Data centers were once just the physical locations where your cloud-backed photos and streamed movies used to live. But now, thanks to the advent of crypto and AI, they’ve evolved into behemoth power users estimated to consume up to 326tWh of power annually by 2028. Big Tech is in an arms race to deliver AI technology competent enough to replace human labor and they want working-class New Yorkers to foot the bill.

What’s driving this explosion isn’t consumer need. Its enterprise clients: Big Tech, Big Oil, surveillance companies and the AI industry are in a rush to lock in dominance over everything from hiring decisions to government services. Data center infrastructure isn’t being built for us, it’s built to be used on us.

The increased power requirement from data centers is already stymieing gains from newly built renewable energy sources. As reported by the Associated Press, coal-fired power plant closures are being delayed. Elon Musk’s xAI data center bypassed the grid entirely and installed diesel generators and mobile natural gas plants, worsening the air pollution in the city of Memphis, Tennessee. These facilities also draw large amounts of water. As discovered in The Dalles, Oregon, the Google data center there was consuming a whopping quarter of the entire city’s water to cool their servers. Combined with the fact that data centers receive large subsidies and create relatively few jobs, communities are often left to battle these tech monoliths alone.

Data centers don’t only affect their host communities. The increasing need for energy is straining the grid nationwide resulting in less reliable power delivery, electrical fires, and blackouts. To support the immense power draws, transformers and power lines are in need of upgrades. These costs hit residential consumers of electricity especially hard. Upstate NY saw an extra $80-$160 increase in bills in the late 2010s before the crypto moratorium was put in place. Georgia is seeing a 24% statewide rate hike, one homeowner even reporting that their electric bill has jumped from $250 to $400 after a Meta data center was built near their home. These costs are only set to get worse as more data centers come online.

The process by which data centers are built receive limited oversight. First, land is rezoned for industrial use through fast-tracked approval processes. Second, meaningful community engagement is notably absent. Public hearings, when they happen at all, often occur after key decisions have already been made, leaving residents with no real voice in the process. Third, companies request substantial public subsidies by promising economic benefits that rarely materialize as advertised. In one particularly striking example, a local government approved nearly $4 million in subsidies per job for a data center—a questionable use of public resources by any measure.

Communities are pushing back, and are demanding greater transparency and input. But, there is a clear pattern of data centers minimizing community input or addressing community members well after fundamental decisions have been made. The Western New York Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park, or STAMP, located in Genesee County is a 1,200+ acre industrial site that sits adjacent to Tonawanda Seneca Nation Reservation Territory and several wildlife refuges. This site is owned and developed by the Genesee County Economic Development Center (GCEDC) who is considering several data center proposals with limited environmental reviews or public hearings. One of its proposals, Project Double Reed, would require $472 million in public subsidies, the power equivalent of 700,000 homes, and the water equivalent of 6,000 homes, all while producing an incessant 24/7 drone of data centers cooling systems. In exchange, the megacorporation would offer the community a measly 122 jobs. Unsurprisingly, GCEDC stands to gain $47 - $79 million in fees from this deal- raising serious questions about who data centers really benefit.

The data center fight is only just beginning. The grassroots opposition has already catalyzed legislative action at the state level. State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, has already announced two bills to regulate the outsize impact of data centers on communities and working class families: the Sustainable Data Centers Act and the AC/DC Act.

1. The Sustainable Data Centers Act (S6394A), if passed, will require pre-construction disclosure to the Public Service Commission and a minimum of 1 public hearing within the host community. The bill adds a renewables mandate to power consumption, a community discount plan for electric bills and an enforcement fine for developers under violation. Though there are well known gaps in this bill - a public hearing does not require the developer to be accountable to the community - it still represents a first real step towards transparency, and acknowledges the rate burden on frontline communities.

2. The AC/DC Act (S8640), if passed, would create a separate electricity rate classification for data centers that require more than 20MW of power. Infrastructure upgrade and energy costs are assigned to the data center, protecting residential and small business customers from rate hikes. This bill seeks to stop the subsidy pipeline from low-income ratepayers to tech corporations.

In combination, these bills will bring transparency and cost protection to New Yorkers where there was none before.

It’s a much needed start. But even if both bills pass, communities will still lack the ability to say no.there will be no clear water protections or caps on energy consumption. And there’s no guarantee that host communities get the benefits that data center developers promise. In fact, the track record shows they rarely do.

The question isn’t whether ChatGPT is useful. It’s whether the wholesale transfer of our land, water, electricity, and tax dollars to an industry that’s actively replacing workers and dodging accountability is good for our communities.

We know the answer is no. Without stricter measures - like a moratorium - the only ones who benefit from data center expansion are the same corporations announcing layoffs every month and pushing to replace human labor with AI. We deserve better and it’s time we began asking for more.

The following document presents a ratified introduction to NYC DSA Tech Action’s guiding Principles On Technology. Serving as a central ideological reference point and accountability mechanism for our working group, these principles emerged from countless reading group discussions, political education sessions and legislative deliberations, followed by a formal drafting process.

Our Principles

What is technology? We start by taking a broad approach, and define technology as any purposive application of human knowledge and tools that mediates our relationship with the world. Under capitalism, the enclosure and privatization of technology ultimately serves to maximize profit and power for the elite, while robbing society of the collective benefit from and ownership over technologies they build. In the 21st century, this dynamic has precipitated most visibly in the technologies of information capitalism, a system where personal data becomes the primary resource to be extracted, commodified and controlled by large digital platforms. The technologies that have developed under this system – social media and communication platforms, the infrastructure of the internet, and artificial intelligence – have spread and impacted the everyday lives of millions of people. Motivated by the shaping of technology under this system, DSA Tech Action sets out to articulate a set of socialist principles that will serve as guidelines for our thinking and practice around technology.

Many of today’s digital technologies are of utility to society and working class people, including the very communication platforms that we use to organize. Indeed, for tools that have become critical infrastructure like the internet, we advocate for free and universal access, and push to bring them under democratic public control. But because of the extensive legacy and ongoing usage of technology as a way to expedite exploitation, as socialists we remain techno-skeptical under the current order. Technological developments under information capitalism have no imperative to serve the interests of society and the working class, often made clear by the myriad of harms accompanying any benefits. As part of our techno-skepticism, we reject the idea that the solutions to problems caused by technology are to be solved with more technology, disavow the blind prioritization of increased ‘efficiency’ for its own sake, and highlight how certain digital technologies can harm societal and ecological relationships. Simultaneously, we believe that new technologies should be developed when they are conducive to human flourishing, and emphasize that the benefits of technology must be distributed equitably amongst society. Ultimately, we strive to decrease our dependence on tools manufactured by the global technology industry while exploring collective ways of developing beneficial open source technology. We act in the interest of solidarity with our comrades, as well as for the safety and the sustainability of our own work.

Modern digital technology is increasingly corrosive in its long-term displacement of human labor, irreversible degradation of the environment, oppressive surveillance methods, and most recently, its commodification of human attention and personal data. These negative impacts are always felt first and most directly by folks on the margin, whether they are racialized or poor people, disabled or elderly people, women or LGBTQIA people. Today’s exploitative version of capitalism is inextricable from the technology industry, further enabled by collusion with the state and by its symbiotic relationship with a military-industrial complex implicated in mass atrocities and genocides. In many ways, the modern American technology industry is intimately tied up with centuries of racism, imperialism, policing, and exploitation of the working class.

Digital technology as we know it today is not only the product of a handful of American inventors, engineers and venture capitalists. It is made possible due to decades of labor, communication, creativity, and care performed in-person and online by billions of people, as well as by the planet’s finite and depletable natural resources. This has been most clearly demonstrated with the rise of resource intensive AI systems, which harness immense amounts of human data and labor off the internet as their most essential building blocks, often without any consent, transparency or renumeration. We see this extraction for what it is – a new form of digital colonialism that violates people’s autonomy and privacy over their personal data.

Data lies at the center of modern information capitalism, with methods for its collection and use never as numerous or advanced as today. We conceive of data as a new means of production, viewing it not only as an individual right to be protected, but as a communal resource to be collectively owned and democratically governed. While the implications of data collection and analysis can be individual (e.g. the loss of privacy, bias in economic and civic engagement, and targeting by law enforcement) the true value of data comes in the aggregate. Recognizing that data has power in aggregate and that efforts centering individual data autonomy alone may fail to safeguard the interests of the working class, we call for collective approaches to managing data.

Technology must belong to and serve the people. This means building technologies that directly improve the material conditions of society, decrease human suffering, uphold human dignity and strengthen the solidarities that exist among us. As members of the DSA Tech Action group, we believe in what we define as the four principles of tech justice:

1. The recognition that technology in our era develops under exploitative information capitalism.
2. The demand for free and equitable access to beneficial technologies, and the freedom from technologies of harmful extraction.
3. The call to bring critical technological infrastructure under public ownership and build open-source technologies beyond the imperative of capital.
4. The right to collective autonomy, consent and ownership over our personal data and how digital technologies utilize it.

These principles are not just theoretical tenants; rather, we put them into practice by making the following commitments:

1. The formation of a robust political education program around technology, accessible to all.
2. The push towards comprehensive, proactive legislation on digital technology that protects the public from technological harms.
3. The fostering of collective spaces conducive to building beneficial open source and communal technologies.

We apply these principles and commitments in the following eight focus areas to construct a set of specific ideals, positions, remedies and demands. We ground our analysis and examples in the contexts of America and New York City, while keeping our positions applicable in the wider global context of technological development under information capitalism.

Description

On August 24th, 2022, our former organizing committee member, Kristen Gonzalez, was elected to the New York State Senate. She currently is the chair of the Internet and Technology Committee & Elections Committee. She represents NY’s 59th District, including the neighborhoods of Astoria, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Stuyvesant Town, and Long Island City.

It’s official: Amazon has cancelled their plans to build their HQ2 in NYC

Today New York’s working class showed that big business and billionaires can’t buy our city. New York belongs to the many, not the few.

NYC-DSA Tech Action is proud to have played a part in that fight, and wish to commend all tech workers who stood in solidarity with our neighbors to stop Amazon’s plan to subvert democracy, and take billions in public money, as they crack down on unions and workers’ rights, increase deportations of our immigrant neighbors, and fuel gentrification, housing speculation, and skyrocketing rents.

While this is a big win, there is still work to do. Amazon still maintains a physical presence in NYC in the form of warehouses, Whole Foods, their corporate office in Midtown, and more, where they actively oppose unionization of their workers. They still dominate online retail, ad sales, and the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. We know Amazon will continue to make incursions into our public schools, our healthcare, our local government, and our daily lives.

The impending Amazon deal was far from the only way capitalism oppresses working-class Queens residents and New Yorkers. Millions of New Yorkers still lack any basic tenants’ rights and live with the threat of rent hikes, displacement, and evictions every day. Still only a quarter of our workers have union jobs. Our transit system is still broken; our public housing is still owed billions. Residents of color face systematic targeting by the police and ICE. These crises persist.

And our local government is still under the sway of neoliberal economic thinking that claims the only way to help the people of New York is by handing out money to giant corporations. The bulk of the billions of dollars in subsidies offered to Amazon were already on the books and can still be offered, through secret deals, to the next massive corporation. That must end.

NYC-DSA, Tech Action, and tech workers on the left will continue to fight Amazon—and any plan to turn New York into an unlivable Silicon Valley East—from both within and without, to push for the economic and social changes we all need to live with dignity.

But today was a victory for sure, and it should send a message to communities around the world: When we organize together we can beat back centi-billionaires and their trillion-dollar corporations and change the world.

On January 11th 2019, Tech Action helped organize a panel discussion on the past year’s wave of collective actions by white-collar tech workers. It was a huge success! Around 250 people stuffed into Verso Books for an incredibly lively discussion and Q&A on tech worker organizing in 2018 and beyond.

Thanks to all who came out, and a special shout out to all the volunteers who helped with check-in, tending bar, and recording. And of course thanks to all our great co-sponsors, including Logic Magazine, Coworker.org, Tech Workers Coalition NYC, and Science for the People.

The panel was moderated by Ben Tarnoff (Logic Magazine, The Guardian) and featured an incredible crew of tech organizers, like:

• Joan Greenbaum, a CUNY professor who was an active organizer with Computer People for Peace in the computer industry in the late 60s and 70s; she had lots of wisdom and experience to share about all this stuff.

• Liz Fong-Jones, who, until recently a longtime Google engineer, has been influential for internal organizing against the military and censorship systems built at Google.

• Meredith Whittaker, also a longtime Googler, who has been very active writing and speaking about ethics in AI research and practice and more recently helped organize the 20,000-person Google Walkout.

• A food service worker at Facebook, but she’s actually a contractor who’s employed by some food service company that Facebook hires. Not long ago she was diagnosed with cancer and her employer tried to fire her before she started expensive chemotherapy treatments. She was speaking on behalf of the often invisible workers like her who, unlike the white collar professionals in tech, don’t have anywhere near the same pay, benefits, security, or even employer, despite working in the same place as us on a daily basis.

Attendees also made sure to snap a solidarity pic with striking UTLA teachers in Los Angeles:

You can check out a recording of the event here.

On first day of September, Tech Action members turned out to support Julia Salazar in her campaign for State Senate. Julia’s a fellow NYC-DSA member who’s campaign recently solicited and adopted a “tech platform” developed by Tech Action members. Her campaign now includes tech policies like:

• Require that high-speed affordable internet access be made available to all New Yorkers, at the expense of the Internet Service Providers (cable companies), and I would provide State funding for the build-out of neutral, high-speed, publicly-owned and operated municipal/rural broadband infrastructure.
• Advocate for the rights of “gig” and contract workers by extending them collective bargaining rights, minimum wage, and other attendant protections and guarantees.
• Provide resources for the formation of “platform co-ops”: apps to compete with Uber, Seamless, or TaskRabbit, but owned and operated by the workers providing services through them, to avoid extractive and exploitative conditions for both workers and consumers.
• Help pass a modern NY-Electronic Communications & Privacy Act to reign in the electronic surveillance capabilities of law enforcement in conjunction with cable and social media companies.
• Ensure that technology companies contracting with NY State abide by standards of algorithmic transparency and data privacy (e.g. requiring open-source code and bias screening), so we can be sure that no New Yorker is paying taxes to be discriminated against or spied upon.
• Demand that tech companies pay their fair share in taxes. Instead of giving the tech industry tax breaks and incentives and getting little in return, these companies must contribute like the rest of us. We should then reinvest that money in public tech jobs, infrastructure, and tools that allow the State of New York to compete technologically with private companies and become self-reliant.

(See her campaign’s tech policy page for the full text of her position statement.)

Our canvas for Julia was a success not only for showing our support and helping to bring our politics to Albany; it was a chance to speak about our politics to new people in the neighborhoods of North Brooklyn, to talk about not just tech issues but all the issues NYC-DSA fights for like universal healthcare and universal rent control. For many it was their first time canvassing as well!

A bit more about Julia: she’s running for State Senate in District 18 (North Brooklyn) in the Democratic primary on September 13th. She was endorsed by the NYC-DSA chapter at our citywide convention last May, after a very enthusiastic and nearly unanimous vote among delegates. Since then she’s gotten the endorsement from the National DSA and from various other figures and organizations on the left: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cynthia Nixon, Our Revolution, and the Working Families Party to name just a few. To learn more about Julia’s campaign check out her recent interview on The Dig, this report in The Intercept, or this recent TV interview on NY1.

Our first Tech Action event was a success! On December 17, 2017 we co-hosted a panel with Logic Magazine called “The Internet We Want”.

The focus of discussion was on the pitfalls of Big Tech and how the Left can seize new opportunities in the wake of its failures to advance a more radical vision for digital democracy. The panel happened to fall on the same week as the FCC’s repeal of Net Neutrality so people were eager to get together and discuss a new radical vision for The Internet.

The panel featured:

• Cathy O’Neil — mathematician, data scientist, and author of “Weapons of Math Destruction”.

• Trebor Scholz — scholar, activist, and leading proponent of “platform cooperativism”.

• Astra Taylor – filmmaker, writer, and author of “The People’s Platform”.

• Evan Malmgren — writer, author of an article in Logic’s new issue on municipal broadband.

• Moira Weigel — postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, cofounder of Logic, and author of a recent Guardian Long Read on tech worker organizing.

If you missed it, check out the video here!

And check out Logic’s photos from the event here.