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This year in Arizona, we took on one of the most powerful industries in the world and won.

The fight began at Barrio Dinners, community gatherings, and listening sessions across Arizona and ended on the governor’s desk. Throughout these community discussions hosted by Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), community members gathered to express concerns about data centers being built in their backyards and what that growth would mean for their water, electricity bills, and neighborhoods. In those same conversations, families talked about struggling to afford groceries, housing and childcare. The hypocrisy at the heart of the data center construction boom in communities across the country was unfolding in Arizona as well. And it was impossible to ignore: lawmakers said there wasn’t enough money to allocate toward meeting our communities’ needs, yet billion-dollar corporations were getting tax breaks to build new facilities down the street.

Arizonans made it clear that this was unacceptable. They took their stories from neighborhood gatherings to legislative offices and public testimony. Alongside coalition partners and Democratic lawmakers, LUCHA partnered with our community members to push for a moratorium on data center tax breaks in Arizona. Tax Day actions and protests, press conferences, and statewide and national media coverage turned an obscure giveaway into a public fight over whose needs Arizona’s government was choosing to serve.

From the start, opposition to our agenda was fierce; even Democratic lawmakers and allies told us this fight was futile. They stated Big Tech had too much money, too many lobbyists, and too many politicians in its pocket. And they were right, to an extent. Yes, Republicans controlled the state legislature, and yes, data center corporations had billions behind their lobbying efforts. But nothing worth fighting for is ever easy, and our motto at LUCHA is to do big things despite the odds. Our relentless........

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