The Offside Mysteries, 44th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): London's The Guardian reports that a petition is underway in central Georgia's Coweta County against something called  Project Sail, a planned 800-acre-plus datacenter near the town of Newnan. The petition seeks a referendum that would also prohibit other datacenters and cryptocurrency mining operations from moving forward. Coweta County has about 160,000 residents, two-thirds of whom voted for the Stable Genius.

The petition organizers say they have collected about 6,500 signatures against their goal of 14,000.  If the campaign is successful, Coweta County could become only the third county in Georgia history to stage a referendum, which allows residents to challenge a county policy or decision.

Recent polling suggests seven in ten people in the US would oppose a datacenter being built near their homes. Monterey Park, California, recently became the first US city to pass a referendum against datacenters earlier this month. 

The Coweta County referendum follows an anti-gentrification effort on Georgia’s Sapelo Island, home to a community of Gullah Geechee people descended from enslaved West Africans who had ben forced to work on coastal plantations. Due to the geographic isolation of the island, the people retained strong African cultural traditions, creating a completely distinct language and cuisine. The referendum successfully defeated a proposal to allow larger houses on the island that would have affected the Gullah Geechee way of life. 

Before that, a referendum on Atlanta's Cop City police recreational facility met the required number of signatures, but the petition was ignored by the city and the effort was tied up in court even as construction proceeded (it's since been completed). Georgia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Chris Carr made his support for Cop City and his persecution of its protesters a campaign issue, and came in a distant fourth in the May 19 Republican primary. Good. Fuck that guy.   

The ability to stage a referendum in Georgia comes from provisions in the state’s constitution. A certain percentage of a county’s registered voters must sign a petition against a policy passed by elected representatives. Once the threshold of confirmed signatures is reached and a referendum is authorized, the county residents can vote on the issue and potentially reverse their elected officials' decision. Referendums (referenda?) are a tool that shows people don’t have to acquiesce to elected leaders, particularly when they don’t have people’s interests at heart.  

Remember, Georgia was recently ranked No. 1 in the country for its freedom of press.