28 Days of Black Liberation 2026 series: Week 2
The University of Michigan & Los Alamos National Lab (which develops nuclear weapons & resources for “national security”) are moving their data center from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti Twp. They want to use the Willow Run manufacturing complex by West Willow, a working-class Black neighborhood. The change from South Hydro Park to Willow Run was pushed with the lie that it wouldn’t “pose risks to residents, infrastructure, or natural resources.” UM is exempt from zoning constraints, municipal permits, and property taxes. It’s a classic win-win for them, bringing the axe down on the Black residents of West Willow.
There are plans for data centers in Allen Park, Van Buren, Grand Rapids, Howell, Lansing. If built, the Saline Twp data center will help OpenAI (ChatGPT) & Oracle (run by one of the world’s wealthiest capitalists, Larry Ellison) make tools for state repression, surveillance, & mass data theft – weapons used against Black people in the very neighborhoods these data centers are being built in.
WE ALL KNOW THE COSTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM. Flint’s water crisis, born from deliberate neglect, continues to poison Black residents. Highways in Detroit purposefully carved through Black Bottom & Paradise Valley. Michigan’s unique financial emergency manager system has been exclusively used to extract capital from working class Black cities. Now data centers, proven water contaminators, are part of this historical pattern of environmental racism.
These centers aren’t being built without a fight from locals. Pressure from grassroots campaigns like Stop The Data Center in Ypsi forced the City Council to unanimously pass resolutions against the data center & forced UM/Los Alamos to delay their construction for the Ypsi Twp Data center from until 2027.