Third Act Actions Lab’s tour of the tech oligarchy DC offices began with a press conference on the grounds of the so-called Apple Carnegie Library–a once public institution now occupied by one of the tech behemoths – then marched to the offices of META, Microsoft, and Open AI before concluding at the city’s Walter E Washington Convention Center, where Data Center World 2026, the premier event for AI data center infrastructure, was happening.
Along the way, Third Act Action Lab members and guest speakers denounced the tech oligarchs and demanded a moratorium on new data centers until people’s assemblies have been set up to establish guardrails.
“The growth of big tech data centers has outpaced our laws,” Linda Edwards, Actions Lab co-facilitator and one of the organizers, told a crowd of about 100 people assembled for the tour.
“Big tech is building data centers faster than we can protect our planet’s resources. They burn fossil fuels and pollute our neighbourhoods. They guzzle our water, raise our electricity bills, and they eat up hundreds of acres of our forests and farmland.”
The Actions Lab “We the People Not Data Centers” April 21 walking tour was part of a growing, nationwide Third Act campaign that includes monthly calls exploring legal, corporate, political, and narrative approaches to counter the threat and win a data center moratorium. The May 18th call will focus on tactical wins across states.
Growing opposition to data centers often focuses on the local impacts of specific projects. The Actions Lab tour, organized in partnership with Beyond Extreme Energy, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Public Citizen, Media Justice, Free Press, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PA) and other environmental and community groups, highlighted the corporate behemoths behind the data center surge.
“An alliance of big tech, big oil and gas, and monopoly utilities are working overtime to keep us addicted to fossil fuels,” said Claire Mills, The DC Campaigns Manager of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who kicked off the tour.
“While they bring in billions, working people pay the price: in skyrocketing utility bills, in dirty data centers in our communities , and in climate change-fueled extreme weather.
“We are here to say: No more backroom deals. No more draining our resources. No more building until we have real protections.”
A short march away, the tour made its first stop at the DC office of Meta (formerly Facebook).
At Meta: Jenna Ruddock, Advocacy Director for Free Press
“Meta is a perfect first stop on any tour of the tech oligarchy, ” said Jenna Ruddock, Advocacy Director for Free Press Action, which opposes media consolidation and promotes equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms. She explained why:
“This is a company that has for decades now failed to act against rampant disinformation, white nationalism, and other violent, targeted hate on its flagship platforms. To paraphrase the brilliant Brandi Collins-Dexter: those issues just aren’t that urgent to them…
So, let’s talk about what is urgent to Meta. Let’s talk about Louisiana.
Because right now, our friends in Louisiana are on the front lines of Mark Zuckerberg’s latest obsession – the same obsession as Sam Altman and the rest of the AI hype squad currently driving this data center building frenzy.
That obsession is scale – scale at all costs.
When Mark Zuckerberg first announced the monstrosity that Meta is currently building in Richland Parish, Louisiana, he bragged about a data center large enough to cover most of Manhattan.
The project would consume more power in a day than all of New Orleans during its summer peak. It required three new fracked gas power plants to be built nearby… Then, just a few weeks ago, the proposal changed. Expanded.
Meta now has ten new fracked gas power plants in the pipeline in northeastern Louisiana, locking in decades’ worth of new fossil fueled energy.
It’s one of the single largest power requests in state history… And while people like the incredible folks at the Alliance for Affordable Energy are still fighting nondisclosure agreements…Louisiana’s Public Service Commission has voted to fast-track review of the seven additional plants, setting them on a path to be approved as soon as the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Meta is pioneering new financing arrangements…to keep huge chunks of debt off its own balance sheets so that it can continue to raise even more money for even more data centers while limiting the company’s own exposure – making sure they have even less skin in the game, while the rest of the economy increasingly teeters on an AI data center-shaped house of cards.
And for what?
Meta is planning to spend $600 billion dollars on data centers over the next two years….
Mark Zuckerberg’s wildest dreams look like a private compound with a doomsday bunker and the AI clone he has Meta employees building right now as the company gets ready to lay off another 8,000 workers next month.
The rest of us have no place in that future.
Our friends in Louisiana deserve better. Our neighbors in Maryland, in Virginia deserve better. We all deserve so much better.
We can’t wait for them to do better. Because — like Meta has shown time and time again — they won’t.
But we can.”
At Open AI: Matthew Shaw, Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development
A block away, the tour stopped at the DC offices of Open AI, where Pam Wilson, a member of Third Act Maryland and co-organizer of the Actions Lab tour, introduced Matthew Shaw, a volunteer with the Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development:
“In 2015, OpenAI was established to create an Artificial Intelligence model so powerful that it could do any work a human can do..this has led to a data center arms race between the largest technology companies on earth, each trying to become the first to replace humans with AI and siphon the planet’s resources in exchange for cold hard cash.” He continued:
“The effects of these massive data centers are first felt in the communities they operate in, from increasing energy costs, to the extraction of drinkable water, to the pollution of the air we all hold in common.
However, these costs are not all localized; there are global risks posed by data centers in their operations and in their end uses… Organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Doomsday Clock Report predict an acceleration of unmanned nuclear command and control systems, bringing us closer to nuclear armageddon; increased carbon emissions leading to a runaway greenhouse effect; and the reduction of barriers to biological weapons and new technologies such as “mirror life.” Each of these issues by themselves are existential risks to human survival.
[People are fighting back…] My research has found that grassroots organizing has led to the creation of over 250 groups across the country with over 350 thousand members combined. They are working for moratoriums on hyperscalers; protections for the air, land, and water; and an end to the tax subsidies propping up the most powerful companies’ bottom lines.
But what comes after the moratoriums expire? Will the status quo go back to its playbook of extraction, automation, and domination? How will we prevent the Tech Oligarchy from moving to other countries or even space if we stop them at home?
I propose a three-track approach:
- Continue pushing for environmental, transparency, and moratorium legislation at the local, state, and national levels;
- Expand national organizing to the international level to learn from each other and share best practices;
- and create what some call a solidarity stack, where workers and communities have democratic ownership over the development and end uses of data centers, as well as the collective benefits they supposedly may bring.
The goal of such an approach is that decisions such as how much water to use, how data is collected and stored, and how profits are reinvested are not left to CEOs and lobbyists in Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Wall Street, but the people of Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Independence, Missouri; and Farmington, Minnesota.
Thank you again for having me here. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions as we march to Microsoft!
At Microsoft Innovation and Policy Center: Josephine Gingerich, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Clara Vondrich, Senior Policy Counsel, Climate Program, Public Citizen
At the Microsoft stop, Pam Winton explained that the company is one of the leading, if not the top, hyperscaler in fields such as AI enterprise adoption, cloud growth, and total infrastructure capacity, building massive data centers in places such as Wisconsin and Georgia that serve as “superfactories” for AI. She then introduced Josephine Gingerich, health advocacy outreach coordinator with Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania.
“I live in Pennsylvania, a colonized land hammered by extractive industries and pollution; currently the second largest producer of gas, and ranked first in the US for electricity exports to other states,” Gingerich said. She continued:
“I am here to make two things clear: 1 – the data center boom…will have significant environmental and health harms if we allow the buildout to proceed, and 2 – the energy demand from data centers is creating an artificial energy crisis, where families need to choose between heating their home or buying groceries…
Generative AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand and more than double data centers’ water consumption by 2030.
Estimates show that gas will be the primary source of energy for data centers through 2030, stalling progress to counter climate change with renewables. Where I live, that means more fracking, leading to an increase of rare cancers, asthma, adverse birth outcomes, and heart problems.
Right now, we are standing in front of Microsoft, the singular customer that has prompted Three Mile Island, the site of the worst commercial nuclear disaster in US History, to come back online in order to provide power to Microsoft’s AI data centers.
With the Governor of Pennsylvania touting “bring your own power” for the data center projects he is ushering into the state, we are at risk of a massive increase in fossil fuel infrastructure and pollution, as well as untested modular nuclear reactors while the federal administration slashes nuclear safety regulations…
Consider Archbald in northeastern Pennsylvania: they have six hyperscale data centers proposed for one town and upwards of 1,300 semi truck-sized diesel generators that would choke out the valley with particulate matter and hydrocarbon emissions. Folks living near hyperscale data centers currently in operation say they sleep in their basements to try and escape the noise.
What is all this destruction for? Is it in service of our wider society, some greater benefit we will enjoy? No. It is for AI Slop, privacy violations, racist surveillance, and the profit margins of the 1%…
Hyperscale AI-dedicated behemoths being proposed and built across the country are not something the people want; the Pew Research Center found that most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, and indeed people anticipate that they will be harmed by AI.
Corporations are insisting that AI is inevitable, that we have to get onboard or be left behind. “Trust us, you’ll love this next great AI tool, it regurgitates semi-accurate information in a new way!”
When has it ever been a good idea to trust a billionaire? Don’t start now. Come together with others in your communities and center our humanity. Reject these hyperscale data centers and AI premise they are based on. We have the power to stop this.
Winton then introduced Clara Vondrich, Senior Policy Counsel, Climate Program, Public Citizen. Vondrich works at the intersection of climate and finance, as well as projects on climate survivor advocacy, fossil fuel accountability and stalling the AI data center expansion. She titled her remarks: “Partners in Crime: Big Tech & Big Oil Burning down our House.”
“You usually think of big oil companies and their stooges when you hear about “climate denier.” But Big Tech companies like Microsoft are worthy of that title too, Vondrich said. “How else could you explain the fact that Big Tech is behind the buildout of the next generation of fossil-fueled power plants and pipelines, including bringing moth-balled coal plants back online – all to power a bunch of AI datacenters that few communities seem to want?” She continued:
“Other speakers today described the harms that data centers cause – from the eerie hum that keeps you up at night, to the local air pollution and heat island effects, the water scarcity and booming power bills, you bet that stuff is pretty bad.
But there’s a sleeper that isn’t getting us much attention yet. Did you know that the self-proclaimed climate champs – Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft – are actually teeming up with Big Oil to burn down our futures?
We know that most AI datacenters today, and those projected for tomorrow, are being powered by fossil fuel-powered grids around the country. Heck companies are even repurposing jet engines and buying up diesel generators to meet demand while their gas turbines are on back order.
But much more significant is the fact that Big Tech is selling their AI to Big Oil with the express purpose of turbo-charging oil and gas exploration, discovery and recovery…Big Tech has become Big Oil’s #1 accomplice…
Standing here today in front of Microsoft’s DC HQ, I’m unhappy to say that Microsoft is the worst offender…the Leading Cloud Provider for the Oil & Gas Industry…
In 2020, Microsoft pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. By 2023, Microsoft’s emissions had already increased by at least 30%. And that’s just for their data centers.
Now according to new research by Stand.earth, three methane gas projects announced in just the last month mean Microsoft’s data center carbon footprint alone will more than double with a 160% increase by 2028.
Yet Microsoft President Brad Smith recently said he was “confident in our ability” to meet their 2030 carbon-neutral goal. Now that’s denial.
[I call on] Microsoft: keep your climate promises.Stop enabling emissions. Use your enormous wealth, power and influence to accelerate the renewable energy future — like you said you would.”
At the Data Center World Conference: Brandon Forester, Senior Campaign Lead at Media Justice, and Taylor Frazier McCollum, Community Advocate from the No Landover Data Center Movement
At the final stop of the tour at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, participants stood across the street from the entrance, watching as participants in the Data Center World Conference entered and exited the building. Laura Simon, a member of Third Act Vermont and co-organizer of the Actions Lab tour, first introduced Brandon Forester, a Senior Campaign Lead at Media Justice, who connected the dots between data center AI and surveillance.
“When you see ICE using these phone apps to check and identify people, that AI technology, that facial recognition technology, is racist and doesn’t work,” he said. “All that tracking that they are doing, combining all that signal information, so that they can abduct and kidnap people in our community… is depending more and more on these huge data centers,” he said.
“Its not just that they are polluting our communities. What they are producing is also incredibly harmful.”
Simon then introduced Taylor Frazier McCollum, Community Advocate from the No Landover Data Center Movement. Frazier McCollum recently launched a petition on Change.org to prevent the construction of a data center in her hometown of Landover, Maryland, that now has more than 23,000 signatures.
“We were able to pack county meetings in September and October and ultimately won a temporary moratorium in Prince George’s county,” she said. “Donald Trump and his family’s companies have earned billions in tech and crypto in just the short span of this presidency. Those earnings are directly tied to data center expansion.” She continued, with a rousing call to action to end the tour:
“Without hyperscale data centers, Donald and his cronies lose power. They lose the momentum of trying to kill this planet… Sam Altman, Larry Ellison and the like believe they are better than all of us.
“I’m here to say they bleed just like we bleed. They breathe the same air and will need the same water that they are rapidly consuming. But they don’t care because they think they have a plan. I’m here to disrupt that plan.
This Data Center World conference will feature speakers telling the world how great data centers are. They won’t talk about the extraction or surveillance. Or how they are poisoning our air and water. They won’t mention how building these behemoth computers has raised temperatures of surrounding areas. Making global temperature change worse.
“We have to stop this madness. They are outnumbered, they are scared and they know we are fighting back. We don’t need more generative AI–we need to use our brain power. Brain power beats AI anyday. We need to see through the lies. The tech oligarchs have sold us out. They’d rather use their massive wealth to deplete and leave us with nothing than end world hunger.
So I’m here to demand a National moratorium on hyperscale data center expansion…Cut the cord, save the planet and tell big tech we won’t take this lying down. Thank you!”
The group then returned to Apple Carnegie, where they ate pizza in the park and a sub-set went into the Apple store, disrupting business by denouncing Apple’s role in data centers and AI, and calling for a moratorium on data centers until people’s assemblies establish guardrails, until the police came and escorted them out of the building. The next day, a group of protestors dressed as Lamenters went inside Data Center World 2026, bringing the message of climate destruction into the belly of the beast and disrupting the conference until police were called and removed them from the building.
