Black Lives Matter Protests Around the World
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View this email in your browser June 2020 As we approach the 24 June anniversary of the first Mardi Gras in 1978, we are in unprecedented times. We are constrained from all but small gatherings, disgusted by police brutality both here and overseas and see an extraordinary upsurge in Black Lives Matter protests around the world. With hundreds of Pride marches and events cancelled, the 24-hour, online Global Pride 2020 on 27 June will be the world's biggest Pride celebration. In this edition of the First Mardi Gras Inc. Newsletter, we have: our joint statement with First Nations Rainbow Ken Davis on The new pandemic Robyn Kennedy on Global Pride 2020 and its Black Lives Matter focus Robert French with updates to Fifty fabulous years of LGBTIQ visibility and achievement events notice of a Regional and Rural Outreach meeting from SGLMG 78ers Committee members Helen Golan and Sallie Colechin sad news of the death of leading Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi. Diane Minnis Joint Statement on Black Lives Matter protests 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. [email protected] [email protected] Membership renewals Thank you to all those who have responded to our renewal drive for First Mardi Gras Inc. membership and to those who have updated their contact details. Many have moved to distant locations. Our ‘diaspora’ is spreading far across the country and overseas. We would like to maintain strong contact with all 78ers so that we can properly represent your interests when working with Mardi Gras and other organisations. One of our members, Ross Smith, was recently in hospital for more than 2 months. Anyone who knows Ross might like to contact him, though he has no email address at present. The Committee send their best wishes to Ross for his full and speedy recovery. Barry Charles - Membership Coordinator Congratulations to Frank Howarth AM Congratulations to FMG Inc. member Frank Howarth who was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Frank told us: I've always been someone who thrives on change and doing my little bit to make the world a better place. This was what motivated my participation in the 78 Mardi Gras, and drives my work in the arts, museums and galleries sector. I'm extremely chuffed to have received the AM in recognition of that work. Creativity is at the heart of the cultural sector, and interestingly, the most creative people I know are in the LGBTI community. And I could not have done this without the support of my partner Peter McCarthy! Frank Howarth (left), Peter McCarthy (right) The new pandemic Jakub and David (@jakubidawid) wandered the tri-city towns of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot on a mission to remove the stigma of homosexuality after 30 LGBTQ-free zones were declared around Poland in August 2019. Photo courtesy of Sydney Star Observer. The day after our 43rd Mardi Gras parade, Australia saw its first COVID-19 fatality. Within a brief period, travel and work and schools and social life closed down. COVID-19 is a global emergency riding the top of the waves of the climate crisis, and the existing economic and geo-political crisis. Most 78ers are particularly vulnerable because of age and health status, so the imposed and self-directed isolation has been intense. For those of us living with HIV, COVID-19 poses particular issues; see 78er, Ross Duffin’s article: https://napwha.org.au/positive/covid-19-vaccines-treatments-and-people-with-hiv. For most of us the sudden change has been very profound: not going to work, not seeing friends or family, not being able to access face-to-face services, not going to restaurants, films, concerts, sports, funerals or demonstrations. Our meetings have gone online. For those of us cohabiting, lockdown might have caused increased interpersonal tensions, for those living alone, unprecedented social isolation may be a bleak experience. Mainstream guidance on social distancing was silent about personal intimacies with people who are not your cohabitants or monogamous partners. Initially LGBTIQ and HIV community organisations were reticent to talk explicitly about casual sex and drugs in this pandemic. Gay businesses, sex on premises venues and sex work closed and even the apps wound down. The economic impacts on our 78ers’ generation/s are as yet uncalculated: loss of working incomes, superannuation, assets, entitlements, services or security. Some sectors, such as hospitality and the arts are devastated. On the other hand, the wealth of the super-rich has massively increased in 2020. With migration, labour and student migration, partner and refugee applications frozen, the situation of LGBTIQ non-residents is critical, either in Australia or overseas. COVID-19 reawakens our collective trauma and grief of the four decade long AIDS pandemic, which kills 800,000 globally each year, despite treatments. Comparisons with HIV require caution. HIV is transmissible but not contagious (and therefore more easily prevented through behaviour change), has a potentially very long period of infectivity, has higher fatality rates over much longer timescale, but is now treatable. Unfortunately our friend Trump “mis-spoke” about having an HIV vaccine already. Fortunately for us, apart from some fringe Christian extremists, this is an epidemic not being blamed on sexuality and gender identity minorities. But there are lessons for this pandemic from AIDS about community and mass mobilisation. There is a need to build on the victories about keeping the intellectual property of the virus, testing, treatments and vaccines freely available internationally in public ownership, so that Big Pharma cannot profiteer and restrict access to those who can pay. COVID-19 highlights health access inequalities and reinforces the need for public health to be in public control. The Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated racism and xenophobia in Australia and globally, eliciting strong fightbacks. On a deeper global level, the pandemic comes at a time of receding democratic space, a world controlled by science-denying, religious, ultra- nationalist, demagogic monsters – Trump, BoJo, Bolsonaro, Modi, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Duterte, Sisi, Netanyahu, Orban, Bin Zayed, Duda, Bin Salman…. and our own Pentecostal Scomo. This reactionary and authoritarian climate poses existential threats to the freedom of LGBTIQ people and communities in many countries. Think of what is happening in the legislative agenda right now in USA, Poland, Indonesia and Hungary. We must gear up our international solidarity activism, much like we did at the time of the first Mardi Gras in 1978. In the northern hemisphere, the annual LGBTIQ freedom/pride season around the Stonewall anniversary in late June or early July has gone virtual. Global Pride 2020 is online, and focussing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. See the following article for our engagement with Global Pride. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, and spurred by anti-police and anti-racism mobilisations, several alternative Queer Pride demonstrations are planned, or have been held, for example in Hollywood, Denver and Brooklyn.