A high-pitch tone pierced through the air in the parking lot at Home Depot in Cypress Park. The sound shrieked from six square speaker boxes set on top of lamp posts in the parking lot area under the I-5 freeway overpass. The screech sounded unpleasant in the front parking lot and excruciating under the bridge. It made it difficult to be there. Which was probably the point.
“What I feel is that it bothers me. It feels like something enters my ear, and that it can possibly be harming it–I feel a pressure,” a day laborer tells L.A. TACO. “Like, it is harmful to be here. Like, [The Home Depot] has placed an alarm to chase out the people.”
(Original Spanish: “Lo que siento es que estorba. Se hace sentir como si le entra algo adentro, y le puede dañar la sistema del oído–siento una presión,” dijo el jornalero, “Como si te va dañar estar aquí. Como si han puesto una alarma para correr la gente.”)…