QUEERS MESS WITH MIDSUMMA’S VIOLENT POLICE PINKWASHING

On Sunday, an autonomous queer “ugly rabble” proudly personally ruined police boss Shane Patton’s attempt at pinkwashing the racist, capitalist, colonial violence of the so-called Victorian state. After their presence at corporate Midsumma pride was disrupted, cops quickly ran to public relations lies, parroted by the corporate media, in a shameful attempt to recoup their image.
We messed with their pinkwashing. Cops used violence. We defended ourselves. Fuck the police!
Corporate Midsumma boss Karen Bryant once again sided with the violent institution of police by allowing them to march while pretending to be on the fence
Victoria Police shoved, choked, punched and sexually assaulted queers, kicked one of us on the ground, threatened to use chemical weapons, stole megaphones, and tried to kettle us—but we thwarted them. The only right cops uphold is the right to reactionary and fascist violence.
Let’s remember cops are specialists in state violence. What we saw on Sunday was an example of their ‘restraint’. When they’re not marching for PR purposes, they act with even greater impunity: more weapons, more violence, less scrutiny (cops offically in the march didn’t have their weapons).
Some members of the crowd deputised themselves as cops. From a racist white woman throwing water at people of colour who were protesting, to a white vigilante crowd member who assaulted an independent trans photojournalist and then slapped a trans woman in the face. This vigilante was the only person arrested, and cops have tried to falsely paint them as one of us.

Many attendees egged on the cops. Some shouted transphobic, racist, ableist and homophobic slurs. And many watched on as passive bystanders. Midsumma cultivates white conservatism. There’s a long way to go.
We’re angry at cops because we see a rapid escalation in violent policing. Over the past decade, off the back of anti-Black racism, we’ve seen so-called Victoria throw billions more at policing, reaching record levels of cops per capita not seen since the 19th century, in this violent settler colony.
Meanwhile more queer Indigenous people, queers of colour, poor queers and their communities are criminalised. Houselessness grows, poverty worsens and the healthcare system groans with more neglect.
The Victorian ALP government is a pinkwashing pro-police and prisons disgrace. Their Ministers are for Inequality and Violence. It’s no accident their cops have violently repressed pro-Palestine direct actions, trans people counter-protesting a Nazi transphobe coalition, are silent on Black murders in custody and lock criminalised trans women up in ‘men’s prisons’ or extreme isolation.
Solidarity against state violence, racism, colonialism, capitalism, ableism, transmisogyny, queerphobia and in the struggle for liberation!