Home Depot Deploys Havana-Style Sonic Weapon Against Day Laborers
"They chose to weaponize sound."
By Joe Wilkins
While federal agents working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) are running up on migrant workers in Home Depot parking lots, the home improvement corporation has decided to take a stand — against the migrant workers.
Reporting by The Guardian reveals a cruel new initiative being rolled out to one high-traffic Home Depot location in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park: high-pitched noise machines meant to shoo away day laborers.
The Intituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (Idepsca), an advocacy group for migrant workers, is calling for the removal of three sonic devices they say are causing migrant workers to suffer headaches and nausea.
In some areas, it’s common for day laborers to congregate outside home improvement stores like Home Depot, where they can find new gigs, catch rides to job sites, and quickly buy new equipment or material. It’s all part of the informal gig economy, a system which exploits poor and working class people for cheap labor.
Home Depot’s sound devices, advocates say, are punishing these folks at the bottom of the ladder.
“They chose to weaponize sound,” Los Angeles city councilwoman Eunisses Hernandes said at a conference. “Devices like these are used as torture against our people.”
One worker described to The Guardian how he has to wear ear plugs to block the excruciating noise, saying it “penetrates your bones.”
Hernandez also said that the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has begun using the devices on its property.
“This is the people’s land,” she said. “This is Caltrans land that is owned by Californians who pay taxes. The people’s land is being used to torture the people.”
The noise machine evokes tales of a mythic weapon supposedly responsible for the ailment known as “Havana syndrome,” which specifically seems to effect US intelligence officers stationed in Havana, Cuba.
No direct evidence of Cuba’s supposed sonic weapon has ever surfaced, though the Home Depot ear blasters do have another precedent: riot control weapons. In situations like the Ferguson uprising of 2014 or the Dakota Access Pipeline protest of 2016, police have deployed “sound cannons,” mobile arrays capable of incapacitating people with high-amplitude noise.
In other words, the same tactic has been refined from a tool of police control to a mechanism to protect corporate property. In both cases, sound is deployed as a weapon to repel unwanted people from a space, closing any chance for a dialogue.
The timing of the Home Depot deployment is significant, coming on the heels of a high number of brutal ICE raids in which Latino-looking workers are rounded up at random, stuffed into cars, and brought to deportation centers.
So far, Home Depot has been silent about the raids happening on its property. But given the chaos these agents cause, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Home Depot is trying to wash its hands of the whole thing — “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
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Asked for comment on the sonic warfare, Home Depot told The Guardian that the machines are a “safety initiative… intended to deter and prevent illegal overnight parking in the area,” with no connection to any “immigration enforcement.”
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Good to know. If you want to raise hell at Home Depot over this violent fascist behavior, call:
800-430-3376 ONLINE ORDERS
800-466-3337 CUSTOMER SVC
800-553-3199 CUSTOMER SVC x5 Store Experience
770-384-4646 MEDIA
E-mail Distribution: Ted_Decker@HomeDepot.com, homedepot@order.homedepot.com, privacy@homedepot.com, public_relations@HomeDepot.com, customer_care@HomeDepot.com
*************************************************************************************
Author Joe Wilkins comes from a fascsist corporate "one way"* publication called Futurism that is owned by another "one way" corporation called Recurrent:
"Since 2014, Futurism has been a growing source of cutting-edge science and technology news. Covering AI, cryptocurrency, quantum computing, genetic engineering, green technologies, and more, Futurism’s beat is the world beyond the horizon."
*One way publications are nasty. There is no way to give them feedback or let them know that they need to make a correction. Getting to the real ownership is impossible from their websites. A business research site like Cortera or D&B are required.
Anyway, he lit my mental hair on fire with his blanket statements about Havana syndrome and "mythical" sonic weapons. He works for a science oriented publication and knows nothing about the technology he's defining. What a pathetic, mind controlled tool.
Here's the e-mail I just sent with 75 bcc's (citizens and government) that reach close to 500 folks give or take:
"For those on copy, here are the numbers to call:
800-430-3376 ONLINE ORDERS
800-466-3337 CUSTOMER SVC
800-553-3199 CUSTOMER SVC x5 Store Experience
770-384-4646 MEDIA
********************************************************************
Dear Home Depot Executive Staff and CEO Ted Decker:
Please see the poorly written and somewhat inaccurate article in the note below. I am disgusted with Home Depot.
This is fascist, illegal corporate physical abuse of human beings. I will no longer shop at your store. This makes me sick. I will help make this sick corporate behavior go viral, so knowledge of Home Depot's decision to become a psychopathic organization and embrace a policy of violence can be spread far and wide.
Intelligence. Does the "executive class" at Home Depot have any? ALL YOU NEED TO DO is understand the situation and benefit from it. Can you stop your sick, evil mental processes long enough to make lemonade already?
A solution: At the stores where this issue exists, set aside part of the parking lot for these workers. Paint some lines on the asphalt with your traffic paint to show where it is OK to hang out. Put out a couple of those $129 picnic tables and a trash can. Ask the workers to stay in that area and use your security guards to politely make sure that they do. How tough would that be for a massive corporation that makes $14 Billion a year? If you are that freaked out by the idea, put up a sign that indemnifies HD for any issues the workers have while sitting at the picnic tables waiting for jobs. Use the store's petty cash to pay the workers a small stipend to keep the parking lot clean. Do The Math.
When I look at this whole thing, it looks like you all have lost your ethical moorings. On some level, Home Depot is now a psychopathic organization, that can no longer just think of a creative solution that doesn't hurt people. It's easier for Home Depot to do violence on people, than to just work with the situation. Wow.
Reminder: This is STILL the united States of America. We are still a country founded on the Rights of the People - NOT some fascist corporate state that enjoys great profits while impoverishing and killing us on every level. The pendulum is going to swing back and it is NOT going to be pleasant when corporate executives start doing hard time for the massive harms they have caused.
No Regards,"
So what is basically happening is that illegal immigrants who get all kinds of Auntie Samantha titty stipends are working under the counter causing American workers loss of work and pay as well as undercutting the prevailing wage while depressing the economy around those stores and somehow Home Depot is the bad guy for wanting them to get off THIER property as they have the right to do and that is a bad thing. Get them the hell out of here and let them deal with where they came from. It isn't OUR job to support and feed aliens while our own are starving and barely surviving. Sorry if I sound calloused, but I believe in feeding MY family before I'm going to feed YOURS.