Kit Rocha and Courtney Milan have a knack for drawing attention to a cause. The bestselling romance novelists helped raise half a million dollars for Georgia voting rights in 2020. Now, their cause is whistles, because whistles let neighbors alert each other when they see ICE agents abducting people. They’ve helped create a group that’s shipped a half million free 3D-printed whistles to 49 US states — 200,000 of them in the first week of February alone.
Technology
One day you'll leave this earth, but your data will live on in a messy future
So much of how we live and interact with the world happens online. From engaging with people professionally and personally, to posting photos, storing files and accessing our bank account information, this all represents what’s known as our “digital legacy.”
What happens to all of this after we pass away? Unlike physical items that we may pass on after we die, such as photos, jewelry, an heirloom, a home, an inheritance, etc., how to handle your digital estate is a totally new conversation.
According to a recent study by the cybersecurity company TrendMicro, only 3% of respondents who were 65 and older had a digital estate plan. What happens to the other 97% of respondents’ digital assets? Who is responsible after someone passes on? Where does the information go?
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A man typing on his laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What are “digital assets” and what is “digital legacy”?
Digital assets are any content or resources that exist in digital form, including files like photos, videos, emails and social media accounts, as well as online properties such as websites or cryptocurrency. On the other hand, a digital legacy encompasses all the digital assets an individual leaves behind after death.
This legacy can include personal, financial and creative digital properties that may need to be managed or transferred according to the deceased’s wishes or legal directives. Managing a digital legacy is becoming an increasingly important aspect of estate planning, as it ensures that digital assets are handled appropriately, respecting both legal requirements and the personal preferences of the deceased.
With over 20-plus years of experience, cybersecurity and education expert Lynette Owens, VP of Global Consumer Education & Marketing of Trend Micro — Digital Estate Planning — helps us answer these questions.
A couple looking at their laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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What happens to our vast and intangible footprint — our digital assets — when we pass on?
Digital assets, such as emails, digital photos, online accounts and subscriptions, digital currencies and documents, remain as they are when we pass on, so it is vital to consider who should take care of them and what should happen to them.
Depending on the company’s privacy policies, there are several possibilities for what can happen to our private and sensitive information when we die. While these scenarios are not always clear and can be very nuanced, examples include data sometimes being deleted after a certain period and the worst-case scenario, which is your data ending up in the wrong hands.
However, creating a digital estate plan — and ensuring you have someone to take care of your digital assets and information when you pass — allows you to decide where information will go and how your accounts will be managed.
A family viewing material on a laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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What does a person stand to lose if they don’t protect their digital assets?
Preserving and taking precautions when it comes to your digital legacy is essential for several reasons:
1. Legal and financial considerations: Online digital assets such as online bank accounts have financial value that should be managed by the executor of your estate or the trustee of your trust. However, they may not have the information to access accounts that are purely online. There’s a need to ensure these assets are managed correctly.
2. Genealogy and family lineage: Organizing this can provide insights into family history and genealogy for later generations. This information lets you track down family relationships, relatives and connections.
3. Personal and emotional security: Unmanaged, dormant online accounts are susceptible to hacking and misuse and can be used to commit identity theft and fraud.
4. Preserving memories: An online archive of treasured moments like pictures, videos and messages shared on different social media platforms allows family members to access and preserve memories easily. Some online accounts can also be memorialized, so users know someone has passed. Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorializing an account also helps keep it secure by preventing anyone from logging into it.
A man on his laptop. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Who is responsible for this information after someone passes on?
After someone passes away, each company will follow its privacy policy regarding handling inactive or deceased persons’ accounts. You can appoint a digital executor to manage your digital assets as part of your estate plan. This individual, who does not necessarily have to be the executor of your estate or trustee of your trust, should be trustworthy, digitally knowledgeable and capable of handling detailed administrative tasks.
They should be designated as your digital executor in your will and trust. It is advisable to inform them of their role and the location of your digital estate plan or include these details in your broader estate plan.
A woman who is estate planning. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Should I provide my digital executor with passwords?
Your digital executor should not require your passwords to delete, close or memorialize your accounts. But they will need to contact each account service and show proof of your death through a death certificate to receive access and permission to carry out your wishes. Be aware that the exact protocols vary by state and company.
While sharing passwords and two-factor authentication credentials with a designated person would make login and online account management easy and convenient for a loved one who is the designated digital executor, we cannot officially recommend this action as it encourages a breach of companies’ terms of use and privacy policies with their account holders.
Instead, we recommend the often laborious and time-consuming process of going through official channels and presenting ID, death certificates, etc., to companies to gain access to account data and management on behalf of a deceased or incapacitated person.
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One hand on top of another. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
How can we ensure our digital assets are protected when we die?
To ensure our digital assets are protected when we die, consider the following:
Create an inventory of digital assets: Make a list of your digital accounts and assets and the associated email or username. Do not include passwords in the list, as this is unnecessary.
Use password managers: Password managers securely store an up-to-date list of your online accounts and usernames. You can designate one person to access your password manager, which could be your digital executor. When completing your digital estate plan, you can reference your account list in your password manager.
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Create a digital estate plan: Provide your fiduciaries (Digital Executor) with instructions on managing your digital assets. For example, you may want the account closed or deleted or pictures, videos or other digital assets saved or distributed to family and friends. Perhaps you want an account to be memorialized. Keep in mind that different businesses provide users with different options for what can be done with accounts if someone is incapacitated or passes away. You’ll need to check the policies of the companies you have accounts with to see what options are available, as this could influence the instructions you leave in your digital estate plan.
Keep your digital estate plan in a safe location: Because it contains sensitive information, you may not want to list the details in your estate planning documents. However, you should reference it in your will or trust, including instructions on how to find it and who your digital executor will be. Work with your lawyer to ensure your digital estate plan fully integrates into your other legally binding documents.
These measures can help better protect your digital assets and ensure they are managed accordingly after you pass, providing peace of mind to you and your loved ones.
A close-up of an elderly person’s hands. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What are some digital estate planning best practices?
In addition to completing the steps outlined above, you can do a few additional things now to protect your data and accounts.
1. Consider using an identity protection solution: Identity Theft companies can monitor personal information like your Social Security Number (SSN), phone number and email address and alert you if it is being sold on the dark web or used to open an account. They can also assist you in freezing your bank and credit card accounts to prevent further unauthorized use by criminals.
One of the best parts of using identity theft protection is that they might include identity theft insurance of up to $1 million to cover losses and legal fees and a white glove fraud resolution team where a U.S.-based case manager helps you recover any losses. See my tips and best picks on how to protect yourself from identity theft.
2. Set up legacy contacts. Many popular online companies, including Google, Apple (for iPhone users), Facebook and Microsoft, allow users to configure their online accounts to ensure that they will be deleted or passed on to trusted individuals who can handle their personal information responsibly. See more on this below:
How do specific online platforms prepare my digital legacy?
Google (Gmail, Drive, and more)
- Go to your Google Account settings.
- Click the profile picture in the upper right of the screen.
- Tap Manage your Google Account.
- Look for “Data & Privacy.”
- Scroll down, and under “More Options,” click on “Make a plan for your digital legacy.”
- Under the section “Choose who to notify & what to share,” click ADD PERSON. You can choose up to 10 people for us to notify if your Google Account becomes inactive. You can also give them access to some of your data.
Apple (for iPhone users)
- Navigate to your iPhone’s settings.
- Tap on your Apple ID.
- Tap on “Sign-In & Security.”
- Scroll down and click “Legacy Contact,“
- Tap on “Add Legacy Contact” and follow the instructions to select a contact from your address book.
- Apple introduced the legacy contacts system in 2021. This allows a user to nominate one or more trusted persons to control the user’s account for three years after their death. The process involves generating a shared access key with this trusted individual, who shares it with Apple after the user’s death (along with the death certificate). Once the legacy contact has completed these steps, they will gain access to the account (photos, messages, files, apps and other sensitive data). The legacy contact will also have the power to decide what happens to the data.
- On your computer, click your profile photo in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
- Click Accounts Center, then click Personal Details.
- Click Account Ownership and Control, then click Memorialization.
- Click Memorialize account.
- Now, you must select a legacy contact to manage your account.
- Click Next to confirm.
Microsoft
Microsoft does not provide a direct feature for setting up legacy contacts or specifying posthumous account management preferences within the account settings. However, Microsoft has a process for handling the accounts of deceased or incapacitated users. If you have the account credentials, you can close the account yourself. If not, the account will be closed automatically after two years of inactivity.
In cases where access to the account is needed, legal representatives or family members must seek legal guidance and may need to provide Microsoft with a valid subpoena or court order.
X
X (formally known as Twitter) does not have anything in place — neither to memorialize an account nor to provide a legacy contact’s details. It also does not provide account access to the loved ones of a deceased user. At the same time, an authorized person can contact X to have a deceased person’s account deactivated after providing relevant information (ID, death certificate, etc.) For more detailed information, you can visit X’s Help Center or their policy on media depicting deceased individuals.
Being owned by Facebook, Instagram has memorial and deactivation features similar to the above. There is no specific legacy contact, but family members and other authorized persons can contact Instagram to inform them the person has died. At this point, the profile can be memorialized or deleted. For further assistance or to request these actions, one would need to contact Instagram directly through their Help Center.
LinkedIn will not disclose data or grant any access to anyone, including family members. Family members and other authorized persons can report a user’s death. If you aren’t authorized to act on behalf of a deceased member, you can report them as deceased, and LinkedIn will memorialize the profile.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Each new generation will spend more time in the digital world. However, due to the rapid pace at which this technology has been embedded into our lives, society still has not entirely caught up with what to do with all of that. But our digital assets are just as important as our non-digital ones. So, when you begin to take an inventory of your physical assets, spend some time focusing on your digital ones, too. After all, these are the ones that the next generation will remember you by.
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Beast Industries, owned by YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, announced on Monday that it has acquired Step, a banking app designed for teens and young adults. The move comes a couple of months after Donaldson announced plans to start a new YouTube channel centered on personal finance and investing. His main channel has 466 million subscribers and has long been one of the most popular on YouTube, frequently featuring videos where Donaldson gives away huge sums of money.
MrBeast’s other business ventures also include a chain of ghost restaurants, the Feastables snack brand, and an upcoming phone service company called Beast Mobile. This is his company’s first dip into financial services.
Step is one of many mobile-only banking services, similar to Monzo or Revolut, but specifically aimed at teens, which may explain why Donaldson chose it over its rivals — his audience is mainly Gen-Z and Gen Alpha. Step’s investors also include Gen-Z influencers Josh Richards and Charli D’Amelio, the latter of whom has appeared on MrBeast’s YouTube channel.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Losing a dog can make your stomach drop and your thoughts race. First, you check the yard. Then you walk the block. After that, you refresh local Facebook groups again and again, hoping for a sign.
Now, Ring wants to turn your entire neighborhood into extra eyes with help from AI. Its Search Party feature uses nearby cameras to spot lost dogs, and it is now available nationwide to anyone who needs help finding a missing pet. For the first time, you do not need to own a Ring camera to use it.
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Ring says its Search Party tool has helped reunite more than one lost dog per day across the U.S. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
What is Ring’s Search Party feature?
Search Party is a community-powered tool that helps reunite lost dogs with their families faster. When someone reports a missing dog in the Ring app, nearby outdoor Ring cameras scan recent footage using AI. The goal stays simple. Find dogs that look like the one reported missing. If a possible match shows up, the camera owner receives an alert with a photo of the lost dog and a video clip. From there, they can ignore the alert or step in to help. As a result, sharing always stays optional, and pressure stays off.
How Search Party actually works
Here is what happens once a lost dog post goes live.
- First, a pet owner posts a lost dog alert in the Ring app
- Next, nearby outdoor Ring cameras scan footage using AI
- Then, camera owners receive alerts if a match appears
- After that, neighbors can share video clips or snapshots
- Finally, messages and calls stay private with no phone numbers shared
Search Party now works without a Ring camera
This update changes everything. Previously, only people with Ring devices could use Search Party. Now, anyone in the U.S. can download the free Ring Neighbors app, register and post a lost dog alert. Because of that shift, dog owners can tap into an existing camera network without buying hardware or paying for a subscription. At the same time, neighbors without cameras can still help by spreading alerts and watching for sightings.
Lost pets already represent one of the most common post types in the Ring Neighbors app, with more than 1 million lost or found pet reports shared last year alone. With an estimated 60 million U.S. households owning at least one dog, the potential reach of Search Party is massive.
How to start a Search Party for your dog
Getting started is pretty straightforward. Download the Ring app for free in the App Store or Google Play if you don’t already have it. Anyone can create a Lost Dog Post in the Ring app.
If the post qualifies, the app walks you through activating Search Party step by step. You share photos and basic details about your dog. Once active, nearby cameras begin scanning automatically.
Search Party alerts are temporary. When you start a Search Party in the Ring app, it runs for a few hours at a time. If your dog has not been found and remains missing, you need to renew the Search Party or start a new one so nearby cameras continue scanning for matches.
When you find your dog, you can update the post to let the neighborhood know the search is over.
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A missing dog alert in the Ring app triggers nearby outdoor cameras to scan footage for possible matches using AI. (Photo by EZEQUIEL BECERRA / AFP via Getty Images)
What happens when a Ring camera spots your lost dog
If your outdoor Ring camera spots a possible match, you stay in control the entire time. You receive an alert with a photo of the missing dog and a clip from your camera. From there, you decide what happens next. You can ignore the alert or help by sharing footage or contacting the owner through the app. Throughout the process, your phone number stays private.
Ring says Search Party has already delivered dramatic results. In one case, Kylee from Wichita, Kansas, was reunited with her mixed-breed dog, Nyx, in just 15 minutes after he slipped through a small hole under a backyard fence. A neighbor’s Ring camera captured video of Nyx and shared it through the app, giving Kylee her first and only lead. “I was blown away,” Kylee said, noting that even dogs with microchips often go unrecognized if they lack a collar. She credits that shared video for bringing Nyx home so quickly, adding that she does not think she would have found him without the Ring app.
Nyx is far from the only success story. Ring says Search Party has helped reunite more than one lost dog per day, including dogs like Xochitl in Houston, Truffle in Bakersfield, Lainey in Surprise, Zola in Ellenwood, Toby in Las Vegas, Blu in Erlanger, Zeus in Chicago and Coco in Stockton, with more reunions happening every day.
How to turn Ring’s Search Party on or off
Search Party remains optional and adjustable. You can enable or disable it at any time inside the Ring app.
- Start by opening the Ring app and heading to the main dashboard.
- Then tap the menu icon.
- Go to Control Center and select Search Party.
- From there, you can turn Search for Lost Pets on or off for each camera.
Ring commits $1M to help shelters reunite lost dogs
Alongside the expansion, Ring is committing $1 million to equip animal shelters with camera systems. The company aims to support up to 4,000 shelters across the U.S. By bringing shelters into the network, Ring hopes dogs picked up by shelters can reconnect with their owners faster. In addition, the company already works with groups like Petco Love and Best Friends Animal Society and says it remains open to new partnerships.
Ring is also encouraging animal shelters and organizations to reach out directly about collaboration opportunities.
Privacy concerns remain around Ring’s Search Party feature
Search Party launched last fall with some pushback. Critics raised concerns about privacy and Ring’s broader ties to law enforcement. Ring says participation stays voluntary and footage sharing remains optional. Still, the feature turns on by default for compatible outdoor cameras, which has drawn attention. Even so, the company appears confident and is promoting Search Party in a Super Bowl commercial.
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PEOPLE LET THEIR PETS DECIDE WHO THEY DATE, NEW SURVEY SUGGESTS
Ring’s new Search Party feature uses artificial intelligence and neighborhood cameras to help locate lost dogs, even for users without Ring devices. (Photo by Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Kurt’s key takeaways
Search Party taps into something familiar. Neighbors helping neighbors during a stressful moment. By opening the feature to everyone, Ring removes a major barrier and increases the chances of fast reunions. Whether this tool becomes a staple or sparks deeper privacy debates will depend on how communities use it.
Would you want neighborhood cameras helping to find your lost dog, or does that feel like too much surveillance? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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Copyright 2026 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Even I print whistles now. It’s the first thing I do each morning after dropping kids at school, and the very last before bed. Usually, I squeeze in a hundred more after dinner.
I print whistles because reality still matters; whistles get neighbors to come running, make sure enough people are recording, so when the regime pretends there’s only one camera angle of Renee Good’s death, we know the truth.
I also make whistles because it’s easy. You can literally do it in your sleep. I’ve made over 12,000 whistles since January 15th with three printers and almost zero optimization. I’ll harvest 300 of them tomorrow morning, 300 in the late afternoon, and another 100 in the evening before I do it all again.
Printing whistles is more cost-effective than drop-shipping them from China. Even if I bought filament at retail prices and paid PG&E’s full exorbitant California electricity rates, I’d be spending around 5 cents per whistle — and the unit economics only get better from there.
Across the country, people are realizing these printers can serve a bigger purpose than building toys and trinkets. Whether someone is looking for 100 whistles to protect friends and family, 200 for a church or school, or 1,000 for a whole neighborhood, requests are flooding in, each one vetted and added to a spreadsheet by volunteers.
No one is told what to do, which whistle to print, or which request to fulfill. These Signal chats feel like a community, building and innovating everything as we go.
The whistles weren’t always 3D-printed. Last summer, some protesters at No Kings rallies already carried whistles to make noise. Following the 2025 raids in Los Angeles, Latino day laborers learned to carry whistles to alert each other about ICE. But Chicago may have proved that 3D-printed whistles could be the future of neighborhood-by-neighborhood organizing.
Emily Hilleren wished she’d been there on October 1st when, she later heard, ICE abducted someone right in front of her nearby school. She was never more than two blocks away the entire time, she tells The Verge, but she never had the opportunity to help. If her neighbors had whistles, they could have blown them and rushed to document the abduction. She decided to make whistles her mission.
She already had a small stash of whistle kits she’d packaged with friends just the previous evening. She’d heard how nearby Little Village had adopted the Los Angeles whistle techniques to warn about ICE raids, how the local Pilsen Arts & Community House had similarly been inspired by LA to create whistle-packing parties last August.
Originally, she figured she’d simply put her whistle kits into a little free library, the kind neighbors use to share books. But the abductions galvanized her to do more. She began hosting her own Whistlemania events at local bars, pairing the Pilsen Arts’ zine with cheap, premade whistles she found on Amazon. She says she spent a couple of thousand dollars, eventually setting up a GoFundMe to recoup her costs.
Soon, the supply of cheap Amazon whistles dried up. But that’s when those bestselling romance novelists entered the picture.
Before Romancelandia showed up for us, it showed up for Emily Hilleren, when Rocha sent some of her very first shipments of 3D-printed whistles to Chicago so the whistle parties could continue. When Border Patrol largely left Chicago, Hilleren returned the favor. She found she still had thousands of whistles piled in her living room, whistles that were needed elsewhere. So she joined forces with Rocha’s online group, which refocused on producing and distributing nationwide.
Like many whistlemakers who were already 3D printing enthusiasts, I started by using whatever leftover filament I had on the shelf. Each 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) roll of plastic produces roughly 500 whistles, depositing the molten string layer by layer to build objects from the ground up. My supply didn’t last long, but I didn’t have to buy more after that — because whenever Kit Rocha and her author friends spread the word that supplies are running low, donors come out of the woodwork. An hour after her Bluesky post, weeks’ worth of filament was on its way to my door.
Nor do whistlemakers necessarily have to pay for postage, because Hilleren brought her GoFundMe along for the ride. Today, she uses those donations to reimburse whistlemakers with shipping receipts, and says she puts any leftover money toward community aid.
So far, donors largely buy filament for us through Amazon wishlists, and Amazon is a company the community has mixed feelings about. But groups like ours have convinced at least one small filament maker, Protopasta, to supply the whistle effort. Operations manager Heidi DiJulio tells me the company’s ready to donate hundreds of rolls of filament, and has today it’s launching a program where donors can support us with its small-batch filament for $20 a roll, competitive with what Amazon charges.
By December, over 20 members had shipped 40,000 whistles. Then ICE came to Minneapolis and killed Renee Good.
“So many people were so upset and they didn’t know what to do, and we could say, here is something you can do,” Rocha tells me. “You can join a print. You can send us filament. You can go find people who need whistles and direct them to us. I think in that moment of pain, that is really when it started to take off.”
A month later, the “Whistle Crew” has over 180 members — sharing their sparkly creations, asking for printer advice, and attempting to improve the group’s processes at almost every hour of the day. Shortly after I joined, one spun up a Whistle Crew Wiki to answer frequently asked questions and help newcomers navigate. Others create new whistle designs that print faster to meet growing demand.
Many stick to printing derivatives of two particular whistles, the ACstudio Micro Bitonal and the Penne. The Micro Bitonal is an incredibly shrill, ear-piercing two-tone whistle that needs only a light blow; the latter uses more air to produce a simpler sound, but has been explicitly tweaked for mass production. But I see lots of hearts and quite a few BakedBeans now, too. Some makers print emergency telephone numbers or slogans atop the whistles, like “Fuck ICE” or “4 Good,” while others beautify them with wavy patterns. I keep it simple by printing most out of multicolor filament.
It’s not entirely foolproof. One morning, I woke up to find my printer fan had mysteriously detached, a frozen explosion of rainbow plastic waiting inside its chamber. Another time, I found a half-printed plate of whistles because my Elegoo Centauri Carbon review unit couldn’t quite tell when it ran out of filament and kept “printing” on air. My Bambu Lab P1P lost two to three whistles per print due to poor bed adhesion, until I added a BIQU Panda Cryogrip Frostbite plate that sticks so well, the whistles make a satisfying pop when I bend the plate to detach them.
There was the day I found a previously working whistle design had started producing entire plates of silent whistles. And like many other whistlemakers, I once made the mistake of thinking my printer could automatically arrange an entire plate of whistles without fusing them all together.
But generally, it works. With the Bambu printers, I can press a button on my phone to start a plate of 105 whistles and expect each to blow loud and shrill. I test one sacrificial whistle from each plate, then throw that whistle away. I don’t even need to use desktop software: Another maker had already created and uploaded the 105-whistle plate to Bambu’s phone app.
3D printers were nowhere near this reliable even five years ago. “It’s pretty mind-blowing now to just take a thing out of a box, do minimal setup and be printing,” says journalist Dan Sinker, also a member of the Whistle Crew. “Like I was printing a plate of whistles probably 30 minutes after plugging it in, and then I never stopped.”
Courtney Milan is the pen name of Heidi Bond, a former US Supreme Court law clerk who wants to protect whistlemakers from possible government bullies. While she says she can’t give legal advice, she helped the group establish ground rules to avoid anything that could be interpreted as a conspiracy to interfere with ICE.
“We’re 3D-printing tools to allow people to exercise their First Amendment right to assemble and to redress the government for grievances,” she says. “We are not trying to enable any other behavior.”
The first rule of Whistle Chat is that anyone posting about illegal activity immediately gets banned. The second is that whistlers are “a loose collective of 3D printing enthusiasts” who merely coordinate with one another, and that admins don’t control the group.
Admins are careful when people ask for the free whistles, too: “If anyone is requesting whistles for a purpose that is not a lawful purpose, we will not fulfill that request.”
It hasn’t happened yet. “If somebody sent us that email, they’re probably a fed trying to entrap us, right? When ordinary people reach out to us, they say, ‘I’m trying to keep my community safe.’”
Bond is worried her rules may not be enough, now that the Trump regime is arresting journalists for exercising their First Amendment rights and claiming Alex Pretti deserved to die for exercising his Second Amendment right. There’s reason to believe they might crack down on whistles, too: They’re already driving MAGA provocateurs up the wall, with one calling them “hearing loss causing machines that terrorists use against ICE.”
Bond calls bullshit: “If we ‘impede ICE’ simply by being there and observing them, the thing that is happening is not us impeding ICE in the exercise of its power, it is ICE being too ashamed to do unlawful acts when being watched by people.” She says it’s time to take a stand, that “the freedoms we enjoy will go away if we do not exercise them.”
Sometimes, I think: Whistles don’t stop bullets. They didn’t save Renee Good. They didn’t save Alex Pretti. “It doesn’t help. It doesn’t really serve a purpose other than shame,” one woman tells me, and for a brief moment, I wonder if that’s true.
But when I share my thoughts with Rocha and other whistlers, they say the whistles are also about human connection, about sharing and displaying a physical symbol that you’re here for your neighbors, knowing you’re not alone, starting a dialogue that can lead to phone trees and mutual aid networks, finding power when you feel powerless.
It’s our blood and bones, and these whistles and phones, against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies
— Bruce Springsteen, “Streets of Minneapolis”
“Once I started giving out whistles, I started seeing how when you directly help somebody it impacts not just others but yourself, because a lot of anxiety is wrapped up in the loss of control,” a man named Matt from Minneapolis tells me.
America Garcia, a first-generation Mexican American, says she felt the power firsthand. She was packing her car one day and heard honking, saw ICE on the corner of her street, immediately feared for her immigrant mother, and started blowing her whistle. “It was this burst of adrenaline,” she tells me, “and once I started hearing the collective whistling on my block, it felt even more powerful.”
While ICE detained the two men they were after, she hopes it may have saved other vulnerable immigrants who heard the whistles and took it as a sign not to leave their homes.
Maureen “Mo” Ryan, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair who introduced Rocha to Hilleren and carries a whistle at all times, says it makes her feel “like maybe I’m not totally helpless if something terrible happens to my neighbors,” because “I can alert others and they might be able to stay safe even if I can’t prevent what’s happening in front of me.”
Hilleren says, “My neighbors are being snatched, they’re being ransomed, they’re being separated from their families, and I can’t stop it. But knowing that I’m trying and seeing all the other good people who are trying, that reminds me that a better world is possible.”
Besides, sometimes shame does work right away. I think of the powerful words of Dan Sinker, describing a moment in Chicago when the whistles, and the people they summoned to witness, stopped ICE in its tracks.
“A report rang out that a child was hiding, and people converged. Whistles around necks, a half-dozen in moments. One heard whistles when dropping her own child off at school. Another rode up on a bike. Everyone unsure of what to do except to do what any parent would do: ensure a child is safe,” Sinker wrote. “The child was safe.”
Bond says that while whistles may not stop bullets, they can stop bullies by making their actions socially unacceptable.
“The whistle says, ‘We will stand up and we will watch, and we will judge you and we will remember, and we will witness. And you will not get away with it,’” says Bond. “‘You may think you’re doing it right now, but you will not get away with it.’ That’s what a whistle says.”
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