06/29/2026
When the group chat is so fun it makes it national news >>>>>>>
Want to join?
Come to Soapbox Seattle on a Tuesday for dinner. The group chat goes hard because there are no randos in it sorry 😇💕
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[ID: screenshots from Grist article on data centers
https://grist.org/protest/climate-activists-data-centers-green-new-deal/]
Climate activists take on a new foe: Data centers
As climate action stalls, the movement is finding new energy in local fights to stop polluting, power-hungry facilities.
That was recently in play in Seattle, where the climate activist group 350 Seattle joined the push to pass a moratorium on new large data centers after the news broke this spring that five major facilities could be coming to town. If all the projects were actually built, they would require about one-third the amount of power that Seattle uses on a typical day. The Seattle City Council passed the moratorium unanimously earlier this month, making it the largest city in the U.S. so far to suspend approvals. For local activists working on an issue as amorphous and overwhelming as climate change, it was invigorating to get involved in a mission with a concrete, local outcome.
Audrey Wang Gosselin, a member of the Soapbox Project and a board member of 350 Seattle, speaks in favor of a data center moratorium at a Seattle City Council meeting. Courtesy of Renaissance
“For us, it was a very good on-ramp for people who just want to do something and want to turn that powerlessness into something meaningful,” said Nivi Achanta, the founder and CEO of Soapbox Project, a local climate action group that advocated for the moratorium. The group’s Signal chat buzzed as the city council weighed the policy: “People were, like, pulling out drinks and grabbing their popcorn and actually watching these city council politics unfold in a way that’s so much more fun than anything I’ve experienced outside of this, in the general climate movement,” Achanta said.]
