“With everything that’s happening in Minnesota right now, we want people to know their rights,” said Mary Doss, an organizer with Team Kettering. “And we want to keep each other safe.”
Team Kettering — a local pro-democracy group — hosted a whistle kit assembly event Friday at Wright Memorial Public Library in Oakwood. Dozens of Dayton-area residents came to assemble bags that contained either a whistle or a kazoo, a pamphlet with information on protest safety and a laminated “know your rights” card.
Doss said the kits are a growing national trend to respond to elevated ICE operations. People are encouraged to pass out the kits to people in their neighborhoods or at community events. In the event of an apparent ICE operation, the whistles or kazoos can be a way for bystanders to signal nearby people of the activity.
More than 26,000 immigrants live and work in Montgomery County, making up roughly 5% of the county’s overall population. Immigration enforcement operations have been felt locally, and Doss said anxiety is growing ahead of the end to Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Haitian and Somalian immigrants in Springfield and the Dayton areas.
While assembling whistle kits, local resident and event attendee Cindy Shivadecker said she’s concerned for her community amid the Trump administration’s heightened immigration raids.
“This is important to me because we are our neighbors’ keepers,” she said.
Dayton resident Tori Gegel said ICE’s operations in Minnesota over the past few weeks have been deeply personal: she has a loved one in Minneapolis that she worries about daily — “I’m incredibly anxious,” she said.
Over the weekend, federal officers in Minnesota shot and killed a 37-year-old man, Alex Pretti. Pretti’s death came on the heels of the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good and another incident a week later in Minneapolis when a federal officer shot a man in the leg after being attacked with a shovel and broom handle while attempting to arrest an undocumented Venezuelan.
Gegel said she has multiple immigrant neighbors and worries for their well-being. The whistle kits help “communicate the potential for danger and help people feel safe,” she said. Seeing numerous community members from inside and outside Dayton assemble the kits gave her hope, she said.
“We can’t do nothing anymore,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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