On July 4, 2012, police in Greensboro, North Carolina used tear gas, a chemical weapon, to disperse a crowd of 1,000 people, most of them young and Black, who were gathered downtown to celebrate the public holiday. Two people were arrested before the tear gas was used to disperse the crowd. One of them was Zannie, who here describes his experience of being threatened with a tear gas canister during his arrest. The other person arrested that night was Jimel Tyrea Leach, who Zannie mentions in his story. The Greensboro police say they use tear gas against people in town roughly 6 times per year.
