When the people of Monterey Park found that their local government was going to approve a 250,000-square-foot data center just 500 feet from their homes, they organized.
And within a few months, the developer withdrew their application.
Andrew Yip, an organizer with SGV Progressive Action, tells L.A. TACO that the organization’s success started with their “existing network of volunteers,” noting that “the community was able to jump in at a moment's notice.”
SGV Progressive Action was founded in 2020 to “address the Black Lives Matter uprisings," Yip says. "To support our Black community."
Then it organized local resolutions advocating for a ceasefire in Palestine, and built a lending library in El Monte called Matilija, where they trained volunteers in community defense against ICE, hosted organizers, and stored 20 canopies and a speaker system.
"So that existed," Yip says.
In November, a community member who had come to a council meeting for other business saw the data center on the agenda and called on SGV Progressive Action.
"They asked if we can take a look at this," Yip says. "And see if that's something that communities should be concerned about."
All that was needed was one last council vote. But the developer requested a delay to the next meeting.
"Had they voted that day, it would have been done, right? It would have been done," Yip says. “But we found out about it, and we turned out hundreds of people to the next meeting.”
CA PUBLIC RECORDS ACT
Under California's Sunshine Laws, local governments are required to turn over agendas, meeting minutes, attendance records, and emails. SGV Progressive Action immediately filed public records requests.
"That's really how we found out," Yip says.
The records showed city planners had given their blessings to the data center, saying it would not result in any “significant environmental impacts.” They had used the developer's own impact assessment in place of a more thorough state environmental review.
The records also showed the city had held a series of community meetings to ask residents what should be built at 1977 Saturn Street, but only notified people living within 500 feet. Each meeting drew between 20 and 60 people. Residents who were there told Yip and other organizers that the city clerk brought in people who backed the data center. It won with roughly 20 votes.
“Twenty-something votes determined [that] residents here wanted a data center,” Yip says. ”That just seemed like a weird recommendation coming out of a community town hall.”
Council Member Thomas Wong, who would vote for having the data center, also works at the power company that would sell its electricity.
The developer also bought a larger property at 1980 Saturn Street across the street. The data center trade magazines reported that these were part of a 13-parcel assembly, all meant for data centers. Yip asked the developers what they planned to do with 1980 Saturn; they said they were not authorized to discuss it.
NO DATA CENTER MPK & THE INFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The residents of Monterey Park bought the domain No Data Center MPK.
“And we had a ton of people come out to support, whether it's walking the neighborhoods, distributing fliers, calling folks, creating artwork,” Yip says. “It was a big showing.”
They went door-to-door to tell their neighbors what the city had not told them: The data center would use twice as much electricity as all of Monterey Park. The 14 “backup” generators would burn 200,000 gallons of diesel every year, without a blackout. And more when the grid price was high.
They held a teach-in. 150 people came.
“We have a lot of very smart residents who were able to do a lot of this research and fact-finding. Many of the residents we work with are researchers or hold PhDs, and they work in universities. So they know how to find this information,” Yip says.
One resident 3D-printed a model of the data center to show just how much of the neighborhood’s space it would take up. Another resident mixed noise recordings from data centers and played them over a loudspeaker. You couldn't hear the birds.
Two dozen people in Virginia who lived near a data center were ready to fly out to testify on their own dime.
“Virginia became ground zero for data center proliferation,” says Yip. “The people didn't know enough about data centers at the time.”
The vibrations and noise never stop, the people from Virginia warned. The reported sound levels of 60db and higher are far from the data center. They have taken to sleeping in their basements. Neither a decibel meter nor the law measures vibration.
Yip and the organizers found that almost nobody in Monterey Park that they spoke to had heard of the data center. The city’s notification had only reached 40 people living within 500 feet of its proposed location, in English.
The neighborhood is 65 percent Asian and 27 percent Latino. The community’s outreach was done in at least three languages, five when necessary. It extended to all the surrounding neighborhoods.
“Data centers, their pollution, and their effects don't just stop at the border,” Yip says.
They started a petition in English, Chinese, and Spanish. It grew to 4,500 signatures.
THE DEVELOPERS & THE DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The developers retained a law firm with 1,000 attorneys on four continents. They hired Actum, the lobbying firm that represents Amazon and Clorox. Actum lists Trump’s former chief of staff as a partner and another who exploited a loophole so large that California had to legislate to close it.
"The applicant sent a letter to the city council talking about misinformation being spread, and that was exactly what the council members said," Yip tells us. "They just parroted the same talking points."
The political lobbyists canvassed neighborhoods and local shops.
"One of the public benefits of the project they were touting was a pocket park ... The pocket park is basically just leftover land on their property that they didn't really need for the data center," Yip says.
They promised 200 jobs and, in the same conversation, no traffic.
“Our people would poke holes in it,” Yip says. “Why wouldn't there be cars in that facility if you're going to have a lot of employees?”
No Data Center MPK retained an environmental and land use attorney. They recommended an ordinance banning data centers immediately, then to reinforce it with a ballot measure.
They set up a one-click email so residents could send comments to City Council demanding both.
Hundreds showed up to the next three council meetings.
“We played mahjong on the City Hall lawn while we waited. We had a lion dance right outside to cheer people on as they entered the council chambers,” Yip says.
The chambers filled, overflowing into the aisles and hallways.
The first meeting produced a 45-day ban on data centers, the second brought a ballot measure that would ban them forever.
During the third meeting, opponents of the data center called for a rally at 5:30 p.m. before the 6:30 p.m. meeting. Steven Kung, the Monterey Park resident who purchased the No Data Center MPK domain, addressed the developers, their lawyers, and the lobby firm directly.
“You’re fighting an uphill battle against an entire city that doesn’t want you here and yet you continue to bully your way into this community of color, to pollute the air we breathe, to make electricity more expensive, to devalue our homes, to drain our energy and resources like a parasite,” Kung says. “You think you can take us on? You’ve messed with the wrong city. ”
On March 31, the developer withdrew its application.
“They underestimated the community's passion. And we never underestimated them. And I think that was a good strategy,” says Yip.
The FPPC, California’s political ethics commission, saw the data center would have a “material financial effect” on councilmember Wong. His power to vote on them was stripped.
Yip says the people who joined for the fight over 1977 Saturn Street have overwhelmingly stayed active with SGV Progressive Action.
"They recognize it's not just about data centers. It's about building community and protecting your community," he says.
The volunteers who organized against the data center are now working to strengthen sanctuary ordinances to protect their communities from ICE.
“And now we have a coalition of all these community members coming from La Puente, Avocado Heights, Roland Heights, and Santa Ana Heights coming together to fight this common enemy. And I'm just going to name it the City of Industry,” Yip says.
NO DATA CENTERS SGV COALITION
Samuel Brown Vazquez rode ten miles horseback from Avocado Heights to the Monterey Park council meeting. Vazquez is a community organizer and founding member of the Avocado Heights Vaqueros.
The City of Industry is in the process of approving zoning changes that would clear the way for three data centers and battery energy storage that would affect the residents of Hacienda Heights, La Puente, Walnut, Diamond Bar, West Covina and others.
The Avocado Heights Vaqueros, SGV Progressive Action, and others organized across city and county lines.
“We created an infographic and started mobilizing folks,” Vazquez says. They are No Data Centers SGV Coalition.
Like Monterey Park, they canvassed door-to-door, showed up to every City of Industry meeting, started a petition, and filed public records requests.
The record requests showed the City of Industry had been discussing zoning changes with developers at Puente Hills Mall, Madrid Middle School, and two battery storage facilities near Hacienda Heights. All just feet from homes and schools.
In February, the city unanimously rezoned Puente Hills Mall for battery storage. Months earlier, the city manager, Joshua Nelson, emailed the developers that they were working to allow data centers anywhere in the city.
Again, organizers found that people had no idea what the city was planning to put next to their homes. Battery centers burned for days when they caught fire. One at Moss Landing had spilled 55,000 tons of nickel, cobalt, and lithium.
“Maybe only one or two people had heard," said Sophia Ramirez, an organizer and the daughter of Zacatecan immigrants. “That was pretty shocking.”'
Ramirez, a Cal Poly biology grad, explained in the outreach, in plain language, how PM2.5 and PM10 particles could slip past the body's filters into the lungs, then the blood.
The No Data Center SGV petition grew to 18,000 signatures.
In Monterey Park, the people who organized were also the people who vote. In the City of Industry, there hasn’t been a competitive election in 10 years, and only four since 1957.
State law says when fewer people run than there are open seats for, a city doesn't have to hold an election. The City of Industry council appoints its council members and some of its members are descendents of the original founders.
The City of Industry has 256 residents, the largest financial reserves of any city in the San Gabriel Valley, and a history of building its wealth at the expense of the surrounding working-class Latino and Asian Pacific Islander communities.
"I had normalized what it was like to live next to City of Industry,” Vazquez says. “I thought it was normal to just grow up near all these warehouses."
The people of the surrounding areas, Covina, Diamond Bar, El Monte, La Puente, Pomona, Walnut, and West Covina, would all be affected by the data centers, but have no political power over the City of Industry.
“To think of it in the context of environmental racism, environmental injustices, it’s really crazy that it's like the city of industry has decided that these communities that live around them are not valuable lives,” Ramirez says. “Zonas de sacrificio.”
People from La Puente, Avocado Heights, Rowland Heights, Diamond Bar, Walnut, and Hacienda Heights came to the City of Industry’s March 26 council meeting where they planned to change the city's zoning code to allow data centers.
The city’s email went down before the meeting. People said it often does. The only way to comment is to show up. More than 100 people did, at 9 a.m. on a workday. Before public comment, the council went into closed session.
“They made us all wait outside in the heat,” Ramirez says.
Ramirez said that it was 90 degrees, and there were many elders. After two hours, roughly 40 were let inside. Outside, there was no livestream. They chanted, "Let us in."
When the doors opened, only about 30 people were allowed to speak. Their comment time was cut from three minutes to one minute. Mayor Pro Tem Greubel got up and walked out halfway through.
The City of Industry does not provide interpreters, translated materials, or any way for people who speak other languages to comment. They haven't posted meeting minutes in over a year. More than a quarter of their meetings are called with 24 hours notice.
“Everything about City of Industry is designed to minimize participation of the public,” Vazquez tells us. ”Like, that is not an exaggeration to say that.”
VALLE IMPERIAL RESISTE VS. IMPERIAL COUNTY
Gilberto Manzanarez, an organizer and founder of Valle Imperial Resiste, learned of the data center on Facebook. Someone had leaked the planning commission’s map over Thanksgiving break.
Manzanarez grabbed his camera, drove to the site, and posted a video that spread across the valley.
The Imperial Valley data center would be one of the world’s largest at nearly one million square feet. It would use double the electricity of Imperial Valley and 750,000 gallons of water every day. County planning staff decided they “qualified as a permitted industrial use,” and there would be no need for environmental review.
Manzanarez, also a history teacher, says, “Public health always takes a backseat to economic development in the Imperial Valley.”
The air carries cropland burnings, diesel fumes, and dust from the drying Salton Sea, laced with pesticides and heavy metals. More than one in five children that live around the Salton Sea have asthma.
Despite decades of investment, solar farms, geothermal plants, military bases, and canals, the 80 percent Latino region’s unemployment sits at three times the national average.
“The promise of economic development and jobs, the same thing, these are stories that we already heard when we had the solar farm boom. Those solar panel projects were sold to us,” Manzanarez says. “It's like, this is going to save us. This is going to lift us out of poverty ... Thousands of people across the Imperial Valley were hired, and they were excited to go work. Fast forward 10 years, 2026, guess what? We have the highest unemployment rate in the state of California. Again.”
Bryan Vega, another local organizer, saw the Valle Imperial Resiste post and joined the other activists. They knocked on doors, handed out flyers, and flooded Instagram with informational videos.
“We started to share information about what the data center is and invited folks to submit public comment,” Vega says.
In January, they held a protest on Main Street and Imperial Avenue. They started a petition to enact the Imperial County Data Center Prohibition Act.
On March 26, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors called for an evening meeting, outside of their normal schedule, specifically about the data center.
The main chamber filled 30 minutes before it started. Two overflow rooms opened in a separate building. And when those filled, too, more than 60 people stood in the parking lot.
The developer, Sebastian Rucci, spoke. There were to be no questions.
Vega recalled standing out in the parking lot.
“Someone outside said, ‘Why are we just standing here? Why are we not more upset? They're making decisions about us in there. And we're out here. And we should be in there. We go to the door and we're like, ‘No Data Center. No Data Center.’ And it's like a battle cry from our soul,” he says.
Vega said one of the organizers, from Imperial Valley for Palestine, had a bullhorn in her car, “because, duh, she's an organizer and she's always prepared for these things."
KPBS reported that “county officials paused the meeting and Rucci departed early after protestors drowned him out.”
Videos show Imperial County sheriff’s deputies escorting Rucci and his business partner, Hector Casas, to their car.
Outside, the 60 people who weren’t allowed in chanted “Fuera! Fuera!” at Rucci and Casas as they drove off.
"This meeting was a sham,” Manzanarez says. “They didn't want to educate us. They didn't want to hear people. They just wanted to check a box."
KPBS reported that in 2010, Ohio prosecutors charged Rucci with money laundering, promoting prostitution, and perjury at a Youngstown nightclub. The felonies were thrown out, but he served 30 days for selling alcohol on an expired license. He later opened an addiction treatment center. The state revoked its certification after finding falsified records.
In 2021, the FBI raided the treatment center and seized more than $600,000. No criminal charges were filed. Rucci sued, got the money back, and is still fighting in federal court.
In an interview with KPBS, he said, "I won them all but one."
Rucci and his partner, Hector Casas, targeted Imperial County because the zoning laws allowed them to skip environmental review.
"Our whole goal is speed," Rucci told KPBS. "That is not sneaky. That's just smart."
On April 7, at 8 a.m., 50 men got off a tour bus with identical orange vests that said, "Data centers equal jobs and prosperity."
They were led through the side entrance of the County Administration Building before any members of the community were allowed through the front. A leaked internal county email sent the night before warned of high turnout and increased security. Despite that, the county provided no overflow room.
Over 100 community members were left outside in 96-degree heat for five to six hours. Elders with walkers. No shade, no water, no chairs. One community member got kicked out for calling out the outsiders taking seats from residents.
The board of supervisors voted to approve the lot merger. Only one supervisor voted no.
Senator Padilla's SB 887 would require all new data centers in California to go through environmental review. The bill does not ban data centers, it only requires developers to study their impact and hear from the public before building.
On April 2, the organizers filed the Imperial County Data Center Prohibition Act, the first step toward a ballot measure that would ban data centers across the county.
“Our parents and grandparents sacrificed so much to be able to be in the Imperial Valley ... part of the sacrifice was having to accept a hard hand,“ Vegas says. “Like when I think about what my Mexican farmworker parents had to undergo, it makes it almost intuitive to fight for the environment, intuitive to fight for the things that I know are true to them, but also very simply put, we would not be here without that."
