“‘Can You Hear Me?’: Virtual Noisemaking in the Pandemic (New York) City”

How did urban residents use noise to stage digital protests during the pandemic? This article focuses on online “cacerolazos,” noise demonstrations by New York City housing organizers and tenants demanding rent cancellation during spring 2020. I analyze rent cancellation cacerolazos as assemblages of sonic and digital practices that enabled tenants to narrativize and contest economic conditions and to build solidarity during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cacerolazos were conducted primarily on online platforms due to health concerns and limitations for public gatherings implemented by state officials. Participants used noisemaking to demand renter protections, foster community, and call attention to precarious housing. By analyzing digital archival and ethnographic data, I examine how the affordances of virtual space differently enabled and constrained the recognition and uptake of cacerolazos as a protest form in the United States. I also situate pandemic-era cacerolazos within longer, interrelated genealogies of Latin American protest and dissensual noisemaking projects conducted on the internet. The cacerolazos' limited reach in early pandemic politics emblematized existing racial and economic inequalities that sedimented during the unfolding crisis in the city.