I'm a volunteer firefighter. I've wondered what my county's response would be if I borrowed one of our SCBAs (self-contained breathing apparatus) to wear to an anti-ICE demo or ICE observation incident. It's not a gas mask in the sense of this article, because as the name suggests it's an entirely self-contained air supply - it doesn't matter what is in the air at all. The one issue is that a single air bottle has a finite and not particularly long use time (if you're in good shape and don't panic, 20-30 minutes tops).
> I've wondered what my county's response would be if I borrowed one of our SCBAs (self-contained breathing apparatus) to wear to an anti-ICE demo or ICE observation incident
Give it a try and see what happens? Get your friends and colleagues with you too! In Europe (at least France and Spain) we have firefighters participating in protests, some of them not so non-violent, and there been clashes between firefighters and police (so unexpected) in the past, most recently just ~a week ago: https://www.albawaba.com/news/firefighter-protest-lille-esca....
I guess there is many reasons AFAB isn't an acronym people usually spread, can't think of any time firefighters generally been against the people.
When I joined, there an "orientation session" in which an existing firefighter said (paraphrasing): "there are lots of different attitudes towards the police, ranging from very positive to very negative, and I'm not going to get into that. But when firefighters show up, it's always the best part of whatever day anybody is having, and DO NOT FUCK THIS UP!"
