Our Weekly Discontents, 6/7/2021
The D in D-Day 2021 is for Dongcopter
With a gentle sway and the appearance of some substantial heft, a gimmick drone flew into the Albuquerque mayoral race on June 1. The copter, a toy model I couldn’t make out in the video, buzzed into action in the middle of a speech by Manuel Gonzales III, a conservative Democrat running in the city’s fall election.
The drone and accompanying protuberance made national news. It is a story at the precise intersection of two of my favorite things: talking too much about drones and talking too much about Albuquerque. (Normally you can find my writing about both at Wars of Future Past).
The dongcopter, as it’s been named by the self-proclaimed DongCopter505 account, is a prime Gimmick Drone. We’re well past the early 2013-2015 heyday of Gimmick Drones, when I could reliably get a story a week about some company using a DJI Phantom quadcopter to deliver dry cleaning, or drop beers to concert-goers, or dropping hamburgers on (to?) unhoused people. (A lot of the early gimmicks were delivery based).
Dildo drones also made their first appearance in this era, as activists in Russia adapted the technique of “pelting a politician with dildos” pioneered in New Zealand into “putting drone parts inside a dildo and flying it at politicians.”
What makes a gimmick drone is that it’s not particularly good at the task. While there are some drones that can carry a couple pounds easily, the 10-ounce drone used here is smaller than all that, and besides, on close look it’s clearly only an imitation of a dildo. The rainbow-colored pantyhose, with googly eyes on the tip, was stuffed with paper. A gimmick dildo on a gimmick drone.
Kaelen Dryer, who can be seen in the video attempting to retrieve the drone and swinging his arms, has been charged with petty misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor resisting, evading or obstructing an office, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Dryer called Gonzalez a “tyrant” in the action. The GoFundMe set for Dryer’s legal defense notes that the device is an “expensive drone with a rainbow colored, paper-stuffed, sock with googly eyes attached to it.”
The gimmick worked! Well, the half-cocked gimmick did half of what it needed to do.
In coverage by the Associated Press (itself run by the Washington Post), as well as Vice and the Albuquerque Journal, we get quotes from Gonzalez, who attempted to pin the whole incident on the campaign of sitting mayor Tim Keller, but very little from the people behind the drone itself.
The GoFundMe states that a friend of Dryer’s “planned to use the drone to taunt Sheriff Manny during pride month because Sheriff Manny is a devout supporter of Donald Trump, a president infamous for his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.”
DongCopter505 tweeted that she “believes that if the officers present had been wearing lapel cameras (an issue which Manny Gonzales III finds suspiciously upsetting) that there would be ample, indisputable proof of what did and did not happen at the event.”
A resistance to body cameras is a defining part of Gonzales’ political identity. While the state eventually mandated officers adopt body cameras in 2020, Gonzales’ Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department resisted until then. He opposes sanctuary cities, bail reform, and the standing DOJ consent decree for the Albuquerque Police Department. It’s the kind of soft praetorianism seen across the country, wherever police weigh in as above the public they are intended to serve.
The consent decree, in particular, was the response to the widely seen police murder of James Boyd in March 2014 by Albuquerque Police, captured on body camera video. The police in Albuquerque have long been trigger happy, in a way disproportionate for cities of the size or crime rate. That state violence has failed to change the crime rate, regardless of how high it’s been toggled up.
Before the drone interrupted his speech and made it national news, Gonzales was answering a question about police reform. His approach, that restrictions for hiring in the city should shift hiring to the (effectively geographically similar) county was a calm, dull answer about skirting civilian control of police violence. He couched it in terms of avoiding hiring those under internal investigations; it is maybe reasonable to assume he believes that any flaws of policing stem from individuals, and that the police are in fact capable of self-policing.
He’s wrong on this front, and his recourse to conspiracy about the rival campaign in the face of a mildly annoying spectacle suggests he’d be incapable of actually meeting any problems a mayor handles with anything besides force. (That Keller, meanwhile, approved another helicopter for APD and also posed with a special police lowrider suggests this race will not, in fact, be a referendum on which candidate is actually willing to rein in police power, much as that needs to actually be a central issue).
What I expect in the aftermath of all this is that counter-drone companies will start marketing to cities and especially police departments, selling jammers and nets and interceptor drones, all hyping up the threat of a paper-stuffed sock as though it were in fact plastic explosives. Existing drone rules already ban flights like this, and I have no doubt the existing repressive machinery of the state can spin into action to punish light spectacle protest.
In the meantime, the people of Albuquerque will continue to live under police departments that assume guilt first, that prefer to not wear cameras, that respond to mental health crises with guns drawn, and that see even the mildest forms of accountability to the people they serve as a kind of existential threat.
This is true in Albuquerque, and it is true almost everywhere else in the United States. The only change, really, is that companies which make counter-drone tools for the military might have the juice they need to start selling to police, too.
It’s time to turn things over to the Discontents crew for their latest updates. But before we do, if you’re a new reader please subscribe today, absolutely free, and be sure you’ll never miss another issue:
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Discourse Blog (and an announcement)
Hi everyone, Crosbie here from Discourse Blog. We had a lot of great work again last week, like crucial coverage of the Democrats sabotaging themselves and everyone else, as well as a great bear blog and the continuation of our Worst Politicians in America series (Georgia this time!) But I wanted to take our section up here today to promo the big news from Discontents this week, which is that our shared Discord server is now live!
Inspired by similar projects like Sidechannel, Discontents has taken over Discourse Blog’s pre-existing Discord server and we’re opening it up to paying subscribers to any of the sites involved. If you’re a paying subscriber to any of the sites in this newsletter, you’ll get an email later today with instructions on how to join. It’s a great community so far, and we’re hoping you can make it better.
Welcome to Hell World
Luke O’Neil
Something is happening in the food service industry. Largely because Covid exacerbated the already shitty and exploitative conditions most workers toil under, many of them are starting to agitate and organize for something better. Among the most recent are the cafe workers of Pavement Coffee, a popular chain in Boston with around eight stores and eighty employees. I spoke with a few of them late last week.
“I think the pandemic really gave industry workers a footing to stand on and get started,” Jude Hanley said.
“People were patting industry workers on the back, saying we’re ‘essential’ and that they couldn’t function without us. Now that things are going back to normal, it’s like, ok, pay us, and support us as if we’re actually essential workers. Regardless of a pandemic or not. In the heat of it all we were still serving you. Doing something you’re not willing to do. The pandemic, as shitty as it was, it’s an opportunity for industry workers, in cafes, bartenders, the industry as a whole, to be like: You wanted us to prove our importance to you? We have. Now let’s keep that going.”
Read it here.
For more recent labor stories from Hell World please see this piece by Em Cassel on why restaurant workers are actually leaving the industry of late; this one about a beloved record store chain in New Hampshire abruptly firing its entire staff in one location, possibly because of impending labor organizing efforts among workers; this one about how not having had to commute over the past year has improved people’s’ lives; this one by Bill Shaner on a nurses strike in Worcester, MA; this one about how service workers can no longer afford to live in the cities they work in; and more from earlier in the pandemic here or here or or here or here or here.
Foreign Exchanges
Derek Davison
Last week I spoke with Sahel expert and Foreign Exchanges contributor Alex Thurston about the apparent (and somewhat more confirmed since the interview) death of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau at the hands of Islamic State West Africa Province fighters. We talked about Shekau’s role in the Boko Haram insurgency and what his death signals for Nigeria’s increasingly tenuous internal security. We also spent a few minutes talking about last month’s coup in Mali and what that implies for a country that was already in the midst of a transition following an earlier coup (by the same junta) back in August. Please give it a listen and check out Alex’s books: Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement, Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching, and Politics, and most recently Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel. You can also find him on Twitter.
Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future
Patrick Wyman
Some time around 2800 BC, an entire extended family - 15 people, children, women, and men - was murdered near the Vistula River in what is today Poland. Yet despite the brutality of their deaths, they were buried with great care, parents lying next to children and an assortment of grave goods accompanying them into the next life. They stayed in the ground for nearly 5,000 years, until archaeologists discovered and excavated these 15 people in 2011.
Who were they? Who killed them, and why?
Thanks to the miracles of ancient DNA, we can understand how the people in the grave were related to one another, the complexities of their ancestry, even what color their hair and eyes were. Forensic science tells us how they died, in excruciating detail. In this week’s edition of Perspectives, I try to unravel the tragedy of this late Neolithic mass murder.
The Insurgents
Jordan Uhl & Rob Rousseau
This week we talked to Max Moran of the Revolving Door Project about the first 100 days of the Biden admistration, the White House ties to corporate power, and whether giving Joe Manchin the power to veto your entire agenda while conservatives are in the process of totally dismantling what remains of US democracy is a sound political strategy. We were also forced to cancel and ban enemy of the show Ken Klippenstein for embarrassing us yet again with his childish and disrespectful Memorial Day trolling. This is episode is brought to you by Woke Raytheon™.
The Flashpoint
Eoin Higgins
Is it a well thought out promotion if there's no way to verify it?
That's the question readers were asking after my story on Saturday about Pittsfield Massachusetts salvage art and furniture store The Funky Phoenix's vaccine promotion. The shop offered 10% the store to anyone who got a vaccine and 60% to anyone who didn't.
Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer told me in an email that as a private business, The Funky Phoenix is “certainly entitled to offer their customers a unique sale opportunity.”
“However, this certainly doesn’t align with public health guidance,” she added.
As people quickly pointed out, there's no way to prove a negative, meaning that the store could have had a run on merchandise—had the ad stayed up. They took it down shortly after my reporting.
Also at The Flashpoint this week:
Exciting things in the works this week, from more on the anti-vax movement to a former IDF soldier telling her story. Subscribe to get the news when it breaks.
Air Gordon pt. 2
Jeremy Gordon
“Writing about Twitter” is, always, a loser’s gambit, but there was something in the myriad responses to former Disney star-turned-pop phenom Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album that I thought was worth untangling, against the backdrop of some recently experienced art that also made me ponder our slow advance toward death. If you, too, have declared yourself “too old” for pop music, there’s some other stuff about Twin Peaks: The Return and Coming 2 America that may sate you. But the pop album is fun, I swear.
Kim Kelly
I’ve been wanting to experiment with doing Patreon-exclusive reporting for awhile, so a couple of weeks ago, I published a piece called How Bessemer’s Amazon Workers Weathered a Media Storm, which looked at what it was like for the organizers and worker-leaders of the union effort to deal with an unexpected wave of media scrutiny. I’d actually pitched and begun reporting the piece before the election even ended, because I was so appalled at some of the behavior I was seeing from the journalists (and “journalists”) who’d parachuted into Bessemer and left their manners at home, and wanted to find out how the people they were badgering felt about the whole thing.
After the vote tally came out, some labor pundits imperiously dictated their postmortem diagnoses about what had gone wrong, and blamed the media for presenting a “too hopeful” (?) view of what was happening in Bessemer. With that in mind, it was interesting to hear from the people who were actually there.
On-the-ground reporting isn’t always accessible or feasible, but when you can swing it, it sure can make a difference.
BORDER/LINES
Gaby Del Valle & Felipe De La Hoz
Pretty much anyone you ask will tell you that our immigration system is “broken.” If we were to make an immigration policy bingo card, “broken immigration system” would be on there, along with “crisis at the border” and “comprehensive immigration reform” and all the other nonsense phrases that get thrown around to describe the current state of affairs. There is, of course, some truth behind these words: nothing about the way immigration cases are processed and adjudicated makes any sense. It’s barely humane, unnecessarily legally complex, and often counterintuitive. The issue is no one can agree on what to do about this brokenness, and rarely (if ever) do policies get implemented that actually end up helping people.
One thing policymakers on all sides of the political spectrum do agree on is the need to chip away at the massive backlog of immigration cases, which currently sits at just over one million. Last week, we wrote about a potential Biden administration plan to speed up the processing of asylum claims. Under the new plan, asylum seekers who arrive via the southern border or ports of entry would have their applications reviewed and adjudicated by asylum officers instead of immigration judges. Their cases would be handled in a matter of weeks instead of months or years. The administration’s communications plan for all of this would emphasize the need to cut down on the backlog, and processing cases faster could certainly do just that. It’s too soon to say for sure, but it’s also likely that moving these cases from adversarial court settings could end up benefitting asylum seekers. At the same time, faster processing times could lead to due process violations—something that has happened under previous attempts to speed up asylum timelines under “rocket dockets,” which Biden, Trump, and Obama have all done.
All Cops Are Posters
Katie Way
Hi all! I’m brand new to Discontents and happy to get with the winning team! I mostly use my newsletter to write about the way cop culture plays out on social media—I cover stuff like Cop Wife TikTok, an Instagram account that chronicles cops on dating apps called @TinderPigs, and police department reviews on Glassdoor.
If any of that appeals, you might like my review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s daughter’s book Tangled Up in Blue, a real doozy of a love letter to police reform—I’m a little… let’s say… restrained on it, because The Nation doesn’t really let you curse. If you want my more unfiltered take on the book, I’d love to chat about it on Discord.