Almost 30 years ago, Amy Kremer worked as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines, allowing her to travel all over the country.
Now, the Atlanta, Ga., resident is traveling all over the country again. This time, she is riding a nationwide AI Data Center Revolt bus to help stop the construction of data centers.
The bus made a stop in Montgomery County on Sept. 22, giving residents a chance to show their disapproval of data centers being built in the county. A rally was held at Ridgley Farms, located just west of Jonesburg. More than 50 people attended the one-hour event.
The AI Data Center Revolt bus tour is run by the Humans First, a grassroots conservative organization fighting for an America First AI policy. The three-week tour began on Sept. 12. When it ends on Oct. 5, the tour will have made 36 stops in 27 states, traveling 7,500 miles from coast-to-coast.
The bus arrived at Ridgley Farms at 5:20 p.m. on Sept. 22, drawing a big applause from the crowd. It was just coming from a stop in Nashville, Tenn., the day before.
Kremer, who is the chairwoman of Humans First, was looking forward to visiting Montgomery County, which has been one of most contested data center battlegrounds in the country for months.
“One of the first stories she told me before I joined the team was about this place in particular,” said Kelli Ferguson, Communications Director of the AI Data Center Revolt bus tour. “It was heavy on her heart and she was really excited to get out there.”
The speakers of the rally were Kremer, District 61 State Representative Democratic candidate Stacy Bax, Harry Cope and daughter Sabrina, county residents Sharon Ridgley and Brenda Buechele and Texas State Director Kathy Latham.
Arrangements of having the bus tour were made when Sabrina Cope was contacted by Kremer on social media and a phone call was coordinated.
“Sabrina has been amazing,” Kremer told the audience. “I heard all about your story. I cried telling it to my team and others.”
Two data centers are being built along the Interstate 70/Highway 19 interchange outside of the New Florence. Google and Amazon have combined to invest $25 billion in the data center projects.
“That’s like David vs. Goliath,” Kremer said. “How do you fight that? You know how you do it? It’s like eating an elephant one bite at a time, right? You can do it. Just don’t give up and don’t back down and never bend a knee to these people. This is your land and this is your home. You have a right to be here and they do not. You are the only ones who can protect it.”
Kremer said she started to become an anti-data center advocate in the fall of 2024, when she was witnessing data center meetings being posted on social media.
“People were being angry at their representatives,” Kremer said. “They were very upset and angry and were screaming and yelling. Sometimes, people were arrested.”
Sabrina Cope, who is a fifth-generation farmer, said she was influenced by Ridgley and Buechele to join the fight to stop data centers from being constructed.
“This issue is very important to me because it’s not just going to affect us, my family and our farm,” she said. “I have an issue when other people who are close to us are also going to have their farms impacted. We didn’t get a say. We really didn’t get any information until they were about to cross the finish line. I also care about wildlife very much, especially with our farm. We farm regeneratively and wildlife is a huge component of our farm.”
Ridgley said for several months, she and Buechele have shared their concerns about data centers in many places, such as commission meetings and town hall meetings.
“As people like to refer to us, we’re two people and partners in crime,” Ridgley said. “We’ve taken a beating over it, but I like to think that we prevailed. It was a tough job. For so long, she and I tried to convince people that there was a need to worry about all of the infrastructure that they were talking about and we couldn’t get anybody on board.”
Harry Cope won the Republican seat for the county’s Presiding Commissioner in August and will run unopposed in the November election. He is against the data centers being built in the county.
Harry said he had plenty of support during his campaign.
“This is a great group of people,” he said. “Pure and simple. That’s how this whole thing went down. We had the people and we had the money and we managed to prevail.”
The bus tour began in Austin, Texas on Sept. 12. It went through Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Tennessee before stopping in Missouri.
“It’s been really great,” Ferguson said of the tour. “We met so many people in different cities who were frustrated and wanted to have their voice heard and are impacted by this. Every story has been different across the country. But it’s the same thing of communities wanting to say what happens where they live.”
The tour will continue in Utah on Sept. 30. For the next six days, it will make stops in several cities in Arizona, Nevada and California before it ends in San Francisco on Oct. 5.
