Dear ,
Today, we’re excited to share the news that Vivek Bharathan is joining MediaJustice as our new Data Center Fellow, and we couldn’t wait to tell you why this matters for our movement.
Vivek comes to us straight from the front lines of the data center fight. In Tucson, he was part of the coalition that stopped Amazon’s $3.6 billion data center from draining the desert’s water supply. While Amazon tried to sell their extraction as “economic development," the No Desert Data Center Coalition exposed the real story, which is that these facilities drain resources while giving communities nothing in return.
As a technologist who actually understands how these systems work, Vivek brings the technical chops we need to take on Big Tech’s infrastructure expansion. But more importantly, he gets that fights around data centers are really about giant corporations extracting resources from our communities.
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We had the opportunity to work with Vivek and the No Desert Data Center crew for the past few months. We’re excited to build on the lessons from Tucson and help strengthen that same power nationally. Vivek will support by helping build relationships with other communities fighting tech expansion, creating political education tools, and developing multimedia projects that expose how data centers follow the same harmful playbook we’ve seen for generations.
While Tech Broligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman have fancy dinners at the White House, Vivek, alongside our organizers, will build the relationships we need to fight back and win. His work starts September 15th and we’re ready to take this fight wherever data centers are draining our communities.
Tech’s power like these data centers are not inevitable. With people like Vivek helping build our movement’s capacity, our people will be ready to strike back.
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In collective solidarity,
MediaJustice
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