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Jackson police could get a new ballistics unit, a small SWAT vehicle and 11 guns if the department is approved for state and federal grants. 

The new chief, RaShall Brackney, is undertaking a push to bring millions in outside funding to the Jackson Police Department amid citywide budget constraints. Brackney took over the department April 1. 

Jackson is navigating a sizable budget shortfall between revenue collected and the amount it planned to spend during the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. This has created the need to cut spending and freeze hiring for most positions. The deficit has also spurred the city council to hold ongoing discussions about how to avoid passing an unrealistic budget next year. 

Knowing she’d have a limited budget this year, Brackney told Mississippi Today that one of her first acts as chief was to hire a local grant writer whose sole job is to find and apply for money. 

“Across the nation, a lot of police departments are woefully underfunded,” Brackney said. “Not as a result of malfeasance, but a lack of resources.”

The city’s budget crunch means Jackson Police Department, which last year was budgeted for $38 million, will return to its funding levels for fiscal year 2025, about a $500,000 drop, according to city budget documents. 

Police budget dominated by cost of employees

Brackney said this shortfall will prevent the department from upgrading certain equipment, such as 16-year-old patrol cars. Most of JPD’s budget goes to salaries, benefits and overtime, according to the department’s presentation to the city council during last year’s budget talks. 

Even as the department spends most of its money on personnel, JPD’s command staff has long complained of understaffing due in part to unattractive salaries. 

In an effort to grow the ranks, the city council in recent years has approved raises for the police. But this is one of the reasons for Jackson’s current financial position, said Pieter Teeuwissen, the city’s chief administrative officer, because the city was paying for those raises out of its savings account. 

JPD is no stranger to the grants process, and currently has in hand five state and federal grants totaling more than $2 million, according to information obtained through a public records request. These include support for the bomb team and a grant to ensure sexual assault kits are tested. 

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, Brackney requested the council allow the department to apply to five more federal grants and another state grant. The department has yet to receive this money, which would total more than $2 million. 

State and federal grant possibilities

The sole state-funded grant that JPD is seeking would come from the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security. The department is requesting more than $125,000 to help it respond to “acts of terrorism,” primarily by equipping the SWAT team with new vests, armor, shields, helmets, guns and a small tactical vehicle.

“The City of Jackson faces an increased threat of terrorism as weapons of mass destruction are increasing (sic) being illegally possessed and used for a number of violent crimes,” the department’s grant writer, Mary Manogin, wrote in documents included in a packet submitted to the city council. 

Manogin added that JPD’s current ballistic vests are “limited in quantity” and potentially fall short of “modern standards for adequate protection.” The application also states the department’s other SWAT vehicles are “large and highly visible,” which is why JPD is seeking a smaller SUV.

A federal grant worth more than $220,000 would help the department obtain “critical equipment and patrol vehicles that cannot be purchased due to budget constraints,” according to city documents. Of that, JPD wants to allocate $208,000 to “mounting docks, dash cameras, field laptops” and drones equipped with thermal imaging.

The drones, Brackney said, would allow JPD “to start overlaying blight with crime, which often (are) very connected.” 

Another $700,000 federal grant would include de-escalation training and the potential adoption of virtual reality technology. A $500,000 grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention related to youth gangs would also support targeted enforcement efforts in areas experiencing gang-related crimes. 

JPD is also seeking a $300,000 federal grant to “identify, investigate and prevent crimes” involving bias, prejudice or violent extremism. The department wrote in a document submitted to the council that it planned to allocate about $207,000 of that to purchase 10 computers and a 12-month subscription to a “threat intelligence software” platform.   

And, $20,000 would go to a hate crime analyst to assist the department’s Real Time Command Center, with the remainder providing 800 brochures, resources guides and information sheets “outlining how to identify and report hate crimes” that would be distributed by a local nonprofit organization.

JPD is seeking another $300,000 in federal grants to help Brackney build a ballistics team. The Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Local Law Enforcement Crime Gun Intelligence Center grant would pay for officer overtime and help JPD hire two staff members to do data entry. 

“That allows us to connect guns to crimes to incidents to persons,” Brackney said. 

Dozens of states sued the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday over the agency’s finalized loan caps that would limit the federal funds available to professional degree-seekers.

The limits officially go into effect on July 1. For borrowers going to medical school, law school, dentistry school, pharmacy school or other programs that the Education Department categorizes as “professional,” students would face a $200,000 aggregate limit for their time in that program and a lifetime limit of $257,000 for any federal student loan.

The complaint from 25 states and the District of Columbia, with Mississippi not included, argues that the Education Department is not acknowledging or including all programs and professional degrees. The lawsuit cites several degrees, including nursing, speech language pathology, physician assistant and physical therapy as programs the agency is overlooking.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that these gaps in particular could weaken the health care industry even further. By excluding certain degrees from the “professional” category, those students would face a tighter $100,000 limit intended for graduate students. Someone pursuing an advanced practice nursing degree, for example, would be limited to $20,500 annually.

A bipartisan pair of senators, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mississippi’s Roger Wicker introduced a bill on Tuesday to overturn the Education Department’s removal of nursing from the list of professional degrees.

“This legislation would make nursing a more achievable profession by expanding the loan limits for nursing students. Classifying post-baccalaureate nursing degrees as professional degrees would give these students more financial freedom after graduation,” Wicker said in a press release.

A study by Philadelphia’s Federal Reserve Bank found that 28% of students in graduate or professional programs borrow more than the limits the agency is implementing.

The lawsuit called the agency’s distinction of professional degrees “arbitrary and capricious.” The states also questioned the blanket loan cap for all degrees in just two categories, rather than creating caps based on the price of the program.

But the Education Department previously said its goal with capping loans was to cut the price of these degree programs by forcing the hand of institutions. What remains unclear is whether institutions will large-scale lower costs as a response, or if the loan limits will create a greater burden for borrowers who may need to lean into the private loan system instead.

“For years, Democrats parroted illegal student loan forgiveness to ‘end the debt crisis’ and buy votes, and now the same people are fighting against the Trump Administration’s legal efforts to drive down the cost of college,” Nicholas Kent, the under secretary of education, told NOTUS in a statement. “After decades of unchecked student loan borrowing that gave schools no reason to control costs, these commonsense loan caps – created by Congress – are already incentivizing colleges and universities to lower tuition.”

A spokesperson for the Education Department also cited a few examples of institutions lowering costs after the loan caps were made public. The University of California at Irvine cut its tuition by 20% and the University of Santa Clara Law School created a $16,000 scholarship designed to “cover the cost of tuition for Santa Clara Law within new federal loan limits.”

The loan limits are a part of the “Working Families Tax Cuts” that President Donald Trump signed into law in July 2025. It’s been a long-stated goal of the administration to cut the bureaucracy within the Education Department, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has furthered that agenda by reassigning programs and grants to other agencies instead of dissolving the department, which would require congressional approval.

The agency remained steadfastly behind the policy in its response to the lawsuit.

“Clearly, these Democratic governors and attorneys general are more concerned about institutions’ bottom-line rather than American students and families’ ability to access affordable postsecondary education,” Kent said.

The lawsuit primarily includes states with Democratic leadership, but Vermont, Nevada, Kentucky and Pennsylvania have a Republican governor or attorney general.

This story is provided by a partnership between Mississippi Today and the NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative, which seeks to help readers in local communities understand what their elected representatives are doing in Congress.

Today’s Crooked Letter menu has several flavors: college baseball, the Ferriss Trophy, Aaron Rei’s much-deserved PGA Championship victory, another remembrance of Charlie Rugg, the NBA phenom named Wemby and much, much more.

Stream all episodes here.

Allison Palmer is looking to get her life back on track. She lives in a women’s shelter and is hoping to find a job to support herself and her husband, who is staying in a men’s shelter.

“I just want to be able to stand on my own two feet,” she said.

Palmer, 55, was one of dozens of jobseekers attending Clocked In, a free workforce expo that aimed to connect employers, jobseekers and community organizations to help people find work, training and other resources.

Deep South Today, Mississippi Today and the Foundation for the Mid South hosted the event, which took place Tuesday at the Jackson Medical Mall. It was made possible by a grant from the Foundation for the Mid South’s Moving Mississippians Forward Through Employment Initiative.

Another jobseeker, Maailyah Davis, 19, attended with her mother and sister. All three were looking for work. She said she’d been looking for a job for a month, and had an interview coming up. She also said she has had trouble finding job openings. Davis, who has a son, said she’s seeking a part-time job.

“I want to spend time with him but still have a job to make money for him,” she said.

Davis is planning to return to school in the fall and work while being a student.

Palmer said her main challenge is her lack of transportation. She hasn’t been in the job market for eight years, but said she is optimistic.

“I’ve talked to a couple people, and they have some opportunities that I think would be good for me,” she said.

Employers and organizations from a variety of fields had tables at the event where they were offering opportunities and resources. 

Edd Blake is the coordinator of business outreach for MCA Powered by NeXT, which provides free training programs for people who want to enter the tech industry.

Blake said events like Clocked In are important for breaking down barriers. 

“It’s all about access,” he said.

Lindsay Stevens, the regional manager at SURGE Staffing, echoed the same point. She said that people in central Mississippi often lack resources.

“I see them come into our offices every day, and they’re looking for jobs, but they don’t know how to apply for jobs or other resources that they may need to gain good employment,” she said.

Donte Jones, director of reentry at MAGCOR, a nonprofit organization that provides support services and job training for people who are currently and formerly incarcerated. He said he wanted to raise awareness about his organization.

“Sometimes they’re a little shy about coming out and trying to find out information because they’ve been told certain things or stigmas or barriers are out there,” Jones said of people who had been incarcerated.

“But there’s a lot of programs and services out there to make sure that they get out and stay out and do well and become tax-paying, law-abiding citizens.”

The expo also featured live conversations with community leaders and Mississippi Today employees about challenges facing Mississippi’s job market and economy.

WASHINGTON — The NAACP is calling on Black athletes and fans to boycott the athletic programs of public universities in states that are taking steps that the nation’s oldest civil rights group says are restricting Black voting rights.

Launched on Tuesday, the “Out of Bounds” campaign urges prospective Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”

If Black athletes participate in the boycott, it could deplete rosters for powerhouse football and basketball programs across the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference.

The NAACP is among groups responding to a wave of gerrymandering in the aftermath of a U.S.Supreme Court ruling that winnowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The boycott comes as civil rights activists have mobilized across the South to protest redistricting plans by Republican state legislatures that eliminate majority-Black congressional districts after the high court’s ruling. Activists have looked for pressure points to dissuade GOP-led states from redistricting maps, including calls for mass protests and economic boycotts.

“Across the South, Black athletes have helped build some of the most profitable college athletic programs in America,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who lives in Mississippi.

Johnson noted that the programs “generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, national television value, alumni donations, merchandising sales, ticket sales, and brand equity — much of it powered by Black football and basketball talent.”

The NAACP’s campaign calls out Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina as states to boycott, arguing that the athletic programs of those states’ flagship universities are especially reliant on Black athletic talent and should protect Black political interests.

“Black athletes should not be asked to generate wealth, prestige, and power for state institutions while those same states strip political power from Black communities,” Johnson said.

The timing of the initiative comes at a moment in the college athletic calendar that might make it difficult for it to have any immediate impact. The transfer portals for the high-profile Division I sports of football and basketball are all closed until 2027.

There may be an opportunity to influence prominent high school recruits who are still weighing their college prospects for the fall of 2027 and beyond. While many schools have received nonbinding verbal agreements from football and basketball players, those agreements won’t become official until late fall at the earliest.

The signing window for basketball opens in mid-November — about a week after the midterm elections — and the 72-hour early signing period for football arrives in the first week of December.

There is a chance that recruits could attempt to put pressure on flagship institutions in the targeted states by threatening to sign somewhere else. The reality, however, is that the pockets of those schools run deep, and asking a teenager to factor politics into a decision that could produce a life-altering financial windfall before they are even old enough to vote could prove tenuous.

Black lawmakers themselves are also putting pressure on athletic leagues to take action against Republican-led states that may redistrict longtime Black members of Congress.

The Congressional Black Caucus on Monday sent a letter to the commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences, as well as NCAA President Charlie Baker, that its members will oppose the SCORE Act, a bill to standardize athletes’ contracting rights across the country, unless conference leaders oppose GOP-led redistricting efforts in states that include major conference members.

“The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack,” the CBC said in a Monday statement. “Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality — it is complicity.”

One estimate shows Democrats could lose as many as 24 seats in the Mississippi Legislature from GOP-led gerrymandering, the state party chairman said Tuesday.

At a news conference in Jackson, Rep. Cheikh Taylor, Democratic Party chairman, said he has reviewed maps Republicans might adopt in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling, which gutted part of the Voting Rights Act.

Taylor said he fears Democrats could lose as many as 17 seats in the House and 7 seats in the Senate. He also cited a report published last fall in anticipation of the Callais decision by voting rights organizations Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter. The report said nearly half of the state’s Black-majority districts, 29, could be eliminated if Republicans adopt an aggressive redistricting strategy encouraged by some in the majority party.

The impact of the Supreme Court decision is almost certain to trickle down to the state and local level, as the decision significantly narrows how courts can require states to account for race in redistricting. And in Mississippi and across the Deep South, race and party affiliation are intertwined.

The majority-white, Republican-dominated Mississippi Legislature has already formed special committees in both chambers to consider redistricting ahead of the 2027 legislative session.

Taylor’s remarks came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower federal court’s ruling that determined Mississippi lawmakers unlawfully diluted Black voting strength when it redrew the state’s legislative districts in 2022. 

Republicans already hold near supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, but several state officials have urged the Legislature to draw maps to cement even stronger majorities. Many Republicans in Mississippi have also said the state should redraw its congressional maps to oust U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the lone Democrat and lone Black member of the state’s delegation.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves called off a special session he initially ordered to redraw state Supreme Court districts in light of the Callais decision. But in a radio interview, Reeves said it was only a matter of time before Republicans moved to target Thompson.

“The tenure of Congressman Bennie Thompson reigning terror on the 2nd Congressional District is over,” Reeves said. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”

On Tuesday, Taylor condemned Reeves’ remarks as “dog whistles,” and said Republicans were poised to target Black representation across Mississippi’s political system. He also said moves by Mississippi Republicans to redraw maps would likely be met with litigation.

“When people say race no longer matters, while simultaneously redrawing districts, weakening protections and targeting Black voting power, we must call it what it is: hypocrisy, moral decay and political cowardice disguised as constitutional principle,” Taylor said. “The same forces framing America as suddenly colorblind are the same forces that continue manipulating systems to dilute Black voices and Black communities working together to make sure that their issues are heard.”

Taylor also vowed Democrats would mobilize to counter Republicans’ “power grab.” On Wednesday, voting rights advocates are set to host a rally at the Jackson Convention Center in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings and subsequent calls to redraw Mississippi’s electoral maps. Attendees scheduled to appear include Thompson, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Scott Colom and the daughter of the late Medgar Evers, Reena Evers-Everette.

“We will continue organizing, we will continue educating, mobilizing and building leadership in every corner of Mississippi, from the Delta to the Coast, from Jackson to the smallest rural community. Every church house and every college campus,” Taylor said. “Our fight is not over, and in many ways it’s just the beginning.”

A federal judge has again delayed the trial of the Madison man accused of setting fire to Mississippi’s largest synagogue, this time to Aug. 3. 

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate granted a second request from Stephen Spencer Pittman’s federal public defender for more time to review evidence in the case. Wingate signed the order Monday, and it appeared in the federal court’s electronic records Tuesday.

Pittman, who usually goes by his middle name, is facing three federal charges: arson, damage to religious property and using fire to commit a felony for allegedly burning the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in northeast Jackson in January.

If convicted of all charges, he could face up to 60 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. 

Pittman has pleaded not guilty to all counts. He is accused of breaking into the house of worship and dousing a lobby in gasoline before setting it on fire. The blaze charred parts of the building and left smoke damage throughout.

Pittman remains in jail as he awaits trial, despite the efforts of his attorney, Michael Scott. Scott had previously successfully requested to move Pittman’s trial from April 6 to June 1. Federal prosecutors have not opposed Scott’s motions. 

State and federal prosecutors indicted Pittman within days of his arrest by law enforcement at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Pittman was being treated for burns just a few hours after the synagogue fire. 

In addition to the federal charges, Pittman is facing a separate first-degree arson charge in state court that is enhanced under a Mississippi law punishing “offenses committed for discriminatory reasons.” 

In the weeks before the synagogue was attacked, Pittman began making antisemitic statements on social media and allegedly behaving in such a way that the “family pets were afraid” of him and his mother was considering “locking their bedroom doors at night,” an FBI agent testified at the February hearing. 

Beth Israel Congregation leaders recently revealed plans for rehabilitating the one-story brick building, with work that included sending away the Tree of Life for cleaning and restoration. The brass plaque commemorates milestones such as congregants’ birthdays and anniversaries.

Brenda Travis was 15 when she joined the Civil Rights Movement, deciding she could not “sit still and be silent.” She was subsequently beaten, jailed, expelled and ultimately sent away from Mississippi,

The McComb native, a self-described exile of the Mississippi movement, died Sunday at age 81.

When she was 10, the sheriff broke into her family’s house without knocking or a warrant and arrested her 13-year-old brother.

A vision flashed in her head of the photograph of Emmett Till’s beaten, battered and swollen body, she said in a 2007 interview posted to the Civil Rights Movement Archive website. “I became enraged and knew that one day I had to take a stand.”

That time began in 1961 when she was just 15, and she became the youth leader for Pike County’s NAACP. Local president C.C. Bryant had just welcomed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader Bob Moses to the area.

“I joined the NAACP and became involved in the movement to get people to vote. “But they were afraid,” she said in a 2013 interview published in the Huffington Post.

SNCC began to teach Black Mississippians how they could vote. First, they had to pay a poll tax and then they had to pass the test given by circuit clerks. The test was supposed to center on the Mississippi Constitution, but Travis recalled that it sometimes became an absurd question like “How many grains are in a bag of rice?”

SNCC soon began a series of protests in McComb. After a sit-in at Woolworth’s in August 1961 resulted in two arrests, SNCC members gathered. Moses had been beaten for helping two Black men try to register to vote, and his head was wrapped in gauze.

“They were asking people to volunteer, because they wanted to keep the momentum going,” Travis recalled. “And it was at that point that I knew that I could not sit still and be silent. So I volunteered to go to jail.”

On Aug. 30, 1961, she and two other SNCC volunteers purchased tickets and sat at the “all-white” lunch counter inside the Greyhound Bus station.

She spent a month in jail. “The Movement trained us very well,” she recalled. “They trained us how to survive, how not to go stir crazy. … Our survival technique was prayer and singing. … We had the jailhouse rocking.”

When she was finally released, she learned that civil rights leader Herbert Lee had been killed for working with SNCC.

She also learned that Berglund High School had expelled her. She stormed to the school and led a walk-out of more than 100 students, who sang “We Shall Overcome” as they marched to city hall and knelt in prayer.

They were beaten and so were SNCC leaders who accompanied them — Moses, Chuck McDew and Bob Zellner — who were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Behind bars, Moses wrote, “This is Mississippi, the middle of the iceberg. … There is a tremor in the middle of the iceberg — from a stone that the builders rejected.” 

Students continued protesting by refusing to return to school until Travis was allowed to re-enroll. School officials expelled those students, too.

SNCC started its own high school for the students. Moses taught math, Dion Diamond handled science, and McDew informed students about history. 

“Nonviolent High” inspired the creation of “Freedom Schools” during 1964’s Freedom Summer. 

Travis was sent to Oakley Training School, a juvenile detention center near Raymond.

“People say, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ but that’s not true,” she recalled. “The wound may have a scab over it, but deep within, it’s still sore. It’s still painful. When I was placed in reformatory school, nobody knew where I was, not even my attorney.”

She was released after six and a half months when she agreed to leave Mississippi. She finished high school in Connecticut and later attended the Tony Taylor School of Business in California.

“I still carry the blood-stained banner, and one day it will be all right,” she recalled in the 2007 interview.

Six years later, she started the Brenda Travis Historical Education Foundation in McComb and wrote a memoir, “Mississippi’s Exiled Daughter: How My Civil Rights Baptism Under Fire Shaped My Life.”

A half-century after the protest, district officials honored the protesting students and awarded Travis, a longtime civil rights veteran, an honorary degree.

“You know what the beauty of it is?” she told The Associated Press. “They made a scapegoat of me, but the students continued to come.”

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.     

Across the country, resistance to data centers is rising even as plans are steadily being made to build new ones.

According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of new data centers — 67% — are being built in rural areas. And three-quarters of those are in Midwestern and Southern towns, including more than 20 in Mississippi, according to Baxtel, which does data center research. The Mississippi date centers include smaller data centers and hyperscale centers that are used for cloud computing and AI and generate the most controversy

The negative effects have not gone unnoticed. A planned xAI  data center in Southaven in DeSoto County, for example, is reportedly terrorizing the community with high levels of noise and air pollution, and residents are now regretting its existence.

Other factors that could lead to community resistance of data centers include the depletion of water systems and the increased energy costs to consumers. When you dig a little deeper, you begin to see how data centers are built on exploitation that goes far beyond small-town USA.

Data centers are both products and producers of wars that kill people and destroy the planet on a global scale. The rapid expansion of these data centers requires raw materials, especially fossil fuels — resources often obtained through violence —  and they fuel a technology that is increasingly used to commit war crimes.

Fossil fuels provide almost 60% of the power for data centers, especially for “emergency generators.” AI data centers run almost 24/7, so these “emergency” generators are consistently operating.

Control over fossil fuels, of course, is a driving factor behind the U.S. regime change efforts in Iran, Venezuela and other resource-rich regions. And the extraction of other needed minerals — like silicon, gallium, lithium and cobalt — requires both the destabilization of the sovereign regions in which they are found and inhumane mining practices, including the use of child labor.

Then there is the question of the moral and ethical use of generative AI. The expansion of data centers comes at a time when AI and LLMs (large language models) are increasingly being used by the Pentagon for militarism domestically and internationally.

The Pentagon recently agreed to massive deals with both Palantir and OpenAI. The employment of AI in military operations has already resulted in war crimes. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude was used in the bombing of the girls’ school in Minab, Iran, which killed about 170 students and teachers. Do towns that pride themselves on family values want to be behind a killing machine capable of murdering young girls?

It’s easy to understand why the announcement of these data centers can seem like good news for areas facing dire economic conditions. Existing low-wage jobs are difficult to survive on. But the evidence suggests data centers create very few local jobs in the towns where they’re built. Should this small number of jobs come at the expense of people and the future of our planet?

The state officials brokering these deals with tech companies could instead work on bringing jobs that design, install and maintain renewable energy systems to replace fossil fuel reliance. They could sign contracts with companies that manage and protect the beautiful natural ecosystems, habitats and biodiversity that often surround rural towns.

We need jobs that sustain the heartbeat of the Midwest and the charm and hospitality of the South — not jobs in an industry that terrorizes communities and kills people.

Data centers are not just toxic installations in communities’ backyards. They are a driving force behind wars and instability, and they keep American workers tied to the endless cycle of wars for fossil fuels.

In defense of the planet, our communities, and communities around the world, I hope urban and rural communities alike can unite to stop data center projects  — especially across the Midwest and the South, where there is so much beauty and love to protect.

Rural communities’ future is not AI. We should be investing in what makes us great: the people and the land.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She was born and raised in Mississippi, where she continues to live and work. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

House Democratic Leader Robert Johnson of Natchez says that as states across the nation become embroiled over racial and partisan gerrymandering of voting districts, he believes now they’ll know “what it’s like to be in Mississippi” with its long struggles with voting rights and drawing district lines. What other states see as unprecedented political battle, Johnson said, “We call Tuesday.”