A few weeks ago, after the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Tom Homan of the Department of Homeland Security arrived in the Twin Cities to announce a winding down of immigration enforcement. But as Gaby Del Valle shows, the city remains under siege—and locals are resisting in every way they can think of:
People are fighting surveillance with surveillance. Garrett Guntly, a tech executive who has lived in Minneapolis for a decade, told me he’s installed a network of more than 20 cameras across the city. “I’ve been out there in negative 15 weather trying to install these things,” he said.
At first, Guntly felt awkward about asking his neighbors if he could set up cameras on their property. The response has been almost universal assent. Their reasoning, he explained, is simple: “The government’s already watching me. Why not my neighbors?” Unlike consumer-grade doorbell cameras, Guntly’s network isn’t connected to the cloud. It’s a network-based internet protocol system. “In layman’s terms, think of it as a CCTV system,” he said. “If the landowner agrees to have a camera on their building facing out onto the street, only then do they have access to the broader camera matrix. It’s a skin-in-the-game approach. If you’re part of the network, you have the network.”
More picks about mutual aid
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“We went to North Carolina to see how mothers carry on when their world comes crashing down. Sometimes they hold each other.”
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“The surge in homelessness on transit systems creates a conundrum for agencies used to the old way of doing things.”
Abdul Sharifu Was Buying Milk For A Neighbor’s Baby. A Snowstorm Killed Him.
“How the tragic death of one man during Buffalo’s historic snowstorm in December highlights both the city’s close-knit immigrant community and its systemic failures.”
