Sherelle Dorsey
speaker
306 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 28 Jun
Sherelle Dorsey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Peggy is co-founder and executive director of the not-for-profit We Act for Environmental Justice.
She's seen stories like this unfold time and time again in communities of color across the country.
Peggy gave this talk at TED Countdown way back in 2022.
This was long before data centers took over the headlines.
But what stuck with me is this phrase she keeps using, sacrifice zones.
And like Peggy said, not everyone experiences this equally.
Peggy's framing doesn't come from a think tank or a policy paper.
It comes from decades of watching the same decisions get made over and over again in communities that never got a seat at the table.
In 2026, that legacy looks a little different.
No smokestacks this time, no rail yard, just a building drawing power and water around the clock to keep the AI economy running, implemented by a powerful new industry.
But ultimately, the behavior is the same.
Powerful business interests taking advantage of historic disenfranchisement to quietly implement their agenda.
Communities within one mile of data centers tend to be disproportionately communities of color, according to the Environmental Justice Data and Governance Initiative.
They also face levels of particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and diesel pollution above the national median.
Nearly half of all data center facilities nationally are located in census tracts where poverty is above the national median.
Understanding this context, the headlines coming out of Prince George's County seriously caught my attention.
This is the latest place to be facing this possibility, but they're also fighting against it.
So to better understand what's going on, I reached out to someone who is watching this issue unravel in real time.
Dr. Wilson and his colleagues did something that almost never happens in these fights.
They showed up early, collected rigorous data that confirmed concerns of environmental harm, and handed that research back to the community.
Showing 61–80 of 306 · page 4 of 16
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