Billie Eilish and Kristen Stewart’s beloved trendyLos Angeles neighborhood has a new alarm system— and it’s not for earthquakes.
Activists in the bougie Highland Park enclave have begun installing loud red emergency sirens meant to warn residents when federal immigrant agents are nearby, allowing people to get off the streets before potential detention,according to the Los Angeles Times.
The football-sized devices — which resemble portable speakers — can be triggered remotely through a mobile app and blast a wailing alarm audible for about half a mile, the report said.
So far, roughly 20 of the $70 sirens have been quietly placed around the area, inside homes and businesses, near busy corridors like York Boulevard and Figueroa Street as lefty anti-ICE activists fundraise online to buy more.
The group Highland Park Community Support posted on Instagram last month that they will not be participating in interviews and “working silently” as they continue to add more sirens in the area in order to “protect identities.” The post continued that they will provide more information on their progress as attention from the media “settles down.”
Fliers placed around the neighborhood spell out the activists goal in blunt terms.
“When alarm goes off ICE is in the community,” the notices read in English and Spanish, according to The Times. “Get off the streets, take shelter and lock down.”
The project has taken root in Highland Park, a rapidly gentrifying community in northeast Los Angeles that’s now packed with artisanal coffee shops, vintage boutiques and celebrity homeowners.
Among the celebrities tied to the area is uber-famous anti-ICE pop star Eilish, who until recently still lived with her parents in the neighborhood where she grew up.
The “Bad Guy”singer sparked intense backlash last monthfor using her Grammys acceptance speech to rail against ICE with the claim that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Following her remarksa Native American tribe urged the singerto return a separate home nearby which the Natives say lays upon their “ancestral land.”
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
