Pride in Protest and the fight for Sydney’s queer community
Leadership struggles, online vitriol and generational change within Sydney's queer community.
Photography by Aman Kapoor
April 11, 2021
Veiled in respectful silence, Taylor Square is surprisingly still, calm even. The sheer number of people that have turned up smother the occasional spot fires of nervousness that jump through the crowd. Bodies radiate quiet determination.
“I’m going to get a little bit emotional because, as I stand here on this occasion, I am recalling that first Mardi Gras”, says Mark Gillespie, microphone in hand, his voice filling Taylor Square.
Gillespie is a “78er”, one of the original protestors who marched down Oxford Street from Taylor Square on 24 June, 1978, to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. When police denied the marchers access to Hyde Park that night, where they planned to have speeches, cries of “on to the Cross” multiplied rapidly. Protestors broke through the police cordon and rushed on to Kings Cross. Curious onlookers, stumbling from bars, watched on. Some joined the march. Some even joined the protestors in resisting arrest and fighting back against police when police turned on the crowd, brutally apprehending 53 people.