City of Sydney Passed a Motion Supporting a Safety Summit, Will It Go Through?
On the 20th of June, Lord Mayor Clover Moore of the City of Sydney council announced that she would call for a “State-wide LGBTIQA+ Local Government Safety Summit” via Facebook after news came through regarding an anti-trans gathering in Oxford St. The community safety summit, co-hosted with ACON, would be held jointly with other councils, NSW government agencies, and, most concerningly, the NSW Police.
Pride in Protest shared their concerns regarding the participation of police in a statement made on our social media pages. After some correspondence with ACON and City of Sydney, it was evident they agreed to reduce the involvement of NSW Police, and the Greens on Council have also emphasised the importance of community-led responses through a motion in Council.
However, interest among ACON and teal state MPs for a safety summit has dissipated despite continued attacks and harassment. In late July, we saw stabbings outside Noir Sydney Nightclub, raising concerns for community safety on Oxford St, and recently, the Wear It Purple pop-up stall in Bankstown was attacked. The targeted attack in Bankstown led to the cancellation of an event featuring drag performer Carla, SMH reports.
According to that same report, the Safety Summit has apparently been dropped. ACON has said they’d provide online seminars, if they’re funded, exclusively for council management to improve their skills in hosting safe events. The community were promised a safety summit to address our concerns about homophobia and transphobia, and the City of Sydney passed a motion supporting it. So why haven’t Council followed through yet?
It is not enough to just organise online seminars on being kind to trans people that might not even interest management, or may even equip them with more excuses for canceling our events.
This is not a response to what has happened in our streets. But Pride in Protest and the community have been setting the precedent for an effective response to this bigotry.
Last week, we successfully reclaimed Oxford St., demonstrating our strength in numbers; students have been actively disrupting far-right street preachers; and we have been working on a campaign to support drag performers affected by the cancellation of Drag Storytime events through our open letter. We hope that by engaging with the community and creating community-led solutions to protect events such as Drag Storytime, we can proactively advance the struggle against far-right bigotry.
Community-led initiatives are the responses we need. We must avoid relying on solutions that involve the police, as we are seeing with Alex Greenwich’s calls for increased policing. We deserve a better solution to the current problem than substituting one group of bigots with another.
This is why the City of Sydney and Inner West Councils should precede with an open summit for the community to come together to talk about what we need. Community members have heard enough from the politicians, from management, from the media, and from the police. The Safety Summit should proceed, with or without ACON & Alex Greenwich, so we can build upon these community-oriented solutions.
Link to full correspondence with ACON and City of Sydney here.
