On July 28th, three people were arrested at a “community meeting on Project Jupiter” called by the Dona Ana County Commission. The people were arrested for rejecting the commissioner’s attempt to end public comment before the majority of people speaking in opposition to the project got on the mic. Thus far, the movement to Stop Project Jupiter has largely fought against the proposed hyper-scale data center south of Las Cruces through official channels. But as those channels got even more narrow at the community meeting, some individuals stepped forward to call out commissioners for prematurely ending public comment. They were met with repression for daring to step out of line. The brave would-be public commenters who refused to let data center opposition be silenced have been slapped with bogus disorderly conduct charges and one was injured in the arrests.

The public hearing got off to a surprising start when union workers were bused in by Project Jupiter contractors to speak in favor of the jobs Project Jupiter will bring (temporarily) to the mesilla basin. These workers packed the room ahead of the start time, allegedly being paid a days wage to attend. Their early arrival prevented many of the Stop Project Jupiter speakers from getting on the docket due to the County Commissioner, Manual Sanchez, limiting public comment (data center opposition has since called for his resignation and shouted him out of a meeting). The few opponents who did speak expressed concern about the water Project Jupiter will require from an already bankrupt watershed, the absurd power demands of the center, the massive projected pollution and the unsubstantiated employment prospects for Dona Ana County residents. Boos and cheers erupted periodically throughout the session. This led to an anti-Project Jupiter attendee being escorted out of the meeting and later arrested. When commissioners moved to end public comment with people still waiting to speak, a small crowd moved to the front of the room to make their voices heard. Private security and local sheriffs then escalated the situation, shoving an attendee to the ground and arresting two people.

These arrests are just one instance of data center opponents being silenced by authorities. In Kansas, Lux Claridge was arrested for clapping in support of speakers opposing Flint Hills Digital Campus Center. He said of his arrest “I’m glad to be out, but this is an inconvenience, really, It’s not really deterring me from speaking out or, I guess, clapping.” In February, Claemore Police in Oklahoma arrested Darren Blanchard, whose public comment aroused cheers from the audience, when he spoke approximately 30 seconds over his allotted time. He was charged with trespassing. In May, Dixon Police arrested Harley Delander at his home in Illinois after he planned a protest outside of a local politician’s home, calling the politician to oppose the data center for the sake of his children’s future. He was charged with felony intimidation and stalking. He acquired the politicians address through public avenues and planned the protest on Facebook. This pattern of public comments being limited, peoples voices being silenced, and public officials and politicians selling out the land and people they claim to protect in the pursuit of fast-tracking data centers is becoming the norm.

Project Jupiter’s PR campaign

Oracle, the company building Project Jupiter, first caught public attention in September of 2025 after news broke of backroom deals and non-disclosure agreements led to them getting $165 billion in Dona Ana County government bonds to build Project Jupiter. Since then, people in Dona Ana County have put their heads together to oppose it. In March, 7,000 people submitted public comment overwhelmingly in opposition to the project.

As people questioned the Project’s environmental impact, Oracle and local partner, Borderplex, have worked overtime to craft a green-data center image, saying its massive cooling system won’t impact the water in the collapsing watershed (the center requires millions of gallons of water from an aquifer that is severely depleted). This lie and other greenwashing attempts have been repeatedly exposed. As Data centers have been met with wide-spread backlash, Santa Fe, Socorro, and Sierra counties have passed temporary moratoriums on data center construction, joining numerous other counties across the country and one state. But not Dona Ana County, where county officials and commissioners have paid lip service to constituent concerns, while allowing construction to continue uninhibited. Santa Teresa residents continue breath in the dust kicked up by Project Jupiter construction.

In another attempt to clean up their image, Oracle donated $50,000 to Casa Peregrino’s, a local food bank in December of 2025. SNAP cuts had rapidly increased the number of people facing food insecurity in Dona Ana county. On July 29th, in another PR stunt, Colleen Chastity, global head of “social impact” for Oracle, oversaw the donation of electric vehicles to be used for food distribution to the same food bank. Naturally, this food bank has not said a negative thing about Project Jupiter. Oracle has also announced it has completed its $1.5 million dollar commitment to the Boys and Girls club of Las Cruces as part of its $6.9 million plan for workforce development and habitat restoration in the area. It has also pledged $360 million for local schools, roads, and services.

As they pump Dona Ana County and the El Paso area full of money in quantities that are significant for the long-abandoned population, but relatively insignificant to a multi-billion-dollar tech company, they have unleashed a PR campaign to change the public perception of data centers. Airing bilingual pro-Project Jupiter ads on television and radio and paying local influencers and media personalities to hype up the Project.

They are shamelessly exploiting the vulnerabilities of New Mexicans. They are capitalizing on poverty to buy people’s approval, or at the very least, their silence. Many New Mexicans see through these “charitable” actions. They see Oracle for what it is: a boot on their neck, ready to drown them in charity while they dehydrate them with Project Jupiter.

Public comment, Moratoriums, and Sitting on Fences

Those organizing against Project Jupiter have worked to raise awareness and gather people towards the cause, voicing their demands at public comments and making sure local politicians know exactly where people stand, and calling those same politians out when they try to silence them. As resistance grows to the ruling class relentlessly shoving Project Jupiter down our throats, our strategy needs to move beyond the playpen of so-called democracy. The bottom line is, if the ruling class wants a data center in Dona Ana County, opposition through acceptable channels alone will not stop them.

Already, in Dona Ana County we have seen public comment limited. Around the country, we have seen public comment limited or shut down entirely. Notably, in May, thousands of Utahns submitted negative comments against the Stratos Data Center. Hundreds of nearby Box Elder residents flooded a commission meeting, forcing the politicians to close the in person meeting and continue virtually. At the virtual meeting, they unanimously rubber-stamped the A.I. partnership for Stratos.

Disrupting public meetings has failed to halt data center progress, but these disruptions have brought more public attention to the issue, and more support for opposition than the orderly public comments that have come before. To make the most of public comment, we cannot just go along with the government’s rules, as they will directly silence us or merely pretend to listen. We must interrupt public comment to expose the process as a sham that does not represent the interests of humanity much less the earth. This will put eyes on the resistance and embolden others to take further steps to disrupt business as usual until construction ceases. It will also invite repression that we must be prepared to support people through, fight back against, and publicize to bring even more people into the fold.

Commenting in mass in an orderly way has yielded moratoriums in some places, though these temporary moratoriums could be an attempt to appease dissent and wait for a time when the opposition is less organized and vocal. Many companies may be able to wait out these moratoriums, or if it becomes too difficult to build, they will pick up and move to a different small, impoverished town that lacks organized resistance. And a data center picking up and moving to another place is not the desired result: these succubuses are an existential threat to the earth regardless of where they are built. We want them to know they are not welcome ANYWHERE.

Politicians are promoting a funhouse mirror version of their constituent’s demands: distorting the call to stop and ban data center projects into a demand to regulate them, or for the process of building them to be slower and more transparent. When asked about Project Jupiter bringing certain doom to New Mexico, gubernatorial frontrunner Deb Haaland, responded “We can’t afford that, so guardrails need to be put on data centers.” She went on to say “We have precious natural resources and one of those is water. And I don’t think New Mexico is in a position with the climate crisis to spend all our water on one industry.” This statement sounds like it is against Project Jupiter, but it would save her a lot of breath to simply call for Data Centers to be banned in New Mexico. Instead, she pandered to her base while sitting on a fence. Haaland, like any politician, wants to be elected, and coming out against Project Jupiter could threaten some of her support. Nearly all prominent unions, many of which are involved with building Project Jupiter, have endorsed Haaland. Those endorsements could be threatened if she came out in opposition to the project. Haaland already feels she has “environmental” voters in the bag without offering to do anything for them, so no need to rock the boat with the unions.

Despite it’s unpopularity, Project Jupiter has the politicians on their side, and they have already begun construction. In order to stop this data center, we need a change in strategy that brings more forces to bear against Oracle. We must continue to demonstrate at public hearings and force the county to come down on us. We must also build mass resistance ready to confront the construction head on.

We don’t got us til Project Jupiter doesn’t have us held hostage

A strategy some forces opposing Project Jupiter have undertaken to win public support (which is largely already against Project Jupiter) is doing charity in an attempt to build resiliency to Oracles bribery. They want to show that Project Jupiter isn’t the only one that can materially provide for Santa Theresa and the surrounding areas. The reality is there is no way we can compete with the immediate material incentives Project Jupiter is offering right now. Unless a local nonprofit recently got a grant to fund 4,000 well paying construction jobs with benefits (what Project Jupiter is offering), we cannot out do what they are offering residents. This strategy can have the effect of limiting people’s horizons; people of Santa Teresa and NM see through Oracle’s treachery and are already defying their immediate material interests to oppose the Project. But this fight will not won entirely through refusing good jobs or creating systems of mutual aide. Even locals en mass refusing to work at Project Jupiter will not stop the construction or operation of this atrocity. We need to approach people with a plan capable of shutting it down. Though we don’t claim to have all the answers, we think bringing as many people out to the site to disrupt construction on a sustained basis is a good place to start.

To make this happen, we need to go out to people wherever we can find them, at their homes, at cultural events, in their churches, and bring them into the movement, something the current forces fighting Project Jupiter have been doing for months. We also need to create avenues for resistance beyond public comment or charity: people need to call the protest and be willing shut it down.

Taking aim at Jupiter with our sight on the Stars

Part of the motivation behind doing charity to promote opposition to data centers is wanting to offer people something. Charity, the data centers jobs, or even shutting down to data centers, all do not provide a way out the current ecological and economic catastrophe that is threatening our very existence. If Project Jupiter is stopped, but the way production is organized does not radically change, the entire state of New Mexico will still be left without potable water in mere decades. The jobs Project Jupiter provides will not change the fact rural towns lack sufficient healthcare, education, cultural institutions, or grocery stores. This too will also require a reorganization of how goods and services are produced and distributed.

In order to reorganize production to take into account what is best for the environment and rural towns we need to make revolution in this society. If you are interested (or skeptical) about this claim we encourage you to investigate it here. But a revolution will not just happen, if left unopposed the rulers of this society will drive humanity, and nearly all other life on earth into extinction, this process has been unfolding for generations and has reached an existential inflection point with Project Jupiter. Our fight against Project Jupiter, and data centers more broadly, can contribute to building the forces required to make revolution in this society. Bringing masses of people out to the Project Juniper site and shutting it down until construction is forced to stop can show those people, and everyone watching, that if we take action in an organized and determined way, we can change the course of history. The organization and networks built through this struggle can later be deployed as part of making an actual revolution.

People are desperately grasping for ways to take control of their future. What we should offer them must be more compelling than good paying jobs or free food to temporarily offset precarity. We must offer them a chance to see themselves as the makes of history through joining a movement where their contributions can fundamentally transform society for the better.