Whistle Kits

Submitted by Mary Groebner

You may have seen coverage of immigration enforcement actions in bigger cities where residents have begun using whistles to alert neighbors either of the presence of ICE or Border Patrol (CBP), or an active taking/detaining of someone.

The whistles are used in specific ways – if you see ICE/CBP in the neighborhood, you blow three quick bursts to alert the community of their presence, and if you see them actively detaining people, you blow three longer bursts. This is just a notification system, nothing more or less (and whistles have long been an effective and cost-effective tool to alert those nearby that someone is in potential danger).There is now a nationwide movement to distribute ‘whistle kits’ to community members, and there are groups springing up all over Washington as well.  This includes a group right here in Olympia!

A whistle kit is a small baggie that contains:

1) a zine that has instructions for use of the whistle (usually in English/Spanish, but we have zines available in other languages and even one version that is visual only), 

2) a lanyard (a piece of cord or string in case someone wishes to wear their whistle around their neck; these are/should be knotted with breakaway knots for safety purposes), 

3) a book or key ring (in case someone prefers to have their whistle on their keychain), and … 

4) a whistle. Our (home-printed) whistles have the WA Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) hotline number on them. The hotline number is used to report when there is an urgent need (i.e someone is actively being detained) but can/should also be texted with sightings.  (Some kits use purchased/donated whistles that do not have the WAISN number on them).

5) Some kits may contain additional items like ‘red cards’ in various languages (though most often these are in English/Spanish). Red cards inform people of their existing rights under the Constitution relative to due process, search and seizure.

How can you get involved?

You can distribute whistle kits to your community.

You could become a whistle stop by stocking some of the whistle kits in your free libraries, or at your business, church, school, etc.

You could help contribute supplies to the whistle kits – if you have a 3D printer, there are numerous whistle designs for you to use and the cost of the whistles generally comes out to about 2-3 cents per. Others are contributing yarn or materials for the lanyards, book or key rings, baggies or printing zines (and sometimes pre-folding them).

You could attend a whistle kit assembly gathering (they are fun and you’ll meet lots of nice people).

Most importantly, take your whistle with you and use it as needed.

For more information (or to get some whistle kits), feel free to contact me (mary.groebner@comcast.net) with questions, or visit the WA Whistles Linktree (https://linktr.ee/wa.whistles).

This link tree has a link to the Oly Whistles Signal chat group if you’d like to join it,  You can message Oly whistles through this OlyWhistles Instagram account and here is aheal.oly.project Instagram post of a local community member talking about the whistle kits.