On Tuesday, July 7th, the Prince George’s County Council voted to approve a two-year, county-wide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. The approved moratorium does not stop the approval of permits for the Landover Data Center planned at the former site of the Landover Mall because those plans were already approved in 2024.
The bill only enforces a pause to future approvals. In addition, according to the council resolution, the moratorium would end early if legislation on data center construction, placement, and operation is approved, which a Councilmember stated was in motion on July 8th.
Regardless of these facts, this moratorium follows nearly a year of grassroots organizing by the residents of Prince George’s County. Without the active engagement of thousands of residents, the fate of the county would already be decided by officials who are increasingly bought out by racist tech billionaires.
Without the organization of working-class Prince George’s residents, we would see the unconstrained expansion of AI data centers that is already present in Northern Virginia. Tech billionaires have demonstrated their anarchic and wasteful capacity to destroy communities’ land, water, and air for their own greed, especially Black and brown communities.
What the fight against AI data centers in Prince George’s County has shown is that communities have the power to stand up to the billionaire class if they are organized to do so. Every data center moratorium won through struggle sends a powerful message to greedy developers who want to profit at the expense of our health, electricity, and water that our communities are not for sale.
And yet, the fight in Prince George’s County is not over. With the possibility of the Landover data center proceeding and the impending introduction of other legislation that may continue to treat Southern Prince George’s as an industrial dumping ground for the ruling class, we must stand firm in our demand for a permanent ban of AI data centers in the county.
The County Council’s pacifying concessions deliberately leave the door open to big tech—but our movement has unified around a core understanding that AI data centers are a net negative for Prince George’s and will not stop until our elected officials honor the will of the people.
Across the United States, people are standing up to their local bought-out elected officials and taking back control of their communities. At the same time, it’s not enough to just fight against data centers as an isolated issue. The struggle against Big Tech in Prince George’s County has illustrated the way AI data centers fuel ICE terror, mass surveillance, endless war, and the climate crisis.
Capitalists monopolize technological development and weaponize it to exploit, divide, and weaken working and oppressed people. None of our victories against these abuses are safe until we build an entirely new system that puts workers in control of tech, not the billionaires. Join us in the fight against endless data center expansion, and for a socialist system!
