During the Civil War in 1863, armed with shotguns, pitch forks, clubs and axes, 300 Perry County volunteers history remembers as The Noble 300 defended their Pennsylvania homeland border against an expected Confederate Army attack.

Conscripts of conscience, they felled trees and built barricades. Mostly they showed up steeled with bravery, loyalty and commitment to Perry County.

Not one soldier from Confederate Gen. Richard Ewell’s 20-man patrol set foot on sacred Perry County soil. Nor did the Confederates advance any further north into our strengthened Union. Fearless Perry County people survived to fight another day.

Today a different breed of outside invader threatens to attack this hallowed ground. A corporate confederacy intent on predatory profit expects to leverage Perry County’s proud past. These profiteering pirates believe they can scare you. They believe they can buy you. By building sprawling, glaring, loud data centers to house massive artificial intelligence (AI) complexes in Watts Township, MRP Industrial of Baltimore, Maryland, expects generations of Perry County people to abandon their birthright of clean air, clean water and clean countryside.

These AI plunderers from a former slave state not only want your land, they want your children’s and your grandchildren’s livelihoods. Executive data center jobs revolve around destroying your jobs. They believe Perry County’s Promised Land belongs to them, not you.

I grew up in Perry County, living my formative teenage years at RD 2 Duncannon in the Cove. I played three varsity sports and graduated in 1969 from Susquenita High School. My state police detective father investigated the worst times of many Perry Countian lives, helping victims and their families find justice in a sometimes cruel and violent world. My mother worked as a nurse’s aide caring for the sick and the aged at the Kinkora nursing home. In my heart I’ll always hail from the Cove.

That means I still fight on the Perry County side.

As you might expect, a renewed territorial defense is underway. Hundreds of good citizens are recruiting hundreds of other good citizens to stand together as volunteers duty bound to protect their homes, their property and their peace of mind. Emboldened by this savage data center threat to our existence, big buck buccaneers from out of town don’t know how the mighty Susquehanna River embodies our spirit and how our spirit embodies the river.

The Susquehanna shapes our spine.

Back in August 1863, “One of the Three Hundred” quoted in the Republican Perry County Freeman newspaper published in New Bloomfield put it this way:

“In the year 1863 and the latter and the first parts of June and July, the rebel hordes were threatening and invading our loyal State; war was even coming to our own firesides. We could hear the rebel artillery throwing the missiles of death into Carlisle. True to the instincts of preservation, from our firesides we rushed, three hundred strong, to the top of the Cumberland Mountain at Sterrett’s Gap, and determined to be a Spartan band and allow no foe to desecrate the soil of Perry with his foul footsteps unless he passed over our stark lifeless bodies.”

No foe still means no foe as MRP Industrial now stalks the land as a loathesome foe. More and more politicians and profiteers work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better.

A new Noble 300 will fix that. A new Noble 300 will create another 300 and another after that. These bloodsucker moneyed mercenaries won’t win this one, either.

Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the leader of the pro-data center fat cat pack, nor Republican U.S. Rep. John Joyce to help terminate data center plans for Perry County. The same goes for Republican State Sen. Greg Rothman and Republican State Rep. Perry Stambaugh. Elected officials from the two main political parties are increasingly bought and paid for by big business that panders to individual self-absorbed political aspirations. This particularly applies to Shapiro who is already spending grotesque amounts of money to be elected president of the United States.

Honor and tradition still matter among generations of Perry County people with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Duncannon, Newport and New Bloomfield as well as in townships like Watts, Buffalo and Wheatfield, Survival there is increasingly difficult for many residents, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.

History matters little if at all to the water-guzzling, tax break-squandering, electric bill-escalating data center polluters who disrespect centuries of hard labor that went into building these little towns and villages where people fight to save what they have worked for and earned.

Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents can and should join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion of cash-driven predatory capitalists spinning their twisted vison of a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. Data center pimps pit neighbor against neighbor as AI immorality tries to pillage the land so greedy executives can take the money and run.

Good Perry County people will not be fooled.

The more we combat data center AI pestilence the better the odds of stopping the poisoning of our land. Blue-collar, white-collar or no collar, you can upend the exploiters’ disastrous plan to disrespect everything Perry County pioneers worked throughout history to achieve.

Principled Perry County people share common values, respect decency, fight corporate masters and defy all pampered, pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize the good graces of our heritage as quaint and foolish. Principled Perry County people will always defend the future of their hometowns, our state, our nation and our world.

Remember the Noble 300.

May their powerful legacy live forever.