Statement Concerning Community Safety Summit Collaboration with NSW Police
An open letter to ACON and the City of Sydney council regarding a forthcoming community safety summit.
The Pride in Protest collective is concerned with the forthcoming community safety summit held by ACON and City of Sydney, with plans to collaborate with the police. We believe that the decision to hold it jointly with NSW Police will fundamentally undermine the community conversation that needs to be had about homophobia and transphobia, and in writing this, we hope for a dialogue that assists our community in coming together.
Our community has been on the receiving end of hatred through the media, on the streets, at work, at our sports clubs, and even at children’s events. It is intended to drive queer people, and trans people in particular, out of public life and back into the closet by trying to make us feel unsafe. It is vital that we as a community can come together to develop solutions, and it is positive that ACON and the City of Sydney council are initiating a summit on where to go from here. But just as many of us boycott journalists sliding into our DMs for exploiting us, many in our community also distrust the police, and their previous approach of trying to run Trans Day of Remembrance encouraged division rather than unity.
These tensions between the community and the police are not historical, but persist to this day. The police continue to avoid accountability in the Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes, Veronica Baxter’s death is unresolved, and sniffer dogs continue to be used by police as a tool of harassment. As advocates for harm minimisation, and community building, we believe that ACON and the City of Sydney council would understand our perspective that officially involving NSW Police creates new difficulties in allowing the conversations that need to be had amongst peers. It would not make sense in any other ACON support program, and we do not believe it makes sense here.
We want to say that we understand the intent behind the decision to involve the police, but unfortunately, they have already created problems in this specific community debate. The police in Victoria actively expressed they were incapable of supporting councils holding drag queen storytime events and consistently argued for them to be shut down, as evidenced by the cancellation of the Monash Council’s drag storytime. This led to job losses for drag performers, a denial of service for rainbow families, and a legitimisation of anti-queer extremists. The subsequent emergency conference by Victorian Mayors heard a presentation that suggested the decisions the police had recommended had emboldened bigotry against our community.
Our community has already attempted to propose other more effective options that we need to build upon and discuss. When the trans and gender-diverse swim night in the inner west was threatened, the Dykes on Bikes and other community members supported them, and the council in Manly produced safety plans for their story time activities. In Victoria, groups like the Rainbow Angels have also emerged to try to deal with the issue. These community-driven solutions are what we need the space to discuss so that we can reclaim our space.
We hope to hear back from you on a way forward for this Safety Summit.
