Dunmore kickball rally rallies neighbors against data centers

The first Protect Our Valley Kickball Rally in Dunmore is being staged at Sherwood Park as a fundraiser, but organizers say the point reaches far beyond the diamond. The Lackawanna Citizens Overwatch Project is using the community tournament to rally neighbors against proposed data centers in Lackawanna County.

The group describes itself as a grassroots nonprofit focused on community-based transparency and justice and awareness, and its data-centers page says the rally grew out of growing concerns over those projects. The same page says the organization speaks for families in the valley who feel they are being treated like an industrial experiment and for people who can no longer speak for themselves.

Kickball is the vehicle because it lowers the barrier to entry while still giving the rally a real sporting core. At Sherwood Park, the event is not framed as a hearing room protest or a town hall speaker series, but as a tournament, which lets residents show up as players, sideline supporters and donors in the same space. That matters in a place where a casual game can pull in people who might not attend a formal meeting but will turn out for an afternoon on a softball field in Dunmore.

The cause behind the event is already part of a wider county fight. A county commissioners meeting summary said one commissioner urged Lackawanna County to use legal tools against sprawling data-center projects, and residents in Olyphant have also gathered to voice opposition. A Lackawanna County hearing on data center development in Pennsylvania still left questions hanging in August 2025, adding to the pressure around the issue. The rally puts that debate into a format built for turnout, visibility and neighborhood identity, with kickball serving as the entry point for a much larger argument over what belongs in the valley.