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The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.

By now, you’ve probably seen the photos of young Egyptians and Tunisians holding tear gas canisters and grenades that say, “Made in the USA.”

While it’s rare for the corporate media to report on the weapons trade, this was too big to ignore.

Several outlets, including CNN and ABC, ran in-depth pieces about Combined Systems Incorporated or CSI, the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based company that sells tear gas and grenades.

The CNN piece points out that the labels on the grenades say, “Danger: Do not fire directly at persons. Severe injury or death may result.”

That’s exactly what happened to 32-year-old photographer Lucas Mebrouk Dolega. He died in Tunisia on January 17, three days after being hit by a tear gas grenade at close range.

Twenty-six-year-old Aly El Tayeb, a pro-democracy activist in Cairo, told ABC what it’s like to walk into a cloud of tear gas. “Your eyes tear up a lot so you can’t see, and you feel like you’re suffocating. You can actually breathe but you feel like you are suffocating so you try to run, but when you run you inhale more.”

U.S. citizens are ramping up their efforts to raise awareness about CSI.

On January 11, 35 New Yorkers protested outside the offices of Point Lookout Capital Partners, an investment firm that bought a majority stake in CSI in 2005.

Protesters held signs with photos of Palestinians and international activists killed and severely wounded by tear gas canisters.

On January 1, 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah died of cardiac arrest after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at the weekly protest against the wall being built in the West Bank village of Bil’in. In April 2009, her brother Bassem was killed at the same protest after a tear gas canister struck him in the chest.

Shortly after Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s death, 25 Israeli activists brought used CSI tear gas canisters to the home of James Cunningham, U.S. Ambassador to Israel. The demonstrators chanted to let his neighbors know that American military aid to Israel is being used to kill unarmed nonviolent demonstrators in the West Bank. Eleven activists were arrested.

On January 17, protesters gathered outside of the CSI facility in Jamestown, Pennsylvania to call on the company to stop doing business with the Israeli military. Werner Lange, of the Coalition for Peace in the Middle East, told WKBN-TV that the owners of CSI “treat their workers like slaves and they treat the Palestinians like target practice.” He said, “We want this gross injustice to end, and we want it to end now.”

A number of groups, including Adalah-NY, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and Jewish Voice for Peace have started a campaign to tell the profiteers at CSI to end the sale of tear gas to countries like Egypt and Israel.

Most U.S. aid or taxpayer money sent overseas is spent on weapons, tanks, and killing machines made by American companies. Since 1981, Congress has required Egypt to spend $34 billion on American made weapons, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Even if the U.S. cuts back on the aid, there’s no guarantee the money would be used for education or social services in this country, but it has to be part of the conversation. Let’s hope these actions gain momentum.