Latest / It's Open with Ilana Glazer / "More Perfect Union on Toxic Data Centers and the Local Nonpartisan Fight Against Them" with Ilana Glazer

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"More Perfect Union on Toxic Data Centers and the Local Nonpartisan Fight Against Them" with Ilana Glazer · It's Open with Ilana Glazer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: This just in.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's open with Alana Glazer is doing its first journalistic collaboration with More Perfect Union.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: I am so excited today to be working with a journalism organization that I not only admire but rely on to feel sane in this upshide down world, and that is More Perfect Union.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: It was on their coverage of rising electricity bills and that connection to data centers that got me hooked.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then I thought, okay, I'm finally understanding the power not only of journalism in real time, but of more perfect union.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: So join me today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to be talking about data centers and how Americans across party lines are coming together to fight them.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: So come on in, it's open with More Perfect Union.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: We are in late stage capitalism and it's so fucked up with AI.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Everything is so sped up.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: It feels like we don't have time to think about what the fuck is going on.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the news cycle is so, you know, flooding us and flooding our zones, as Project 2025 said they literally were planning to do.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: They're flooding the zone, you know, and the silver lining about capitalism, late-stage capitalism, AI, and data centers coming at us so fucking fast is that the cycle, the design of capitalism, how it destroys communities and dehumanizes us and profits a wealthy few is more visible than ever.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I got hooked on More Perfect Union from their coverage of data centers.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: And for more perfect union's coverage, it's not about data centers.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Data centers is a vehicle for Americans to come together across party lines to agree that they deserve basic human rights and so do their neighbors.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it hasn't been about data centers for more perfect union, it's become about big tech oligarchs versus working class Americans.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is a moment when the tides are changing, when Americans are stopping looking from left to right and starting to look top to bottom.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so let's turn to a clip.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: So this clip is coverage by More Perfect Union of families and communities living just yards from Mark Zuckerberg's massive data center and what that looks like and feels like in their day-to-day lives.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: This is called water pressure in the kitchen.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_09: Wow, and that's just from the water pipe.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: And this is what's in the sediment and the pipes.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: The light pollution is walk around the house.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The light pollution is so frightening.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_09: The area around XAI leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_08: You can't hardly breathe.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_08: Easter and her husband have also developed COPD.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_08: What does it feel like?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_08: Feel like you're fixing to die.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: This facility is not just a death center, it is a mass megabane gas power.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_06: The impact has been immediate and undeniable.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_06: Relentless industrial noise.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: Town hall filled with people.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like heartening to see people at the town hall, but it's because they're being immediately uh pummeled by this onslaught of data centers.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: It definitely gives me this feeling of claustrophobia and like it's like closing in on us and me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I also, I also really get this sense that this might start in poorer rural areas, but it's coming for everybody.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's coming for middle class suburbs, it's coming for upper middle class suburbs.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: And even if it doesn't come in such close proximity, it's gonna affect the water.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: It already is.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: That is really chilling, really fucking chilling.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I found out in my prep with More Perfect Union that 38% of Americans live within five miles of a data center today.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: You and me, right now, 38% of us live within five miles of a data center.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we are getting sick.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: We, the collective Americans, it's also making me think of the documentary Um the Social The Social Dilemma, where everybody realized, oh, these tech billionaires don't let their children have phones.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: They're not letting their children on social media.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: So they're not getting themselves near, they're not living your data centers, the Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, whoever the fuck else from Google, Sam Altman.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: They're not living near data centers.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're not living with the hum.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: They're not living with the lights blaring into their windows at two in the fucking morning.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: And we cannot wait until we get sick to fight back.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: We have to understand what's going on.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: This is like, this is the challenging part of being in the world.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is the challenging part of being an adult, but we can't wait.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: We have to be able to look at the reality, share the reality together, confront the reality together, and act.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, as we record this, uh, I just found out that parents in New York City temporarily delayed an AI school.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm starting to organize within my community about fighting back against AI in schools.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: Why do kids have iPads in schools?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Why do they have Google Chromebooks?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have Google Chromebooks in school.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: This is all manufactured.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's manufactured class divide.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's also manufactured saying you can raise up in the class hierarchy if you have tech.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: There are no solutions coming from tech.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: They said that they were gonna cure cancer.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not seeing, I'm seeing cancer caused by data centers from this coverage.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: I am not seeing cancer cured.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is no bueno.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: This is not where the solutions are.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: So what I'm looking for is is um examples and blueprints of how communities have come together to fight back.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been finding these examples on More Perfect Union, like this next clip.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_07: We show up here today because we're coming.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_07: And we have an expectation of the people.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: My six years on the council, I've never seen all the rooms filled with a max with people waiting in the lobby.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm overjoyed by the amount of community support that came out for this.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_07: In a world where we are constantly being divided, everyone showed up tonight with a common goal and we won.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've been like hoping that something would bring us together, and it looks like data centers are.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_08: Shouldn't you try to return?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_08: We, the good people of St.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_08: Charles, Missouri, will be waiting.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, you will!
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: I needed that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: I needed that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that clip saying I it's so ironic.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: Data centers brought us together.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: We've been looking for a common cause.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Data centers actually can be the common cause.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, you see all different kinds of people across racial lines, white people, black people.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it really brings up for me the white working class being tricked again and again, generation after generation, in this country by the construct of race, the manufactured idea of race.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: If you say that you're white and play within the rules of what whiteness means and harm others, harm black people, harm brown people, harm women, even within white uh white social structures.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: If you play this game, you're gonna be white.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna be white and rich.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe data centers are the fucking thing that make the white working class see that this is all a sham.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: This is all a sham to enrich a few people at the top.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: That is so hopeful.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my God.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: And also, like, you know, you think I I think about um community organizing, there's a weight to it and a heft.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: But when I see those rooms filled to the max, I'm like, this is a happening.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like that's like lingo from the fucking 60s.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm like, this is a happening, this is what's happening in this town.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Growing up, I remember feeling like, oh, I can't wait to get to New York City.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: Things are happening there.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: But when people come together, it's a happening.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: And also that clip, like you can feel the power of the people.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: When people are united for a common cause, they can get things done.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: This this makes no damn sense.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: Data centers make no damn sense.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: Again, what is the product?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Chat bots.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: People use it for in in my industry for writing, bouncing ideas off of.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's um it's no bueno, man.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for therapy, it's not for writing.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: This is nothing.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's you're being fooled if you think there's something for you on the other side of Chat GPT.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: What's what the thing that is genuinely uh waiting for us on the other side of AI and data centers is the collective, is the United States coming together against the our legacy of the genocidal framework of racism and class divide.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: That is what is waiting for us on the other side of AI and data centers.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a clip that relates to me just saying, Sam Altman, Zuck, and Elon Musk, they're not living near their own data centers.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And we're gonna check it out right now.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody really wants a data center in their backyard.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't want a data center in my backyard.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you do get a lot of pushback and you need buy-in from the community because you have to get permits to do that work.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you have government officials that they are elected by the community.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: They certainly want to make their constituents happy.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so you in turn have to make their constituents happy so that you can still get your permit and you can still operate there.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, data centers, once they are operational, don't bring a lot of jobs.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: They do on the construction side, but you're not really getting a ton of that community benefit from having a data center really truly in your backyard.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I love about More Perfect Union.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: I I just I have not seen coverage like this.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: The lawyer for Microsoft says, I don't want a data center in my backyard.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: Girl, and and I saw this when it came out.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I just have to say, just follow them, like and subscribe and follow because it's building this database of knowledge.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: This is not the same as short form content burning your fucking brain.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you say, What did I do today?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Or you go to do something, forget what you did in the middle of it, and it's like, I wonder why I've forgotten.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I say to myself, Oh, because I've taken so much short form content in that's nonsense, unrelated, and you know, disparate.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: But more perfect unions work, I'm grateful for it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: I feel armed.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I have knowledge that's actually helping me have maintain and grow my self-knowledge because my ethics, that's wrong, the clip that I just saw.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's fucking wrong.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this idea of like the politeness of um corporate.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: I want to say racism, but like what I really mean is anti-humanity, anti-working people.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a politeness to it, and this woman's giving this presentation and she's doing her job and she's salaried and she's trying to be human by being like, I don't want it in my backyard.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like, this is so inhuman.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: This is just wrong.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: And you're talking about loopholes and how to convince people, buy-in, but it is so egregious that there is no product, no jobs, no profit waiting.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: What is the trade-off?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And per more perfect unions coverage, an Ohio resident who lost their job to AI said, we're draining our reservoir so a chatbot can write a poem.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's what this is.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: It it's it's it's absurd.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: It like would be funny if it weren't so immediately deadly, and if it weren't so obviously and clearly tied to our country's origins, our country's legacy of stealing land and stealing labor through torture.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just it's just unbelievable, but it's so related and it's like so obvious and transparent.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: But again, people are coming together and seeing eye to eye with their neighbors to fight this evil.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna prove it to you.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_04: Well, if you needed proof that people are fed up with AI, I've got a one-two punch for you.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: Georgia voters just flipped two public service commission seats.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they didn't just flip it, they swept with Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard winning with over 60% of the vote in Georgia.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: This is a referendum on skyrocketing electricity costs and unfettered data center expansion.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: The Public Service Commission is a body of five electeds who regulate and set the rates that utilities like investor-owned Georgia Power can charge customers.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_04: The Republican incumbents approved six rate increases since 2023, increasing electricity bills by about$500 per year for the average household.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: And while Georgia Powers 2.8 million customers are scraping by, the company made about$2.5 billion in profit in 2024.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: Georgia is also the center of big tech's land grab, with 145 data centers in the Atlanta area alone and 78 more planned in construction.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: Atlanta is now leading the country.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: Georgia households get rate hikes while AI companies receive$163 million in tax breaks every year since 2022.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_04: This Microsoft lawyer said the quiet part out loud.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody really wants a data center in their backyard.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I don't want a data center in my backyard.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_04: Voters just proved her right.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_04: Not just in Georgia, but also in Virginia, a state that houses a third of the world's data centers, where data centers consume nearly 40% of the state's total electricity.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: In the district that voted for Trump, Virginians elected John McAuliffe to the state house, who ran specifically against data center expansion.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_09: Do you want more of these in your backyard?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_09: I'm John McAuliffe, candidate for delegate, and I sponsored this ad because I'm tired of losing family farms to data centers.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: Voters have rejected greedy tech companies and the private utilities doing their bidding and built momentum to hold utilities and legislators accountable.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: Tech giants, be warned.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you know what I'm loving about More Perfect Union is their nonpartisan nature.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: I have for 10 years organized around electing Democrats as progressive as I could fucking find, but I'm at a point at which I'm feeling disillusioned by this structure.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: This establishment, this company called the Democrats because it's still corporate backed.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And what I'm seeing through more perfect unions coverage is that Democrats at the local level are take are listening and being responsive to this anti-data center platform that is, I mean, look at those swings in Georgia.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: Dozens of points, dozens of points.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um Dems at the national level are slow, more in the establishment.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm thinking of my own senators, Chuck Schumer, who's literally 80 in his 80s, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who's voted uh is is just um a corporate backed Democrat.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: These people are slow to anti-data centers.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: But these national democrats, they're uh they're removed, you know, they stay removed.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: But at the local level, this could be the thing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: This could be the thing that makes the Democratic Party uh the party for the working people.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: This was the first time a Democrat won in this district in Georgia in 20 years.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: A district that in 2024 was plus 47 Republican, and then in this election became plus three Dem.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's incredible.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And if Democrats do not listen and respond to anti-data center, it is becoming evident that people will vote them out.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: So check this.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: In Missouri, in a small town, they voted out half of their city council for approving a six billion dollar data center.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is something that I pray that Democrats at whatever level will start to understand as we head to the midterm elections.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is urgent.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: We are racing against the clock here.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just becoming increasingly disillusioned with this two-party system.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: And rather than saying, fuck it all, I'm actually seeing by more perfect unions coverage that there is a blueprint, there's a framework for how to move forward.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: This is more about working people, working Americans coming together to fight for our basic needs met.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my God.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: There there's this swell.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's um it's it's intense in this time of anti-humanity, such pointed, painful anti-humanity, such visible.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, please, this country is born on multiple genocidal frameworks working together to confuse people out of being human, you know?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's the particular visibility of anti-humanity in this time that is making it um, that is amplifying what it means to be human and it means to feel in your human body and to feel for other human beings and what they're feeling in their human bodies to be connected by what it feels like, you know, when someone's like your heart or your mind, you you actually feel it.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: My heart swells from that clip.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it is so important to celebrate wins and to recognize what winning looks like and feels like, and it's kind of everything.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: The moment that guy says, they canceled it, they canceled it, man, that feels like those stories.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: There is a reason, even though so much of TV and film is propaganda.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: No, there is a reason that we tell stories.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: There is a reason that it's important to have those moments of victory.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: They unite us, they remind us what it feels like to have your heart swell, to have your shoulders relax and open and to feel safer and have peace.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Man, that felt good.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, that clip felt good.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Have you seen that anywhere else?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: This is this is what is happening right now.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is truly, it's a blank slate.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's ours for the taking.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: The Democratic Party is working peoples for the taking, but we'll fucking see.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see what they do this year and in the midterms.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it actually doesn't matter to the movement of the working people.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: As you saw in that clip, you can't, you cannot stop the power of the people.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: That that will win.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: That will win in the end.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: I know it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: I fucking know it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is uh this has been such a fun first partnership with More Perfect Union.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: The thing about More Perfect Union, once you know about it, you can't not know about it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: Check them out.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, More Perfect Union, for collaborating with me, but also for your journalism.
• 21:24
  unknown: Ha ha!
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Court Fuller, for fully partnering on this episode with us.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, this has been so much fun.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: And also, uh, you know, confronting reality together actually lightens the load.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Zach Benamotz, for editing this episode.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Ramo Ventura, for these gorgeous graphics.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And um, thank you to David Rooklin for creatively producing this.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I just want to thank the people who made this episode look and sound so good.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, from the physical production side is Kevin Deming, Lexa Krebs, and Nicole Maupin from uh Lights, Camera, and Sound.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it for me.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: See you next time.