Voters vs. Data Centers w/ Michelle Martinez, Molly Sweeney, and Christy McGillivray

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap, the movement that’s working to block the. Of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

This week on the show, we are exploring a multi-front approach in Michigan against data center development and the corporate influence that fuels it. Organizers in the state are pursuing interlocking ballot measures, which would tax the rich to better fund the education, while also banning lobbying by corporations who pursue ecologically devastating development in the state.

I’ll be joined by organizing director of 4 8 2 4, Molly Sweeney, Michigan Money out of politics organizer, Christie McGillivray, and Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment at the University of Michigan, Michelle Martinez. But first these headlines. Last week, San Francisco teachers won almost all of their demands after their first strike in nearly 50 years.

This was positioned as part of a larger effort by teachers across California, and their new contract includes progressive pay raises, 100% employer paid insurance coverage for dependents, as well as sanctuary schools provisions protections against AI and prevents special education from being contracted out of the district.

Congress is out this week, but DHS funding has lapsed and unfortunately this does not include law enforcement, so it doesn’t mean relief to communities that are under siege from ice. This is the third partial government shutdown since Trump took office. The shutdown also prevented an official house delegation to the Munich Security Conference, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a huge number of American lawmakers in Germany.

Last week. The proceedings included an official speech by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who attempted to walk back a little bit of JD Vance’s, rhetorical Bombas from last year. The conference was also attended by a slate of Democratic presidential hopefuls who tried to strike a more conciliatory tone with Europe from Gavin Newsom to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Hillary Clinton also made an appearance to brag about deporting people without putting immigrants in concentration camps, which says a lot. And for a meeting about the US European Alliance, there was a lot of domestic US politics on display. Meanwhile, European leaders use the opportunity to remind their American counterparts that MAGA has squandered basically all of the United States’ moral and political leadership on the world stage.

This all in spite of Democrats, assurances that the Transatlantic Alliance is merely dormant to not dead. But it’s pretty clear that a lot of European leaders are not keen on staying dependent on the whims of the US government, given everything we’ve been through for the past 13 months. And finally last week, it became the official policy of the US government and the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change does not exist.

Trump announced that the EPA would officially terminate their endangerment findings from a 2009 study, which is the bedrock of scientific data that backs the reality of human caused climate change. This wholesale erasure of data clears the way for the EPA administrator Lee Zelin, to do the exact opposite of his job.

He and Trump excitedly announced plans to lift the floodgates on any regulations or restrictions for fossil fuel energy providers. Meanwhile, in a report published last week by the Washington Post, it was revealed that in the past three years, global temperatures have shown an acceleration beyond the explanation of most climate modeling.

So anyway, let’s talk data centers. Right after this break. 

[00:03:25] Sound on Tape: Hi, this is Josh Stro, the senior multimedia producer here at Convergence Magazine. That means I have the privilege of working on all the audio and video projects that you see coming from Convergence Day in and day out. I hope you’ll consider becoming a member of Convergence, where a small, independent operation and rely heavily on our readers and listeners just like you to support this work.

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Thanks for listening. 

[00:04:25] Cayden Mak: At the end of 2024, Michigan’s state level democratic trifecta passed a massive tax incentive for data centers to the tune of $90 million in exchange for essentially an IOU for future quote unquote community benefits organizers saw this as representative of a two-pronged problem.

Desperation on the part of local and state governments to bring in revenue and corporate control over the functions of democracy in a time since Michigan has fast tracked data centers and those community benefits have been elusive. As pushback against data center development has ramped up as a nonpartisan community issue across the country.

In the time since the tax break was passed, organizers in the state have begun circulating petitions for two ballot measures, which address both sides of this problem. Invest In My Kids is a ballot measure that would repair a regressive tax and require the rich to pay their fair share into the education system.

And money out of politics. We dismantle the system of lobbying, which allows corporate control of the state assembly.

Joining me today to discuss the state of data center development in Michigan and what these ballot initiatives are trying to do are the co-founder and organizing director of 4 8 2 forward and steering committed member of the invest In My Kids. Ballot initiative. Molly Sweeney. Molly, thanks for joining us today.

[00:05:43] Molly Sweeney: Thanks, Caden, 

[00:05:44] Cayden Mak: the Executive Director of Voters not politicians, and a steering comm steering committee member of the Michigan Money Out of Politics ballot initiative. Christie mcr Gillray Christie, thanks for joining us. 

[00:05:54] Molly Sweeney: Thank you. 

[00:05:55] Cayden Mak: And the director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment at the University of Michigan.

Michelle Martinez. Michelle, thanks for joining us. 

[00:06:02] Michelle Martinez: Hey friends. 

[00:06:04] Cayden Mak: So let’s set a little context here about the sort of state of data center development in Michigan. What are some of the deals that you’ve seen play out? What is the sort of timeline that we’re talking about here, and how did the issues around data centers come to your all’s attention?

Why don’t we start, why don’t we start with Michelle? 

[00:06:23] Michelle Martinez: Great. Yeah, thanks. And appreciate being online with all of you learning about data centers. So this was a fight that I did not wanna get into after 20 years of being in fossil fights in my hometown of Detroit. I’m. Was pretty burnt out when comrade of mine, Andrea Pierce, who is one of the founders of the Michigan Anishinabe caucus, came to me and said, this data center thing is really harsh.

It’s gonna be terrible for Michigan and it’s gonna be terrible for our rate structures, our energy utility payers, and more. And I was asked to join and to start doing some research behind it. And that was late in 2024. And it took me a while, but. You know the important thing for listeners to understand is that this is not just a new industry.

This is not just a new factory online. This can change the fabric of our society and completely. Modify local ecosystems, our energy infrastructure, and the workforce as we know it. So you know, this is a moment where we’re calling everybody in to say, Hey, data centers are not just a new industry, but they’re huge energy consumers, they’re huge water consumers, and they house artificial intelligence, military surveillance.

Our local one here at University of Michigan will be working on nuclear weapons development. It’s also changing our relationships with social media data inferencing, cryptocurrency, and all of those things will be housed in super cute, some super computers right in our backyards. 

[00:08:01] Cayden Mak: So what is it then that is so alluring or what are the sort of promises that were made around these data centers and why is it that the government of the state of Michigan were like, cool let’s go ahead and do this. Molly, I see you like laughing to yourself a little bit. I’ll pass to you. 

[00:08:19] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. So, so I’m primarily an education organizer. We work on public school issues and so why data centers?

And in 2024, I remember like running into a room with other organizers. I dunno if Christie was there. And I was like, there’s this data center thing. And everyone looked at. At me like I was nuts. And they’re like, why do you care? And we work on public school organizing. The biggest issue for us is that Michigan’s public schools are $4.5 billion underfunded.

We’re at 2006 levels of funding at 2026 prices. And at the time. The governor’s office, and this is really where Christie and I at Sierra Club became friends when Christie was at Sierra Club was introducing a 6% sales tax and the use exemption on data centers and schools are primarily funded from sales tax in Michigan.

And the state rep who was pushing. The Dana Center issue, who had just, I think, flown to Seattle on a trip to look at some with Google was using schools and school finance as the reason why we needed these. And so it was this real manipulation. Go ahead. What 

[00:09:28] Christy McGillivray: should we say his name? It was Joey Andrews.

I think it’s important. 

[00:09:31] Molly Sweeney: Yes. Yeah. From Joey Andrews. And, for us it was this manipulation of people want in Michigan, people want jobs. People want good schools and we don’t have ’em right now. And so the data center push that we were hearing in this exemption bill was for Benton Harbor in particular, which is one of our black cities in Michigan who’s been divested emergency management like the Mayor Benton Harbor.

They want good schools, they want good jobs. And they were using data centers and this tax exemption as a way to say, this is the only way we’re gonna get those things. We’re gonna get school dollars. ‘Cause it’s gonna bring jobs and more people, and that was the reason of we’ll bring more people and more jobs and therefore we get more money for our schools.

And I know, I remember Christine and I having a conversation even with folks in the governor’s office and other state reps, and they were like, well, if we don’t do this exemption, they’re gonna go to Wisconsin. And so it’s like this race to the bottom, right? And that’s how Michigan really, it’s like this economic development lens that they’re manipulating folks.

People want good things here. And so they’re the race to the bottom of just give it all away to corporations and then we’ll get good schools and then we’ll get good communities. And so that, that’s how we first got introduced. And really is the lens of like economic development and financing in the state is like both parties have said, we, the only way we can make Michigan great.

And beautiful and wonderful for folks and have great public services is by selling it to big corps. Yeah. 

[00:11:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It, what’s interesting is the thing that you’re describing feels very like when you lay it out like that, it’s well, of course not taxing these corporations is going to drop revenue, but the, like the, there’s something very there like this argument that by.

Creating tax incentives and bringing new business to a state is like the only way to grow the pool of available resources is something that like we hear time and time again in California where I live, a lot of it is oh, we have to have these tax incentives, or the billionaires will leave, right?

Like it’s, there’s a scare mongering about you, I think you’re right, it’s like a race to the bottom about where these companies will inve invest their money. 

[00:11:44] Christy McGillivray: Yeah. It’s actually not just not paying taxes. It’s more insidious than that actually. 

A lot more insidious.

So, the way that Molly characterized it is absolutely right. They pitched it as the thing that was gonna save a struggling local school district, right? And the claim was that the company coming in was going to give the school district $20 million. I don’t know why they just don’t pay taxes.

And also that $20 million was nowhere in writing anywhere. And last time I checked, people don’t give away $20 million without having it being an enforceable writing. Furthermore, these tax breaks actually were introduced in 2015. Okay, so a version of these bills had been in place since 2015, and they had been used primarily in a county in Michigan called Kent County, and they’re not just sales and used tax exemptions.

In those bills, they can come for other things and they did. So when they set up the original whole tax break scheme, they also set up ways to come for tax, got dollars through tax capture and other back doors to get out of paying other sales and use tax exemptions. There was some really amazing reporting coming out of Washington State and ProPublica spent years compiling it.

The sales and use tax exemption specifically for data centers in Washington State ballooned into one of the largest corporate tax giveaways ever in the State’s history. And that’s because they set up the pieces to start coming for more. So when state rep Joey Andrews started screaming about how we were gonna save our public schools, if we give tax breaks to Silicon Valley, billionaires becoming trillionaires again, why not just fund public education?

When he started pitching that, I was like I had been focused on a lot of the environmental issues. But I was like, the numbers aren’t lining up here. Like according to the Senate analysis, the sales and use tax exemption only results in a couple million dollars a year in saving for these companies.

They have billions of dollars. That’s nothing. That’s like couch cushion lint. It’s not even changed. I said, why? Why are they absolutely like shitting a brick over these sales and use tax exemptions? The math doesn’t add up. 

So I started reading them over and over again to try and find the tax scam, and I found three.

They can come for local tax capture. They don’t actually have to hold themselves accountable to creating any jobs. And if they’re set up on a brownfield or an old power plant site, they can put all sorts of new things into those agreements. So what is in writing was that they can come for a lot more money.

What is not right. Was any of their promises, any of their promises about how they would actually help public schools? 

[00:14:38] Cayden Mak: And what it sounds like, and correct me if I’m wrong, what it sounds like is like this is now a playbook for them. 

[00:14:43] Christy McGillivray: Yes, of course. It’s a playbook. It’s absolutely a playbook. Yeah. So it’s not just that they’re getting a tax break.

They’re taking the hard earned tax dollars of Michiganders that want better schools. It is the ultimate transfer of wealth. I don’t understand why billionaires stealing our tax dollars is somehow. Appropriate in economic development, but making sure our kids have good schools is not economic development.

[00:15:06] Michelle Martinez: What 

[00:15:06] Christy McGillivray: is 

that? 

[00:15:07] Cayden Mak: Sorry. Yeah. No, it’s infuriating.

[00:15:11] Michelle Martinez: So coming back to this moment in the Michigan State legislature, when Andrea Pierce was coming for me, we had a democratic trifecta. And in that. The progressive movement in so many of our organizing fronts had actually elected this through hard earned organizing boots on the ground, building teams in rural Michigan Upper peninsula, the tip of the mid with farm worker communities to make sure that we won this and we did by hundreds of votes in some cases, and we had a pre progressive agenda on the table.

There were things like water affordability that Michiganders still do not have. There were things around rent controls and protecting renters across Michigan. The Secretary of State doesn’t allow driver’s licenses for undocumented people. Something that we knew we needed after Trump, was elected to protect our undocumented friends and neighbors.

All of these things and so much more. Was on the table and the Democrats had the opportunity to pass each of these bills and put them on the docket. But the one thing that they chose above all of these other agenda items was data centers. 

And that’s what put a fire under my ass. Because if we are working for a party system that’s meant to help support our friends and neighbors communities all over Michigan, no matter where you live. Or how much money you earn, right? We all want a future where Michiganders can live and breathe Clean air data centers is going in the opposite direction. 

And so that’s really the hardest part. Fast forward today, they’re now saying that the amount of electric generation that’s being proposed, that’s in the pipeline for our two utilities.

That’s DTE, energy and Consumer Energies, which by the way, they’re Monopoly investor owned utilities. Okay. Is more electricity generation in four years than our entire industrial sector in Michigan. So that’s automotive industry. Steel manufacturing, right? Chemical manufacturing, oil processing, all of it.

So just to put that in perspective, it’s not nuts and bolts. It’s an entirely new. Energy system that we have to build and it has all kinds of downstream impacts. 

[00:17:34] Cayden Mak: Well, before we talk a little bit about the ballot initiatives, I’m curious about what kind of environmental impacts. Also that you all are thinking about.

’cause we’ve talked about the sort of like political landscape. We’ve talked about the like economic impacts, the tax breaks might have in terms of schools and stuff like that. But obviously a big piece of a lot of data center fight is that there are these downstream environmental impacts, but have there been, has there been discussion of that and what is the, what are the things that you all are on the lookout for?

[00:18:04] Christy McGillivray: Interestingly, I, the reason why this popped up on my radar screen was because the the state legislature passed a renewable energy package in late 2023. And it took a ton of effort, flawed legislation, but there were some good benchmarks in there, and a few like tight loopholes that we thought the fossil fuel industry was gonna have a hard time getting around.

And so that was December of 2023. In January of 2024 at the time I was working for Sierra Club, I read the first article about a coal plant staying online to power. Data centers. 

And that was the first like account I can remember of someone saying a coal plant is gonna stay online because this generation surge is coming.

And I like that was like when the penny dropped and I was like, oh god. Because in our package, and this is really standard and it makes sense if you think about it, if there’s an increase in demand, utilities and anyone producing electricity have a mandate to produce energy no matter what.

Because power going out can actually like, lead to people dying, right? 

[00:19:06] Cayden Mak: Yeah. So 

[00:19:07] Christy McGillivray: in any sort of utility regulation, there are always what are called off ramps to make sure that any utility can prioritize generating electricity no matter what. So if you have a massive increase in demand, they don’t have to meet renewable energy goals, right?

And so, started looking at, it, started worrying and then. Ai, there’s just this onslaught, right? This massive AI explosion. And so throughout the course of 2024, we were both educating ourselves on exactly what was going on, which is actually really hard ’cause these companies force everyone to sign NDAs.

There was 

[00:19:43] Cayden Mak: sure, 

[00:19:44] Christy McGillivray: Refuse to hand over water use. Actual data, for example, they claim it’s proprietary. It’s so shady. So I was primarily looking at it from the energy side. But of course, being in the Great Lake State, water is an issue too. And functionally, what Democrats in Michigan did is they walked away from their renewable energy mandate in order to give tax breaks to the Silicon Valley billionaires that are currently destroying democracy and building a surveillance state.

That’s what they did, so they destroyed their one legislative victory on the environment in service of making Mark Zuckerberg richer. 

[00:20:21] Cayden Mak: This sounds like a real match made in hell. Yeah, like big tech and fossil fuel industry. Yeah. 

[00:20:27] Christy McGillivray: And it’s really serious because, and this is a really insidious thing.

The, like everyone’s coming together across political divides right now because they hate data centers. Republicans and Democrats hate data centers, well, voters, I should say elected officials as voters. 

[00:20:39] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. 

[00:20:40] Christy McGillivray: But one of the misinformation things that’s getting out there is that on the right they’re saying Enviros love data centers because it forces people to build renewable energy.

And I just wanna be clear, that is like not true. Not true. They’re keeping fossil fuels online and building more fossil fuel infrastructure. They’re not building enough renewable energy anyway. But Michelle can talk a lot more too about some of the environmental impacts. But I encourage folks to check out what’s happening in Memphis.

There’s very serious environmental justice concerns and one of the. Bullshit arguments from these bill sponsors was that we were actually being discriminatory and racist against communities of color here in Michigan because we didn’t want them to have good jobs. So I’ll turn it over to Michelle to talk about the actual, like racism.

How many jobs? Not. 

[00:21:24] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. 

[00:21:26] Michelle Martinez: Yeah. I think the threats to democracy is the real ringer here, right? Because as I began to do research about what the impacts of these data centers are, I kept encountering that thing Christie’s talking about, which is the non-disclosure agreements. And so all over the country, right?

You look at Virginia that’s been dealing with data centers and has the most data centers anywhere in the United States, 80% of data centers are under non-disclosure agreements, so it’s not a small problem that we’re dealing with. The other problem here is that, within the United States are projecting between 4% and 12% total energy growth over the next four years.

That’s a huge range, and the reason that range is happening is because the way that data centers actually begin to mark how much energy they’re going to use is only based on their. Internal analysis to their own data center efficiency. It’s not actually an apple to apples comparison of other data centers, so you might have really fast chips, but it consumes more energy.

Or you might have a closed loop water system. Which consumes more energy. Maybe you have an evaporative system, sir. There’s mechanical and technical aspects that have this huge range of energy consumption and without actually having the ability to say. Okay friends are you gonna submit that data to us so we can actually model out how much energy we’re going to be putting on the grid at any particular time?

They’re like, Nope, we can’t, these are industry secrets that keep us competitive against China. Sure. And so we’re in this situation where you look at PGM or PJM who just in January, right? Remember the cold snap that happened all over the United States and everybody’s turning up their heat.

If they have it or bringing in other appliances, well, they’re worried that they’re gonna have to tell data centers to turn on their generators. ’cause there’s literally not enough power on the grid to supply both our homes and our businesses and data centers. And so with this huge amount of uncertainty.

Is this growing worry that grid operators are not gonna be able to provide enough energy. And we all know that power comes from power plants. And so what we’re seeing in the data is that there is a projected. 13% increase in carbon dioxide emissions just from data centers globally. So while we should be rolling back stopping and slowing down the runaway train on climate, tech billionaires are like.

Pouring gasoline on the fire and they’re like, yeah, bitches light another cigarette off that shit.

[00:24:08] Cayden Mak: They all think they can go to Mars, right? Really? 

[00:24:11] Michelle Martinez: What we doing? Friends, like planetary crisis. They want 

[00:24:15] Molly Sweeney: the money. Yeah. 

[00:24:17] Michelle Martinez: Gist of it, but it’s terrifying. Like you read some of this stuff and you’re like, my eyes are bleeding.

Like what’s happening? 

[00:24:23] Cayden Mak: It does defy logic when you think about the scale of what we’re talking about here and like I do think that it’s hard. It is a scale that I do think it’s like hard for people to wrap their brains around because like it’s just bigger than I think. Human brains can conceptualize that this is a scale that is not just something that you can look at with your eyes and see that it’s like much larger than that, 

[00:24:48] Christy McGillivray: right?

So I think that’s accurate. And I remember when I, the first numbers that I really started reading about their potential power consumption, I didn’t believe them. I was like, surely this is wrong. I was like, this reporter got this wrong. They’re not gonna reopen three Mile Island. They’re not opening an entire nuclear power plant just for a data center.

That’s insane. I literally didn’t believe it. Yeah. And then I was like, I went and checked it and I was like, oh my God. 

[00:25:11] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. But they don’t tell Michiganders that bill gets passed on to you. 

[00:25:15] Michelle Martinez: And I think that’s the more insidious part that we’re seeing in Michigan is that some data centers that use for storage or other purposes can be put in rural areas.

And so in many places in Michigan, how it’s showing up is in poor middle class. Rural white communities. And we’re deeply segregated in Michigan. 

[00:25:34] Christy McGillivray: Yep. 

[00:25:34] Michelle Martinez: And while on the face of this these are deep red counties that are out and out, outraged at the hall meetings all over the place. What is gonna roll downhill is that energy costs are gonna go up, like Molly said, and also the power plants.

That these facilities rely on are in black and brown communities. Sure. And so there is an invisibilization going on of how this is, data centers are an EJ issue. But maybe on the face of it, in some places, it’s not looking like the quote unquote traditional environmental justice fights that we’ve been a part of in the past.

[00:26:12] Cayden Mak: That’s really interesting. 

[00:26:13] Molly Sweeney: Well, and there’s like really interesting opportunities. I think this is there’s an interesting place in the data center organizing where in these small rural communities, sometimes their first reaction is like the racist, racist trope of like, why not just move it to Detroit?

And I think there’s a really big opportunity to build. That’s, honestly, check Facebook. That is the very first comment. Is just move it to Detroit. And so I think there’s opportunities for EJ and environmental organizers to really push people in like a solidarity lens. Otherwise I think this turns into actually.

Like the same thing we’ve always seen. It’s like just 

[00:26:47] Cayden Mak: Some racist, NIMBY stuff. 

[00:26:49] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s also like anti-Jewish stuff. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the comments. 

[00:26:53] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure there’s 

[00:26:55] Molly Sweeney: a lot of ways in which I think we can engage with it and that’s moving people forward.

[00:26:58] Cayden Mak: That’s a good segue into the conversation about these ballot initiatives. There’s two of them. But Molly, let’s start with invest in my Kids. What is the ballot initiative trying to do and where did it come from? 

[00:27:09] Molly Sweeney: So, after years of Wealthy and Corporate Control of Lansing Michigan schools are $4.5 billion underfunded from the tip of the up, down to Detroit schools look very similar.

They’re closing. We have some of the worst teacher retention rates in the country. 8,000 teachers leave a year. The story our literacy rates are awful. Because our class sizes are ballooning. And we can’t retain teachers especially special education teachers. So our ballot initiative is 10 years in the making after we’ve seen control of Lansing from DTE, from wealthy Michiganders like Betsy DeVos, and after watching the trifecta in Michigan.

Fight harder for our corporate tax breaks for Ford, dt, et cetera, versus passing broad scale new revenue for public education. We decided to take it to the ballot and so the invest in my kids ballot initiative is a new surtax on individuals who make $500,000 a year. And couples that make a million, any dollar they make, over 5% of that will be a new tax for public education, for lowering class size, career and tech and attracting and retaining teachers.

And we’re putting it in the constitution because we do not want the legislature to mess with it. 

[00:28:29] Cayden Mak: Amazing. Wow. 

[00:28:30] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. And if we pass it, it would be an extra 1.6 billion for public education in the state. So that’s, we’re we’re going to the heart of like actually taxing the rich in this moment tied to what we’re calling a Frame Michigan for the many with Christie’s ballot initiative, which is getting money outta politics.

’cause we believe you have to tax the wealthy for the public good that we care about. And you have to eliminate the influence of big corporations. 

[00:28:56] Cayden Mak: Great. Well, Christie, tell us a little bit about the money out of politics initiative. 

[00:29:00] Christy McGillivray: So. Michigan for Running Outta Politics is going after closing some of Michigan’s nastiest campaign finance loopholes.

Here in Michigan we allow politicians to open up 5 0 1 c fours, which are nonprofit organizations and they can take political contributions to those operations. So it’s not just PAC money, it’s not just super PAC money. And the Super Pac money is of course the Citizens United money. It is also this 5 0 1 C four loophole, and we have at various points on various scales, been rated actually the most corrupt state legislature in.

The country. It is egregious how corrupt Lansing is, and I think we really saw it come to a head during this last Democratic trifecta. So what this would do similar to what Molly described with our ballot process, but we are not going for a constitutional amendment. We are going for to, to pass it as a law basically via ballot referendum.

So the signature threshold is a little bit lower. But what it would do is it would cut elected officials and party chairs and a list of various party entities off from using those 5 0 1 c fours for contributions from regulated utilities, so it’s DTE and consumers. There’s others too, in that list, but those are the two big ones.

And anyone who has a contract with the state worth $250,000 or more. And these two distinctions, the fact that regulated utilities only exist because the state basically allows them to, and then they’re going through the Public Service Commission, and then contractors with a state who have a direct conflict of interest when it comes to lobbying lawmakers.

For those contracts that holds up to Citizens United. So that’s why we picked this particular frame. It’s been tested in 15 different states, so there’s precedent saying this holds up to Citizens United and we will not have a functioning state government until we tackle the corrupting influence of money and politics.

We. It’s just impossible to get around this. Just to give you a few short anecdotes when legislators first get elected to office and they go to Lansing, they are instructed by party leaders on how to set up their 5 0 1 c fours to take money. They don’t want their constituents to know about.

It’s like literally a training they all get. Wow. It’s completely outta control. They’re the former state. 

[00:31:11] Molly Sweeney: That’s why we prioritize tax cuts for corporations over people. 

[00:31:16] Christy McGillivray: Exactly. And so, and to, to give you some other concrete examples people will tell you straight up if DTE is opposed to this, it is not happening.

Just full stop. DTE has primary Republicans. They have primary Democrats and won because they can just dump as much money on the race as they want to. We’ve seen, like for example, community solar legislation. Which actually has bipartisan support because Republicans like independents or they used to, I dunno, things have gotten a little weird, but that legislation will never see the light of day.

It just never will because DTE doesn’t like it. Our utilities don’t want people to be able to produce their own power, so it’s just dead on arrival, even though it has bipartisan support. So, Molly mentioned we have to deal with taxing the rich, right? And we have to deal with cutting off all the avenues in.

How they manipulate our democracy with their money, and she’s absolutely right. I think that it’s really important for folks to understand that our democracy will not survive the level of wealth accumulation that we’re seeing right now because wealth is a form of power and democracy’s work when you balance power.

That’s the whole point, right? And if we allow people to become trillionaires and buy elections, that is not democracy. They should never be allowed to have that much money ever. So we have to tax them. We have to, in order to actually balance the power in society that allows democracy to exist. And then of course.

You have to go after corruption too. 

[00:32:43] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. We’re just playing into the hands of the fascists, right? We’re pa like, this is a, 50 year playbook that, especially with DeVos, where schools in Michigan are really the experiment, right? How do we kill public systems? Defund, discredit, right? It’s like Milton Friedman coming, his like dreams coming to life for real.

Like you go back to this is it, right? It’s like defund, discredit, continue to do it and then. When we think about Michigan, schools have always been this crux of like, how do we get that public education system away from the hands of our most powerful unions in the state, which are teachers unions.

[00:33:12] Cayden Mak: Yep. 

[00:33:12] Molly Sweeney: And in this country, right? So it’s this is for us, this is a game. Like how do we actually. Take this to the ballot because our legislature has never been courageous enough to do it. And the to ballot initiatives, we’re on an uphill battle. ’cause the institutional power still doesn’t want these ballot initiatives.

Both of us need about $1.5 million more to pay for our stuff. 

[00:33:32] Cayden Mak: Well, let’s talk a little bit about. One, the way that these, you see these ballot initiatives working together on the data center issue and how like data center development has become a sort of like tool in your organizing toolbox to drive these signature drives.

[00:33:49] Christy McGillivray: Michelle said it really well, although really quickly, I will say, just to illustrate, and I’m gonna let Michelle riff ’cause she, she’s got this DTE. Is the entity that whipped the votes to pass those data center tax breaks. So we built a coalition that was blocking those bills for almost a calendar year.

And if you can imagine how insane that fight is, like the governor of Michigan was saying that she wanted something to happen and we got enough people in her party to say no. And it wasn’t until DTE finally weighed in that it passed. So I’ll turn it over to Michelle. 

[00:34:23] Cayden Mak: Great. 

[00:34:23] Michelle Martinez: Yeah, I think the key point here is that.

Ballot initiatives on democratic issues like tax distribution and like getting money out of politics are a key stress test for our electorate and for our organizing models. Because what we’re finding with data centers is that the fight is at the zoning board level. Which is wild considering that a lot of our zoning boards are volunteer or not are maybe elected but uncompensated.

And also township commissions, which may also be uncompensated though elected, right? And when you have a huge maybe 10, 20, 40, 80, $90 million check sitting on your desk and a data center developer saying, okay, do you want this or not? These planning and zoning commissions are hard pressed to say no because the fact of the matter is.

Yes, our local governments are being starved of revenue, both at the local level, but also at the state revenue level. And even in the case that a township like Celine Township said no the data center developer, ai, Oracle related digital, went back and sued them. There’s really no way that a local township can deal with a trillionaire, with an army of lawyers to come back and say, okay, from our free will of what we actually want for the vision of our place can happen with that kind of threat behind it.

So you’re really between a rock and a hard place. And so for us. The progressive end the data center’s fight has to be taken to a different platform because it’s true. All political banners left, right up down front, center at the local level are opposed to data centers, and the thing that we’re finding is that where we can find alignment has to be at the ballot.

Box because we’re so polarized in Michigan for so many decades over bread and butter issues at the kitchen table that we can’t see the forest for the trees because of the way the lobbyists have really owned the frame for so long.

[00:36:54] Molly Sweeney: Yeah. Michelle hit it on the head. We’ve been using these as one places to collect ’cause people are gathering, but it’s opportunities to really point people to who’s to really blame.

It’s like this is the wealthiest folks, these are the big corporations, and now it’s in your backyard. You may have not thought it was here before. ’cause a lot of places that, they’re small, rural, white, mostly white communities. And so it’s a moment of solidarity, it’s a moment of eye-opening, politicization.

We have a great example from our folks up north for a Bitcoin mining center and a data center that they like, they activated in like a random white community. And, and folks are like, oh wait, us too. Now we know. And so folks are getting more involved in the movement. And I think for us, we see it as an opportunity.

And this is why we wanted to do the ballot initiatives, right? Like people don’t trust either party ballot initiatives are issue first issues matter to people. Your public schools, your teachers, your families, your economic wellbeing. And it, the data centers are another opportunity for us to say Hey.

Here it is. Like you, you care about this. It’s not about Dems, it’s not about Republicans. Come to the ballot box to talk about things that matter to you. And for our hope is we’re bringing more people into a solidarity movement that actually is gonna make Michigan a better place and push both parties to be better.

[00:38:09] Christy McGillivray: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And I just, I wanna tell like a couple stories about how like wildly popular this is. So we have a MAGA Republican, our rep, Jim DeSena, who is a hundred percent on board with this. He is out collecting signatures. He hates utilities. He is intensely critical of his own 

[00:38:28] Molly Sweeney: part.

He like signatures for mop, not for invest. So 

[00:38:32] Christy McGillivray: correct. Correct. Yeah, no, that is a good point, Molly. I’m gonna tell a funny story about that in a second. 

[00:38:36] Molly Sweeney: I’ll say there’s not always a crossover between the data center folks and like wanting to tax the so, 

[00:38:41] Christy McGillivray: But he’s very mad about corruption, right?

It’s the drain, the swamp talking point. And the reason why drain the swamp became like a rallying cry for MAGA is because our politics is actually really corrupt. They weren’t wrong.

So. The difference I think is that between like me and like a MAGA person that’s mad about corruption is that I actually think the Trump administration is like.

The most grotesque corruption I’ve ever seen in my life. So it’s like that’s the difference. That’s the difference. But that’s okay. Because we can get in the door and we can find common ground and we can have these conversations. So because of rep Jim DeSena, who I do trust on this issue, because he’s very publicly, he.

Taken incredibly strong positions. He’s called out members of his own party and he is out there getting signatures, right? He’s sincere about this and that’s why I believe him. ’cause he is actually doing the work. He’s not just, giving the talking points. It’s not an Epstein file situation, right?

He’s actually trying to fix it. So he has given us an end to this like MAGA world. So like we’ve presented to the Faith Family Freedom Coalition, we’ve talked with Great Lakes gun rights, which is very strange for me. Working to do a second presentation at Hillsdale College, which is like the most arch conservative college in the entire country.

It’s here in Runaway County, Michigan. So, no, I’m sorry, it’s in Hillsdale County. Anyway, not important, so. We have this in right now, and I just heard from another voters, not politicians, volunteer, who, there’s like a guy at a farmer’s market with a giant MAGA hat. And the second he saw what she was doing he said, I wanna help get signatures too.

And was literally like rounding up everyone in the farmer’s market to come sign to go after corruption. And it just goes to show that if we don’t do exactly what Molly said and help harness this rage that people are feeling right now. And direct it at the billionaires destroying our democracy.

That rage is gonna turn into racial violence and people are going to punch down. We have to stop that from happening. We have to, and we can. And I think the fact that these data centers are actually the backbone of the surveillance state that ICE is using right now to literally kidnap people. Do God knows what in those facilities, there’s a direct connection there.

There’s a direct connection to the violence that ICE is perpetrating these tech billionaires and data centers and it is our job. We have a moral calling right now to stop that and go make sure people understand who is actually hurting them. I’ll get off my soapbox now. 

[00:41:04] Cayden Mak: No, that’s great. I like, there’s something very heartening to hear about the ways in which this is opening doors to have conversations with.

Regular Michiganders who might not otherwise be open to talking to your organizations, your coalitions, and that it also really points to the business as usual is just not working for people. 

[00:41:24] Molly Sweeney: No one’s gonna go stump for candidates, we’re not here. 

[00:41:26] Cayden Mak: And it feels like the parties don’t understand that.

No, they don’t. The state party or the National Party, 

[00:41:32] Molly Sweeney: They don’t understand it. And it’s interesting to see, I will say, we’ve been out here now for six months. And both of us have thousands of volunteers on the doors to having conversations.

I would say we have the best pulse on what Michiganders want and the parties still don’t see it. They’re like, no, our Dem candidate, she’s great on policy. Her husband works for data center. 

[00:41:52] Christy McGillivray: Wait more specifically, he works. It’s Oracle ai. 

[00:41:56] Molly Sweeney: It’s Oracle ai. And so 

[00:41:57] Christy McGillivray: Like he’s, it’s and it’s Larry Ellison who is literally buying up every single media outlet he can in order to again, destroy democracy.

Why are we doing business with him? 

[00:42:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well I also wanna ask a question about the sort of obviously you’re deep in the thick of collecting signatures. This is a there’s some like real like numbers that you have to push in this like next cycle.

First of all, what is the sort of like arc of these campaigns? What is it gonna take and then. I think one of the things that I’ve been seeing a lot of are folks thinking about how do we move in alignment together beyond the arc of a single campaign and like, how do we build, so I guess there’s two as we start wrapping up questions one about what are the sort of like actual mechanics of these ballot initiative campaigns, and then how are you thinking about.

Moving this alignment forward beyond the arc of this campaign, how do you build towards something bigger here? 

[00:42:56] Molly Sweeney: Great questions. So for invest in my kids, we have to get 446,000 valid signatures, and so we are about halfway there. We have a volunteer canvas that has about 3000 people on the ground massively pushing to get this on the ballot.

We have two weeks of action right now. Our, and then we have a paid canvas that we just launched about a month ago. That’s shared with Mop-Up Michigan. We’re funding it together and our goal is to finish up signatures early April and turn them into the state. What it will take, just frankly, is we need an extra $1.5 million.

Between the campaigns to finish up. Paying for the paid campus, it’s such a large threshold. And the winter was really tough here. And volunteers don’t five degree weather. 

[00:43:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Understandably. 

[00:43:49] Molly Sweeney: And so, and this is our first time doing this, right? Like we’re learning. 

[00:43:51] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:43:52] Molly Sweeney: And our volunteers are learning.

So that’s what it’ll take for invest, I will say for invest in my kids. This was the vision was always to create a larger distributive container for organizing around public education and democracy. And so we are gonna be launching out of all these volunteers, I mean we’re IDing so many cool new leaders who like are ready to rock in their, like small towns across Michigan, big cities.

And so we’re launching people organizing for public school teams. Pops teams across the state coming out of this that’ll be working to build a broader vision for public education in the state but also fighting for democracy. And so that’s our plan. 

[00:44:27] Cayden Mak: Amazing. 

[00:44:27] Christy McGillivray: Yeah. I’ll be quick.

Our threshold’s a little bit lower because it’s a statutory law. Voters, not politicians has done this before. However, the context was really different. It’s big lift, flooding the zone works. Social media is not actually a great place for organizing right now because all the tech bros went fascist.

So, factors. 

[00:44:42] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:44:43] Christy McGillivray: I’ll say if you look at the money situation, 1.5 million sounds like a lot, and it is for normal people. It is not when you’re looking at the amount of money sloshing around the political sphere right now. So I think the reason that we don’t see big,

[00:44:55] Molly Sweeney: michigan paid $6 million to get voter ID on the ballot, so, 

[00:44:58] Christy McGillivray: So it sounds like a lot of money. It’s actually not. And this is where like we start getting really frustrated with people SA saying they care about democracy, but they don’t understand that we have to deal with wealth and equality and corruption in order to save our democracy, just anyway, whatever.

Someday they’ll get there. But the bigger picture, Molly was talking about this. Ongoing investment in organizing for public education. That is 100% true. We don’t have a democracy if we don’t have education. And there has to be more done to distribute wealth in this country. And there has to be more done to fight corruption.

So there is a table space here in Michigan called Michigan for the money that is dedicated to all the different reforms that we need to make in pursuit of that. And one of the great things that I think invest in my kids. Does is quote justice Brandeis from the Supreme Court. Justice Brandeis wrote in the twenties that you can either have a democracy or a great concentration of wealth.

You cannot have both. So this is gonna be an ongoing decades of our lives, probably the rest of our lives. There are gonna be a series of things we have to do after this. And we are building the relationships and rehumanizing ourselves to other voters in Michigan that got sucked into the MAGA cult of lies, about what it means to be American, what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a voter.

They have been sucked into this alternative universe, powered by big tech disinformation that has convinced them we’re the enemy. Yeah. And by running ballot initiatives, we’re showing them that we’re not. And so we’re gonna get there. 

[00:46:19] Molly Sweeney: Christie, just one more thing on that around the pro revenue piece is there are zero funders.

Just to be clear, there are zero, actually, there’s one funder in the entire country that really funds pro revenue taxing the rich ballot initiatives. Just to be clear. And you can think why. And so for us, the bigger piece is also turning both of these initiatives into long term pro revenue initiatives that are gonna be fighting for.

Like bigger taxation, more accountability to wealthy folks in the state. 

[00:46:46] Michelle Martinez: I love these women. I love ballot initiatives run by badass women. And I love that the doors open to so many volunteers. And look, I was at a community hearing in a small town in Michigan, lion Township, in which a data center 62 football field big had been proposed and had.

Totally jumped over procedural processes to get fast tracked, and in a five degree weather, six six inch snowfall. Hundreds of people came out to a community meeting saying, we don’t understand why this is happening. We’re angry, we’re frustrated. What can we do about this? Asking for lawyers and information and FOIAs.

But at the end of the day, it was the My Mob campaign that was saying the answer to this. Is money out of politics and organizers there collecting signatures and recruiting people to the campaign. And this is the kind of power and the reclamation of people’s agency and democracy that’s happening in Michigan and needs to be supported financially, needs to be supported by funders in, if you’re independently wealthy, donate.

Because it’s not just about. Getting out there and boots on the ground, but it’s also that financial support to support the labor that’s happening behind this. 

[00:48:16] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Well, where can folks learn more about both these campaigns, plug in either as volunteers, as donors where can people find you on the internet?

[00:48:25] Molly Sweeney: All right, there’s, well, there’s Invest in mi kids.org for the Invest in My Kids ballot initiative 

[00:48:32] Christy McGillivray: and it’s mop up michigan.org for Michigander for Money Outta Politics. 

[00:48:38] Cayden Mak: Fantastic. Well. Molly, Christie, Michelle, thank you so much for making the time to talk to me today. As a product of Michigan Public Schools, I could think of nothing more important.

[00:48:48] Molly Sweeney: Where’d you go? Caden? Where’d you go? 

[00:48:50] Cayden Mak: I went to International Academy. Oh. Yeah, I did. And my mom was a her, almost her entire career, a special ed teacher in Troy Public school District. So, oh my 

[00:49:01] Molly Sweeney: God, you didn’t mention that. 

[00:49:04] Cayden Mak: Yeah. We, this, yeah this stuff is all very near and dear to my heart as Michigan.

Michigan through exile. In California. Well, thank you all for making the time. It was such a pleasure to learn about these really important campaigns and all the hard work that you are doing. I’m sure we will be keeping up with this both these campaigns as things evolve. 

[00:49:22] Molly Sweeney: We 

[00:49:22] Michelle Martinez: appreciate you. Thank you, Kayden.

[00:49:25] Cayden Mak: My thanks again to Molly, Michelle, and Christie for joining me today. You can read Molly and Michelle’s article about the ballot measure [email protected]. We’ll also include links to the information about the Michigan ballot of issues in the show notes. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights.

I’m Kaden Mock, and our producer is Josh Stro. Editorial assistance provided this week by Aquina. Kimie David designed our Cover Art Convergence Magazine is a proud founding member of the Movement Media Alliance. And of course, if you liked what you heard, please let us know. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes, tell a friend and rate and review the show wherever you listen.

I would love to read your review. And finally, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a [email protected] slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements.

I hope this helps.