#RightToProtest

2025-07-15

@RussCheshire And this is why I am determined to follow her. To prison if necessary.

Ask yourself: should you do this too? My panel design -- for t-shirts, hoodies, what you will -- is free to copy and use. Or design your own.

#RightToProtest
#GazaGenocide

journeyman.cc/~simon/palestine

2025-07-09
2025-07-08

@drgeraint I want them to decide that, yes. That is the point. It's also why I've made my name and email address part of the design: if anyone's getting prosecuted for this, I'm up for it.

#GazaGenocide
#RightToProtest
#Democracy

Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:​MsDropbear42@infosec.space
2025-07-07

Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News

NSW Police to drop anti-riot charge against injured protester Hannah Thomas

smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-po

Yeah nah, the hashtag still seems valid.

#ACAB #RightToProtest

Greenpeace Internationalgreenpeace
2025-07-04

PROTECT THE PROTEST.

Across the world, we’re seeing a crackdown on the right to protest.

This doesn’t just affect environmental activists. It affects anyone who wants to make their voice heard.

greenpeace.org.uk/news/protest

Droppie [anonsys] 🐨♀🌈🐧​🦘msdropbear42@anonsys.net
2025-07-01

crikey.com.au/2025/07/01/chris…

The assault on Hannah Thomas under hardline NSW anti-protest laws at a pro-Palestine protest in Belmore should be seen against the backdrop of growing lawlessness in Sydney under the Minns government.

NSW Police — which was strangely reluctant to investigate its own actions during the protest at Belmore — appears powerless to stop near-routine gangland shootings in Sydney which increasingly harm either innocent bystanders or the wrong targets. According to the ABC, eight innocent people have been killed in gangland killings since 2020. There have been a dozen gangland shootings alone in Sydney since Christmas, invariably described in media reports as “brazen” given their public nature.

But that’s only part of a broader increase in violent crime in Sydney that is worsening under the Minns government. The most recent NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR) crime data up to March shows the growth in violent offences accelerating in the greater Sydney area over the past two years. There’s been a long-term rise in violent crime in the state that far predates the Minns government: the overall level in violent offences in NSW bottomed out in the mid-2010s after a decade of decline, and remained relatively stable until the pandemic. From 2023, however, violent crime has risen, with the trend concentrated in Sydney. Over the past decade, the number of violent crimes in greater Sydney rose by an average of 2% a year. From 2023, however, the average increase accelerated to 2.2% a year. In the rest of NSW, in contrast, growth in violent crime slowed.

Where was the increase in violent crime centred? Blacktown has endured a 10% increase in violent crime per year over the past two years, outer south-western Sydney 5.6%, and the south-west 4.5%. Violent crime has also dramatically accelerated in Sutherland — up nearly 10% a year, and the Central Coast, up 6.7%. In contrast, property crimes have been generally stable in NSW over the past two years — although that contrasts with a long-term decline in property crimes over the ten years to 2025.

This means the overall rate of violent crime — adjusted for population — has significantly accelerated.

Domestic violence and sexual assault are the two categories of recorded — not convicted — violent crime that have seen rapid growth, but bear in mind both of those categories are subject to victims’ willingness to report, and have historically had lower rates of reporting than other categories. This means the increase might reflect greater confidence by victims in the police and criminal justice system — although, given the dire level of convictions for sexual assault offences in NSW, that confidence would be unjustified.

The growth in crime stands in contrast to Minns’ high level of performativity over violence. He introduced tougher laws on bail for minors — spiking the number of kids denied bail — as well as for domestic violence offenders, in the wake of repeated murders and attempted murders of women by former partners. However, the BOCSAR data shows breaches of both apprehended violence orders and bail orders have continued to grow at high levels both over the past two years and decade; breaches of violence orders jumped nearly 7% between March 2024 and March 2025.

Minns’ greatest performance on violence, however, was reserved for the Dural caravan hoax, which the premier knew from police very early on was likely a hoax, but chose to label as “terrorism” and a potential antisemitic mass-casualty event. Minns rushed draconian hate speech laws through the NSW Parliament before the nature of the hoax was publicly revealed, and continued to claim the hoax justified the laws afterwards. The premier refused to give evidence to a NSW upper house inquiry into how he exploited the hoax, and initially refused to let his staff attend, before backing down in the face of threats of arrest.

Indeed, the primary contribution of Minns — a reliable supporter of Israel — to law and order in NSW has related to expanding powers of police in relation to protests and criminalising speech, rather than curbing actual violent crime. Organised crime gangs might feel free to butcher one another in public, and violence against women may be rising, but the real priority continues to be pro-Palestinian protesters, who are dealt with in all the rigour and brutality NSW police can muster.

#NSWPol #RightToProtest #WhyIsLabor

Droppie [anonsys] 🐨♀🌈🐧​🦘msdropbear42@anonsys.net
2025-06-30

crikey.com.au/2025/06/30/hanna…

Her right eye swollen shut, blood streaming down her cheeks. Hannah Thomas posted the image after sustaining injuries while being arrested and forcibly removed from a pro-Palestine protest last Friday. Thomas, who ran as a Greens candidate against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in his electorate of Grayndler in 2025, may lose sight in her right eye.

So far, the only person to face any legal sanction for this is Thomas herself — for allegedly hindering or resisting a police officer and refusing to comply with a direction to disperse — and four other protesters.

“I’m five foot one. I weigh about 45 kilos. I was engaged in peaceful protest, and my interactions with NSW Police have left me potentially without vision in my right eye, permanently,” Thomas said via an Instagram video from her hospital bed on Sunday night.

She had clear culprits in mind:

I look like this now because of [New South Wales Premier] Chris Minns and [New South Wales police minister] Yasmin Catley and their draconian anti-protest laws and their attempts to demonise protesters, especially protesters for Palestine. They’ve emboldened the police to crack down with extreme violence and brutality, and they were warned that those laws would lead to this outcome.


New South Wales Labor has always been clear about its views on protest.

“I don’t want to see protests on our street at all, from anybody,” New South Wales Police Minister Yasmin Catley said in the days following the Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. “I don’t think anybody really does.”

But in February this year, in the aftermath of the Dural Caravan hoax (more on that later), NSW passed new laws restricting the right to protest, and police were given additional powers to move on protesters near places of worship. Further, any conduct that could be construed as harassment or intimidation of worshippers could result in up to two years in jail. The laws also broadened the coverage of NSW’s protest permit system.

NSW Police has denied that the new anti-protest laws were used in the arrest of Thomas and other protesters, and said the protesters were given a move-on order for allegedly blocking pedestrian access to SEC Plating, the business being protested.

“The new laws that have been mentioned during the media over the weekend were not utilised on this occasion,” NSW Police assistant commissioner Brett McFadden told 2GB.

However, arrest documents for one of the five people charged, which have been reported by both the ABC and Nine papers, included a reference to a protester being outside a “place of worship”.

The flurry of legislation followed weeks of roiling media coverage of the discovery of a caravan laden with decades-old explosives and the address of a Sydney synagogue in the outer suburb of Dural in January this year.

As soon as the discovery was leaked to the media, NSW Police said it was considering whether the situation was a “set-up”. Australian Federal Police deputy commissioner of national security Krissy Barrett later contended that the AFP’s experienced investigators “almost immediately” believed the plot was fake on account of how easily the caravan was discovered, how “visible” the explosives were, and, crucially, the lack of any detonator.

None of this stopped NSW Premier Chris Minns from saying the police had discovered “a potential mass casualty event”, adding “There’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism.” The next day, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unequivocally agreed with Minns’ assessment.

In March, by which time the anti-protest laws had passed, the hoax was made public. There is currently a state legislative inquiry looking at whether the public was misled in the lead-up to the laws passing.

Minns’ chief-of-staff James Cullen — who, along with four other senior staffers had initially risked arrest by failing to show up when summoned the previous week — told the inquiry on Friday, “The relationship that’s been constructed by some between the Dural caravan event and the passage of those three pieces of legislation is extremely unfortunate and unfair.”

Regardless, McFadden’s insistence that what happened to Thomas did not require this new legislation tells its own story — the crackdown on dissent has been ongoing for years.

An illustrative detail into just how deep-seated and bipartisan the aversion to protest is in NSW: back in December 2022, under the previous Liberal government, then government minister Alister Henskens happily endorsed the anti-protest laws that sent his niece, climate protester Deanna “Violet” Coco, to jail.

NSW is far from alone. In recent years, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia have all cracked down further and further on dissent, either via legislation or police raids.

Since October 7, 2023, the primary targets have expanded from climate protesters — Australia leads the world in jailing climate protesters — to include protesters against Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

NSW Police assistant commissioner Brett McFadden was, as you might expect, unrepentant on 2GB: “Our police are asked to do difficult things every single day of the week, and in the information available to me, there’s no misconduct identified, and I back the actions of my police.”

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke expressed some sympathy toward Thomas’ injuries, but took a similar line.

“When people were asked to move on by the police, they should have followed the police direction. Apparently they didn’t,” he told Sky News.

“The issue of the injury will be dealt with by the police review, but for anyone wanting to have a protest, you know, no-one’s above the law.”

At the time of writing, Albanese has not commented on what happened to Thomas, his former rival for Grayndler and current constituent.

Political class are bucking fastards.

#RightToProtest #AusPol #WhyIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance

Bruce BroomhallBruceBroomhall
2025-06-28
2025-06-28

‘It’s a complete assault on free speech’: how Palestine Action was targeted for proscription as terrorists

It might even be illegal to share this in a week's time, so do it today!
#RightToProtest

theguardian.com/politics/ng-in

2025-06-22

#MetPolice arrested autistic #YouthDemend activist in supported housing as part of #WestminsterMeetingHouse #Quaker raid operation
theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/j

"They showed me pictures of protests that I wasn’t even in. They showed me pictures of [information about] upcoming events, only a few of which were actually protests, the other which were just meetings and free food events."

#RightToProtest #DirectAction

Droppie [anonsys] 🐨♀🌈🐧​🦘msdropbear42@anonsys.net
2025-06-22

citynews.com.au/2025/no-easy-a…

AFAICT this is a very real looming problem, yet our cretinous AusPol lack-of-leadership bullshit shemozzle is either exacerbating this, or at the very least, not helping. Eg... each time i begin again to ponder if i could possibly overcome my personal demons to fully electrify my home [ie, endure all the intensive peopling needed] when our gas prices rise [ie, increasing the economic desire to convert], what happens? Yep, our fucken electricity prices rise as well, thus reducing or eliminating the economic incentive.

Ofc all the climate, & moral, reasons remain to more than justify converting, but so far, w/o also the strong economic reasons, my demons keep winning the day. For normal, non-me, peeps, sans my demons, the confused economic signals alone prolly entirely prevent them converting.

Fuckheads, our govt. 🙄🤦‍♀️

#AusPol #WhyIsLabor #HahahahaLiebs #NatsAreNuts #GreensYEAH #ClimateCrisis #NonLinear #TippingPoints #PositiveFeedbackLoops #FossilFools #RenewableEnergy #ChangeTheSystem #StateCapture #RightToProtest #Biodiversity #WeAreTotallyFscked #Misanthropy #Karma #NativeForests #StopLoggingNativeForests #FsckCapitalism #CognitiveDissonance

2025-06-21

“Petitioner is not a flight risk, & the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,”Judge Farbiarz said. “Period, full stop.”

During an hourlong hearing conducted by phone, the New Jersey-based judge said the #Trump admin had “clearly not met” the standards for #detention.

The #DOJ filed notice Friday night that it is appealing #MahmoudKhalil’s release. [cuz they’re assholes]

#immigration #law #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #dissent #autocracy

2025-06-21

The #Trump admin is [still] seeking to #deport #MahmoudKhalil over his role in pro-#Palestinian #protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan.

Khalil was released after US Dist Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the govt to continue detaining a #legal US resident who was unlikely to flee & hadn’t been accused of any violence.

#immigration #law #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #dissent #AmericanAutocracy

2025-06-21

The former #ColumbiaUniversity graduate #student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his #UScitizen wife & infant son, born while #MahmoudKhalil was detained.

“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,”he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken 3 months.”

#Trump #immigration #law #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #dissent #AmericanAutocracy

2025-06-20

The story behind the arrest of 87-year-old #veteran #JohnSpitzberg at the Capitol

John Spitzberg joined a #veterans march at the National Mall on March 14 in Washington, DC. The 87-year-old veteran was #arrested June 13 at the US Capitol while protesting #Trump’s birthday parade spectacle.

#AmericanAutocracy #law #democracy #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #dissent
npr.org/2025/06/20/nx-s1-54384

2025-06-20

#Trump admin lawyers wrote in a June 17 filing that #MahmoudKhalil's request for release should be addressed to the judge overseeing his #immigration case, an administrative process over whether he can be deported, rather than to Farbiarz, who is considering whether Khalil's March 8 arrest & subsequent detention were constitutional.

#law #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #dissent #AmericanAutocracy

2025-06-20

US #judge orders release of pro-#Palestinian #activist #MahmoudKhalil

A U.S. judge ordered on Friday that #ColumbiaUniversity graduate Mahmoud Khalil be released from #immigration custody, a major victory for #CivilRights groups that challenged what they called the #Trump admin's unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist.

#law #Constitution #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #RightToProtest #FreedomOfAssembly #AmericanAutocracy
reuters.com/legal/government/u

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