More than 500 people filled an Eau Claire event center Saturday evening to drink old fashioneds while connecting over a collective desire to prevent “oligarchs” and big tech companies from constructing AI data centers in the region. 

On a beautiful early summer evening in the highly contested and swingy 3rd Congressional District — with the closing game of the NBA Finals and early games of the FIFA World Cup competing for attention — attendees from across the political spectrum expressed their frustration  with a world that appears to favor the financial interests of billionaires promising to wipe out swathes of jobs with a new technology and the associated data centers threatening the natural beauty and resources of Wisconsin’s driftless region. 

“For us the land really matters,” Cyndi Greening, the leader of Chippewa Valley Indivisible, said. “This is where we swim and play and raise our kids. I think it’s a bigger issue here, because a lot of us are much more tied to the land.” 

The Uniting Western Wisconsin event was hosted by a number of groups, including Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin, Great Lakes Neighbors United, the Wisconsin Farmers Union, Healthy Climate Wisconsin and Indivisible. 

While data centers have been popping up across the state, most notably the hyperscale data centers constructed by Microsoft, Meta and Vantage in Mount Pleasant, Beaver Dam and Port Washington, there has been less frenzied development in western Wisconsin. But still, a proposed center in Menomonie was killed last year after opposition from residents pushed local officials to change zoning rules to put more onerous restrictions on proposed data centers. 

The event Friday included speeches from a number of anti-data center activists, musical performances from the Eau Claire-based band Them Coulee Boys and Boyceville native Madilyn Bailey and a headlining performance by the comedian Charlie Berens, creator of the popular online “Manitowoc Minute” series, who has become a high-profile anti-data center voice in the state. 

Blaine Halvorsen, who helped lead the fight in Menomonie and one of the event’s main organizers, said his goal was to move the data center fight away from “angry villager energy” opposing a development in specific  neighborhoods to a more proactive discussion about how to build stronger protections for communities so they aren’t rolled over by the power of big tech. 

That aim was reflected during Berens’ set. One of his  largest applause lines in the mixed political crowd of Wisconsin voters came when he advocated for giving the state’s Department of Natural Resources more regulatory authority over development. 

In an election year when so much attention and resources will be devoted to earning the votes of people in this area, organizers reiterated their belief that candidates had to take the intensity of data center opposition, and by extension a rejection of artificial intelligence, seriously. 

“This is a big election year, and I know all candidates should be expecting, if they’re not already, a lot of questions about data centers and how they’re going to deal with hyperscale data center proposals, and how they’re going to be the best candidate, whether it’s for governor, state Legislature, Congress, whatever it may be,” Danny Akenson, an organizer with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin  said. “And I would say that we are going to be looking out to see that candidates are answering to the people in their communities, we believe that the people closest to the problem are the closest to the solution, and that local control is something that should be protected, so whether it’s data centers, whether it’s frack mines 10-15 years ago. We need to make sure that communities have a voice in the decision making, and I hope that the candidates that make sure that local control is protected are the ones that people really think about.” 

Among the attendees, people were drawn to the event for a variety of reasons. Some told the Wisconsin Examiner they were concerned about the harm data centers can pose to local land, water and air; others were concerned about the massive energy demand of data centers increasing their utility bills and some simply knew the issue is one that’s drawing a lot of attention and wanted to learn more. 

Ron Demotts, a Menomonie resident who works near the proposed data center site, said he knows it’s an issue that people in his community have been upset about, but without any social media he’s just seen yard signs around town with “no impression” about why it’s become such a prominent debate. 

“I don’t know the first thing about the topic,” he said. 

But others came more fired up. Jan Schneider connected the proliferation of data centers to the Trump administration’s immigration policies — saying that both reflect a disregard for humanity. 

“I do not support the data centers, I don’t support the energy they take, the land that they take, the fact that AI is probably what they’re supporting, and that just isn’t something that I think we’re ready for, because there’s no regulations or anything on that,” she said. 

Chippewa Falls residents Elizabeth Yost and Luke Ballard said they moved to Wisconsin from Illinois for college and then stayed after graduating specifically because of the abundant access to fresh water. 

“We’re really concerned about water access and water quality,” Yost said. “That’s why we moved to Wisconsin, so we could have fresh water to swim in and drink.” 

She added that as a younger person, she’s frustrated with AI being foisted upon her at work and on her devices. 

“A lot of the AI use that I do is kind of forced on me in my email or in my text messages, where it’s not that I’m opting in, instead it’s being forced on me because I use Gmail, because I use, like, an iPhone, so that’s frustrating,” Yost said, “definitely, that you don’t really have a choice, which is why I think it’s really important on the systemic and societal scale to have change made. Because it’s not going to be just opting out of ChatGPT that’s going to save the day.”