John Palameda | Red Phoenix guest correspondent | Illinois–

Advocates rally for greater data center regulations at the Capitol in April 2026. (Capitol News Illinois/Jenna Schweikert)

In Grayslake, a northwest suburb of Chicago, a local movement aiming to stop a 472-acre data center from being built in a residential area faced another hurdle as the local city government packed a city council meeting with over 100 members of the International Union of Operation Engineers (IUOE) Locals 150 and 152. In a tense and heated scene, locals were denied seats and were, at times, prevented from speaking by union members, who sang the U.S. national anthem over protesters and called others “bleeding heart liberals.” The union attended the meeting to protect the data center, which it said would bring union construction jobs to the location. Protestors have raised concerns about water and electricity use on Lake County’s outdated infrastructure, noise pollution, the limited jobs provided by the project after construction, and local officials selling residential land to a corporation for the expansion of AI.

It is the latest attack on the movement, whose modest aims are to stop the construction of the data center. Previously, the town cancelled seven of the last twelve city council meetings and Grayslake’s mayor, Elizabeth Davies, has offered no response other than saying Grayslake should be “honored” to have been chosen for the project. On June 13, the community held a protest against the data center which brought several hundred people to the streets of the usually quiet suburban town.

The involvement of the IUOE presents working class activists with difficult choices. It is undeniable that there has been a rightward turn in American unionism in the wake of the Trump movement, which has created tension in the traditional bastion of Democratic Party politics. At the meeting, several union members clearly opposed what they saw as “complaining liberalism,” as one union member said in the meeting. Another union member, however, said he needed the job to pay for necessities which is why he had come out, as his situation was made worse by what he called “Trump’s policies and Iran.” Even in this small microcosm of the issues facing the American labor movement, the contradictions were obvious.

The protest movement, of course, has its own contradictions. Even with the involvement of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in organizing the June 13 protest, the movement’s demands have largely settled on broad, big-tent goals, such as avoiding electrical strain and excessive water use, even as many members of the group’s public social media spaces espouse anti-capitalist sentiments. This is due, in part, to the fact that local politics still revolves around the organizations and relationships that drove the No Kings protests, which oppose a particular form of capitalism rather than capitalism itself. Within the movement are also uncritical anti-science forces, such as anti-vaxxers, who oppose anything that can be branded as new.

The incident was a flashpoint of the ongoing national battle over not only data centers but the nature of democracy in the heart of the beast. Workers all over the country are faced with the fact that the traditional channels of democratic reform, such as city council meetings, elections, and peaceful protest, are not effective by themselves. What’s more, we are faced at every turn with attempts to turn us against each other. Exclusively white male union laborers were seen silencing people opposing corporate intervention in their community. Protesters were heard proudly saying liberals created the trade union movement in the meeting.

We, the working people of the United States, must not take the bait. Local officials want to portray opposition to data centers as anti-labor. This is simply false. The same policies that gave us this data center are the ones that have chipped away collective bargaining rights. As the American working class rises to the moment and begins to grow its ability to resist fascism and capitalism, it will be tested. In this test in small-town Illinois, organizers must avoid distraction and aim their sights at the capitalists forcing unwanted data centers in their community.

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