If It’s Built Here, It Should Work Here
Just What’s Right: A Voice for Truth, Conscience, and Compassion
Virginia is growing. Not slowly. Not quietly. But in ways most people never see. Behind the scenes, rows of servers hum day and night. Data centers, thousands of them, powering everything from banking to streaming to national security. And yes, Virginia is home to one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world.
We are told this is good for us. Jobs. Revenue. Growth. And all of that is true. But truth, when it matters, is never just one sentence long. The other night, I attended a neighborhood civic meeting. A Virginia state senator was the speaker. His backyard is surrounded by the very infrastructure we’re talking about. When I asked about data centers, I got the familiar answer: Jobs. Revenue. Strain on the grid. And then came the solution. Nuclear energy. He shared that he had lived near nuclear facilities before and felt comfortable with it. That he wouldn’t mind having one in his backyard.
And that’s where something shifted for me. Because public policy cannot be built on what one person feels. Not when the stakes include water systems, air quality, land use, long-term environmental impact, and the physical, emotional, and financial realities of the people who will live with those decisions
Some people will feel fine. Others won’t. And those who don’t deserve more than reassurance. They deserve data, transparency, and a real voice in the outcome. Because growth is not abstract. It lands somewhere. And in Virginia, it’s landing here.
Alongside that growth comes something else: enormous demand on our electrical grid, pressure on infrastructure, environmental trade-offs, and long-term commitments that communities will live with for decades. So the real question is not: Is this growth good? The real question is: Who does it work for?
If companies are building here, if they are drawing from our land, our energy, our infrastructure, then the system surrounding them should work for the people who live here. And right now, it doesn’t fully. We see it in our schools. We see it in public safety. We see it in healthcare. Good people are not applying. Experienced people are leaving. And the answer we keep hearing is: “There’s a worker shortage.” No. There’s a system shortage.
Yesterday, we asked: If not unions, then what? And the answer was clear: A system that gives workers voice, stability, and a share in the success they help create. Today, we take that one step further. If data centers are generating significant revenue, then that revenue should not disappear into the background. It should show up where it matters most. In stable, competitive wages, benefits that reduce stress, safe staffing levels, and sustainable working conditions.
Call it collective bargaining. Call it a hybrid system. Call it common sense. But call it something real. Because here’s what we cannot keep doing: Building wealth in one part of the system, while asking another part to absorb the strain. And we cannot make decisions about how to power that growth based on what anyone “feels” is acceptable. Because some people will live next to those decisions. And their voices matter.
This is not about stopping growth. It is about designing it responsibly. A system that works does not extract from one side and reward another. It aligns them.
If it’s built here, if it draws from here, if it impacts life here, then it should work here. For the workers. For the families. For the communities. Otherwise, we are not building a system. We are building a strain. And strain, over time, always breaks.
Because truth doesn’t shout, it endures.
