As the US government’s immigration crackdown expands across the country, anxious residents have mobilized to look out for each other. One way they’re doing that is by finding ways to build the tools they need to be resilient against the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents empowered to kill with impunity.
All over the country, makers are 3D-printing thousands of whistles to help people on the ground alert others to nearby ICE activity. But the whistles are far from the only tools being used to respond to the surge of federal agents. Protesters are DIY-ing a wide array of gadgets like camera mounts, mobile networking gear, and handheld eye washers to clear away pepper spray, tear gas, and irritants used to quell protests. Many of these efforts are coming from individual makers. Many of these projects are being made in hacker spaces.
Hacker spaces, also called maker spaces, are community centers or warehouse spaces that contain workbenches, 3D printers, laser engravers, power tools, and just about anything somebody might need to build whatever project—digital or analog—they have in mind. They’re also meeting points for like-minded tinkerers and focal points for the hacker community. You can find one near you pretty easily just by searching for it online or using directories.
“There is a constant level of inherent stress and anxiety,” says B, a maker who uses hacker spaces in the Midwest and who also asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from federal agents. “There’s like a base level of concern that will not go away for the foreseeable future.”
It has been a month since federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and uprooted life across Minnesota as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge. Last week, Trump border czar Tom Homan announced that it would withdraw its forces from Minnesota. It isn’t yet clear how long that process will take, what the scope of the withdrawal is, or whether Department of Homeland Security forces will return. ICE is also looking to extend its reach, secretively leasing spaces for new facilities across the US.
Maker spaces are providing the tools to help people push back. Builders are cranking out those whistles, but also 3D-printed tourniquets and mounts for bodycams that observers can wear to free up their hands while filming ICE activity. They’ve become spaces for community readiness meetings and conversations about how to build resilience. They’re also serving as venues for fix-it clinics where folks can get help repairing the damages that occur as people’s tech is broken during protests or after federal agents break doors down while bursting into people’s homes.
“Resistance is actually pretty practical,” says a maker who also asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “Anybody can 3D-print a whistle. Anybody can fix a door or laser-cut stencils.”
Individually and in communities, people are utilizing techniques and technologies that have been available for years. Meshtastic is a community that uses low-power mesh routers as nodes in an expansive off-grid network that lets people send text messages. Individual routers can be placed on trees or roofs and create expansive networks for communication without having to connect to the internet or cell towers. (The security isn’t perfect, as anyone who happens to have the password for a channel can see the messages within.) If everything works as planned, the setup offers a pretty clear use case for people looking to monitor and communicate about ICE movements without being found out. People can buy and repurpose routers online, or build their own.
Woody Poulard, a Meshtastic advocate in New York City who participates at the hacker space NYC Resistor and has distributed a zine about how to use mesh routers, says he has worked with ICE watch volunteers to establish a broader network of mesh communications in New York. In January, he participated in a workshop for people building small router nodes into their phone cases, so they would have an immediately available connector wherever they went.
“If there’s a natural disaster, it’s good for that too,” Poulard says. “But it’s perfect for the situation that we’re in right now, where you have people you might not want to join a conversation.”
Beyond the makers meeting the moment are those preparing for what is likely to come.
Artist and crafter Claire Danielle Cassidy has been at the resistance art game for a while in Portland, Oregon, a city that is currently suing ICE over its use of tear gas. She builds solar-panel power banks to charge people’s devices at demonstrations and protests and advocates for joy and “weaponized cuteness,” because “girly culture is going to save us, like it always does.”
She spoke to me from her neon-soaked home in Portland, wearing a pair of her own laser-cut earrings that spell out “FUCK ICE.” (You can download the file to make your own.)
“Being effective in activism, you don’t need to be upset, stressed out, and have an adrenaline response for you to be caring,” Cassidy says. “This is the whole pipeline of fascism: sucking people into shame and fear cycles and trying to take power over the situation. Things can be gentle even in the middle of all of this. And you can still be effective.”
The trick to doing that, Cassidy says, is to make it a habit. She runs a pop-up camp called There U Glow, a queer- and femme-led workshop that aims to teach people how to modify LED lights as a fun way to get participants into technical tinkering.
“If you learn about how to set up an LED coat, you actually know 75-ish percent of how to set up an off-grid solar array,” Cassidy says. “I can tie that together for people.”
Despite the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive push into cities and communities around the country, Cassidy says crafters and makers are preparing for the worst without sacrificing what makes them human.
“We’re not fucking around in the dream space anymore,” Cassidy says “This is a particularly fucking fraught time. But we are still going to live our lives.”
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