Protest arrests at Mardi Gras

Protest arrests at Mardi Gras
Image: Sally Goldner. Image provided.

Two members of the radical LGBTIQ group Pride In Protest were arrested at last weekend’s Mardi Gras parade. The arrests highlighted an odd division in Sydney’s gay community.

Pride in Protest don’t like the commercialization of the annual massive parade and want to put control of it back into the hands of activists; they also want to highlight the Liberal Party’s historical hostility to gay rights and want among other things to ban the NSW Police float from participating in the parade, as well as large corporations they view as having questionable human rights agendas. It has been organizing and succeeded in placing a member of the group on the Mardi Gras board this year.

To highlight their opposition, the group created a renegade float – actually not much more than a tricycle with some balloons tied to it – spoofing the Liberal Party. Some Pride in Protest members, sporting jackets saying they were from the “Department of Homo Affairs” and wearing Scott Morrison masks, jumped into the parade in front of the Liberal Party float and temporarily stopped it (and all the floats behind it) from proceeding.

Police pulled three protesters off the street and arrested two of them.

“Pride in Protest in no uncertain terms condemns the excessive violence shown towards members of our community,” said Pride in Protest member Charlie Murphy, who sits on the Mardi Gras board.

“In 1978 large numbers of LGBTQ+ people were arrested for simply being out and proud on the streets. Now, in 2020, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras have made themselves complicit with a police force intimidating a grassroots LGBTQ+ protest group for wanting to make a statement against the Liberal Party, a party with a rich and ongoing history of horrific homophobia, transphobia, and racism that continues today.”

As a footnote, the British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail Australia ran a story on the Sydney headlined “Stabbings, protests and violent brawls.” The “stabbings” refers to one fight police said involved two homeless men. The “violent brawls” refers to an incident involving four Paramatta bar-goers in an altercation with police that night, many kilometres away from the Mardi Gras celebrations in Sydney.

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