First Nations people and 78ers looked on with disgust at the police behaviour following the first Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney, earlier this month.
After a legal, approved rally proceeded without incident, police forced a crowd at Central Station into the narrow suburban concourse on Eddy Avenue and surrounded them. The crowd was not allowed (or even ordered) to disperse.
Instead these people were forced in upon themselves with no regard for the social distancing that the police claimed to be upholding. The result was panic and outraged resistance – exactly the response that the police had intended to provoke.
Police then used violence and pepper spray on innocent people and some officers even laughed.
This long standing NSW police tactic is one 78ers remember well – when protesters were trapped, bashed and arrested in Kings Cross by police on 24 June 1978. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.
78ers have now received an apology from the Police Commissioner for the behaviour of NSW Police in 1978. But the NSW Police have demonstrated that they have not changed.
First Nations people were there rallying in protest, as we have many times before, calling for justice, calling for freedom, demanding that the police and justice systems stop killing us.
First Nations people experience individual and systemic racism, discrimination and injustice throughout our lands. We endure over-policing of our communities and suffer from the disproportionate incarceration rates of our people. We witness the ongoing destruction of our sacred and cultural sites. We grieve the more than 400 deaths in custody since the Royal Commission. We have not seen justice for these crimes against our people.
Despite so many of our people at the rally being personally impacted by these injustices, the Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney proceeded without incident. People committed to social distancing and other infection control measures.
Our communities were passionate but peaceful. The police were not.
The NSW Police Force’s actions added trauma and further injustice to a day where our communities were exercising their human right to protest against the lethal racism we face.
As LGBTQI First Nations people, we know the compounding of discrimination puts us at further risk from police. The fear for our communities, our loved ones and us in relation to the police and justice system’s discrimination and violence is real, ongoing and current.
Those protesters at Central Station deserve an apology. First Nations people deserve apologies and need urgent systemic change to stop the targeting of their communities by police and the justice system and to stop deaths in custody.
First Nations Rainbow and First Mardi Gras Inc. stand together to say that Black Lives Matter!
The slogan of the 78ers – STOP POLICE ATTACKS! ON GAYS, WOMEN AND BLACKS! – is still relevant today and just as urgent.

First Nations Rainbow & First Mardi Gras Inc.