The story of how a chemical weapon went from the battlefield to the streets

One hundred years ago, French troops fired tear gas grenades into German trenches. Designed to force people out from behind barricades and trenches, tear gas causes burning of the eyes and skin, tearing, and gagging. Chemical weapons are now banned from war zones. But today, tear gas has become the most commonly used form of "less-lethal" police force. In 2011, the year that protests exploded from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, tear gas sales tripled. Most tear gas is produced in the United States,...

In recent years, protest camps have become increasingly prominent, seen in mass protests around the world, with camps erected everywhere from a park in Istanbul to a Mexico City street. Though these movements, like the countless others that have adopted this tactic, have differing goals, they ve all found protest camps to be an effective tactic for getting and holding attention from media and government alike. This collection offers a number of interdisciplinary case studies of protest camps as unique organizational forms that transcend the contexts of particular social movements, looking at...