OPINION: Celebration Without Compromise — Why Mardi Gras Should be Publicly Funded & Cop Free

Mardi Gras is a party, a protest, a riot, a celebration. Besides awareness and action, Mardi Gras is also about laughter, joy, music, dancing, drag, lots of glitter, and tons of colour. 

In an opinion piece, so-called “Protect Mardi Gras” claims that we must protect Mardi Gras from the Big Bad to keep it both a party and a protest. 

And we, the baddies, say we must protect Mardi Gras from Zionists, cops, and “Protect Mardi Gras” to make it a party and a protest again. 

“We’re Here, We’re Queer”: Fund the Festival

So-called “Protect Mardi Gras” claims that Mardi Gras welcomes everybody to Pride, from gay landlords to queer and trans tenants, from a business association board member to an asylum seeker. 

(On a related note, I am a Malaysian trans asylum seeker. During the Mardi Gras season, the University of Sydney threatened to suspend and deport me to danger for writing on a whiteboard “USYD Vice Chancellor Mark Scott supports Gaza Genocide”.)

If Mardi Gras is for everyone, why are tickets to Mardi Gras events literally the price of a one-way flight to Kuala Lumpur? 

Under a cost-of-living crisis that affects queer people disproportionately, why were tickets of the 2024 after-party $239, or a third of weekly rents in Parramatta? 

For trans femmes who buy estradiol, cyproterone and progesterone under the PBS, the price of the Bondi Beach Party is 5 months of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). 

If “Protect Mardi Gras” aims to protect the allegedly inclusive character of Mardi Gras, they should join us to call for government funding. To make Mardi Gras inclusive, Pride in Protest is campaigning for public funding of our proud festival. 

If the government provided ample funding for us, Mardi Gras would not be sourcing private funds from overpriced events that prohibit queers, especially First Nations and gender diverse communities, from celebrating Pride. 

Even our “free events” are not free. Over time, viewing space for the Parade has been diminished where now 25% of the Parade route is only accessible for viewing for a price. The income Mardi Gras makes from this is menial, and the cost for the government to make up shortfalls such as this would not even touch the sides of their Arts budgets. 

The Labor Government claims that they will work in partnership with the LGBTQIA+ community to improve inclusivity. If Labor puts their money where their mouth is, Mardi Gras will not be forcing trans communities to decide between, on the one hand, groceries, housing and HRT, and on the other hand, partying. 

“We Are All Palestinians”: No Pride in Genocide

If “Protect Mardi Gras” spends half their time demanding public funding, Mardi Gras will not be receiving funds from events produced with dirty money. And not the fun kind. 

Right now, Mardi Gras is seeking to partner with Fuzzy, which is owned by Superstruct Entertainment and backed by KKR. By investing in Zionist settlements and fossil fuel companies, KKR and its subsidiary Superstruct kill lesbians in Gaza and disappear Two-Spirit people and Indigenous women in so-called “Canada”. 

In occupied Palestine, KKR has economic interests in “Israeli” companies complicit in both the Gaza genocide and the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank — part of the ongoing Nakba. 

On Turtle Island, KKR holds stakes in the Coastal Gas Pipeline implicated in both violence against the Wet’suwet’en and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) crisis — part of the “Canadian” genocide of the First Nations. 

If the government just invests in our festival and parade, Mardi Gras will not be getting funding from ethnic cleansing, mass shootings, deliberate starvation, and two genocides of Indigenous peoples. 

Besides being a party, Mardi Gras is also a protest for all, from the Palestinian people to the Wet’suwet’en Nation, from the Wa Dzun Kwuh River to the Mediterranean Sea. 

Pride in Protest is proudly campaigning for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel. We are against the unconscionable investments of Fuzzy and other companies complicit in forced displacement and colonial genocides, from Palestine to Wet’suwet’en territory. 

“Stop Police Attacks on Queers, Women and Blaks”: No Police at Pride

“Protect Mardi Gras” claims that Mardi Gras will gladly receive anyone, from protesters to police that call them homophobic slurs and misgender them in custody. 

In a recent op-ed, Peter Stahel from “Protect Mardi Gras” does some shadowboxing and says that Mardi Gras should remain a “party” that gives the NSW Police the red-carpet treatment. But what kind of Karen thinks that cops gatecrashing a party makes it more fun? 

When Jamie Jackson Reed and Bryn Hutchinson came to the Mardi Gras Parade in 2013 they were there to celebrate — but their pride that day was decimated when they were beaten senselessly by the police. Numerous others joined them in complaints of police violence and harassment, which sparked thousands protesting on the streets and cost almost $700,000 for the NSW Police to settle outside of court. 

When cops march with weapons in their holsters, or perform degrading strip searches based on false positives, how much fun are they adding to those people’s nights? 

We know that NSW Police and their sniffer dogs and strip searches — recently found at court to be largely illegal — do not result in harm minimisation for partygoers who use drugs. Evidence shows that this leads to humiliation of attendees, and higher risk of overdose. This is why the Productivity Commission (hardly a communist front) is arguing that policing be phased out of entertainment districts as it is bad for business, bad for public health, and well, bad for fun. 

The NSW Police neither serves nor protects Mardi Gras. In both parties and protests, they work against the LGBTQIA+ community to police our Pride. Since Pride in Protest have been campaigning on this for the past 7 years (a full 7 years longer contributing to Mardi Gras than “Protect Mardi Gras” has), apologists for the police have never offered real solutions for the problems caused by policing in both the parade and in broader society. 

We haven’t heard a genuine response for support for stopping deaths in custody, which is a slap in the face to an expanding list of victims of police brutality. We’ve never heard of any of the Mardi Gras directors that defend policing on how they plan to end strip searching at the festival, to get firearms out of the parade, or to address the oppressive anti-protest laws that threaten our ability to fight for desperately needed protections for LGBTQIA+ communities. Mardi Gras has even been a laboratory for the police to test surveillance technologies that have been met with zero resistance from the right wing. 

While right-wingers like “Protect Mardi Gras” ignore all these problems, Pride in Protest is trying to solve them. Pride in Protest’s successful motion with regards to tearing up the Police Accords told the NSW Police in no uncertain terms we reject their powers to do things like conduct “decency checks” on paradegoers they deem too saucy for Pride. 

Rather than deal with any of these problems, where kicking the police out for killing us would send a strong and clear message to them, all you get is a browbeating about how you’re not “inclusive”. 

Doesn’t all that sound fun to you? 

Luna Choo (she/they) is a proud Malaysian trans woman and queer asylum seeker. She is a member of Pride in Protest and a trans activist for refugee rights and a free Palestine.