An anonymous dispatch from some night owls
We do not wish to mince words: if water is life, and if life is sacred, then we must fight as such. An over-reliance on representative action has left a community holding their breath wishing the other 3 data centers can be voted out of office. In light of this, we take stock of our capabilities to disrupt the construction. We have engaged in these actions in an effort to both raise awareness of the local threat of data centers and strike even a meager blow to everyday operations of a company we wish to deter.
We regard this minor property damage as a moderate response to the threats being leveled at our community. A moderate response to the local developers who, after years of exploiting their community by restricting housing, now seek to sell out this community to AI data center development. An action designed as a warning and sigil, cutting through layers of bureaucracy, corporate lobbying, and inaction. A warning to Carson that the community will not remain ideal amidst a lull in civil politics. A sigil aimed to resonate with those of you eager to fight data-center development on event footing, for those projects will spare no resource, no recourse as they carve up the Earth in the name of development.
Furthermore, we refuse to see our tactics as divorced from the larger central Texas movement ecosystem, but instead as a leap into new terrain of struggle. A diversity of tactics must actively be undertaken to keep the movement a healthy and flowing river. Hence, we hope our experiment is received positively by all those in opposition to the furthering of data-centers and colonial surveillance.
Carson Properties and their Discontents:
John David Carson, a local piece of shit in bed with big tech, has built favor among local politicians and planning commissions via a solidarity among those who view the natural world as a hindrance to “human progress.” In helping run a family business (Carson Properties), this nepo baby has inherited the financial capital to enforce his vision of data-center development primarily through property acquisition and leasing. Townhomes, leasing offices, smokeshops, apartment complexes, student housing, strip centers, department stores, and patches of green space all fall under their domain. If property is the tool by which Carson holds all the cards, a bit of property damage seemed a useful tool for discouragement.
For generations Carson & his family have been profiting off of speculation, landlording, and selling off the land and water beneath our feet, now for the sake of moving to data centers, signaling his desire to graduate to the class of disgraced techno-fascist oligarchs making waste of the planet like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Joe Lonsdale, and Alex Karp, lead developers of a new age of illiberal fascism creating the latest state of the art surveillance systems & drone-guiding tech that want to strip the life out of the land’s resources so they can better strip life here and elsewhere.
These almost 60 years of land-grabbing and slum-lording has left the family enriched in the social and economic fabric of San Marcos and entrenched alongside the city government. Developers are insidious, weaseling their way into the hearts of the towns of their proposed sites. Carson hosts river cleanups, attends city council, rents properties to businesses in the area, and even lives in the community. He and other developers will engage in propaganda campaigns and try to wine and dine residents and officials to support their greedy cause. Thus, we will not normalize his role in San Marcos- as a landlord, a business owner, a neighbor, or even as a purported advocate for the ecosystem he seeks to ravage. It is time we put up a real fight.
Unsatisfied with his current power and influence over local government, John David Carson looks to profit off our destruction and elevate himself into the next social echelon. Carson has partnered not just with any old water thirsty, power sucking, life annihilating data center group, but Sabey Data Centers, a titan of data center construction and known supporter of Trump, DHS, ICE and the fascist surveillance state, to raze the land for the purpose of renting out space to the tech oligarchs whose mission has always been the surveillance of the populace, turning personal opinion into a panopticon. We wish to illuminate their ventures into disparate arenas of fascism throughout the country. For example, leasing properties to ICE and owning a Homeland Security building in Tukwila, Washington, prompting public outcry and a temporary 6-month moratorium on detention centers in the city. Hand in hand, the bread and butter of these companies (Carson and Sabey) serve to promote environmental catastrophe and racism, job instability, hyper-surveillance and de-intellectualization by AI. We refuse to go about our business as usual in town while one of these data center cronies lives and breathes among us.
We aim to make visible the many sprawling tentacles that originate from Carson and Carson Properties and expand throughout central Texas. John David Carson and Carson Properties are trying to see what they can get away with. They hope you don’t notice all the land they have bought up and housing they control that they rent back to you at increasing rates. He hopes now you don’t notice him expanding his horizons into AI data center development as he seeks new ways to exploit the land and his community.
Data Centers: A Modern Hellscape
Data centers are the epitome of capitalist arrogance, destroying the necessities for life itself just to make a return on investment. Tech’s involvment in expanding the surveillance state, imperialist war technologies, biometrics,and misinformation is one readily apparent: Drone strikes using AI systems that target public parks in Iran, AI generated imagery posted by the White House depicting Trump as Jesus, Flock cameras misindentifying alleged suspects in marginalized US communities or stalking women seeking out of state abortions, and facial biometrics allowing the categorized persecution of Palestinians at security checkpoints across occupied West Bank and Gaza. We’ve been intentionally kept in the dark for over a year about what data these data centers will hold, but judging from what data centers are readily utilized for, it can’t merely be for the sake of maintaining your overexpensive, glitchy, and soon to be obsolete phones ordering off of Amazon because no single data center is made with the faux purpose of purely maintaining technological commodities.
Additionally, many data centers have attempted to portray their campuses as the least egregious of the data centers, claiming closed-loop cooling designs are the “eco-friendly” solution to AI. Carson himself has said he would dedicate half of the land slated for his data center for “conservation”. He plans to pave paradise with the same equipment that uphold campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing across the globe. The absurdity of this faux-environmentalist drivel is aimed at reformists who professionally misunderstand the severity of the climate crisis. The obfuscation of greenwashing has turned the onus of greenhouse gas and pollutant production away from the profiteers, shifting the blame onto the people.
Our so-called “representatives,” whether local, state-wide, or (inter)national, have bought these lies with the money they have been given by techno-fascists to expand their project of surveillance, constant warfare, and the enshittification of the human mind to the point of unquestioned compliance to the state and their capitalist puppeteers.
Carson’s data centers are no more of an inevitability than those proposed by Maberry or Cloudburst, nor any of the data centers being challenged by communities across the US. Such temporary victories can be seen in Indianapolis, where in September 2025 a Google data center was voted down in city council… only for Sabey to propose a $4 billion data center in its absence, facing similar intense public outcry. If they can be defeated elsewhere they can be defeated here – yet the legal refusal of data centers is not an assurance of their defeat, city council’s and tech developers have pushed beyond community outcry and demands in El Paso, Flagstaff, Tucson, and now Indianapolis.
WHAT CAN BE DONE? AN INVITATION…
Our detractors likely will rush to label us petty criminals seeking quick thrills, but we reject these labels unequivocally. We gesture instead to militant community resistances from Standing Rock to Dakota Access Pipeline to Weelaunee Forest. Others are encouraged to reflect on possibilities and limits in our region. We achieved this with minimal resources and some measure of coordination. We are no experts but endeavor to become more than passive spectators. We ask those who read to do the same 🙂 Whether in Caldwell, Hays, or elsewhere, data centers occupy the countryside. City jurisdiction cannot continuously serve as a vehicle for resistance, and in this regard, the movement must shed its soft skin. Struggle doesn’t cease at the confines of city hall, or even at actions as these. As the struggle evolves so do the challenges and opponents, so should our tactics be employed and innovated upon as our enemies find tricks new and old at gambling away the planet.
If we hope to pierce through this fog of war, the assets of our opponents must become viable targets. Home demos, land occupations, road blockades, and sit-ins are just some of the numerous transgressive tactics that have yet to be tested. The durability of this ecosystem will be proven in everyone’s ability to experiment.
This is only the beginning. The cries of the people for justice will turn to screams of disenchantment, the angry realization that oppressive systems – the capitalist political machines – will never be fixed by replacing a single cog. The facade of electoral strategies bringing piecemeal progress has far too many cracks to be viewed as the whole picture of political action. Expanding the assumptions of the effective is key to moving forward as the same culprits change mediums, ushering in a digital age of population control. Our chains are strong, but the people are stronger. The human need for autonomy will overpower the forces of evil that dominate our everyday existence. This act of defiance serves as a stepping stone pushing the envelope of the inevitable victory of the global populace. In the heart of empire, one clot will likely not be enough to achieve the failure of the system as a whole. Together we can clog the machinery of data centers as factories of our misery.
We share this sentiment with all others who are standing up to obstruct the machinery of exploitation that is so often vulgarly masked as “progress.”
We protect those at risk within our own community and land a small blow against that greater evil which threatens all life.
We channel a sense of justice felt by all those who have chosen to step beyond the bounds of law set for them by their oppressors.
We act on behalf of water, the land, and all living things which cannot separated from the water and land.
We seek a better future than that owned and leased by Carson Properties.
We refuse to cede any inch of the real to the artificial without a fight.
Flyer for further distribution & use
