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My name is Amber Lawthers. If you don’t know me, I am “the esports girl” who put Marshalltown Community College’s esports program on the map in 2022. I am a passionate artist with an upcoming BFA in animation and minor in graphic design. I am a young resident of Marshalltown who has lived here all my life. But most importantly, I am part of the next generation of Americans who will be graduating and entering the workforce, deciding what it is I want to do for the next thirty years.
I do not claim to speak for every Gen Z young person. But I can confidently speak for a lot of us when we say that if council members of Marshalltown continue discussions about data centers in town and go through with allowing them despite vocal public pushback, our futures will not remain in Marshalltown.
Data centers are more than the “technology and change are bad” drivel that I would expect from older generations of Americans. Data centers represent something entirely different to those of us within Generation Z; we are the generation of Americans who must live with the devastating effects of the global climate crisis that will never see relief. We are the generation of Americans who don’t know if we’ll be able to drink clean, unpolluted water tomorrow as corporations and big tech dump their waste into our rivers. We are the generation of Americans who must live in a surveillance state as Flock cameras continue to go up to record everything we say and do with the assistance of AI. We are the generation of Americans who have been treated as nothing more than a product for our representatives to sell to the highest bidder all our lives, our existence a second thought compared to lining the pockets of those who vote against us. We are the generation of Americans who have to actively fight against AI shredding up our childhood dreams to get an entry-level job and start our futures.
Building a data center in Marshalltown would be like building a monument to everything that my generation has had to live through through no fault of our own, and will have to continue living through as the quality of our lives continues to decline before they have truly started.
If the city council continues to discuss data centers, act like seven in ten Americans don’t want data centers in their backyards per recent Gallup polling numbers, and act like they’ve already made up their minds by allowing data center investors to speak at council meetings despite the constant lines of “nothing is official yet,” and wasting over a month on the moratorium that’s supposed to protect us, Generation Z will simply turn away and find our futures in communities and states with elected officials who understand the dangers and public disdain of data centers and are committed to protecting our already fragile futures. I do not feel like I would be the only young person who would be embarrassed and ashamed to call Marshalltown home if the council plugs their ears and allows Amir Atefi of Swarm Systems, a man from a company that has no documentation online apart from our own local newspaper, to upend the lives of the people of Marshalltown who have already struggled the most.
We of Generation Z have spoken quite clearly along with the rest of our parents and grandparents, our friends and enemies across the political aisle, our lifelong neighbors and strangers we’ve never met, and we will continue to speak for as long as the message remains unheard: we do not want data centers and everything they bring and represent in Marshalltown. Not now, not ever.
Amber Lawthers is an alumni of Marshalltown Community College and an eSports national champion in Mario Kart.