Open Letter from the LGBTQA+ Community Regarding Police at Mardi Gras

To the Board of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and World Pride,

We, the LGBTIQA+ community and friends are concerned about police presence in Mardi Gras events.

With World Pride attracting thousands more international guests to Sydney Mardi Gras in 2023, we call on the Board to end NSW police presence within the parade and events.

At Mardi Gras in 2022 NSW police forcefully evicted renowned ‘78er Barbara Karpinski from the Sydney Cricket Ground stadium. Barbara was ejected for holding up a hand-made anti-war poster that said ‘Love not war Putin, Peace Putin,’ in Russian.

Just weeks before the 2022 parade, Thungutti teenager Jai Wright was killed by police pursuit in Sydney’s inner-west, 750 metres away from the site where TJ Hickey, another young Aboriginal man, was chased to death by police in 2004. These two deaths are a small fraction of the 500 plus Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have died in custody since 1991 and follows an even longer history of police violence toward First Nations peoples.

We urge the Board and World Pride to remember the origins of Mardi Gras. On 24 June, 1978, police arrested 53 people at the LGBTIQ+ pride parade and many people were badly beaten inside police cells.

More recently, in 2013 18-year-old Jamie Jackson and 34-year-old Bryn Hutchinson were attacked by police at Mardi Gras. Despite widespread calls for an independent police inquiry for Jamie and Bryn, none were forthcoming.

Additionally, we request the Board and World Pride to reflect that in the last 12 years there has been an almost twenty fold increase in strip searches in New South Wales. Between 2018–19 and 2019–20, NSW Police conducted over 9,000 strip searches, 270 of which were among children.

Further, 3 in 4 respondents to a 2020 survey conducted by the Victorian Pride Lobby believed that Victoria Police should not march in uniform. For trans and gender diverse participants the figure was higher at almost 9 out of 10 people.

We are cognisant that refusing NSW police marching rights in Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras places the Board in a difficult position. Financial issues continue to be difficult amidst COVID-19 and ongoing climate change induced weather events.

However, while we strongly support Mardi Gras, we are the people that march in, watch, support and are the creative producers of floats in a parade that currently promotes the branding of the NSW Police.

In Melbourne, Melbourne Midsumma is discussing a move to ban police from marching in the parade. Brisbane Pride and Auckland Pride have gone ahead with excluding police. New York Pride banned police from marching, Denver and Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Sacramento, San Francisco, and D.C. have all reduced police presence at Pride, as has London.

So we ask the Mardi Gras Board and World Pride to:

Act in solidarity with all of those who face sexual assault, violence and repression at the hands of the policing and prison system.

Act in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign.

We request that the Board and World Pride end the tradition of the NSW Police Force float and the NSW Corrective Services float for World Pride 2023 and for future parades.

We request the Board make public any deals that have been signed with the police, and organise community securing of Mardi Gras events and the parade.

We are also asking you to respond with urgency.

We want to highlight that no individual is being excluded from the Parade, police officers and those in corrective services who are LGBTQIA+ identified may still march, they can do so under the many other dynamic community floats that are involved in the Parade, just not under the NSW Police or Corrective Services banner.

We look forward to hearing your response and given the urgency of this issue, hope that we can receive it by the 30th of April, 2022.

SIGN THE OPEN LETTER!

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