An anti-data center activist helped stall a project planned for an abandoned mall just outside Washington, D.C. — and now she wants her county to ban them all.
Taylor Frazier McCollum, also known as “the Landover girl,” started a petition that drew more than 25,000 signatures against a $5 billion data center project, which was planned for the empty site of a former mall in Landover, Maryland, WAMU reported. Local opposition to data centers led to roughly 40 communities voting to restrict or ban projects in the Nov. 3 midterm elections — and the issue was “crucial” for 23 percent of voters, according to CNN’s exit poll.
“I was like, ‘Oh, hell no,’” Frazier McCollum said, WAMU reported. “Why would you want to bring water-polluting, diesel-generating data centers right down the street from where people live, work, play? It just didn’t make sense to me.”
The petition and subsequent protests led to local data center moratoriums, and the Landover data center is now on hold, according to WAMU.
A local official, Council Member Wanika Fisher, told Frazier McCollum the county’s “economic future” must be addressed, WAMU reported. The county is facing major concerns, including poor economic conditions, a budget deficit, decreased tax revenue and job loss.
Frazier McCollum was evicted from her apartment in 2024 and learned about the proposed data center when she moved in with her grandfather, WAMU reported. She now advocates for data centers in her community to be banned and said she needs to set a “precedent” for the country.
Lerner Enterprises — the developer behind the data center, county officials and Frazier McCollum did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Lacy McCollum Jr., Frazier McCollum’s father, compared his daughter’s work to that of civil rights activists and said data centers are about a “right” to water, air and homes, according to WAMU.
“While I’m afraid for her, we need those people,” McCollum Jr. said, WAMU reported. “We needed the Medgar Evers. We needed the Martin Luther Kings. We needed the Malcolm X’s. People like Taylor, they jump out here so the people behind them get to make progress.”
Frazier McCollum was interviewed in a Sept. 2025 Party for Socialism and Liberation Instagram post. She collaborated on the PSL’s post with the organization’s Washington, D.C. and Baltimore chapters, the national PSL organization and the county’s local No Data Center in Landover anti-data center organization.
“We do have concerns of environmental racism because they’re putting [the data center] in Landover for a reason; we already got [FedEx Field] in our backyard,” she said in the interview, according to the PSL’s post.
The PSL is a Marxist-Leninist organization, with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, that aims to overthrow the U.S. capitalist system and replace it with a socialist one.
The anti-data center activist’s Change.org petition said the county did not inform the community about the project and address concerns before approving it.
“The old Landover Mall site holds a special place in our community’s history and hearts,” the petition stated in part. “Turning it into a massive data center complex will not only disrupt the visual landscape of our neighborhood but also bring along potential environmental and socio-economic impacts that the residents were never consulted about.”
Similarly, a $2 billion data center project in Tonawanda, New York, was blocked by the state’s one-year moratorium, signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul on July 14.
Tonawanda unanimously approved a data center moratorium on Aug. 3. The Riverview Innovation & Technology Campus would have been located at the town’s former coke plant and would have taken up 140 acres.
“Do you just fucking hate AI?” one activist said on Instagram in reference to the Tonawanda data center, in a screenshot shared on X.
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