A socialist-led petition to ban every data center in Oakland has cleared 3,500 signatures in a week, turning the fight over Behring Companies' downtown project into a test of whether the city follows Oakley's outright ban or the regulate-and-permit path chosen by Pittsburg and San Jose.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation — the same group that helped organize against East Bay data centers in Oakley and Pittsburg — launched a "No Data Centers in Oakland" petition this week aimed at Colin Behring's proposed innovation hub at 415 20th Street. The demand is not disclosure or oversight but a citywide prohibition, a harder ask than any Bay Area city except Oakley has granted. It puts Councilmember Carroll Fife, who represents the district and has stood beside the developer, between a revitalization pitch and constituents who say they were never asked.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation this week began circulating a petition, hosted at nodatacenteroakland.com↗ (external source, opens in a new tab), calling on the City Council to prohibit data centers citywide. Organizer Aditi Varshneya, who lives and works in Oakland, told KQED↗ (external source, opens in a new tab) the more than 3,500 signatures gathered so far are evidence residents want something in that space that benefits the community. The campaign's site frames the fight as a choice between "the people" and "the ultra wealthy," and lists PSL Bay Area as its contact. Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu, an Oakland native, shared the petition on Instagram, CBS San Francisco reported↗ (external source, opens in a new tab).

The target is developer Colin Behring's plan for 415 20th Street, a former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory supercomputer building one block from the 19th Street BART station. Behring casts the project as an "innovation hub" in which the data center is a fraction of the footprint, arguing that a single IT floor bears no resemblance to the sprawling, gigawatt-scale campuses AI has spawned in places like Texas. He told CBS the IT space is "minuscule" and that its cooling would run closed-loop without wasting water. The petition tells a different story, putting a hard number on the plant it wants banned: a 20-megawatt data center it says belies the developer's "minuscule" framing.

What makes this a Council problem rather than a message board is precedent. In Oakley, a developer dropped a data-center component after residents rallied, and the council then passed what organizers call the Bay Area's first ban — temporary, but a ban. Pittsburg, where more than 300 residents packed City Hall in June, and San Jose have instead leaned toward regulation. PSL is now asking Oakland to pick Oakley's path.

Fife has not. The councilmember, who represents downtown, spent the same week trying to lower the temperature, asking the public to help "de-escalate the tensions" around the project, per CBS, and reaffirming her commitment to "responsible technology" in Oakland while pitching a downtown revival. She told KQED she is drafting regulations on responsible AI and organizing a public forum on the impacts. Her framing — that petitions spread because residents aren't clear on what is actually proposed — casts the opposition as a communication gap. Organizers call it a disclosure failure, which Varshneya described to KQED as central to how communities react to these projects.

KQED found that most Oaklanders it interviewed hadn't heard of the project at all. Bryan Ortega, 30, a longtime resident, wanted the centers kept out of the city and told KQED the motive was "all capital gain." Areli Hernandez, an Oakland resident of about a decade, told the station she wished residents had a way to formally contest the project — apparently unaware the petition already existed.

The procedural stakes are concrete. By Behring's account, if part of the Oakland plan collapses the whole project does with it, and CBS reported that should the plans exceed what current zoning allows, the full Council would have to vote. That vote — if it comes — is the moment the petition is built to reach.