It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Mexico’s government said it will compensate Vulcan Materials less than 1% of the $1.7 billion compensation the US quarrying firm sought in international arbitration over the closure of its Mexican mining operations.
Vulcan launched arbitration, through its Mexican unit Calizas Industriales del Carmen, in 2018 under the North American Free Trade Agreement after authorities shuttered its limestone extraction operations in Quintana Roo state.
Mexico’s Economy Ministry said on Monday the arbitration tribunal dismissed almost all of Vulcan’s claims, upholding only one related to the January 2018 closure of a single site.
A government source told Reuters the amount would total around $15 million, of the more than $1.7 billion sought by the US company.
Vulcan said on Monday the tribunal found Mexico had violated NAFTA in several respects, but called the financial compensation awarded “insignificant,” without disclosing the amount.
Vulcan claimed the case stemmed from Mexico disregarding an agreement meant to free part of its aggregate reserves and ordering “arbitrary closure” of its extraction operations.
Former Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, had accused Vulcan of causing severe environmental damage, including destruction of cenotes and contamination of underground rivers, by extracting limestone below the water table for decades. Vulcan accused the Mexican government of illegally expropriating its assets.
The affected land was subsequently declared an environmental protection zone.
(By Ana Isabel Martinez)
Friday, July 31, 2026
The Real Story Behind Immigration, Work, and Power
Why people migrate, who profits from division, and how working people can build power together
Most immigration debates focus on the border. But the real story starts much earlier — with trade deals, war, inequality, climate breakdown, corporate globalization, and political systems that force people from their homes while concentrating wealth and power in fewer hands.
This educational resource explores why migration happens, how immigrant labor is exploited while immigrants are scapegoated for problems they didn’t create, and how systems like ICE and programs like 287(g) expand fear, surveillance, and repression across entire communities.
It also examines why division between immigrant and non-immigrant workers benefits the powerful, how solidarity can improve life for all working people, and what organizing for labor rights, community defense, economic democracy, and human dignity could look like in practice.
Introduction: The Question We’re Not Supposed to Ask
When immigration comes up in politics or the news, the conversation usually starts at the border. Who crossed? How many? Legal or illegal? Who gets deported? Who gets detained?
Today, many people are hearing about immigration through stories of workplace raids, deportations, ICE operations, and local police departments entering agreements with federal immigration authorities through programs known as 287(g).
In communities across the country, these agreements allow local law enforcement to take on immigration enforcement functions that were once primarily federal responsibilities.
Supporters say these programs improve public safety. Critics argue they undermine trust, make communities less safe, and pull local governments deeper into systems of detention and deportation.
Whatever someone’s opinion on immigration may be, these policies raise a bigger question: Why are so many people migrating?
If we only look at what happens after someone reaches the border, we’re starting the story too late.
So why are people leaving their homes in the first place?
Because migration doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Most people don’t wake up one morning and casually decide to leave behind their language, their family, their community, and everything familiar to travel thousands of miles into uncertainty.
People migrate because something pushed them. And because something else pulled them.
To understand immigration, we have to look upstream. That means looking at trade policy, war, climate change, corporate power, labor markets, and political decisions made over decades. It means understanding how the global economy works — and who benefits from it.
And if we do that honestly, something becomes clear very quickly: The same system hurting immigrants is hurting working-class people almost everywhere.
That’s why immigration isn’t just about immigrants. It’s about work. Housing. Healthcare. Democracy. Wages. Fear. Power. And ultimately, it’s about whether ordinary people will be divided against each other — or organized together.
Migration Is Usually Forced — Even When It’s Called “Voluntary”
There’s a phrase often used by economists and politicians: “Economic migrants.” It sounds neutral. Technical. Like migration is just a lifestyle choice.
But what does “economic migrant” really mean?
Usually, it means someone can no longer survive where they are.
A farmer whose family had grown corn for generations, only to discover they could no longer compete against heavily subsidized imports selling for less than the cost of production. A worker whose town’s public utility was privatized, leading to layoffs, rising prices, and fewer stable jobs. A family trapped between rising debt, stagnant wages, and cuts to public services, where working full time no longer covers basic necessities. A rural community displaced when a mining project contaminated local water supplies, bought up surrounding land, or transformed farmland into an industrial extraction zone. A village facing years of drought where crops repeatedly fail and families can no longer count on harvests to survive.
These aren’t abstract economic trends. They’re the kinds of stories that often appear in local newspapers, labor reports, environmental investigations, and community meetings.
When enough of these stories happen at once, migration becomes less a choice and more a survival strategy.
Take trade agreements like NAFTA. When NAFTA took effect in the 1990s, heavily subsidized U.S. corn entered Mexico at prices small farmers couldn’t compete with. Millions of rural livelihoods were devastated. Entire communities were economically shattered.
At the same time, factories along the border expanded using low-wage labor to produce goods for U.S. corporations.
This is important: The system didn’t stop migration. It redirected it to its own benefit. People displaced from stable livelihoods became part of a labor force that corporations could exploit across borders.
And this pattern repeats all over the world. Global South countries are often pressured into debt arrangements, austerity programs, privatization, and export-oriented economies that enrich multinational corporations while weakening local stability.
Trade and debt policies aren’t the only forces that shape migration. Military intervention and foreign policy often play a role as well.
Consider Guatemala. In 1954, a democratically elected government pursuing land reforms that threatened powerful corporate interests was overthrown with support from the United States. The decades of instability, repression, and violence that followed helped create conditions that contributed to migration for generations.
The point is not that every migrant story traces back to a single event. It’s that migration often emerges from long histories of political and economic decisions made far from the communities most affected by them.
Then, when people migrate because survival at home becomes impossible, they are blamed for the consequences of the very system that displaced them.
As Eduardo Galeano once wrote: “People were imprisoned by poverty and arrived imprisoned by borders.”
The Border Is Not Just a Line — It’s a Labor System
Listen to enough immigrant stories and a pattern emerges.
A construction worker leaves his hometown because years of economic hardship made it impossible to support his children. A mother takes agricultural work because it’s the only job available, despite long hours and dangerous conditions. A teenager grows up fearing that a routine traffic stop could separate their family.
These stories are different. But they share something in common: People are trying to build stable lives under conditions they did not create.
It’s easy to talk about immigration as numbers, statistics, or political slogans. It’s harder to look at individual lives and see how economic systems, labor markets, and public policies shape the choices people face.
One of the biggest myths about immigration is that governments genuinely want to stop undocumented immigration entirely. If that were true, many industries would collapse overnight.
The reality is more contradictory. The economy often depends on immigrant labor while the political system criminalizes the workers providing it.
Why? Because vulnerability is profitable.
A worker who fears deportation is easier to underpay. Less likely to report abuse. Less likely to organize. Less likely to strike. Less likely to demand healthcare or safer conditions.
This is not accidental. It creates a labor force that is economically essential but politically disposable.
And this doesn’t just hurt immigrants. It lowers standards for everyone. When employers can exploit one section of workers through fear and precarity, it puts downward pressure on wages and conditions across entire industries.
This is why many labor organizers argue that immigrant rights are labor rights.
Because the real conflict is not between immigrant and non-immigrant workers. It’s between working people and systems that profit from division and insecurity.
The Biggest Lie: “Immigrants Are Taking Your Jobs”
This idea has been repeated for generations.
Irish immigrants. Italian immigrants. Chinese railroad workers. Jewish refugees. Mexican laborers. Muslim immigrants. Refugees from Central America.
Different groups. Same story.
“They’re taking jobs.” “They lower wages.” “They’re ruining the country.”
But when researchers actually study immigration, the picture is far more complicated — and often the opposite of what people are told.
Immigrants are workers, consumers, neighbors, taxpayers, caregivers, and organizers. They start businesses at high rates. They fill essential jobs. They contribute more into many systems than they take out.
More importantly, wage stagnation in the United States didn’t happen because immigrants crossed borders. It happened because unions were attacked. Because corporations outsourced jobs. Because billionaires gained enormous political power. Because labor protections weakened. Because housing became financialized. Because healthcare became privatized. Because wealth concentrated at the top.
A CEO moving factories overseas for profit can destroy thousands of jobs overnight. A private equity firm can gut an entire town. A landlord company can raise rents across a city. A corporation can automate jobs while paying executives millions.
But immigrants become the scapegoat because they are visible, vulnerable, and politically convenient. It’s easier for elites to point downward than upward.
And fear works. When people are economically insecure, they search for explanations – and the powerful often provide targets instead of solutions.
That’s one reason solidarity matters so much. Because when workers blame each other instead of concentrated wealth and power, the people benefiting from inequality remain untouched.
What About Culture?
For many people, concerns about immigration aren’t only economic.
Sometimes the concern sounds more like this: “Will my town still feel like home?” “Will we lose our shared culture?”
These feelings are real, even if people draw different political conclusions from them.
Communities change. They always have. The United States itself is the product of centuries of migration, cultural exchange, conflict, adaptation, and reinvention.
The question is not whether culture changes. Culture is always changing.
The question is who gets to participate in shaping it.
The same neighborhoods where people worry about losing community are often places that have also lost local newspapers, union halls, public gathering spaces, family farms, locally owned businesses, and democratic institutions.
In other words, many people are experiencing a genuine loss of community.
But immigration is often blamed for changes that have much deeper causes.
When a factory closes, when rents double, when a town loses stable jobs, when young people leave because they can’t afford to stay, people naturally feel disoriented.
The problem is that immigrants did not cause those changes.
In many cases, immigrants arrive in communities already being transformed by forces neither they nor longtime residents control.
The challenge is not choosing between preserving community and welcoming newcomers. The challenge is rebuilding communities where everyone has a stake, a voice, and the ability to belong.
Because at the end of the day, culture is not a museum exhibit. It’s something people create together.
And communities are strongest not when they’re frozen in time, but when people have the power, security, and democratic voice needed to shape their future collectively.
ICE, Fear, and the Expansion of Repression
After 9/11, immigration enforcement expanded dramatically under the language of national security.
Over time, immigration enforcement became deeply tied to policing, incarceration, and private profit. Private prison companies began making billions from immigrant detention. Entire local economies became financially dependent on detention facilities.
Politicians competed over who could appear tougher on immigration. And fear spread far beyond undocumented people.
Mixed-status families live with constant anxiety. Children fear parents disappearing. Workers fear speaking up. Communities fear cooperation with schools, hospitals, or local government.
This damages democracy itself. Because democracy depends on trust, participation, and collective life. Fear destroys all three.
And history shows that systems built to target one population rarely stay limited to that population forever. As Pastor Martin Niemöller warned in his famous “First They Came” reflection, whatever you allow your government to do to others, they will eventually do to you.
When a society becomes comfortable with mass detention, militarized policing, and normalized dehumanization, everyone becomes less free.
What 287(g) Means for Communities
One example of this expansion is something called 287(g). Most people have never heard of it. But its impact is enormous.
287(g) agreements allow local law enforcement agencies to collaborate directly with federal immigration enforcement.
In practice, this means local police can act as immigration agents in various ways.
Supporters claim this improves safety. But many studies and community organizations have found the opposite.
Why? Because when immigrants fear police contact could lead to deportation, they become less likely to report crimes. Less likely to cooperate as witnesses. Less likely to seek help during emergencies. That makes entire communities less safe.
Domestic violence survivors may stay silent. Workers may not report exploitation. Families avoid institutions altogether.
And there’s another problem.
Programs like 287(g) increase the risk of racial profiling. When immigration enforcement becomes tied to local policing, ordinary traffic stops can become gateways into detention and deportation systems.
People get targeted because of language, accent, neighborhood, or appearance. That erodes trust not just for immigrants, but for everyone living in those communities.
And once local governments normalize cooperation with expanding federal surveillance and enforcement systems, democratic accountability weakens further.
It’s worth asking who benefits when neighbors become suspicious of one another. When workers fear reporting wage theft. When witnesses avoid reporting crimes. When communities stop trusting public institutions.
The result is not just more deportations. It’s weaker civic life. Weaker worker power. Less public safety. And less democratic participation for everyone.
In that sense, programs like 287(g) don’t only affect immigrants. They reshape the social fabric of entire communities.
This is not only an immigration issue. It’s a civil liberties issue. A labor issue. A community issue. A democracy issue.
Climate Change and the Future of Migration
One of the biggest migration stories of the future is climate change.
Rising seas. Extreme heat. Crop failures. Water shortages. Storm devastation. Millions of people are already being displaced.
And here’s the uncomfortable reality: The countries most responsible for historical carbon emissions are often not the ones suffering first and worst.
Meanwhile, wealthy countries increasingly respond not by addressing root causes, but by militarizing borders.
In other words: The same economic model contributing to ecological collapse is preparing and enacting repression to manage the human consequences.
Instead of justice, we get walls. Instead of redistribution, we get detention. Instead of cooperation, we get fear.
But no border wall can stop climate breakdown. No detention center can solve drought. No deportation policy can reverse ecological collapse.
The question is whether societies will respond through solidarity and transformation — or through escalating cruelty and authoritarianism.
Why Solidarity Matters
The most powerful thing working people have is each other.
That’s true whether someone was born in Texas, Mexico, Haiti, Palestine, or the Philippines.
Because most ordinary people want similar things: Safety. Dignity. Healthcare. Time with family. Decent work. Housing. Community. A future for their children.
And historically, the biggest gains for working people happened when solidarity expanded rather than contracted.
The ruling idea has often been: Keep workers divided. Native-born versus immigrant. Black versus white. Citizen versus undocumented. Urban versus rural. Because divided people are easier to govern. Easier to underpay. Easier to manipulate.
But solidarity changes the equation.
When immigrant workers organize, labor standards rise. When unions include undocumented workers, employers lose leverage. When communities resist fear politics together, repression becomes harder to sustain.
The question is not whether immigrants and non-immigrants compete.
The question is: Who benefits when they do?
What a Different Vision Could Look Like
A humane immigration system would start upstream. It would mean reducing the forces that displace people in the first place.
That includes: Ending exploitative trade arrangements. Supporting labor rights globally. Addressing climate change seriously. Reducing militarism and intervention. Canceling crushing debt structures. Protecting indigenous land and food sovereignty.
Domestically, it would mean: Pathways to citizenship. Strong labor protections for all workers. Universal healthcare. Housing guarantees. Union rights. An end to mass detention systems. Demilitarizing immigration enforcement. Protecting civil liberties.
And maybe most importantly: Building institutions where ordinary people actually have democratic power over the conditions shaping their lives.
Because migration crises are often really democracy crises. Economic crises. Ecological crises. Crises of concentrated power.
A society where people have secure housing, healthcare, meaningful work, democratic voice, and strong communities is also a society where fear has less power. When people feel secure, they’re less likely to look for scapegoats. They’re more likely to look for solutions. And when communities have real control over the decisions affecting their lives, migration becomes something that can be managed humanely rather than exploited politically.
What Can People Actually Do?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this. The problems are global. The systems are enormous. The forces involved can seem impossible to challenge.
But history changes when ordinary people organize together.
That can mean: Supporting immigrant worker centers. Joining unions. Fighting wage theft. Opposing local cooperation with abusive enforcement systems. Showing up at city council meetings. Supporting sanctuary policies. Helping neighbors know their rights. Building multilingual organizing spaces. Creating relationships across communities that fear and propaganda try to divide.
It can also mean joining organizations already doing this work — groups fighting for economic democracy, political democracy, labor rights, housing justice, immigrant solidarity, and community self-defense. For many people, that might mean getting involved with a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, labor and tenant organizing projects, immigrant justice organizations, faith-based community groups, or grassroots mutual aid networks rooted in their own communities.
For people wondering where to even begin, resources like the All of US Directory can help connect you with local grassroots organizations, worker centers, immigrant justice groups, labor campaigns, and community defense efforts already active nearby.
And it also means changing how we talk about immigration. Not reducing people to statistics. Not treating migration as an invasion. Not accepting narratives built around fear and punishment. But asking deeper questions. Why are people displaced? Who profits? Who benefits from division? What kind of society are we building together?
Those questions don’t just help us understand immigration. They help us understand power.
And once people start asking questions about power, new possibilities begin to emerge.
Conclusion: The Real Border
There’s a story we’re often told: That the biggest threat to working people is other working people crossing borders.
But maybe the real border is something else. Maybe the real border is between those who profit from exploitation and those who live with its consequences. Between concentrated wealth and democratic life. Between systems organized around profit and systems organized around human needs.
Migration reveals those contradictions very clearly.
Because immigrants are not outside the system. They are often the people most exposed to its violence and instability.
The worker laboring under threat of deportation. The family displaced by economic policies they never voted for. The community targeted by surveillance and policing. The farmworker harvesting food while struggling to access healthcare. The refugee fleeing conditions shaped by decisions made thousands of miles away.
These are not separate stories. They are connected stories.
And the response to those realities will shape all of our futures. Whether democracy will continue to shrink under the pressures of concentrated wealth, repression, and fear — or expand through participation, organization, and collective action.
In the end, the future will not be shaped primarily by walls or borders. It will be shaped by whether ordinary people can recognize themselves in one another, build power together, and demand a society organized around human dignity instead of fear and exploitation.
The most important question is not who crossed a border. It’s why the border became the story in the first place.
When we start looking upstream, we discover that many of the problems blamed on immigrants were never caused by immigrants at all.
Once we understand that, we can stop fighting one another over the consequences of a broken system and start changing the system itself.
Originally from the US, Alexandria has lived most of her life in the Caribbean, as well as in Egypt and Central America. A sailor, writer, organizer, and street medic, she has been involved in community organizing, media, and education for over 20 years. Alexandria is currently a staff member of ZNetwork.org, a writer for Extinction Rebellion, and is active with Caracol DSA and Food Not Bombs. Her work has appeared on ZNet, Common Dreams, Foreign Policy in Focus, CounterPunch, LA Progressive, Waging Nonviolence, Antiwar.com, The African, The Socialist Project, mÎtaCPC, DiEM25, PeaceNews, Green Left, Popular Resistance, Resilience.org, Grassroots Economic Organizing, Shareable, Dissident Voice, Democratic Underground, and various other outlets.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Data Centers Divide Democrats in Michigan Primary
Senate candidates offer conflicting visions over the role of A.I. and corporate power
Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Rep. Haley Stevens, right, are vying for the Democratic party nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat. (Jose Juarez, AP Photo; Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call via AP Photo)
The projects have sparked renewed civic engagement in rural areas and small towns—stories that inspire David and Goliath comparisons. Residents ignite with fury upon finding out their local elected officials have made deals in the dark to bring data centers to town. They come out in force to city council meetings, zoning hearings, and protests in an effort to confront the power of major utility companies and multinational tech corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal.
This growing opposition has forced Michigan’s elected officials to reconsider the wisdom of the state’s 2024 decision to hand out tax breaks to data center constructors.
Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County public health official running in the August 4 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, tells Barn Raiser that the corporations building data centers aren’t straightforward about their development plans.
“There’s been so little transparency on the part of the corporations themselves and the part of the utilities,” he says. “It has raised the hackles of folks who’ve learned not to trust a lot of these bigger corporations when they tell them everything’s going to be okay.”
El-Sayed is locked in a fierce contest that has accentuated divides within the Democratic Party. El-Sayed, whose parents immigrated from Egypt, has pledged not to accept corporate PAC money, has called for eliminating arms sales to Israel and supports universal health care and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Haley Stevens (D-Mich.-11) is a vocal supporter of Israel who has accepted money from corporate PACs, outside groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has the support of party leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a third challenger in the race, suspended her campaign July 5.
An April Emerson College poll shows data centers could be among the deciding issues in the election. Emerson’s poll of 519 likely Michigan primary voters found that a majority, or 55%, opposed data centers being built in or near their community, versus 27% who supported them. Opposition to data centers was much higher among likely Democratic primary voters, with 63% opposed versus 45% among likely Republican primary voters.
A demonstrator at an April rally in Traverse City, Michigan, holds a sign emblematic of the growing data center resistance. (Miles MacClure)
Dark money spending and support for Israel remains another flashpoint in the campaign, gaining national attention. The Associated Pressreported AIPAC and its affiliated groups have spent close to $30 million backing Stevens, which is their largest investment ever in a single race.
In January, El-Sayed released a terms of engagement proposal for data centers, which includes a guarantee for local jobs, a freeze on consumer electricity rate hikes and community benefit agreements. In recent weeks, he has shown support for a system of federal oversight and public ownership of AI companies, a proposal first advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has endorsed El-Sayed.
Stevens has not laid out any similar positions. At a Democratic primary debate in July, Stevens connected data center construction with job creation, saying it will put Michigan “on the forefront of innovation and manufacturing,” but she has also called for protecting Michiganders from data center costs.
In an email statement to Barn Raiser, Stevens wrote, “when it comes to data centers and AI infrastructure, my top priority is making sure costs don’t go up for Michigan families and that we are protecting good-paying union jobs. We cannot allow utility companies like DTE to pass new costs onto consumers while these projects move forward.”
Stevens did not answer Barn Raiser’s question regarding Michigan residents’ concern about AI potentially resulting in less jobs.
“ Part of the problem with our politics is too often corporations are buying and selling politicians in the first place. In the case of DTE, our local utility, they’ve given to 93% of state legislators,” says El-Sayed, referencing McMorrow, who eventually dropped out. DTE was McMorrow’s top donor in her 2022 state Senate reelection campaign. El-Sayed’s current opponent, Stevens, has received money from DTE since her first U.S. House reelection campaign in 2020.
McMorrow was among the 38 state senators to vote for a Senate bill that exempted hyperscale data centers from sales and use taxes on their equipment. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in 2025.
In hindsight, El-Sayed says a more extensive review process should have occurred before state legislators approved laws to entice data center development in the state.
“I think we should have spent a bit more time to hold the particular utilities accountable ahead of laying out the red carpet, as our state has done,” he says.
Data centers have split support amongst unions and their endorsements. The United Auto Workers (UAW), which has over 400,000 members nationwide, endorsed El-Sayed in June. In an April press conference with Bernie Sanders and other labor leaders, UAW president Shawn Fain compared AI to NAFTA because of the risks it poses to workers and communities. “The same greedy corporate power brokers today want us to believe that killing millions of jobs in the name of AI will be a good thing, and the working class knows better,” he said. Several of the building trades unions, on the other hand, view data centers as a catalyst for job creation, with many, including Plumbers Local 98 and Pipefitters, Steamfitters, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Service Local Union 636, having endorsed Stevens.
Michigan’s chapter of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. In June, the AFL-CIO released a policy agenda for the next five years. It included demands that data centers and AI infrastructure be “built by and run on union labor,” while requiring that “data centers pay their fair share of costs and taxes” and that working-class families and communities “are protected and included every step of the way, including regulations over water and power use.”
Construction workers may be the only local residents who stand to benefit from the data center boom. A Citizens Research Council of Michigan report on data centers found that the economic benefits of data centers largely occur during the construction phase and concluded that the projects aren’t long-term drivers of economic development. In June, Bloombergreported that data centers account for 2.3% of all construction spending in the United States.
In a July debate, El-Sayed and Stevens clashed over their approaches to AI and data centers. El-Sayed reiterated his community engagement plan and added, “I think we have to be serious about the fact that these pose real dangers,” he said. “And the people who are pushing them are the richest, most powerful corporate CEOs in the history of our economy.”
Stevens did not speak directly to citizens’ concerns about AI but pledged to entice data centers to pay for utilities and rate increases. “I also want to secure Michigan being on the forefront of innovation,” she said in a statement to Barn Raiser.
Michigan state Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-Garden City) voted against the tax breaks for data centers when the Michigan House of Representatives voted on the bill in 2023. Wegela had concerns about the environmental impact of data centers from the beginning, he says, but hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of the pushback against using hyperscale facilities to drive AI developments.
“I think there are a lot of concerns with that industry right now and concerns about what the technology, unregulated as it is now, might do to working-class people,” Wegela says. “And I think that is one of the many reasons this is becoming so controversial now.”
For Wegela, data centers are an issue that unites people across party lines. “In areas that these data centers are coming to, you have these coalitions of people on the left and the right coming out to fight together against data centers,” he says. “That’s working class versus Big Tech.”
That coalition of residents was on display on a sunny Saturday morning in Traverse City, Michigan. About 40 protesters showed up to oppose data center construction across Michigan, one of several anti-data center protests that took place across the state on April 11. At the Traverse City protest, attendees brought signs decrying data centers and signs in support of Lake Michigan’s freshwater supply. Speakers voiced their opposition to AI in schools and expressed skepticism about the number of local jobs that data centers would generate.
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, speaks at an anti-data center rally in April in Traverse City, Michigan. (Miles MacClure)
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, appeared alongside Mitch Distin, who helped organize the protest and is running as a Democrat for state representative in Michigan’s 104th district.
Wagner voiced his discontent with the Make America Great Again movement after continuous campaign promises broken by the Trump administration, like financial gain for working-class Americans, and he found common ground with Democrats seeking to maintain natural resources and oppose AI companies. “I feed my kids off this land. I don’t want Big Tech to poison it,” Wagner told the crowd.
In November, a company called Rocklocker—a subsidiary of oil and gas company Reefworks—proposed building a data center in rural Kalkaska County, just east of Traverse City, on 1,440 acres of land owned by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But community backlash was fierce. At meetings to discuss the proposal, residents didn’t buy the economic benefits claimed by Rocklocker and they were wary of the environmental impact.
“The scientific literature is abundantly clear that none of the benefits are distributed or trickle down to local communities, they’re the ones who ultimately pay the price for data centers,” Distin told the protestors. “The only people who are benefiting from this are big tech CEOs and the legislators.”
If a data center is abandoned by a company, it’s unclear who will be responsible to pick up the pieces. “What happens if the company goes bankrupt?” says Wegela. “You’ve seen factories across the state for the automotive industry and cities have been on the hook for cleaning those up or maintaining those. And I just think these are things that aren’t being talked about enough.”
“Democrats should be leading the opposition to unchecked data center growth,” says Michelle Deatrick, chair of the DNC Climate Council. “That’s not because we oppose technology, it’s because we believe growth needs to serve the public interest, it needs to serve the people, and that’s in both the short and the long term.”
One tactic used by local organizers has been to implement moratoriums. For instance, residents in Livingston County, north of Detroit, successfully pushed Howell Township to approve a six-month moratorium on data center projects, including the $1 billion, 1,077-acre data center proposed backed by Meta, which owns Facebook.
Michigan State Representative Jennifer Wortz, a Republican in the 35th District, introduced a bill in February that would place a moratorium on data center construction across the state until April 2027.
Towns, counties, cities and states across the country are deciding how to respond. An analysis from The Information, an online news source, found more than 300 bans or moratoriums across the United States. (Datacenterbans.com has an interactive map and updates a tracker on data center policy around the country.) On July 14, New York enacted the nation’s first statewide one-year moratorium on data center construction following an executive order signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). Maine nearly became the first state to do so in April, when the state legislature passed a moratorium, but Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed the bill.
As communities sour on data center projects, they’re also turning away from AI. A Quinnipiac University poll from March 2026 found that 81% of millennials were concerned about AI. The poll also found that 55% of Americans believe AI will do more harm than good, up from 44% in April 2025.
“ I don’t know if everybody in the public space has connected that the data center and the AI fight is one and the same,” says Wegela.
In the workplace, AI is meeting resistance. Futurismreported that some workers are intentionally sabotaging their employer’s AI deployments. Fears over the direction of AI are also turning violent. In April, a Houston man traveled to San Francisco and hurled a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house.
“The fear and anxiety about AI is justified,” Altman wrote on his blog in the wake of the attack. “We are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.”
Kyle Blomquist, an architect running for Congress in Michigan’s rural 1st congressional district, says the data center tax breaks handed out by Michigan should be repealed. “I’m surprised by the fact that our state has decided to incentivize the location of data centers in the state through these various different tax abatement programs and cuts,” says Blomquist.
When Michigan first legalized medical marijuana, local governments had to set ordinances about marijuana store zoning before any business was allowed to set up shop. Blomquist says he would have liked to see a similar process play out with data centers.
Instead, the Wild West of data center growth has exposed a need for towns and counties to update their zoning ordinances. Many of the towns where data centers have been proposed have never had such large developments set up shop before.
“ I would’ve liked more caution with the data centers, more along those lines where you give the communities the opportunity to set their own conditions as to whether or not they want them located there at all,” says Blomquist. “Instead, it’s kind of a free-for-all.”
This article was originally published by Barn Raiser; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
Michigan's Haley Stevens’s Palantir Consultant Scandal Draws Attention to Her Record on ICE Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign has also been marked by $30 million in support from AIPAC.
Rep. Haley Stevens speaks during a House Democrats' news conference in the Capitol on Thursday, February 6, 2025.Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images).
Up until this week, House representative and Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign shared a mutual consultant with far right tech surveillance company Palantir, new reporting reveals, bringing renewed attention to Stevens’s record on ICE as she faces a contentious race against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Drop Site News’s Ryan Grim reportedon Thursday that the consultant, Caitlin Legacki, was consulting for Stevens’s communications outfit while also “secretly” consulting for Palantir. Legacki was “one of Stevens’ key spokespeople,” as local outlet Michigan Advance wrote.
After Grim reached out to the campaign for comment on Legacki’s dual appointment, they terminated her and said that Stevens was “unaware” of her work for the tech giant. Legacki is also a senior fellow at conservative Democrat-aligned think tank Third Way, Grim reports.
The campaign also replied with a statement touting Stevens’s record on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Palantir has been central to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mass deportation efforts. Among other collaborations, ICE granted Palantir a $30 million contract last year to build out a surveillance program to track the movements of immigrants.
“Haley believes ICE is out of control, putting Michiganders in danger, and needs an immediate overhaul. That’s why she’s voted against giving them another cent without serious reforms, including prosecuting any ICE agents who commit crimes and abuse their power, forcing ICE agents to wear proper ID and prohibiting them from wearing masks to conceal their identities, and taking away their $75 billion slush fund,” the campaign said.
However, Stevens has previously come under fire for her record on ICE. In February, Stevens visited a Michigan ICE jail where an immigrant who was being detained, Nenko Gantchev, died. After the visit, she praised the facility for employing women — a comment that was mocked online.
“Of note, there is female leadership here, and there are women who walked with us today and explained, on the intake process, how important it is to treat people with humanity,” Stevens said, Michigan Advance reported at the time. “And that obviously really stuck out to me, because some of the things that we are witnessing before our eyes, in our neighborhoods, in our streets, is really a lack of humanity.”
Stevens has also been criticized for being one of 75 Democrats who voted for a resolution that expresses “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel,” after an attack at a mall in Boulder, Colorado last year.
“Congresswoman Stevens said she’ll stand up to ICE, all while she took talking points and advice from a compromised corporate apologist now revealed to be a key advisor in Trump’s deportation machine,” said a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign, Roxie Richner, in a statement. “Perhaps it’s why Stevens voted to thank and fund ICE. Abdul has been clear and consistent on his stance since 2018: Abolish ICE.”
Stevens — who was first elected to Congress by primarying incumbent Rep. Andy Levin with the help of AIPAC, in 2022 — is locked in a fierce race against former public health official and progressive candidate El-Sayed.
AIPAC has poured nearly $30 million into backing Stevens in the race, making it the pro-Israel PAC’s largest-ever investment into a single race, and amounting to nearly double the Democratic National Committee’s entire war chest for 2028 so far, Grim pointed out this week.
Vulcan Materials’ Columbus quarry. Credit: YouTube
