Taylor Frazier McCollum, the "grassroots" activist who has been credited with securing a moratorium on data center development in Prince George's County, Maryland, had extensive support from a China-linked group that widely promoted her campaign and even provided signs with its logo for the on-site demonstrations.
The group that collaborated with McCollum—a struggling single mom with no history of activism—is the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist group tied to notorious Beijing-based tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who has been accused of bankrolling an extensive Chinese propaganda network.
The revelation is the latest evidence that the increasingly effective anti-data center movement can be traced, at least in part, to Chinese-tied funders. An investigation published earlier this year by the Bitcoin Policy Institute linked several anti-data center campaigns to Chinese government-tied organizations, while the social media platform xAI reported in August that its safety team had identified a network of Chinese "inauthentic accounts" that repeatedly spread anti-data center content. President Donald Trump has also suggested China is behind the movement, while Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called for a federal probe into the issue.
According to the watchdog site Influence Watch and a recent report from the Anti-Defamation League, the PSL—which is based in San Francisco—is funded by, and shares staff with, Singham's hundred-million-dollar pro-China Marxist network of activist groups. Specifically, Influence Watch reports that the PSL boasts funding and personnel overlap with the groups ANSWER Coalition, BreakThrough News, and the People's Forum, which are key cogs in Singham's influence network, which the Connecticut-born expatriate controls from China. City Journal reported in June that the PSL is central to that network, citing a prominent communist funder that Singham’s organizations "redirect insurgent organizing into tightly controlled institutions" and that each of the network's initiatives is designed to build up the PSL.
For her part, McCollum, portrayed in a credulous NPR profile as a struggling single mom and waxing parlor employee "whose political awakening was triggered by data center development," started a public petition in June 2025 calling on Prince George's County leaders to block plans for a $5 billion data center on the site of a mall in the town of Landover that had been abandoned for more than two decades.
Three months later, the PSL's D.C. chapter, which calls for the "socialist transformation of society," posted a video of McCollum explaining the petition and accusing the developers of the proposed Landover data center of "environmental racism." That video garnered hundreds of thousands of views and caused the number of signatures on McCollum's petition to explode from 180 to more than 20,000.
It appears to have been the start of a collaboration with the PSL, according to a Washington Free Beacon review. On Sept. 8, 2025, a week after that initial video, the group posted another video of McCollum asking locals to join an upcoming anti-data center rally outside a Prince George's County public meeting. Days later, PSL posted a video of that rally with McCollum and other activists surrounded by protesters holding anti-data center signs emblazoned with the official PSL logo. "Stop big tech's war on black communities," one PSL sign stated.
"The message is clear, the people don't want data centers and AI destroying their communities!" the PSL account wrote in a separate post.
McCollum did not respond to a request for comment from the Free Beacon asking if she is being paid by PSL or another Singham group. The NPR profile said she and her daughter were evicted from their apartment in 2024, were living for a time at her grandfather's house, and are still looking for a home. McCollum's group, No Landover Data, meanwhile continues to distribute flyers with PSL's logo featured. One flyer states that data centers are "raising our power bills" and "allow ICE to terrorize our communities."
Overall, the PSL has posted a dozen videos highlighting McCollum's anti-data center activism and rallies led by McCollum since September 2025. The most recent video came in June, showing her calling for a permanent ban on data centers. "We want a ban. Full stop," she said.
In July, the Prince George's County Council approved a measure to ban data center development for two years, at least temporarily blocking construction of the project McCollum had advocated against in Landover.
Last week, McCollum delivered remarks at the "People Over Data Centers" summit in Baltimore, which was organized by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and featured Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.). She spoke during a panel discussion titled "Grassroots Heroes - How Four Activists Achieved Success Against Big Tech on Data Centers," an agenda of the event showed.
McCollum, meanwhile, has also been featured in PSL videos unrelated to her data center activism.
For example, in January, the group posted a video of her speaking out against D.C. youth detention centers, which she called a "jail for kids." In April, it posted a video of her speaking at an anti-Iran war protest surrounded by Palestinian flags: "Trump and his war criminal buddies are telling us that this war is over but at what cost? We need a new system that puts people first and puts people over profits. Stand up and fight back and join the socialist movement."
The PSL has led dozens of rallies in D.C. over the last year protesting the Trump administration, the Iran war, the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and ICE.
