In Whom We Find Shelter: Choosing Communities of Care Over Cultures of Surveillance
By M Jade Kaiser
As a southerner living in the Midwest, I was ecstatic when I realized I had a chance to head south for the winter holidays. I knew immediately which warm haven I would visit. Born and raised just a few hours east, the city of New Orleans has always held my deep affection. Though it was many years since my last visit, much was just as I remembered. The live street music.
The splashes of color. The rich cultural landscapes. The Spanish moss lacing the gorgeous, old trees. So much of what makes it special is still intact. There was one striking exception to the familiar, however: the astounding level of police surveillance.
Just walking through a public parking lot during the day, lights flashed red and blue after detecting my presence. An automated man’s voice pronounced over me repeatedly, “You are under surveillance.” Chills ran down my spine.
While I was shocked by the sheer quantity of cameras and disturbed by the new technologies I encountered, I know police surveillance has increased exponentially over the last decade. From coast to coast, especially targeting Black and brown majority communities, the number of virtual eyes upon us is swiftly multiplying.
Policing surveillance is also reaching the doors of individual homes. Over 10 million people are currently using Amazon’s “Ring” doorbell camera. The associated “Neighbors” App partners with hundreds of local police departments providing them access to recording content shared by users. Meanwhile, programs such as “SafeCam NOLA” in New Orleans encourage local community members to register their home cameras with the police department directly. The
at-home camera is becoming an extension of the local police’s eyesight. There are similar programs throughout the country.
I understand intimately the desire to feel safe. To be safe. To minimize risk, vulnerability, or loss. Security cameras can cut through some of the anxieties of living in a world where trust between people is low. But I shudder at the assumptions we invite in when we reach toward safety by monitoring each other in this way.
The word ‘surveillance’ means ‘to observe with attention to suspected criminals.’
What happens to us as humans when this is the lens through which we increasingly look at the world? So readily expecting to encounter ‘a criminal.’ At the door. In the parking lot. At intersections and bus stops. With centuries of racism, classism, and ableism still shaping our imaginations – individual and systemic – of who these ‘criminals’ might be. Many of us rightly resist laws – old and new – criminalizing queer, trans, poor, disabled, immigrant, and Black individuals and communities. How strange to then take shelter in the very systems that enact that criminalization, by bringing their watch to our front doors.
I have plenty of my own fears and lived encounters with violence and vulnerability that shape my lens on humanity. My concerns with surveillance do not grow from a deep sense of security in the world. But as a feminist, I also know that technologies rooted in systems of compliance and control are not trustworthy sources of safety. While surveillance cameras may slightly increase chances a package delivery is secure on a porch, they come at a lasting cost I certainly don’t find comforting, materially or spiritually.
With all the challenges we have ahead of us globally, it is inevitable that risks and needs will multiply. We get to choose whether that draws us deeper into community or further into fear of each other. Taking down one of the 10 million Ring cameras in the world won’t change the challenges ahead, but it can signal one small shift toward a future built on a different set of values. A future that honors the humanity of others, problematizes systems not people, and ultimately recognizes, as Dr. Saidiya Hartman has said, “that care is the antidote to violence.”