‘Too many coppas, not enough justice’
On Monday, I caught the train up to Sydney to protest war criminal and president of Israel Isaac Herzog’s arrival in Australia. I did so because he is a genocidal freak who has directly caused the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and his arrival to Australia reaffirms our government’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. I also attended knowing that our state’s premier, Chris Minns, is actively suppressing our ability to protest against Israel’s atrocities by shutting down Sydney’s CBD and enacting special police powers against peaceful protesters in an attempt to promote ‘social cohesion’.
As I entered the protest, a cop stood in front of me looking exactly like Sean Penn’s military officer character, Steven J. Lockjaw, in One Battle After Another (2025). He even did the weird pursed lip movements Sean Penn does in the movie. I think about PTA and Penn’s portrayal of Lockjaw. In the movie, every inch of Penn’s characterisation: his gait, his mouth, the tension and swift aggression that motivated his every movement, seemed so entirely repulsive that it was hilarious. But at the protest, the same physicality felt surreal, like every police officer was Lockjaw adorned with a Thomas Sewell type of moustache. I found myself re-evaluating One Battle After Another. Penn’s performance wasn’t great because it exaggerated the mannerisms of the police and military, but it made clear the violence and aggression present in every one of the police and military’s gestures.
I messaged my friend who I was supposed to meet at the protest that I was in the crowd to the right of where the speakers were. It’s 5:40pm. The protest started only ten minutes ago. She told me she was a little late because she just finished work and she was being told by the police that she cannot enter Town Hall for the rally. The reason the police gave? The protest is at capacity. They directed her to Hyde park, feeding her misinformation on where the protest will move to. I looked beside and around me to see plenty of room for other protesters, I had been to rallies far more cramped. I messaged her that it’s total bullshit. Eventually, they let her in, but I could not find her amongst the crowd of thousands of people. I put my phone in my bag and listened to the speakers. One of the speakers spoke on seeing the massacre of her family unfold online. How she had to call hospitals in Gaza to check if her family was still alive. She speaks of seeing the mutilated bodies of loved ones on social media. Crying, I put my sunglasses on, out of habit. I am disgusted with Israel, with Herzog, and with my government’s complicity.
Eventually, my friend and I play the game you do at protests where you send each other photos of where you are located in the crowd, and you try to find one another using the prominent signs. I managed to find her right as the crowd was finally starting to march. Movement is slow, and due to the police surrounding the crowd at all sides, we don’t quite know what direction we are going in. In the crowd, I saw lawyers who have just finished their day of work. Tradies still in their high-vis gear. School kids. Inner-West Sydney wine mums. Families with children. Three different people wearing Bladee and Yung Lean’s merch from their gig at Laneway (I was considering wearing my T-Shirt, as I had slept in it the night before). Lovers and couples, young and old. Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and Jews. I saw a crowd of thousands of ordinary people organised despite the fear the Minns’ government has attempted to instill. At one point, an Uber Eats delivery person gets caught in the crowd with his bike. We tried to help him get out, but he told us the police will not allow him to leave to do his delivery. Jokingly, we asked what food he has in his bag and if we can have it. He laughed along, even as many more protesters repeated the same joke.
The crowd moved slowly. We start trying to move in the direction of the Queen Victoria Building. The collective becomes compact, we cannot move further forward. People started holding up hand-written signs which said ‘march to Central’, so slowly the crowd began to move around. At this point, I saw a lot of people behind my friend and myself. In fact, I think we were towards the front of the crowd. We creep forward, occasionally taking squat breaks due to our feet being tired. Suddenly, we hear shouting from behind.
“Move forward! Please!”
The voices are desperate. I saw a group of girls younger than me run past, crying, holding keffiyehs, and shirts, up to their eyes. The crowd was stagnant further in front, unable to move further due to the police blocking us, and protestors were running forward from behind us. We were packed tight. Protestors grabbed onto their friends as we moved forward in the increasingly pinched crowd. A woman came up to us, an organiser, or just as likely one of the many protestors trying to keep the collective safe. She told us not to turn around as the police are deploying pepper spray. Like an idiot, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the police are now less than a metre behind us. Many on horses. I saw two protestors facing the police with arms around each other. The police officer in front of them lunged forward without provocation, another police officer holding him back. A family is confused, trying to get towards the train station to avoid the police violence. We guided them away from the police towards one of the staircases down to Town Hall station. The threat of pepper spray was still imminent, so we tried to ensure they didn’t walk across the police line for their safety.
My friend and I tried to move out of the pinch caused by the police by walking sideways. As we did this, presumably looking shocked, a police officer says to us;
“Just do what we say and you won’t have anything to worry about.”
I turned my head so he wouldn’t see the indignant expression on my face. How could we trust you to keep us safe when we have literally just witnessed you be violent towards peaceful protestors? How could I trust you to help us move when you contained thousands of people to an increasingly compact space, with no room to disperse? I kept my head down and walked with my friend along the back police line, trying to keep as much distance as I could. Probably because I might see another Sean Penn look alike and laugh. I saw a makeshift medic station on our right, five protestors laid on the floor, presumably getting their eyes flushed from being pepper sprayed. Due to the police blocks, my friend and I had to walk through and jump off a metre high garden bed to get onto the street and out of the crush.
Scattered protestors looked at each other in confusion. My friend and I continuously repeated in mumbles “what the fuck?” We all walked towards Central station, although we had been pushed into the side streets of the CBD. I saw two police officers block the entrance of a convenience store, a place protesters could go to get water due to the three hours spent in close confinement, or to clean themselves from pepper spray.
We finally made it to the main street near Central station and the crowd reconvened. The crowd cheered and chanted. A group of men at a boxing gym on the second story of a building hung out the window, still and watching. A different Uber Eats delivery worker stood next to his bike cheering, and yelling, “free Palestine.” We watched from the small park next to Central station as thousands of protesters marched onwards.
Eventually, we walked into Central station. A few police officers hung around the entrance, one of them said “See? Not so violent are we?” It made me sick to my stomach after the violence I had witnessed. My friend and I bought water from the EzyMart, behind us in a line was a man with wet wipes rubbing his face. He was laughing, maybe from shock or to stop the pain. He said he has been sprayed but even after the wipes, it still burns.
From where I waited at Central station to catch my train home, to the very next morning, I was glued to my phone watching scenes from the protest. I saw a video of a group of muslim men praying, being thrown and assaulted by the police. I saw a video of police punching a protester with a bike in the body and head. I saw a police officer throw two protester’s keffiyehs in the bin. I saw police punch a restrained protester who was laying face down on the concrete, at least 18 times. I saw the police charge forward at protesters, whilst mounted on horses. I then saw Minns defend the actions of the police, describing the police violence as “proportionate” to the situation. I eventually saw overhead footage of how we were kettled at town hall. I am shocked to see just how many of us were compacted in an increasingly small space. I read on social media how a Dunghutti man, Paul Silva, was arrested at this protest, by the same system who killed his uncle, David Dungay Jr. I think about how these same violent tactics have been, and continue to be used, to control and kill First Nations people in this settler-colonial state. The NSW police force was established in 1825 as the NSW mounted police. They were established specifically to police the Wiradjuri people following their resistance to the colonial occupation in the 1824 Bathurst wars, where hundreds of Wiradjuri people were murdered by settler-colonisers. The NSW mounted police, and thus the NSW police force we know today, was formed specifically to enact state violence against Aboriginal peoples and protect state colonial interests. Police mounted on horses have been used for this purpose for over 200 years, including at Monday night’s rally.
Early in the protest, just moments before marching, I turned to my friend to talk about the Harbour Bridge protest a few months prior. I talked about how the police sent text messages to our phones when we were on the bridge, telling us to turn around, causing confusion and two separate foot traffic flows within a contained space. We discussed how the policing strategies put protesters in danger. A protester turned around and said to my friend and I;
“That’s why they do it. To make us confused, so they can make us look bad. So they can get away with attacking us.”
