The Indiana NAACP’s Environmental Climate Justice Committee hosted a conversation on data centers, during NAACP’s statewide conference in Fort Wayne on Friday.
Abre’ Conner, director of the national NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Council, gave the keynote speech, offering questions to ask of elected officials as the centers go up.
She said it’s important for people at local levels to be united in their messaging in questioning the centers as they’re being built.
“What a lot of these tech companies are hoping for is that they can have one-off conversations with one individual who they think can sway the opinion of others within the communities," Conner said. "But when people at a local level are united, they’re not able to use those strategies.”
Google is currently building a data center in southeast Fort Wayne. They are now asking state environmental officials for permission to build an additional 142 more emergency generators than their original proposal.
A public hearing on that request will be held on November 13.
