Author: Roland Martin   Published: 4/ 17  /2025 BlacK Star Network

So, let’s talk about what is happening in Southwest Memphis right now. A historically Black community is once again on the frontlines of a growing environmental fight. Guess who is at the center of it: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI. It’s the same company he built to take on OpenAI and ChatGPT. Right now, people in Memphis are seriously worried about air quality, asthma, and survival. Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson joins us now. Join this channel to get access to perks:    / @rolandsmartin  

Black Folks to Elon Musk: Hands Off Our Neighborhood

Author: Willy Blackmore   Published: 4/30/2025   Word In Black

Overview:

Like most Black urban communities, Memphis has dealt with more than its share of industrial pollution, typically caused when the city allows plants and factories to locate in their neighborhoods. The environmental justice movement is organizing residents to push back through oppposition at public hearings.

On Friday in Tennessee, the Shelby County Health Department held a public comment meeting as part of its consideration of xAI’s permit request to run 15 natural gas-powered generators in southwest Memphis. Pending permit approval, the Elon Musk-owned company has already been operating the generators — and according to local environmental activists, some 20 more generators too — to supply electricity to Colossus, the supercomputer behind Grok, the chatbot feature on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

But it was abundantly clear at the meeting that many Memphis residents want nothing to do with Musk.

It was a crowded, raucous affair, with the few hundred people in the auditorium at turns yelling, booing, and at least twice breaking into song — “We Shall Overcome” and “Amazing Grace” both. According to news reports, about 100 people were still waiting in line outside when the meeting started. The public comments were almost, if not entirely, in opposition to the permit applications made by

At the outset of the meeting, xAI’s Brent Mayo, wearing a black t-shirt and black hat both bearing the xAI logo, read a short prepared statement focused on the benefits that the corporation’s presence in Memphis would provide residents. The company is investing $80 million in a new wastewater treatment facility, and “we want to help build a better, more sustainable electrical grid for Memphis,” he said.

If the statement was routine, the response was not: Mayo was booed and yelled at during the entire time that he spoke, and in a video of the meeting posted to Instagram by local state representative Justin J. Pearson, a Democrat, it was difficult to make out most of what Mayo had to say. It appears that it was a problem in person too: at one point, someone yelled over the boos and jeers “I can’t hear the presenter!”

Black Communities Benefit Least

There are ample reasons why the Black community rejected Mayo’s pitch. Studies show that, when enormous data centers are built, Black neighborhoods suffer most and benefit the least.

According to a Climate Justice Alliance fact sheet, Black communities “face the highest impact from AI and data centers because they’re disproportionately impacted by climate change, which is driven by CO2 emitted in part by the energy production involved in running data centers.”

Furthermore, “roles to be replaced by automation and AI roles — such as food service workers – are held disproportionately by Black people,” according to the fact sheet. And because data centers consume so much energy and push up utility prices, “Black communities are already more likely to be energy insecure and have difficulty paying for their utility bills.”

At the meeting, Mayo said xAI will be the second-largest taxpayer in Memphis, “providing tens of millions of dollars in local tax revenue.” One person in the crowd was not impressed: “It won’t come to us!”

Mayo left the meeting immediately after he finished speaking, skipping the public comment period entirely.

Residents spoke of losing multiple family members to cancer and other diseases linked with environmental conditions.

Memphians spoke of the city’s long history of industrial pollution and the disproportionate effect it has had on Black communities like Boxtown, the neighborhood immediately adjacent to the Colossus facility. Residents spoke of losing multiple family members to cancer and other diseases linked with environmental conditions, of contending with asthma, of air quality so bad that it wakes you up in the night. The closest thing to a dissenting opinion was one speaker who said that justice and accountability could only come through the courts, not theatrics, as a public meeting.

While Musk (and, to a lesser degree, once he had left the building, Mayo) was the primary target of people’s ire, the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce took its share of blame too. The Chamber has been a major supporter of xAI’s growing footprint in the city’s old industrial areas, which the Chamber is now trying to rebrand as the Digital Delta. At the opening of the meeting, Chamber members were asked to raise their hands, but none did, and no members spoke either. As Oceana Gilliam, who is married to Rep. Pearson, said during her public comment, “they’re sitting right there in the front, not saying a goddamn thing.”

One Black woman who spoke captured the overall mood of the meeting very succinctly:

“Elon Musk we do not want here in Memphis,” she said twice in a row.

The public comment period for the xAI permits ends on April 30, and the health department will make its decision sometime after that.