Mayor Brandon Johnson faced boos from a crowd of anti-data center activists on the South Side Saturday after not disavowing the massive “Quantum Shore” development. Fresh off an executive order more strictly regulating the construction of data centers in Chicago, Johnson appeared at the “Community Over Quantum” event at a Southeast Side school. Asked whether he would oppose the Quantum Shore, which he has repeatedly claimed credit for sparking, Johnson said his “values have not changed,” but “the information is stronger.” “I’m prepared to commit all of my resources … to work with this coalition to do what is legally possible to make sure that the development that is happening is not happening at the expense of working people,” he said. Johnson’s decision to not condemn the project inflamed the crowd, illustrating the thorny politics surrounding increasingly unpopular data centers and advanced computing technology — and the rising pressure Johnson is set to face as the major development at the U.S. Steel South Works site moves forward. “Was that a satisfactory answer?” Lia Terrell, the Southside Together member who served as emcee, asked the crowd as Johnson finished. “No!” the crowd shouted back. “Not at all,” Terrell agreed. “He made his opinion very clear. The reality is that we don’t have the mayor’s support. The data center executive order is not the same thing as stopping the quantum facility.” The tense exchange was just the latest incident in an ongoing push by South Side activists to secure environmental protections and other key concessions as construction moves forward on the 440-acre Quantum Shore site’s first phase, the Illinois Quantum & Microelectric Park. That portion of the potentially massive project includes anchor tenants IBM and PsiQuantum, a company seeking to build the world’s first commercially viable quantum computer. The state has pledged