In this edition of Forthright Radio, we focus on the final clause of the First Amendment, which addresses “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Governments around the world have developed ways to suppress the right that right, using diverse methods, including what are euphemistically called “non-lethal” or “less than lethal” weapons. Indeed, we live in an age of “the commodification of repression,” where global industries profit on the suppression of the right of the people to petition their government.
Anna Feigenbaum is currently a principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University, where she teaches multimedia journalism and convenes their Civic Media Hub. In the Fall of 2017, Verso published her most recent book Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WW1 to the Streets of Today. Funded by a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities grant, she used archival and data storytelling methods to track the movement of tear gas from the trenches of WW1 to the streets of today, asking
‘How did it become normal to police communication with poison’?
Her earlier book, which she co-edited, is Protest camps in international context: Spaces, infrastructures and media of resistance. She has held positions at Rutgers University, the London School of Economics & Political Science, and the University of London. Her work has appeared in numerous, diverse journals from The Atlantic to The Guardian, Financial Times and Waging Nonviolence.
PIETÀ Gaza City, Gaza Strip May 14, 2018
Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images (https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2018/may/15/gaza-mourners-and-a-nearby-moon-tuesdays-best-photos)
In Tear Gas she chronicles the history and use of chemical weapons against civilians, documenting the lack of scientific or medical proof that they truly are non-lethal.
Two German soldiers and their mule wearing gas masks in 1916.
http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWgas.htm
Soldiers in gas masks advance on World War I veterans in the Bonus March protest in Washington in July 1932
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/11/greene.jobless.veterans/index.html
Demonstrators react to tear gas and smoke bombs set off to deter their voting-rights march in Camden, Alabama, in 1965. (AP photo.)
https://www.myajc.com/news/national/for-trump-nominee-jeff-sessions-race-great-battle-not-fought/9cpM4nR3NUFQTbuSPSDzXL/
State troopers wear gas masks as tear gas is fired on about 600 marchers trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. They had begun a 50 mile march to the state capital, Montgomery, to protest discriminatory practices preventing black people from voting. State troopers used brutal force to push them back on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”. Charles Moore via Steven Kasher Gallery
Police surround an incapacitated man after throwing tear gas into the crowd of protesters, 1968, Kansas City, Mo.
Credit Western Historical Manuscript Collection
Photographer Nacio Jan Brown captured a moment that shocked many: a National Guard helicopter spraying tear gas on students and antiwar protesters in Sproul Plaza on May 20, 1969 — in some sense extending “the front” from Vietnam onto college campuses. The juxtaposition of the military-grade helicopter with the Campanile — the unofficial symbol of the UC Berkeley campus — helped make this photograph an iconic image of the suppression of campus protest. The demonstrators had gathered to commemorate the death of James Rector, who had been shot by police while on the rooftop of Granma Books on May 15, during a protest over the disposition of People’s Park.
Soldiers taking cover behind their sandbagged armoured cars while dispersing rioters with CS gas in Derry, Ireland on their “Bloody Sunday” Photo: PA/PA Archive/PA Images https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/7828754/Saville-Inquiry-Bloody-Sunday-timeline.html
police tear gas demonstrators they had penned-in on wall street #occupywallstreet
Then-UC Davis police Lt. John Pike hits protesters with pepper spray on Nov. 18, 2011. (Wayne Tilcock / Associated Press) The former UC Davis police lieutenant who pepper-sprayed student protesters at a November 2011 Occupy demonstration would later receive about $38,000 in workers’ compensation.
http://www.dailycal.org/2013/10/23/former-uc-davis-police-lieutenant-receives-38000-workers-compensation-settlement/
84-Year-Old Dorli Rainey, Pepper-Sprayed at Occupy Seattle, Denounces “Worsening” Police Crackdowns | Democracy Now!
CBP Orders New Training After Minnesota That Could Expand Use of Chemical Weapons https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-cbp-officers-crowd-control_n_696a6113e4b018dc941d85c0
Tear Gas or Lethal Gas? Bahrain’s Death Toll Mounts to 34
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/blog/tear-gas-or-lethal-gas.html
“The woman in red” shows Ceyda Sungur, an academic at Istanbul’s university, who stood defiantly in Taksim Square, centre of the uprising that has swept across the capital and beyond.
06/06/2013 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/05/turkey-uprising-ceyda-sungur_n_3388712.html
Two street stencils on walls in Istanbul Inspired by the protests in Taksim Gezi Park, Istanbul, the summer of 2013, when CNN Turkey aired a penguin documentary, while CNN International ran live coverage of the protests.
Ramadan Thawabteh, eight-months-old, died from asphyxiation after inhaling tear gas, fired by the Israeli army, that entered the house of his family. It was not immediately clear if a tear gas grenade had entered the house in the city of Bethlehem or if the gas had seeped in from outside. https://www.yahoo.com/news/palestinian-baby-dies-tear-gas-fired-israeli-army-165944094.html
Police fire tear gas at demonstrators protesting the shooting of Michael Brown on August 17, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Scott Olson / Getty
Kosovo opposition politicians release tear gas in parliament to obstruct a session in Pristina, Kosovo March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Laura HasaniReuters
Sites of protest and political contention are often shaped by ‘other media’. Anna Feigenbaum looks beyond taken-for-granted media devices and practices and returns to the foundational roots of Communication Theory’s ‘the medium and the message’.
In addition to smartphones, Facebook pages, political posters and live-streaming laptops, communication involves all kinds of other technologies. Such “other media” objects include the fences, walls, and barricades, that become sites of and for communication. This ‘other media’ also includes ‘container technologies’ like shoeboxes or sound grenades, which function as storage devices, as well as re-crafted objects that become transformed through practices of disobedient design.
#teargasID The Riot ID Project
Who are the World’s Heaviest Tear Gas Users? Our 2015 Mapping the Media project on Tear Gas is now live! Check out the maps on our BU Civic Media Hub website.
http://www.civicmedia.io/projects/tear-gas-maps-2015/
Anna Feigenbaum, author of Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today, in conversation with L.A. Kauffman, Mark Bray, Ali Issa, and Ajay Singh Chaudhary. At Verso Books in Brooklyn, November 8, 2017.
Watch it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gPqfSPikWA
*** Some of the articles referenced in this interview can be found here:
DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree https://theintercept.com/2026/04/03/less-lethal-chemical-weapons-tear-gas-protests/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
What happened when US Police teargassed protesters – a visual investigation https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/17/teargas-effect-portland-police-investigation
Judge Says Columbus Police Ran ‘Amok’ Against Protesters; Restricts Use Of Force https://www.npr.org/2021/05/02/992890494/judge-says-columbus-police-ran-amok-against-protesters-restricts-use-of-force
Columbus police ‘ran amok’ during BLM protests last summer, federal judge rules as he orders officers to stop using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on nonviolent demonstrators https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9537969/Columbus-police-ran-amok-BLM-protests-judge-rules.html
Hundreds report abnormal menstruation after being teargassed during Portland protests https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/29/teargas-protest-menstrual-cycles-health-impact
Hundreds Reported Abnormal Menstruation After Exposure to Tear Gas, Study Finds https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/us/period-tear-gas-study-portland.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage
Teargas, flashbangs: the devastating toll of police tactics on Minnesota children https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/30/teargas-effect-children-police-minnesota-brooklyn-center
Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/portland-tear-gas-chemical-grenades-protests/
A guide to the less-lethal weapons that law enforcement uses against protesters https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/05/less-lethal-weapons-protests/?arc404=true
Rubber Bullets Are Still Bullets https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rubber-bullets-deadly-protests-police-george-floyd_n_5eda9e47c5b68a90de7688de
How the ‘use of force’ industry drives police militarization and makes us all less safe https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/use-of-force-police-militarization-less-safe/
The profitable theatrics of riot control Militarized policing was designed to destroy the dignity of those who contest power
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/the-profitable-theatrics-of-riot-control.html
The profitable marriage of military and police tech War technologies aren’t just adopted by domestic law enforcement; they’re created with policing in mind
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/police-militarizationswattechnology.html
The National Guard protects Ferguson’s police, not its people Backing a militarized police force with civilian soldiers makes a mockery of the right to protest
This weekend, a one-stop-shop to militarize your town
Former UC Davis police lieutenant receives $38,000 workers’ compensation settlement http://www.dailycal.org/2013/10/23/former-uc-davis-police-lieutenant-receives-38000-workers-compensation-settlement/
Israeli Drones Tear-Gas Gaza Protesters in Latest Unmanned Weapons ‘Experiment’
Tear gas was banned for warfare in 1993 but police still use it, viral meme says http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/26/facebook-posts/tear-gas-was-banned-warfare-1993-police-1997/
We are also thankful to the ever magnificent Roy Zimmerman for permission to include his “SING ALONG SECOND AMENDMENT SONG” after our interview with Professor Dunbar-Ortiz. You can hear more of his pointed, pithy civic lessons here: 
Linda Gordon is Florence Kelley professor of history and Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Her early books focused on the historical roots of social policy issues, particularly as they concern gender and family issues. Her first book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: The History of Birth Control in America, published in 1976 and reissued in 1990, remains the definitive history of birth-control politics in the US. It was completely revised and re-published as The Moral Property of Women in 2002. More recently, she has explored other ways of presenting history to a broad audience, publishing the microhistory The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction and the biography Dorothea Lange: A Life beyond Limits, both of which won the Bancroft Prize. She is one of only three historians to have ever won this award twice.
After being disbanded in 1870 following the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was officially re-formed in 1915 by founder William J. Simmons, and saw a huge rise in popularity in its early years. Pictured, an eerie sight as hundreds of members gather adorned with hoods
Focused on an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, the new Klan took much of its early influence from popular 1915 film, the Birth of a Nation, which glorified the first version of the Klan. In this image, the streets of Washington are filled with 25,000 KKK members during a march in August 1925.
Despite attempting to portray themselves as a respectable establishment who ‘upheld law and order,’ the Klan’s activities were often coupled with widespread violence.
A whole family can be seen taking part in a racist parade including three young children wearing KKK robes .
The drum corps of the Dallas Women’s KKK poses in front of Union Station around 1930. The Dallas Klan No. 66 at one time was the largest KKK chapter in the nation. (Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress and
“…The civic leaders posing with Powell and Gifford in the photograph, from left to right, are: H.P. Coffin of the National Safety Council; Captain of Police John T. Moore; Chief of Police L.V. Jenkins; District Attorney W.H. Evans; U.S. District Attorney Lester W. Humphreys; T.M. Hurlburt, a sheriff; special agent of the U.S. Department of Justice Russell Bryon; 
“In a ravenous 55 day spasm during the summer of 1898, the United States asserted control over 5 far-flung lands with a total of 11 million inhabitants: Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Never in history has a nation leaped so suddenly overseas empire.” Doing so was by no means a matter of political consensus. In fact at several steps on the way, a single individual or vote determined events, leading to the deaths of thousands. The questions that arose then, continue to arise to this day.
Grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. orchestrated the CIA’s “Operation Ajax”, which aimed to overthrow democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, who had been Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951:
White supremacists clash with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. (Sipa via AP Images)
White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
Neo-Nazis and white supremacists march in Charlottesville on 11 August. The rally and subsequent death of a counter-protester were decried as real-world consequences of far-right online movements. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Mark Bray is an historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He completed his PhD in Modern European and Women’s and Gender History at Rutgers University in 2016, and is currently finishing his manuscript “The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and the Ethics of Modernity in Spain, 1893-1909.” “The Anarchist Inquisition” explores the emergence of groundbreaking human rights campaigns across Europe and the Americas in response to the Spanish state’s brutal repression of dissent in the wake of anarchist bombings and assassinations. He teaches at Dartmouth College, where his recent statements about Anti-fa have generated a good deal of controversy, with Dartmouth’s president denouncing them and more than 100 professors denouncing the denouncing. Mark Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House, 2017) and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero Books, 2013), as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School (PM Press, 2018).
From left: Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Lisa Sharon Harper, Rev. Carlton Smith, Cornel West, and others (including Seth Wispelwey wearing a white robe and red stole) protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville. CREDIT: Heather Wilson, @aNomadPhotog / Dust & Light Photo
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