If you are getting involved in the world of New York City activists and organizers, you’ll need to get familiar with the Signal app, a secure text messaging app which is widely used in many segments of this community.
Getting Started
To get started, download Signal from your smartphone’s app store.
When you first use the app you will create a new account. You can use any name for your account; many people protect their privacy by choosing a nickname or using just their first name.
Once it’s set up on your phone, you can also use it on a desktop or tablet.
As part of local whistle-distribution efforts, community members hand out flyers explaining how drawing a crowd to observe and document immigration enforcement efforts can help to check their worst excesses.
There are a variety of different designs for these flyers floating around, but I wanted one that included all of the relevant information for my neighborhood on one sheet, including the basics of whistle brigades and ICE watching, information about the New York City rapid-response hotline, links to Hands Off NYC for trainings and mobilizations, and to Our City Our Rights for legal information.
I drew inspiration from a bunch of different sources to come up with a new version, which includes English and Spanish layouts as a flyer, a double-sided half-sheet, and a zine.
You’re welcome to print these for your own use, and to modify them as needed; for example, you could replace one or both of the links at the bottom with resources that are relevant to your community. (Use the free Aptos font if you want to match the existing style.)
When printing, consider using colored paper, which makes the flyers look a bit more interesting. The below are printed on Astrobrights “Punchy Pastel” Mega Assortment ($20 for 625 sheets at Amazon, which is three cents per sheet), but any light / pale colors should work.
I think that having a visually-interesting table helps to draw people in, which is why we use colored paper and prepare materials in a few different formats.
I also try to give people a choice of multiple types and colors of whistles, in hopes that they feel it’s something they chose, rather than something they got stuck with.
We selected a small style of whistle that could be easily attached to a keychain, in hopes that people would to be more likely to carry them every time they left the house.
These are manufactured in bulk in China, and are available via Amazon, Alibaba, and similar outlets under many different sellers’ names, often described as “Emergency Whistle with Keychain.”
We’ve gotten three four different packages so far, each from a different seller, but the actual whistles seem to be completely identical, so it seems like these are all coming out of the same one or two factories and just being resold under different brand names — whichever one you choose should be fine.
With the massive No Kings march behind us, we’re turning our attention to hyper-local organizing — connecting with the folks on our block and our immediate neighborhood to build connections so that we can face the challenges ahead together.
On Saturday, November 15, as part of Hands Off NYC’s Day of Community Action, we will be hosting a little sidewalk party from 3:00 to 6:00 here on 106th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam — sharing hot chocolate and mulled cider, folding zines, and handing out safety whistles to our neighbors — so if you’re in the neighborhood, come on over and join us!
Or if you live elsewhere in the city, figure out something you can do to start conversations and build community in your neighborhood — and sign up to host your own event! There are useful organizing tips at www.handsoffnyc.com/nov15.
Kazoos can be a useful way of drowning out offensive comments from counter-protestors, without a whistle’s downside of sounding like an emergency alarm or call for help.
For this purpose, look for the kazoo’s big brother, the “super kazoo,” sometimes sold as a “mini air horn” — it’s a three-inch plastic cylinder, with a vibrating membrane at one end. Blowing into the small hole along the side produces a loud, low sound with a buzzing overtone.
This YouTube video by Mark Rober found the super kazoos were almost as loud as a portable airhorn. Surprisingly, they appear to be louder than a vuvuzela, and have the advantage of fitting into your pocket and not looking like something you could hit people with.
Sample Products
I purchased a pack of a dozen for around $20 and gave most of them away: Amazon B07X9P69KL.
We’re considering holding some upcoming protest actions in the Times Square area, so I visited the area and made some notes to overlay on a simple line map that folks can use for planning purposes.
The crowding of tourists, office workers, and theaters goers does make this a challenging location, but it’s incredibly iconic — if you see a crowd photo taken here, you instantly know it’s from New York City.
In anticipation of a possible Federal deployment to New York City this autumn, I put together a visual reference showing the location of Federal buildings, including office towers and court houses.
I also included the city’s National Park sites, including monuments and memorials, as they also fall under Federal jurisdiction, although several of them are located too far away to be shown on this map.
Click to enlarge. Map from OpenStreetMap / Apple. Federal sites from gsa.gov and nps.gov.
The ubiquitous metal barriers used by the NYPD for crowd control are sometimes referred to by activists as “bike-rack barricades,” but it turns out that they’re also known as “French barriers,” in reference to their origin in France in the 1950s.
This article (“Portable Boundaries” by Carl Alviani in Works That Work, 2014) describes their European history and their proliferation in New York City after 9/11.
They’re manufactured in lengths from 6.5 to 8.5 feet, and retail for just over $100 plus shipping.
NYPD has tens of thousand of them, some deployed around the city and most stashed in a warehouse for use during major events.
NYPD Crowd Control Barriers / photography by Rhododendrites via Wikimedia under CC-By-SA license.
To facilitate planning for some upcoming protest activity, I put together a simple map of the area around 26 Federal Plaza and Foley Square.
As shown below, traffic to the adjacent portion of Duane Street is restricted by vehicle barriers; pedestrian access is generally allowed but barriers are kept nearby and can be closed easily.
