data center development, it is unclear what effect her executive order will have on projects already underway, including the 2.2 million-square-foot Stream Data Centers project in Genesee County. The project’s developers have already asked for state and $1.46 billion in state and local tax breaks from local officials.
“Working families are being asked to pay for infrastructure that primarily companies worth billions of dollars,” said Velez “Who’s that money going into? Whose pocket? It’s not coming into mine.”
The Stream Data Centers project is also opposed by members of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, which has filed a lawsuit with the Sierra Club to stop construction. Grandell “Bird” Logan, a member of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, also spoke at the rally.
“This data center would be the closest project, there on the Stamp site, to my nation’s territory, and this would stand to cause noise pollution, heat, light, you name it – all sorts of things that would cause irreparable harm to a pristine environment,” said Logan. “It’s the latest example of a system that’s designed to exploit us – both Indigenous peoples and anybody here who really remains in the 99 percent.”
The protest was part of a nationwide wave of actions called by Make the Road, Food & Water Watch, People’s Action Institute’s United Ratepayers campaign and other allies, asking on communities to “Dump Big Tech.” The campaign attention to the connections between data center construction projects, which as in New York State are often accompanied by requests for massive government subsidies and tax breaks, and facilitate the use of facial recognition and other AI technologies developed by Palantir, OpenAI and Google by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Their data centers steal our work, our natural world, and our most basic freedoms, while AI is used to monitor every facet of our lives,” said New York State Assemblymember Adam Bojak, who spoke at the Buffalo rally. “And these wealthy few have the audacity to say our Black, brown, and immigrant neighbors took jobs and resources instead.“