Anyone who has attended a recent rally in Sydney knows that there is more to the police than cheesy grins and helping the elderly. Despite already knowing this, I was completely unprepared for my experience of police at the May 17 blockade of the Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) office in Sydney.
We were blockading the front doors in order to stop people from getting in. Attempting to prevent us, the police pushed back. One police officer grabbed hold of my breast and pushed. There were plenty of other parts of my body, all less invasive, that he could have pushed. This unnecessary invasion of my personal space really shook me, and it got me thinking about the role of police at protests.
My discussions afterwards with other left activists indicated that sexual harassment at protests is not an exception, but the norm. Among other incidents, I was told about a woman participating in the Sydney M1 blockade who was so traumatised by the experience of a police officer grabbing her breasts and shoving his leg between her legs that she left the blockade.
None of this is accidental. Harassment does not come from just a couple of rotten cops who don't know how to handle protesters. It is a conscious tactic employed by police in general. Police are used at protests to intimidate and (if they're doing a really good job) demoralise protesters to stop them from coming back. What better way to deter women protesters than to sexually harass them and, most infuriatingly, get away with it?
The police are paid to defend the interests of the ruling class. Their primary purpose in any capitalist society is to defend property rights, reinforcing the power of the super rich against the rest of us. They protect the "right" of big business to make profit regardless of the consequences for the environment, workers or social services. The police are used to break up strikes, attack demonstrators and protect corporations.
ACM makes millions of dollars of profit every year out of imprisoning refugees for the government. The police were outside ACM to defend its profits against demonstrators for refugee rights. If the only way to defend ACM's "right" was to abuse mine, so be it.
Sexual harassment by police officers is justified by sexist ideas, which legitimise the view that women who do not obey the "rules of femininity" are deviant and, therefore legitimate targets for abuse. If I had stayed at home and not gone to the ACM blockade, the cop would never have touched me. As it was, I joined the "rat-bag rabble" and got in the way of ACM going about making profits. In the groping police officer's head, I deserved what I got.
Well screw that idea! If I hadn't gone to that protest, if women stay at home afraid of sexual harassment by police, where would that get us? It certainly wouldn't help raise awareness about the conditions of refugees, or any other injustice in society, and it certainly wouldn't contribute to campaigns against sexual harassment.
Unfortunately I don't think cops will take heart, realise the error of their ways and stop using sexual harassment at protests. That would conflict with the role they are employed to play at protests. Not going to protests in order to avoid sexual abuse at the hands of the police is just letting the police win.
There are two things we can do to stop this sexual harassment. Firstly, we can help rebuild a mass women's liberation movement that speaks out at every injustice that women suffer. Secondly, we need to be out on the streets demanding a just society, a society which is not based on private profit being protected by an armed body of (mostly) men. And along the way I suggest we scream out loudly every time a cop uses sexual harassment, exposing the bastards for what they are, and showing how little they intimidate us.
BY ANGELA LUVERA
[The author is the Sydney Central Resistance branch organiser.]