Another Century of Chemical Warfare

It’s mid-October 2025 in Chicago. ICE agents are showing up in neighborhoods all over the city and in the suburbs. Sometimes helicopters and drones scope out an area a couple days before and then the ground goons arrive. Every day they grab fresh victims, shove them into vans, trucks and SUVs and take them to detention centers. They’ve zip-tied naked children. They’ve tear gassed and fired pepper balls at peaceful protesters, citizens trying to protect their neighbors, and journalists. Even unprepared Chicago police officers have been tear gassed. In a city that has one of the highest asthma rates in the country, where African American and Latinx families living in Chicago’s south and west side neighborhoods bear the brunt of hospitalizations, federal agents are using chemical weapons against us and hitting some of the most vulnerable the hardest. 

This publication shares examples from a collection of unrestricted World War I era archive photos from The National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The collection covers the development of chemical warfare and protection against it. I reviewed over 2,000 photos to make selections for this booklet. All are dated as having been received between 1918 and 1920. Over a century has passed and we are still determined to destroy people’s health with chemical weapons. Now our enemy is Immigration and Customs Enforcement; our tax dollars fund their gear and weapons. We are paying them to poison us.

— Marc Fischer