Day and night lately, I’ve heard the screeches – high above me, in the branches of the oak and locust trees. When I take the dog out for her early morning walks, they scream down at me, or so it seems. The sound is piercing, like something in pain or distress.
Because we live in an age of immediate gratification, I could quickly identify the source of the screech. I tapped the Merlin app on my phone, and— thank you, Cornell Lab! — up popped the image of a red-tailed hawk.
It turned out I was listening to a bunch of juveniles, screaming for food. But red-tailed hawks also scream to defend their territory, or when they sense danger approaching their nest. Usually those dangers take the form of the dreaded human.
I think the hawks are onto something. It’s time to sound the alarm about the perilous moment in which we find ourselves.
Last May, I went to a coffee shop in my St. Paul neighborhood to meet two other women who wanted to start making noise. We went in together on buying three dozen 20-by-30-inch black foam boards and painted giant white letters on them that we could mix and match. We enlisted a handful of friends and used bungee cords to attach the letters to a pedestrian overpass over I-35E near Trader Joe’s.
Our first message read: MN: FIGHT FASCISM. Or at least that was the intent:
We only realized later that we’d misplaced the first s. (but nobody likes fac-ism, right?) It was windy, and several times, strong gusts threatened to blow the letters right off the bridge. Even so, we lost count of the waves and honks of support that came our way (and, sure, a few middle fingers) and in so doing, we learned about the power of spectacle.
Since then, we’ve refined our methods, screwing the letters onto boards to make them easier to hoist.
Our little St. Paul group is part of a wider movement called the Visibility Brigade, launched, in part, to create social proof locally. Political guru Anat Shenker-Osorio talks up the importance of letting folks know that others in the community feel the same way they do, and that resistance is possible. This can be accomplished, she says, through signs, or hats, or even painting a barn. But it can also be done through rush-hour resistance: giant banners over highway overpasses that thousands of people will see over the course of an hour. A true captive audience.
Messages tend to be to be specific and pointed. They might call attention to news events (JUSTICE FOR EPSTEIN VICTIMS) or remind people that they’re not alone.
Here in St. Paul, our messages have run the gamut:
and, most recently:
This coming Friday, we’re joining visibility brigades nationwide in urging: BE BRAVE WITH US. WE’LL STAND WITH YOU.
Farther south, a brigade of self-described “nasty” Mendota Heights women hopes to inspire communities all along the I-35E corridor to conduct overpass actions at the same time, à la Burma Shave.
Who knows how far this can go?
Recently, I learned that a group of hawks is called a kettle, or boil, or cast. Typically, these terms apply to hawks that wheel and soar together, spiraling upwards like bubbles in a boiling pot.
Words can stir the air, it turns out, even if you can’t hear them.
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