Builders are back against the ice

Woody Pollard, a Meshtastic advocate in New York City who is involved in hacker space NYC Resistor and has distributed a zine on how to use mesh routers, says he worked with ICE surveillance volunteers to create a broader network of mesh connections in New York. In January, he participated in a workshop for people who are building small router nodes in their phone cases, so they have an instantly available connector wherever they go.

“If there’s a natural disaster, that’s good for that, too,” Pollard says. “But it’s perfect for the situation we’re in now, where you have people you might not want to join the conversation.”

Far from the decision-makers convening at this moment, there are those preparing for what is likely to come.

Artist and craftsman Claire Danielle Cassidy has been at Art of Resistance for a while in Portland, Oregon, a city currently suing ICE over its use of tear gas. She builds solar-powered power banks to charge people’s devices at demonstrations and protests, and advocates joy and “weaponized cuteness,” because “feminine culture will save us, as it always does.”

She spoke to me from her neon-filled Portland home, wearing a pair of her laser-cut “FUCK ICE” earrings. (You can download the file to create your own.)

“In order to be effective in activity, you don’t need to feel upset and stressed, and you need to have an adrenaline response to care,” Cassidy says. “That’s the whole fascism pipeline: drawing people into cycles of shame and fear and trying to seize power over the situation. Things can be nice even in the middle of all this. And you can still be effective.”

The trick to doing this, Cassidy says, is to make it a habit. She runs a pop-up camp called There U Glow, a queer- and women-led workshop that aims to teach people how to modify LEDs as a fun way to get participants involved in artistic tinkering.

“If you learn how to set up an LED layer, you actually know 75 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 crackdown in cities and communities across the country, Cassidy says artisans and makers are preparing for the worst without sacrificing what makes them human.

“We’re not messing around in dream space anymore, this is a particularly risky time,” Cassidy says. “But we’re still living our lives.”