Jayne Black is a Wisconsin-area environmentalist and mother of four. An organizer with the group Moms Clean Air Force, Black has plenty of experience struggling for environmental justice throughout her home state — but when a proposed data centered forced the fight onto her own doorstep, she won in a round-one knockout.
A 64-year old activist, Black first got her start organizing when two of her four children were diagnosed with asthma related to environmental factors and multiple sclerosis, People reported.
After learning about the a data center proposal on a plot of land 12 miles away from her home, she was horrified. “When you speak about wanting changes for cleaner air, and you have a child who’s impacted, it hits differently,” she told the magazine. “It’s gut-wrenching, and knowing too that these data centers primarily are using fossil fuels. It’s really disappointing and it’s scary.”
Black started a Facebook group to inform the public about the development, and the extreme environmental costs the facilities engender. Now called “Stop the Northeast Wisconsin Data Centers,” the group gathered over 2,000 members within just the first two days alone, and it’s since swelled to around 3,700.
Per her interview with People, Black used concerns around the area’s natural beauty as a jumping-off point to educate locals about the environmental harms data centers cause — effectively meeting people where they were at and building awareness from there.
“They’re like, ‘this is farmland. I don’t want it in my backyard. I love where I live. It’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. I don’t want this,”” Black told People. “And then when you start talking to them about what this really would mean for their community and their health, they’re even more concerned. So that was the organizing part.”
Within days of the Facebook group’s launch, the facility’s Texas-based development firm Cloverleaf withdrew its plans, blaming a lack of support from local officials.
While it’s a huge win for the town of Greenleaf, Black acknowledges that the fight is far from over. “We had such strong opposition, [Cloverleaf] said, ‘okay, we’ll just go elsewhere.’ And that’s what they do, unfortunately.”
Still, the 64-year-old organizer isn’t gatekeeping any of this, and hopes the successes her nearby town enjoyed will inspire others to take action wherever the next Cloverleaf development pops up.
“I work with organizers all across the country, and so we really want Greenleaf to be inspirational to the fact that community pushback works, like how important your voice is,” Black told People. “I was just one person who started a Facebook page.”
More on data centers: Residents Furious After Their Town Board Rejected an OpenAI Data Center, But a Billionaire Developer Forced It Through Anyway