Stop Archbald Data Centers<\/a> said as her three young children played in the background.<\/p>\n\u201cI definitely don\u2019t feel lucky about it. I feel angry. I feel like everything I love is being threatened, from my home to my family to our health, our town, our representation (by elected officials) and on a larger scale, our freedom \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, it really feels like we\u2019ve been at war in Archbald.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sadly apt characterization of the bombardment of data center proposals borough residents have been forced to absorb over the past year. Tammy, as she is best known, said fighting off \u201cstrong, bold, Money Machines\u201d and the billionaires behind them has been hard on the everyday citizens driving the resistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of us who have really been in the arena on this feel like we\u2019ve been operating in survival mode for about a year now, and that really takes its toll on your (mental and physical) health,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, for me, the most heartbreaking part is the loss of time with my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tammy and her husband, Justin, who co-founded Stop Archbald Data Centers, have three children ages 2, 3 and 6. She took a hiatus from her professional career to be a stay-at-home mom. Then the invasion came.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really looking forward to this time, getting to be in that role for once in my life and really spend that very limited precious time completely focused on them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I feel like that was robbed from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another sadly apt characterization of the peace of mind and sense of individual and community security that\u2019s been robbed from the people of Archbald over the past year. It\u2019s hard to relax with so many targets on the borough\u2019s back.<\/p>\n
PNK Group is way late to the invasion. Any chance of winning widespread public support for invasive data center development anywhere in Pennsylvania expired months ago.<\/p>\n
PNK Group\u2019s sloppy, self-owning introduction to Archbald mirrors the hapless, backfiring rollouts of other outside exploiters targeting the borough. Why would the residents of any town welcome newcomers who don\u2019t know its name or its home county?<\/p>\n
PNK Group\u2019s mailer is just the latest misfire in a public relations war that turned against data centers months ago. People don\u2019t much care where data center developers come from, as long as they spend their \u201cliquid gold\u201d somewhere else.<\/p>\n
While resisting the invasion eats up time she could spend with her children, Tammy said the hours she spends organizing, answering emails and attending public hearings is an essential investment in their future. \u201cArtificial intelligence\u201d is already taking more than it has ever given.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey keep saying how AI is the future, how it\u2019s going to serve humans, life is going to get easier, it\u2019s going to do all these jobs we don\u2019t want, it\u2019s going to be this great thing that serves us so that we can have all this free time to just enjoy the best of life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut tell me, in reality, if it doesn\u2019t actually feel like we\u2019re the ones serving it already.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, is grateful for human beings who stand up for humanity Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By President Donald Trump\u2019s consistently shifty standards, Archbald is the \u201cluckiest\u201d little town in America. Already \u201cblessed\u201d with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1590,2116,182,3052,139,1559,1560,231,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-250887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-chris-kelly","tag-data-centers","tag-local-news","tag-midvalley","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}