Whistle becomes key tool in protests against Trump’s ICE crackdown | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
When Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon appeared on the Grammy Awards red carpet, he wore an accessory that has become a must-have for activists in neighborhoods targeted by ICE: a whistle.
The whistle has become a key part of the defense against Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, used to alert people to the presence of agents. But it has also become a target for the right, who have called whistles “machines that cause hearing loss” and said whistling could constitute “assault.”
“These women went out of their way to cross the street and probably attacked the police while whistling in their ears,” right-wing streamer Steven Crowder said last week, referring to the women at the scene of Alex Pretti’s murder in Minneapolis.
Crowder was not alone. Mike Cernovich, who like Crowder is part of a conservative movement that has called liberals “snowflakes,” said last week that whistles “should be considered a violent weapon” as the right united to oppose the device.
The whistle has gained such attack status because people are using it to support undocumented immigrants across the country. Protesters have developed a simple code to use when encountering immigration officials. “If you see ICE in the neighborhood, whistle in short bursts. If you see ICE arresting someone, blow the whistle in a long, repeated fashion,” is how Hands Off NYC, an advocacy group active in New York, characterizes it.
Its use has spread throughout the country. In Chicago, people held “whistle parties” in which they handed out devices, and one group distributed more than 150,000 whistles across the country, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Activists in cities from Milwaukee to New York, Portland and Los Angeles did the same.
The omnipresence of whistles in immigration clashes, however, has led to them being castigated.
Megyn Kelly, a right-wing podcaster, suggested last week that whistleblowers contributed to Pretti’s killing by immigration agents and said the use of whistles “needs to stop.”
“Now, some say that’s fine. It’s actually interference. You, if you went out on your lawn and whistled at a coach at the top of your lungs all day, you would be cited by the police under local noise ordinances. That would be a disturbance of the peace. That’s what these people do. And they undoubtedly contributed to the chaotic atmosphere that ultimately led to the death of Alex Pretti,” Kelly said according to Media Matters. Kelly was also upset that Vernon wore his whistle to the Grammys.
Cernovich, meanwhile, wrote on social media: “People with high IQs don’t respond well to loud noises. From smoke detectors to hearing loss-causing machines that terrorists use against ICE. But these things should be considered a violent weapon. They damage hearing for life.”
It’s not just activists who use whistles. City and state lawmakers carried whistles during a news conference at Minneapolis City Hall last week, while Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib used a whistle in the House of Representatives on Thursday to illustrate her opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“President Johnson said, ‘ICE does what ICE is designed to do,'” Tlaib said.
“ICE was built on violence and racism. It cannot be reformed. ICE must be abolished. And Kristi Noem [the secretary of homeland security] must be indicted. »
Interviewed at the Grammys, Vernon said: “The whistle is there to represent all the watchers in Minneapolis. They’re out there on the street corner, 30 below, and they’re warning their neighbors of the danger. And I think music is a beautiful thing. But we do it with gentle hands. I think the real work of humanity and empathy is these people seeing that and not staying home. They’re going out in the street and taking care of each other and nothing could inspire me more.”
