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Growing<\/span> up<\/span> in<\/span> New York City, \u201csnitches get stitches\u201d was a phrase I heard often, from playgrounds to movies, and in adult conversations I had no business being privy to. Snitching never had a positive connotation, understandably. But a highly scrutinized new app proves that sounding the horn to protect someone vulnerable is a historic form of protest \u2014 and it\u2019s not going anywhere. <\/span><\/p>\n HuffPost is committed to fearlessly covering the Trump administration. Click here to support our mission and become a member today.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n ICEBlock is a crowdsourcing platform designed to <\/span>inform and warn communities<\/span> of the presence of ICE agents. The app functions as a defensive response to recently revved up ICE raids while also shedding light on the power of collective and strategic information sharing. For all those reasons, it\u2019s making the <\/span>Trump administration Big Mad<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n Officially launched this past April, ICEBlock came under fire this week when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons released an official <\/span>statement<\/span> critiquing a CNN story covering the app, with quotes from its founder Joshua Aaron. The statement refers to CNN\u2019s coverage as an advertisement for an app \u201cthat basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers\u2019 backs.\u201d It feels a little hypocritical to talk about ICE agents as targets to me, but OK.<\/span><\/p>\n Since the statement was released on Monday, ICEBlock reportedly <\/span>rose to the top<\/span> of Apple\u2019s App Store and had over 95,000 users. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTrump officials got a lesson in the Streisand effect\u2014whereby attempts to suppress information only circulate it further\u2014as their outrage over ICEBlock,\u201d Robert McCoy wrote in The New Republic. And now the Trump administration, doing what they do, is threatening CNN with legal action.<\/span><\/p>\n While Kristi Noem and them might see this app as a form of snitching on law enforcement, it actually increases agents\u2019 accountability. In many ways, chiming in on it can restore a sense of power to residents. <\/span><\/p>\n I know I\u2019m not alone when I say Donald Trump\u2019s second term has had me fighting off feelings of hopelessness on a daily basis. <\/span>Every day, our social feeds are inundated with updates about new policy proposals that would hurt our well-being \u2014 whether they are <\/span>cuts to gender-affirming care<\/span> or the <\/span>potential loss of social benefits<\/span> to thousands of people who rely on them to get by. But for me, masked ICE agents hunting down students, mothers, fathers, and anyone they\u2019ve deemed \u201cillegal,\u201d has been among the most disconcerting things to watch. <\/span> <\/p>\n Crowdsourcing apps are a reminder that there\u2019s great power to watching each other\u2019s backs. Aaron cited his Jewish upbringing as a guiding light for the app. <\/span>\u201cI had the chance to meet Holocaust survivors and learn the history of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the parallels that we can draw between what\u2019s happening right now in our country and Hitler\u2019s rise to power are undeniable,\u201d he said, in an <\/span>interview with NBC News<\/span>. <\/p>\n The truth is, it\u2019s a grand American tradition to protect each other against what we deem immoral behavior from authority figures; it\u2019s even more specifically Black American tradition as marked <\/span>by the Black Panthers<\/span>, and by <\/span>enslaved people who used <\/span>coded language<\/span> to share pertinent information related to organizing escapes and other acts of resistance. <\/span><\/p>\n For two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching, and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 \u2014 we can’t do this without you.<\/p>\n We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.<\/p>\n Thank you again for your support along the way. We\u2019re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.<\/p>\n We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.<\/p>\n Thank you again for your support along the way. We\u2019re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.<\/p>\n Support HuffPost<\/p>\n Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.<\/p>\n For two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching, and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 \u2014 we can’t do this without you.<\/p>\n Support HuffPost<\/p>\n Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.<\/p>\n And so, while the Trump administration bristles at people\u2019s attempts to mobilize, the act of community care will continue to evolve along with technology that fuels it. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up in New York City, \u201csnitches get stitches\u201d was a phrase I heard often, from playgrounds to movies, and in adult conversations I had no business being privy to. Snitching never had a positive connotation, understandably. But a highly scrutinized new app proves that sounding the horn to protect someone vulnerable is a historic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2157,165,534,2803,2802,1193],"class_list":{"0":"post-10050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-app","9":"tag-care","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-form","12":"tag-iceblock","13":"tag-latest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}20 Years Of Free Journalism<\/h4>\n
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