--- --- Jan 27, 2026 # Abre’ Conner Is Helping Communities Defend Their Environmental Rights by [Simmone Shah](/author/simmone-shah/) ## Simmone Shah Reporter  Courtesy NAACP One of the first cases Abre’ Conner took on fresh out of law school was in California’s Central Valley, advocating for Allensworth—an unincorporated town that was the state’s first to be founded, financed, and governed entirely by Black Americans—in its century-long fight for access to clean water. The experience exposed Conner, now 38, to the impacts of environmental injustice on rural communities. “It helped me fully realize how systemic and embedded environmental and climate racism is in everyday decisions across the country,” Conner says. “I always thought that something like that couldn't possibly exist in a state like California.” Now the director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP, Conner has spent her career pushing for long-term systemic changes. In 2022, she testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on how Mississippi’s state government intentionally withheld resources from Jackson, helping secure over $600 million in funding to address the water crisis impacting more than 150,000 residents. She’s also worked with organizations in central California to advocate for a state-level buffer zone to prevent the use of toxic pesticides around schools. As AI data centers crop up around the country, Conner is grappling with their environmental impact. [Studies](https://time.com/6987773/ai-data-centers-energy-usage-climate-change/ "undefined") have shown that data centers rely heavily on fossil fuels—and stand to add millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. According to the Environmental Energy and Strategy Institute, large data centers can [consume](https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption "undefined") up to 5 million gallons of water a day to keep servers cool, impacting nearby residents’ supplies. Living near a data center has also [been linked to higher exposure to air pollution](https://envirodatagov.org/blogs/communities-close-to-epa-regulated-data-centers-face-heightened-air-pollution/ "undefined"), including fine particulate matter, that can result in significant respiratory-related health consequences. Those health impacts are estimated to cost up to [$20 billion](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288 "undefined") per year in the United States by 2028, according to [_Harvard Business Review_](https://hbr.org/2025/11/mitigating-the-public-health-impacts-of-ai-data-centers "undefined"). When these new data centers raise concerns from local residents, Conner [steps in](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/naacp-launches-lawsuit-pollution-musks-xai-00410597 "undefined") to help ensure they don’t further harm Black, Brown, and low-income communities, many of which are already [disproportionately exposed](https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/racial-ethnic-minorities-low-income-groups-u-s-air-pollution/ "undefined") to higher levels of air pollution. In December, Conner, along with other NAACP leaders and environmental and climate justice advocates, [led a strategic summit around data centers](https://naacp.org/campaigns/stop-dirty-data-centers "undefined"), creating a first-of-its-kind framework to help communities advocate for their rights**.** Among the recommendations laid out were that commitments be legally binding and publicly disclosed, and that temporary construction contracts do not replace stable, living-wage employment in communities. “It's about learning and listening to the community members themselves,” she says. Looking ahead, Conner’s goal is to help communities protect and advocate for themselves as new challenges arise and the effects of climate change intensify. “To see people across the country talking about environmental and climate justice at a hyper-local level and in a way that feels personal to them—that gives me a lot of hope,” she says. “We have a chance to get it right.” Abre’ Conner Is Helping Communities Defend Their Environmental Rights ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2026/7353464/abre-conner/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2026/7353464/abre-conner/"},"headline":"Abre’ Conner Is Helping Communities Defend Their Environmental Rights","datePublished":"2026-01-27T13:02:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:04:22.598Z","description":"Find out why Abre' Conner is on TIME’s 2026 Closers list.","url":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2026/7353464/abre-conner/","keywords":["Closers 2026","list","franchise","Special Project","sponsorshipblock"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19b14f60d6085605/6998ccf607a30dcfea77da9a/time-closers-2026-abre-conner-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Simmone Shah","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/simmone-shah/"}],"creator":"Simmone Shah","articleSection":"U.S.","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt19b14f60d6085605/6998ccf607a30dcfea77da9a/time-closers-2026-abre-conner-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/closers-2026/","name":"Closers 2026"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2026/7353464/abre-conner/","name":"Abre’ Conner Is Helping Communities Defend Their Environmental Rights"}}]}] ```