Concerned citizens crowding into a rec center to protest a proposed data center in El Paso, Texas. Suburban homeowners shouting down pro-data-center politicians in Festus, Missouri. Teenagers and their parents swamping a local zoning meeting to demand an end to data center construction in DeKalb County, Georgia. Conservative farmers rising up to block a data center in Howell Township, Michigan.

The grassroots resistance to artificial intelligence data centers that is springing up in communities across the country outlines the kind of working-class coalition many of us on the Left have always dreamed of — a diverse, nonpartisan, top-bottom movement against Big Tech billionaires that has the potential to reshape American politics in incredibly positive ways.

The most immediate, short-term policy demand driving this local organizing is a moratorium on new data centers. There are different versions of this policy — Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced a national moratorium, statewide moratoria have been proposed in at least twelve states (and one passed in Maine, though the legislation was vetoed by Governor Janet Mills), and dozens of cities, towns, and counties have already enacted such laws.