About 20 people rallied in front of Fayetteville City Hall on Wednesday, demanding the N.C. General Assembly ban data centers and urging people to sign a petition calling for the ban.
The participants included Fayetteville City Councilmember Shaun McMillan. Organizers said similar events were happening in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Asheville.
“For months now, we have made it clear to our local politicians that we will not stand by while they incentivize these parasitic data centers so big tech executives and the officials who serve them can get richer,” said Isaac Lacap of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He emceed the rally.
“Communities across North Carolina are organizing, from Fayetteville to Charlotte to Durham to Boone,” he said. “Billion dollar corporations are still planning massive data centers that will strain our water system, drive up utility costs, and put corporate profits over our communities.”
A news release for the rally cited concerns that data center-powered automation and artificial intelligence are replacing human workers.
A few passers-by signed the petition during the rally. More than 1,000 people have signed the online petition.
The rally came as the vast computing centers that undergird modern society and power the ongoing advances in AI have become controversial. Through much of 2026, activists have packed Fayetteville City Council and Cumberland County Board of Commissioners meetings to demand moratoriums.
Cumberland County last month imposed a six-month moratorium to provide time to develop an ordinance to regulate the computing facilities. It applies outside town and city limits.
Fayetteville is developing a data center ordinance and the City Council postponed consideration of a moratorium into August. Meanwhile, some council members visited data centers on Tuesday to research them before they resume considering a moratorium inside the city limit.
The activists on Wednesday called for the state to repeal tax incentives for data centers, stop Duke Energy from raising electricity rates on the general public in order to power data centers, and to ban new data center construction.
The legislature has not advanced a ban on data centers, but this week the state House and Senate voted to repeal a sales tax exemption that data centers receive on electricity bills. If the legislation becomes law—it’s a provision in the state budget bill that was approved on Thursday and sent to the governor—data centers will start paying a 7% sales tax on their power purchases. The legislature’s staff estimated this will generate $21.4 million this fiscal year.
‘We Oppose Data Centers’
Other comments from people at the Wednesday’s rally:
- “Fayetteville already suffers from water contamination from PFAS in the Cape Fear River, and our state is currently in the middle of the most severe drought we have seen in decades,” said Angela Freckleton of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “The very suggestion of building a multi-acre hyperscale facility that guzzles enough fresh water to supply a whole town and introduces even more contaminants into the water system is insane.”
- McMillan urged people to call for the City Council to pass a moratorium to stop data centers while regulations are developed. He noted a data center proposed for Custer Avenue in the Eastover area. “They are watching us. They are listening. If our response is weak or muted, they or another company right behind them will move in and become the single largest consumer of water and electricity in the city of Fayetteville,” McMillan said.
- “We oppose data centers as they are currently being developed because they rely on massive subsidies from the local population,” said Ben Hultquist of Strong Towns Fayetteville. “North Carolina gives them significant tax incentives. Duke Energy spreads out the cost of the grid upgrades to all rate payers. And residents in the area have to deal with the air, light, and noise pollution, and the tremendous property value loss that that causes.”
The organizations that took part in the data center event were the Party for Socialism and Liberation, ActionNC, the Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, Strong Towns Fayetteville, Fayetteville Freedom for All, and WatchOut Westover.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
