I’m requesting assistance to draft an email to our city council here in small-city-near-a-big-city Canada to help them decide to not allow an AI datacenter to be built. They said they won’t read a big long letter with citations and everything which is sort of unfortunate, because it’s what I had prepared, but I feel I’ve got to write something.
Is there a list of punchy and true reasons why a small community would absolutely not want one of these things up in Canada here in a short form? My habit of over-writing things will only hurt, so it needs to make sense to people only barely tech-literate. This is why I need help.
Background: I run a medium-sized IT firm and am very familiar with how they operate and what they entail. In fact, my company was selected to help implement the center until we saw the plans and the future scale (more than 10x) with the lack of care they envisioned and chose to back out completely.
Cool. Write them multiple letters. More importantly, get other people to write them letters - friends, family, coworkers, people you went to school with, cashiers and stockers in the shop, letter carriers, pizza delivery drivers, the local hiking group, book club, and historical society - anyone you can think of. It’s particularly good if the group has some natural alignment, so you can use some of their existing organization and contacts to further your cause. Hit up every local and regional group you can find via email, Contact Us, Facebook, whatever. Hell, stand in the most crowded part of town and hand out flyers.
Your flyers can be small if you need them to be (like if you’re printing them yourself) - say, a quarter of a page. You can do something like:
CALL / WRITE: * Official contact info for the people making the decision (not home addresses)
SHOW UP: * Date, time and location of the next several meetings
Further info: a URL for more information and for getting together online and organizing. [1]
[1] Set up an email address - Gmail is fine, people recognize it as “legit”, so that people and organizations can contact you. Check it at least once a day.
Purchase a domain and make a really simple website. Have it replicate your flyer, but in more detail. Include references: link in news articles from Canada (Canadian-focused is great!) and the States (they likely have more areas that are more seriously affected) about how these things have affected locals. Add link(s) to a coordination and suggestion method: this could be one or more of a: Facebook group, a new subreddit, a discord channel, etc - whatever old and young people are using in your area. Also include your new email address (properly obfuscated to avoid bots) so that people can contact you.
Remember that whatever platform you organize on, some people who support you won’t be on it. You’ll have to choose between one method to build momentum and multiple methods to reach more people; your choice will likely depend on your timeframe. Have one of your options be “join our email list”; every time you organize an action or there’s an upcoming meeting, email everyone on your list.
Ask people to put signs in their yards and local businesses to put signs in their windows. It’s great if you can afford to buy signs, either yourself or by collecting money [check local laws for soliciting], but every bit helps.
Show up at every meeting they have, and get as many people to come as well. It would be lovely to have everyone joining you to speak, but even just the increased numbers and angry faces will have an impact. As possible, have each person speak to a different negative aspect of the data center, and have it be personal and relatable: “as a mom, I worry able the pollution”, “as someone who hikes/hunts/runs trips into the woods, I worry about the noise”, “as an elderly person/young person just moved out on their own/struggling parent I worry about the increased electricity rates”, etc. Be detailed but concrete.
Also, don’t just oppose this to local town councilors. Start pestering lawmakers at the county/district level, and province/territory level - this may be a local decision, but you can make an impact at higher levels as well - and if you get those higher levels on side as well, they can apply pressure downward.
Are there any local elections coming up? Run, or have someone else run, as a candidate, with one of their main planks being opposing the data center. The point isn’t to win the election; the point is for your candidate to continually force the other candidates to address the issue of the data center. That keeps it in the news, helps build momentum and pressure.
Contact news organizations: paper, radio, online, real-world, tv, podcasts, call-in radio shows - whatever you can reach. For every action you plan - council meeting, protest, letter-writing campaign, whatever - contact the media and let them know about it. If your event is upcoming, tell them a few days in advance so they can cover it live; if it’s something like a letter-writing or phone-in campaign, let them know in advance and ask them to follow-up with the contactee(s) a few days after, to “get their opinion on the recent protest” (also phrase this as an option if they can’t cover it live, they could call and ask about their response).
Designate someone to talk to the press and be available for interviews. If possible, it should be someone even-tempered, with clear talking points, a good public speaking manner, who looks good in business casual (which is what they should wear for interviews).
Contact other data center resistance groups and crowd source their ideas as well.