Even on a soft spring sprinkling evening the back roads from my crib to Spring Mills, WV is country beauty at its finest. The small hills and rocky outcrops roll across the valley floor. Still like so many mountain areas, there are wild woods next to pastures, farm fields next to forests.

At least it still is right now. Republican Governor Patrick Morrisey wants to ruin these rural counties in our Eastern Panhandle.

Last Friday night, 500-600 people crowded into the Spring Mills High School auditorium for a town hall meeting held by two local Republican elected officials.

Each speaker added to the list of reasons data centers will ruin lives while we endure constant noise, higher electric bills, threats to our ground water, the loss of natural beauty, valuable farmland, and lowering home values.

Hey, Gov. Morrisey, what about it?

Speakers posed question after question.

Why would any governor jam something on his voters?

Why would local Republicans both blame the GOP Governor and try to protect their party as people across the Eastern Panhandle suffer?

Where will the vast water needs come from?

How far from each operation can you hear their noise?

Why would our GOP elected officials do this to our counties and our people?

Where would the electricity come from? Will it require new generation power plant/s, and how high will our electric bills go?

The longer the town hall went on, the more it dawned on folks that this data center crisis is coal colonialism repeated again. Politicians sell the state’s resources that go to out-of-state corporations profit leaving few jobs, poverty, pollution, ruined creation and dirty water. The land and people poisoned.

Tension had been building in Berkeley County over the news of the data center on its way.  

Some folks blamed the governor because he made data centers development his number 1 priority. 

Other folks tried to protect the Republican Governor even as they castigated the governor’s highest priority.

We’ll soon see as election season begins that confronting MAGA folks with their own contradictions makes them mad as an “ole wet hen”, as my Momma used to say.

At the town hall meeting, we heard over and over that the data centers near Spring Mills, and others across the state, are the goal and highest priority of MAGA GOP Gov Patrick Morrisey.

Brooke Gibson testified, “Governor Morrisey said this data center would be good for Berkeley County.” Loud murmuring and laughing ensued.

Annie Watson said her family has been on her land for generations. “Look at the coalfields. Thousands of people don’t have drinking water.”  Will that be us? “How long before this data center is obsolete?”

Lucia Valentine spoke as a candidate for Delegate from District 97 and a clean water advocate at the legislature: “We need responsible development while we protect the water, the land and all our resources. It is crucial that elected officials work to protect our Eastern Panhandle.”

A well known small family farmer from Jefferson County also spoke. He said his water rights go back to 1732, almost four centuries. “Are the governor and his legislature trying to cancel my water rights?”

No Kings 3 In The Eastern Panhandle

There were at least five protests in the Eastern Panhandle on NO KINGS DAY 3 – Charles Town with 900 people, Martinsburg with 600, Morgan County with 450, Hampshire County and in Harpers Ferry.

March 28 was the largest, broadest, nonviolent deepest demonstration for justice and peace on one day in American history.

We in the Panhandle were amongst the very first Americans to begin the street side sign waving protests.

After more than a year of almost constant protesting we’ve seen support for us grow from passers-by.

We can feel even here in West Virginia the decline in MAGA strength.

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