<<Story, images, etc all solely by Jenny/ Jennifer>>
Aaaaand I’m back to serve up some more hot tea. As I shared last week, I’ve been out & about over the past month capturing some of these tumultuous times & the brave folks fighting back over the past 4+ months of this new president/ administration in the United States. Again, though Nazis would call for Nationalism at any cost & slam our (Americans’) critiques, I am no bigoted nationalist, rather am an American citizen who believes that it is patriotic to exercise and call for the freedom of speech and human rights. I’ll keep the writing brief as many of the images speak for themselves, but here’s a quick description of some of the intense local happenings last month:
Here around South Bend, Indiana (over an hour from Chicago) we started the month of May off with a governmental Public Hearing about the local Amazon AI Data Center installation- the most lucrative investment in Indiana’s history to date whose construction started a year ago (unbeknownst to the majority of regular citizens). The meeting was held by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), was open to public feedback & critiques, and was being live recorded for further use (*by the government and Amazon). As I’ve had to clarify to others, I am very pro-solar energy (having even attended a live governmental Public Hearing last year about a few local large corporate solar projects in our area), love my electric plug-in hybrid car/ am pro-electric, and am in general very pro new forms of energy that depart from a reliance on fossil fuels. That said, I did learn quite a bit at one of the local (ZOOM-attended) solar hearings last year- in essence the small asks that local folks & government officials were seeking (a certain required distance of solar farms from private homes & the planting of a tree line between solar farms & residents).
This is where we depart from “normal” though. AI Data centers are their own beast and start to call into question the extreme levels of harm vs good that the technology brings to the world. At this hearing we heard data from professionals such as the agronomist/ Clean Water Field Coordinator or the Indiana Wildlife Federation and other professionals/ experts in their field from non-profits to govermental agencies down to local farmers & teachers actually seeing the effects of the facility in real-time far before construction has even ended/ far before operations have even started to get even this facility up & running. This specific public hearing was aimed at the expansion of the already 7 acre Amazon data center campus that is still under active construction… with them allegedly wanting to usurp another 14 to 15 acres. The land chosen is a lush wetland just off of my favorite local park (Bendix Woods) which is rich with biodiversity including 200 acres of woods ponds, a 27 acre nature preserve, native praries, a maple syrup sugar camp (tiny wood cabin where the tapped maple trees’ syrup is processed publicly), birding trails, forest bike trails, the 2nd highest point in the county, free autumn hay rides, and more.
Back to the information and data shared at the Public Hearing. As a local farmer pointed out, the data center already calls for using 3,000,000 (3 million) gallons of water per day- a large amount considering only .5% of the world’s water is fresh/ potable (*drinkable). Shockingly, he pointed out, due to the data center’s construction since last spring, the water table has already dried out… a disturbing reality since topsoil allegedly already only has about 60 years left due to deforestation & global warming. Other experts were quick to point out that Indiana has already lost around 95% of its wetlands (with this being some of the last) & teachers pointed out the protections that we should have due to the 1972 Clean Water Act. One economist weighed in on it being a poor decision (*to consider increasing the acreage of the data center) while others were quick to point out that the center mainly benefited bilionnaires (*as this one would only employ 25 humans at most) & that Deep Seek (*China-based AI) is already running at a fraction of the cost with less required space and water (a huge factor when considering in 2 years it’s projected that AI Data centers will need 4- 6x than the entire country of Denmark’s amount of water to run on annually). Folks were also livid that the “pay it back to the community” portion of the corporation’s enterprise were proposed to be set near the Illinois border vs here where the land & water are being taken for said data center. Folks demanded that at vey minimum that Amazon pay it back to the exact county where they’ve been building this data center. Another important piece of information that folks alerted us to was that these types of facilities often put the cart before the horse ignoring most environmental impact factors AND that most data centers seem to become abandoned after a mere 10 years leaving no decommission plan and acres large abandoned buildings/ destroyed environment in their wake.
As you can see, folks in the community were very involved and tuned-in with pages of data & notes being added to throughout the hearing. I learned more than I’d ever imagined with my main takeaway being that these AI Data centers are (based on the data/ facts presented) seemingly by far-and-large more environmentally & socially destructive than beneficial. After the hearing I jetted off in my hybrid plug-in car to swing over at sunset to see part of the construction of this local Amazon Data Center and visit my favorite local park that’s adjacent to it. The builds are unfathomably large & absolutely overwhelming- the largest buildings (footprint) buildings I’ve ever seen… even spanning across the highway. Below the photos (of just corners of them) I snapped from my car I’ve included the park next to the Data Center- one I’ve pretty much gatekept for a decade from everyone for my love of it and its privacy. I’ve often taken my dogs for walks there in what feels like the rainforest portion (the nature preserve) to enjoy looking at the local spring ephemeral flowers, the native mushrooms that I like to ID, and local native fruits that I rarely see elsewhere. I also donated a bucket (via the biz) for maple syrup cultivation (*as seen below) which I got to visit during the annual Sugar Camp Days (where the staff teaches the public about maple syrup cultivation & cooking). In decades of professional photography I’ve only allowed one couple the option to be photographed there and I’ve included those photographs below as well.
Here’s a few more pieces of information from a non-profit// Indiana’s oldest and largest consumer & environmental advocacy organization:
Unsurprisingly given the state of the nation/ world, this month (May 2025) also continued to see more massive large-scale protests across the United States and world. These were (and continue to be) some of the most patriotic & largest in scale that I’ve ever seen over the past 11 years in my experience of unpaid protest professional photography from California to the Midwest (over an hour East of Chicago). This particular protest happened less than 3 days after the Amazon Data Center Public Hearing (*their conquest to gain 10- 20 acres of more land for said data center)
Though not as astronomical as a week & a half ago’s 30 miles of around 15,000 protestors over the weekend spanning from Chicago to a suburb, this particular protest in South Bend, Indiana took place in downtown South Bend. Folks protested many things being destroyed in our nation & others- many things that Trump & minions are currently trying to chip away at with their proposed “Big Beautiful Bill” (massive cuts to nearly everything to cover tax cuts for the mere <800> billionaires who have continued to be prioritized over the other 340 MILLION of us). This protest again nearly brought me to tears as I almost didn’t come, came hours late, then as I was leaving/ talking to a local corporate graphic designer Gen X activist pal, went to capture one last shot which ended up being a teacher I’d had 22 years ago. This was especially poignant as this teacher in particular had heavy handedly guided us students (*in our 1st time ever voting for president) away from voting for a particular candidate-telling us that the most important issue was abortion, thus being a Catholic school had to flip from always encouraging Democratic candidates to now Republican candidates. I managed to stutter out a “HI!” after snapping the photo with shock on my face as I stood with the head of Pro-Choice South Bend facing a teacher who’d initially guided us to vote for the Anti-Choice presidential candidate in the early 2000s… very much impacting my initial politics as a teen (which then promptly changed when I went out into the world and had deep discussions with roommates, best friends, strangers, past long-term boyfriends, and more all over the world). With this new and shocking experience under my belt, my new takeaway is that it seems that Trump has done one thing very well: Uniting large swaths of caring citizens on both sides of the aisle to ban together- even in when in the past some may have been in opposition on certain topics.
Onto my imagery:
Thanks for again checking out my images from yet another historic/ tumultuous 2025 month in the United States. Thanks most of all to common sense & fierce citizens for putting in the work every day to fight against fascist policies and all threats to democracy. We must remain united in these the United States (*and world) in order to ensure the safety & prosperity of not only all of our citizens, but the citizens of the world. To fighting the good fight!
**Quick addition: Elon’s pushback/ critique on the ever very unpopular “Big Beautiful Bill” is of note & significance. It’s never too late for folks to stand with the majority of Americans on pressing issues.