Stop AI Data Centers -- Sunday May 17th

This is the announcement for the upcoming Workers Strike Back monthly meeting.

 

Join Workers Strike Back at Our May National Zoom Meeting. STOP the Data Centers and AI Layoffs! If you’re in or around the Peoria, IL area, join our in-person meeting at the Peoria Public Library, 1312 W Lincoln Ave, Peoria, IL 61605

RSVP NOW Working-Class people around the nation are fighting back against Big Tech Billionaires who are pushing for a massive expansion of Hyperscale data centers. One such fightback recently occurred in Pekin, Illinois, near Peoria, where I live and where I am helping to build Workers Strike Back. Working people in Pekin got organized and fought back against a planned 321-acre hyperscale data center. Workers Strike Back was proud to join the fight! Our movement went up against big tech and real estate billionaires and multimillionaires and also the Democratic and Republican parties. Democratic and Republican politicians alike have shamefully provided tax incentives for Data Centers to developers. In Illinois, Democratic Governor and billionaire JB Pritzker signed a bill in 2019, with bipartisan support, that has provided billionaires with an estimated $983 million in lifetime tax breaks and benefits as “incentives” to build at least 27 data centers. Instead of taxing the rich to fund working-class needs like free healthcare for all, they have tried to do all they can to hold a red-carpet welcome for the AI billionaires. But it shows that the class allegiance of the Democratic and Republican parties is with the billionairess, not with the working class. Working people organized City Hall speakouts, yard sign distribution, and canvassing shifts to oppose it. Workers Strike Back members played a key role in the City Hall speakouts by putting forward a fighting, class struggle approach, and politically explaining to our fellow workers that we need to create a credible political threat to the establishment politicians who don't respond to moral appeals, but instead can be swayed only by the organized strength of working-class movements. A crucial aspect of this was exposing the real role of the Democrats and Republicans during the speakout at City Hall. This meant rejecting the rules of “decorum” that the establishment imposes on working people to try and render our movements ineffective. Because of the mass mobilization of working people and our strategy, the movement in Pekin won! Our movement’s victories to date: We forced Governor Pritzker to put a hold on the tax breaks for new data center developments We forced the Republican Mayor of Pekin, Mary Burress, to announce in March that the city would not be moving forward with the data center project We forced Democrats and Republicans on the Pekin City Council to vote unanimously to stop the sale of public land to the data center developer, Western Hospitality Partners

Congratulations to the working people of Pekin, Illinois! This victory is proof that when working people get organized to fight for our demands, we can win. This strategy - the strategy of class struggle - is needed in every city hall, in every workplace, in every protest. Our methods for fighting back need to be crystal clear that our allies are the working class in the fight against data centers, big tech, and the billionaire class as a whole. Our enemies are anyone who sides with them, like the corporate politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties. Join Workers Strike Back for our monthly national meeting over Zoom on Sunday, May 17th to talk about lessons from the struggles that Workers Strike Back members have been engaged in and how you can get active in the fightback against the AI and data center boom. These data centers are being massively expanded due to the increasing need for corporate data storage and the advancement of dystopian AI technologies that are designed to increase billionaire profits while systematically depriving workers of our basic rights and quality of life. One such instance is the pervasive use of AI in health insurance and the systematic denial of care by corporations like UnitedHealthcare. Sometimes, these technologies are used in even more sinister ways: companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Palantir are all using their data management and AI tools to allow the Israeli military to track and target Palestinians and journalists in the ongoing, brutal genocide in Gaza, and also to help ICE target and detain immigrants in the United States. Not only are data centers used in the most horrific ways by these corporations, they also consume eye-popping amounts of energy. In some cases over 100 megawatts of continuous energy, which could be used to power up to 100,000 small homes. This massive energy demand from these monstrous data centers has led to an increase in utility rates for working-class people in many areas. These massive hyperscale data centers are also consuming hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per hour, and in most cases the energy supplied to power these data centers comes from burning fossil fuels, which is further exacerbating the climate catastrophe. The energy consumed by the largest data centers is equal to the entire output of a medium-sized power plant. The increasing need for energy and water, and the cynical sourcing of this energy by the capitalist class, are going to have a disastrous impact on the climate. The billionaires profiting from these data centers know the real dangers that spring from their actions all too well, and they do not care because they have no regard for our lives and the impact on our communities. The same is true for the Democratic and Republican parties, which are both parties of Wall Street and war. Working people need to fight to take the big energy corporations and big tech companies into democratic public ownership to be run by workers, so that we can democratically and scientifically decide what technologies to use and how to use them, while also protecting the environment. The climate impact of Trump's war on Iran and the deregulation of fossil fuels is further driving us towards climate apocalypse. What we need is a lightning-fast transition to green energy and infrastructure that can only be carried out by a socialist society. Solidarity, Justin Smeltzer Workers Strike Back Peoria, Illinois

Join Workers Strike Back at Our May National Zoom Meeting. STOP the Data Centers and AI Layoffs! If you’re in or around the Peoria, IL area, join our in-person meeting at the Peoria Public Library, 1312 W Lincoln Ave, Peoria, IL 61605

RSVP NOW

What We Stand For: Fight the Rich! End the Billionaire Class & Their System Workers Need a Real Raise — $25/Hour Minimum Wage Good Union Jobs for All Stop the Climate Catastrophe — Take Big Energy Corporations into Workers’ Ownership Fight Racism, Sexism & All Oppression Stop Mass Deportations Medicare for All & Quality Affordable Housing — Tax the Rich End the Genocidal War on Gaza — No Military Aid, No Occupation Bring Down Trump, the Billionaires & Their Two Parties No More Sellouts — We Need a New Mass Party