Brooklyn midterm crowd boos pro-data-center question as AI dominates debate

AI infrastructure became a political liability onstage at a Brooklyn midterm gathering: a question asking who supported AI data centers drew boos. In TechCrunch’s account of Newsreel’s Thursday evening event, the facilities became a recurring focus of election discussions, with speakers challenging whether promised jobs and investment could answer residents’ concerns about control over their communities.

The event, called Midterm Madness, brought together media workers, technology founders and policy advocates ahead of the November 3 election. TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis moderated its data-center panel, giving her account a firsthand view of the audience reaction and the arguments onstage.

The subject reached beyond that dedicated panel. A later discussion billed around the Democratic Party’s future also turned to data centers, drawing competing arguments about labor, prosperity and public consent.

The objection was about who gets a say

Davis’s panel featured technology and human rights researcher Maia Woluchem and environmental and public health advocate Hilary Flint. The discussion centered partly on residents’ belief that technology companies were making deals with local officials without enough public scrutiny. Davis described cases in which zoning rules leave people unclear about what is being built until opportunities to object have narrowed.

Environmental and health concerns sat alongside a broader sense of lost control. The panel connected opposition to anxieties about living costs and technology leaders’ talk of replacing workers. Its argument was not simply that the buildings were unwelcome: data centers had become a physical symbol of distrust toward the technology industry and the speed of its development.

When Davis raised benefits some communities had received from data-center construction, Flint rejected the idea that compensation necessarily settled the question.

What is a life worth?

Hilary Flint, environmental and public health advocate, at Newsreel’s Midterm Madness event

Jobs did not settle the argument

On the later panel, NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon offered a different perspective. Some labor unions support data centers because of the jobs they promise, she noted. She recalled the pride Rust Belt communities once took in large industrial buildings because those workplaces represented prosperity, family stability and a future for their children.

That comparison met resistance. Vox’s Astead Herndon said Vivek Ramaswamy had been booed for making a similar argument in Ohio. Herndon emphasized a lack of consent, saying he had seen that concern among Republicans as well. Political strategist Morris Katz, who worked on Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, questioned whether institutions he blamed for taking away union jobs could now credibly offer workers a better future.

A Brooklyn snapshot of a wider construction fight

The discussion took place against measurable disruption to development. TechCrunch cited Data Center Watch’s finding that almost $200 billion in projects were delayed, stalled or blocked by political and community opposition in the first half of 2026. That figure describes affected projects, not a tally of investment permanently canceled.

Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New York and Virginia were considering additional guardrails and transparency around development, TechCrunch reported. Virginia alone had hundreds of new data centers planned.

Newsreel founder Jack Brewster said AI and data centers appeared in every onstage conversation and ranked second among topics in questions submitted with RSVPs. He drew a distinction between rural communities, where he said backlash involved feeling replaced, and Brooklyn, where the concern was more about who gets rich. Those observations describe this gathering; they do not establish how much the issue will determine votes.