If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve likely seen footage of federal agents using tear gas to suppress and disperse protestors. After being teargassed outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility near Chicago, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said “It was impossible to breathe, and really, really scary.”
Congressional candidates and elected officials like Mayor Biss were just a few of the people who federal officers brutalized with tear gas and pepper balls to suppress protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown. But it’s not just ICE, and its not just in Chicago that tear gas is a problem. Use of Tear gas is spreading to more agencies, in more cities, under the fossil fueled fascist Trump regime.
Tear gas is a chemical weapon BANNED for use in warfare by both the Chemical Weapons Convention and Geneva Protocol. But those agreements don’t apply to domestic law enforcement. Sign here to tell Congress: If tear gas is too dangerous for a battlefield, it has no place on our streets.
We’ve been campaigning to ban tear gas for years – at the state, local, and federal level. This is both to protect protestors and the right to peacefully protest, and a way to defund, dismantle, and abolish the police & military industrial complex long term.
Short-term, tear gas causes immediate, intense pain. Long-term effects include chemical burns, blindness, and even death due to the resulting asphyxiation.
We’ve tried to pass local bans on tear gas, and succeeded in cities like Denver, Portland, and Seattle. But it’s not clear how effective they will be at stopping Trump, federal agencies like ICE, and other members of the fascists regime who just don’t care about local laws and regulations. And, as Trump and his regime just told every general and admiral in the US military to use US Cities as “training grounds” we only expect things to get worse in the short term.
As federal law enforcement increasingly resorts to tear gas against its own people, our best bet is to build support for a nationwide ban. And that means organizing, outreach, and the support of people like you.
If tear gas is too dangerous for the battlefield, there is NO justification for police using it against people exercising their constitutional right to assemble in our cities. If you agree, click here to send a message to Congress telling them: Don’t silence dissent with tear gas.