Chaos Ensues After Memphis Delays Vote on Musk’s Data Centers

Willy Blackmore, Word in Black

Shouting and confrontations followed a City Council decision to postpone a moratorium aimed at addressing pollution concerns.

Eager to learn if elected officials would hit the brakes on Elon Musk’s plans to expand his data center empire in their city, residents filled a Memphis City Council meeting early last month, hoping it would finally address a problem that has disproportionately harmed Black neighborhoods.

But when the council postponed the decision, frustration boiled over into pandemonium: audience members yelled at council members, council members shouted back, then hurled insults at each other. As police cleared the chamber, fights broke out outside.

Since then, the meeting has gone viral: news outlets from TMZ to FOX News have picked up the story, elevating the data center moratorium issue.

The bottom line: Memphians will have to wait a little longer to find out whether the City Council will pause new data center construction for one year. After voting 7-5 to postpone the decision, the council is set to try again on Oct. 20.

KeShaun Pearson, executive director of Memphis Community Against Pollution, told the Commercial Appeal newspaper that the situation shows there are “seven City Council members who think we don’t deserve clean air.”

“We deserve justice and a moratorium now,” he said.

At issue is Musk’s rapid construction of massive SpaceXAI data centers — and dozens of gas-powered generators to supply them with electricity — in Memphis’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. Those communities already are heavily burdened by industrial air pollution; experts say emissions from Musk’s turbines add to the problem, and residents believe a moratorium can stop further harm, at least temporarily.

Read the full article here.

Read about the racial bias in artificial intelligence or how a data center promised jobs in a historically black town but residents were wary of the claim.

ABHM Breaking news.