This Land Is Your Land, Unless It’s Being Poisoned for Profit

Written By Guest User

This Earth Month, come with us, Give Black Alliance, to learn more about what is happening in our communities. Many of us are simply fighting for the right to exist. Come with us to Memphis to witness, listen, and learn what happens in a community when the air itself becomes a weapon.

This land is your land, this land is my land, unless you live where others can pollute at little to no cost. Unless your children are breathing air that is slowly stealing their futures. Unless you live on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee and witness your community sacrificed in the name of something called progress.

Every April, we pause to think about our relationship to the earth. But this April is different. We are not just thinking, we are going to learn together. We have so many questions. We want to understand how AI is disproportionally impacting Black communities. Where is our emancipation from this desire to constantly contain us on a plantation of pollution, in the name of progress? What is the fallout to the Earth itself? We are committed to following the truth wherever it leads, and want to bring a community willing to learn and act alongside us.

So, let’s start here: What happens when a new technology, one that promises to reshape human intelligence itself, lands in a Black neighborhood without permission, without permits, and without warning?

“Where is our emancipation from this desire to constantly contain us on a plantation of pollution, in the name of progress?”
 

What We Are Learning: Why Memphis Matters

Memphis is not a metaphor. It is a real place, and right now, they have been under siege for years.  They are in a battle that every philanthropist, every donor, every person who claims to care about justice, needs to understand. 

In June 2024, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI announced it was building Colossus, described as the world’s largest supercomputer, in an old factory building in South Memphis starting in July 2024. The $12billion deal was done. No public meetings, no environmental review.  No community input. Memphis city officials, including members of the city council, learned about it when everyone else did: when it was already a done deal and without residents’ voice or discussion.  

The neighborhood chosen? Boxtown, a predominantly Black community in South Memphis founded in 1863 by formerly enslaved people after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Boxtown was once the only place Black residents were legally permitted to live in Memphis.  Boxtown has never received what it deserved. Unfortunately, today, the cut is deeper, as it is the most polluted neighborhood in the city, surrounded by an oil refinery, a steel mill, a gas power plant, and multiple Superfund sites. The cancer risk in Boxtown is four times the national average.

Then, in just 122 days in 2024, methane gas turbines were built to power the supercomputer. Not five. Not ten. Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) aerial photos from July, 2025 revealed there were 35 methane gas turbines built to support this effort. The poison is spreading. As recently as April 9, 2026, SELC, on behalf of NAACP, Young Gifted and Green and the Safe and Sound Coalition, filed an appeal challenging the flawed permit issued by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality that would allow xAI to operate 41 methane gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, just a mere 18 miles from Boxtown.

What Community Members Are Saying:

“It’s no accident that in this community, we’re four times more likely to have cancer in our bodies. It’s no accident that in this community, there are over 17 Toxics Release Inventory facilities surrounding us, now 18 with Elon Musk’s xAI plant.”
— State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, South Memphis 
 

The Questions We Are Asking

We are still learning. But the questions are becoming clearer the more we look: 

Is this legal? SELC says no. The NAACP filed a formal notice of intent to sue xAI for Clean Air Act violations. The EPA opened an investigation. On December 15, 2025, the Memphis and Shelby County Air Pollution Control Board voted 6-1 to dismiss the appeal. Meanwhile, xAI appears to be running the same methane gas turbine playbook at its second facility, just across the state line in Southaven. Will this happen to more communities?  

Is the economic promise real? xAI says it has brought jobs and investment to the community. A Community Benefit Ordinance passed by Memphis Mayor Paul Young sets aside 25% of xAI’s property tax revenue, potentially up to $100 million over time, for communities within five miles of the facility. In year one, the city estimated it would receive roughly $12-$13 million in taxes in the first year, with $3 million of that going to surrounding neighborhoods.  There are over 16,000 homes in the 38109 zipcode. Back-of-the-envelope math says that each household will receive less than $190. Is that economic promise worth the destruction?  

Is this a pattern? Yes. xAI has followed the same blueprint twice: build fast, power with unpermitted gas turbines, seek permission only after communities protest. The current federal government is focusing on “light touch” AI regulation to prevent censorship of AI output and wants to override state-level laws. Environmental lawyers warn this could open the door to unregulated methane plants across the state. Memphis is not the end of this story. It is the beginning. 

Where is philanthropy? That is one of the questions we are sitting with. When communities that have done nothing wrong are systematically forfeited for the profits of the wealthy, what is the role of philanthropy? How are we comfortable with the idea that only 2% of affluent donors’ philanthropic dollars are designated for the environment, leaving communities like Memphis, who are most at risk, alone at the front lines. 

“Organizing around xAI is less about preventing the repetition of the past and more about intervening in the systems that threaten to bring history’s violence into the present.” ”
— Prism Reports

The AI ghoul rush is real. And Black communities, already overburdened, already fighting, are already carrying generations of environmental injustice in our lungs.  Now we are being asked to absorb the cost of intelligence for the rest of the world. 

What We Are Going to Do About It

Give Black Alliance does not have the answers. But we believe learning together is the first act of resistance. Here is what we are doing this month: 

Bring the T. We are going to talk about this.  Watch Black T, featuring Rev. Dr. Earle Fisher, Ms. Amber Sherman and Ms. Elaine Turner. We are talking to three stalwart activists who will help us understand what happened, how it happened and what we need to do to emancipate ourselves.  

Boots on the Ground. We are going to Memphis. We will be in the community, listening to residents, walking the streets of Boxtown and other communities. We are talking to experts and bearing witness to what is happening there. We will ask the hard questions about what accountability looks like and what philanthropy’s role should be. 

On the couch. We will be sitting down with experts, community organizers, and philanthropy leaders to ask the hard questions about what accountability looks like and what philanthropy’s role should be. We will bring back what we learn. 

Directing our Five T’s. Time, Talent, Treasure, Ties, and Testimony.  All of it, pointed at Memphis community.  We will listen, learn and ask how can we support the broader fight for environmental justice in Black communities. 

This month, Give Black Alliance is learning with you and standing with Memphis.

We are sending boots on the ground to Memphis this month to witness, listen, and learn alongside the community. We will be hosting expert conversations — bringing voices from the front lines to our couch. And we will be asking the hard question together: where is philanthropy?

We are directing our Five T’s to Memphis:
Time • Talent • Treasure • Ties • Testimony

We Cannot Stand Still

Earth Day, at its core, is about the right to live, fully, safely, and with dignity, in the places we call home. That is a freedom issue. Boxtown, and other cities and states, are losing their civil rights, actually their right to exist. Freedom without clean air, without safe water, without the power to exist on your own terms has always been incomplete. 

We look forward to going to Boxtown.  A place named for the houses formerly enslaved people built from boxcar scraps. It sits next to T.O. Fuller State Park, ironically, the first green space built for Black Americans during Jim Crow, on former plantation land. The history of this place is not incidental. The systems that made Boxtown a sacrifice zone are the same systems that made it possible for xAI to arrive without permission and leave pollution behind. 

“This land is your land” has become Mercy, Mercy Me. The poison wind blows from every direction now. But we do not have to stand still. We cannot watch suffering without acting. 

We are learning. We are going. Will you come with us?

Sources:

Guest User
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