Ahead of Climate Week March, organizations rally to demand, ‘No Data Centers for Billionaires’
September 20, 2025 | Press Releases
Dozens of activists and community members gathered before the ‘Make Billionaires Pay’ march to oppose the dangerous and growing alliance between the Trump administration and tech billionaires.
(New York City) ––– This morning, members of the Athena Coalition hosted a rally to call attention to a dangerous and corrupt alliance developing between tech billionaires and the Trump administration. The rally included local, state, and national organizers fighting back to stop Big Tech’s unsustainable data center expansion across the country. They were joined by tech workers from No Tech for Apartheid who are working to hold tech corporations accountable for directly participating in the unfolding genocide in Palestine.
Speakers included:
- Ryan Gerety, Director, Athena Coalition
- Marisol Winfrey-Herrera, No Desert Data Centers in Tucson, Arizona
- Avalon Akashi, NY Renews Indigenous Solidarity Committee
- Former Google worker with No Tech for Apartheid
- Myaisha Hayes, Senior Movement Building Director, Media Justice
“What we see today between the White House and tech billionaires is a dangerous and corrupt alliance. In exchange for publicly supporting the Trump agenda and providing the administration with powerful technology, these billionaires are inking new deals abroad, evading legal oversight, and recklessly building data centers that cannot be powered renewably. These very same corporations that are selling out the American public are actively participating in war crimes abroad. By coming together and finding common ground, we have the power to stop these corporations and stand in the way of this corrupt administration,” stated Ryan Gerety of the Athena Coalition.
Organizers called attention to the sprawling data centers that big tech billionaires are building across the country not just to power AI, but to cement their wealth and power. They warned that big tech’s data centers may reverse hard-won climate gains, raise energy bills, and steer technological progress toward a short-term, profit-driven, and militaristic vision. The Trump administration has said that they will pave the way for the deals and power data centers with coal.
“Thousands of Tucsonans came together to oppose Amazon’s harmful Project Blue data center. But Amazon and TEP, our for-profit utility, won’t take no for an answer. What we’re facing in Southern Arizona is happening all over the country: communities are being sacrificed so Big-Tech, for-profit utilities and the fossil fuel industry can cash in. The massive buildout of data centers is not inevitable. We beat them once already in Tucson and we’ll do it again and again until our desert community is protected. We stand in solidarity with every community fighting back against extractive billionaires and know that together we can defeat the oligarchs and build a world where we can all thrive and live in dignity,” stated Marisol Winfrey Herrera of the No Desert Data Center Coalition.
After the rally, participants joined the Make Billionaires Pay march, a mass mobilization across the country to “stand up to Trump and the Billionaire Class and demand better for our people and planet.” Convened by 350.org, Demand Climate Justice, Climate Action Network and War on Want, protesters attempted to reach world leaders gathered in New York City for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week, demanding an end to billionaire giveaways, as well as defense of migrants, the global majority, and the planet.
“Tech companies want us to believe that the AI race is a race we can’t afford to lose. But we have nothing to gain from technology that pollutes our air, compromises our access to clean water, and extracts wealth from our communities. This is just the latest scheme to concentrate wealth and power amongst a handful of tech billionaires who don’t even believe in the future of our humanity. This race is nothing but a race towards the bottom,” stated Myaisha Hayes, Senior Movement Building Director of MediaJustice.
This rally also coincides with the BDS National Committee’s ‘Disrupt Complicity Weekend,’ a response to Palestinian civil society calls for mass disruptive actions against complicit states, corporations and institutions marking the UN General Assembly deadline for Israel to end its illegal occupation and apartheid. Speakers in the rally highlighted Project Nimbus, the joint $1.22 billion contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021, providing cloud computing infrastructure, AI, and other technology services to the Israeli government and the Israeli military. Nimbus offers the platform for the Israeli military to run deadly AI programs such as Lavender and Gospel––crucial to the Gaza genocide.
“These tech oligarchs forget that they don’t even exist without us–without the labor of their workers and without the land of local communities to build on top of. They forget that I don’t have to accept the reality of my work contributing to genocide and war crimes, and that I can organize alongside my coworkers to stop this war machine. They forget that when places like Tucson resist the development of Amazon’s greedy AI data center, those communities can defeat them,” stated a former Google worker with No Tech for Apartheid.