Thought you could stop us? On August 24, we’ll fill the worlds’ streets!

Written by: Louisa L. on 6 August 2025

 

How can you measure a crowd? The cops said 90,000, while protest leaders estimated 300,000 marched for Palestine in Sydney on August 3. 

Frequent protesters can measure crowd size by how many friends they meet (apart from those they went with).

For this writer, it was one person in the long wait before the march, another walking back on the bridge, and another heading home. GIGANTIC!

My brain compares it to other Sydney protests: first, the Vietnam Moratoriums (though strengthened by mass strikes) were much smaller; second, it was about three times bigger than the 80,000 in the Domain in 1988 against Minister Metherell’s sweeping attacks on NSW public education; third, half the size of Walk against the War on Iraq of 500,000 (estimated by the maths teacher marshal, on people passing each minute times length of time, plus aerial images of citywide human gridlock and thousands stranded roadside on route as bus after overloaded bus sailed by). So, 260,000 or so.

Guadian Australia employed an expert and came up with a similar figure.

With 94 percent of Australians opposed to war on Iraq, lack of industrial strength and worker organisation made it less powerful than the moratoriums. Some say it failed. But if you don’t fight, you’ve already lost. Our peoples united against US imperialism and its puppets. We understood our friends and our enemy. A battle was lost, but not the war.

Now, back to the bridge march.

“We’ve been instructed”

Cops systematically underestimate protest crowds. This time they did it with malice. They didn’t want that aerial picture showing wall to wall people from Sydney streets to North Sydney. 

Their much-publicised whinge “we averted a catastrophic crowd crush” at the northern end meant turning the crowd back on itself. This fake catastrophe was belied by the crowd’s self-discipline and patience, by first hand questions to cops about why they blocked access to a trickle at the northern railway station, “Isn’t it more sensible to move the barrier further back?” “Yes. But we’ve been instructed to have it here.” 

Ah! Neither common sense nor kindness will budge a cop instructed to do something, unless they have no other option. They must obey orders. They must be compliant. They are part of a force. They are organised, drilled to act for their masters.

Their role is to suppress the many on the orders of the few. 

On the Bridge, we watched train after southbound train fly by alongside us almost empty. Crowd crush, du’h.

Remember this!

For decades, police rarely tried to stop a large protest.  

In Covid, they tried it twice, the first Black Lives Matter protest, where every participant wore a mask. Then Invasion Day, where a compromise saw thousands seated in set groups in the Domain, and no march. Like August 3, police refused protest rights, and courts (still with vestiges of peoples’ rights won in historical struggles, plus a belief in a democratic façade) ruled to allow protest. 

Each time organisers said events would go ahead with or without permission.

Had permission not been granted, there’s no doubt police (drilled and armed with horses, body armour, batons and tear gas) would have systematically attacked in surroundings favourable to division and control by an organised force. But at what cost to them?

Many protesters dismissed ideas of police attack. “It’s too big.” “Why would they do it?” But they have done it again and again in this writer’s life, in the second Moratorium, the anti-apartheid protests against South African rugby tours, the first land rights protests, the Tent Embassy, and on and on it goes. Police create chaos and violence, and blame the victims. 

This time their court application failed. So, commanders ‘proved’ the protesters had to be saved from themselves and a non-existent crowd crush.

Instead of trains home, or a voluntary walk back to the city, or a drink of water or 4pm lunch or a toilet queue at Milsons Point or North Sydney, we had to walk all the way back.

Little children were exhausted, parents carrying them in relays. “What a strong girl (or boy) you are!” Tears became smiles, backs straighter. “Your little sister won’t remember this. You have to tell her! This is an important day! And you were here.”

We were all there. In downpours, we knew our footsteps were writing a small damp page in history. The next protest on August 24 will be far bigger. All those you could not come this time, because they were worried about police or the notice was too short, will be there.

Whatever the police force does, whatever its masters demand, we’ll unite for justice!

 

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