History often happens without warning and, even more often, against all our wishes and best efforts. Sunday, 3 August, was different. Hundreds of thousands woke up ready and determined to make history themselves on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The March for Humanity, a protest against 22 months of genocide and starvation in Gaza, was historic, not least for its sheer size. Sydney has not seen a protest so big since the march against the Iraq war more than twenty years ago. “Massive, unprecedented and huge”, Jewish anti-Zionist journalist Antony Loewenstein announced from the speakers’ platform in Lang Park. There’s no question the march exceeded 100,000 participants, protest organisers predicting the final tally could be triple that.
Half of Sydney’s CBD became a protest-only zone. Helicopters buzzed overhead, drowned out as the day went on by cowbells, drums, whistles and the banging of pots and pans to signify the starvation gripping Gaza. 
“Hello passengers”, said a prerecorded voice on the Wynyard train station loudspeaker. “If you’re here for the protest ...”. I waited at the top of the station escalators to meet up with members of my union. One wrote in our group chat that her train from Glenfield, two hours before the protest, was composed of just two groups: “One: Palestine protesters. Two: Footy fans”. Another chimed in: “We just came through Lidcombe and more and more passengers are getting on ... All walks of life. We stand together, it’s brilliant”.
They weren’t wrong. Up the escalators, in progressively larger instalments, came what looked like all of society. Every conceivable age and background; from choirs, unions, religious groups and political parties; from every suburb of Sydney, every corner of NSW and interstate.
The crowd exited the station and stepped out into truly appalling weather. The rain came in angry fits, and vain hopes raised by fleeting rays of sunshine were repeatedly dashed. Yet this was a day that masses of people wouldn’t have missed for the world. A very dapper man walked past me in Lang Park, hardly giving his beautiful shoes a second glance as they sank into mud. When children are dying of human-made hunger, or shot dead for sadistic target practice, would anyone let a bit of rain hold them back?
I tried to observe what I could by weaving through the crowd. The fastest way to move was by sloshing along the kerb of York Street, where a small river was flowing. Yet the people just kept coming. Homemade placards (“Penny Wong is a ‘non-lethal’ murderer”), keffiyehs galore, shirts with every conceivable slogan. Umbrellas, umbrellas, umbrellas. Each time I returned somewhere—Wynyard Station, Lang Park, or the woefully under-prepared Domino’s Pizza—the crowd was impossibly huger than before, as if I were returning on a different day.
The march was also historic because it was opposed by both major political parties and police. Two other great protest marches across the bridge—the 2000 March for Reconciliation and the 2023 World Pride march—were endorsed and even led by most of official society. The March for Humanity, however, was fought tooth and nail by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns and the state’s police force. Minns lied that the rally would plunge the city into “chaos”. Federal Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi (recently sanctioned by Anthony Albanese’s parliament for silently holding a sign protesting the starvation of children) explained from the platform: “It was never about traffic, it was never about logistics, it was always about protecting Israel and the Labor government from accountability”.
Minns made it clear that he opposed the bridge march regardless of how much notice was given. The NSW police took protest organisers to court to try stop it from going ahead. The outcry and overwhelming support from more than 300 organisations tipped the court ruling in our favour. “We’re here today because people power won”, Amnesty International representative Mohamed Duar told the crowd. Duar’s father still has the key to his house in Palestine that was stolen from his family by Israel in 1967. “I promised my father that one day he would be able to return, and I intend to keep my promise”. Sporting legend Craig Foster also spoke, and anti-war hero Julian Assange marched at the front with the lead banner.
In an encouraging sign, more trade unions than ever endorsed the protest and its pro-Palestinian demands. Flags and banners represented the National Tertiary Education Union, the Nurses and Midwives’ Association and the Electrical Trades Union, among others. As Maritime Union of Australia state secretary Paul Keating told the crowd, organised workers have played an essential role in struggles against war and racism throughout Australian history, from Vietnam to South African apartheid. “I say to my fellow trade unions, if ever there was a time to come together and be a force for good, now is the time”.
As part of my transport job, I drive over this bridge almost every week, and it’s still beautiful every time I do. But that did not leave me any better prepared for approaching the bridge on foot in the middle of the road. The slow but dogged pace, the onwards push of the crowd, the sprawling out as the road widened and the surging mosh when it narrowed again. The bridge loomed ahead like something to conquer, and the crowd moved inexorably to take it. Just as I had this thought, we began to chant: “Whose bridge? Our bridge!”
Cheers erupted as our contingent finally passed under the iconic steel structure. Beneath its magnificent arches, flanked by those gigantic hangers and moving cheek by jowl for a righteous cause—I have never seen the Harbour Bridge from a more beautiful vantage point. Even the bridge climbers above us, who would have seen the march in its full glory, missed something by being so far away from the action (though many raised their fists in solidarity).
Exactly halfway across the bridge, I felt something almost dreamlike. There were a hundred thousand people on this bridge. For a moment, this most famous Australian landmark belonged to Palestine. A brief pause in the chanting. The crowd was enveloped in silence and the sky in fog. I turned to the activist next to me. Did he feel it too? He nodded. “It’s like being in the eye of a storm”.
The crowd’s spirits were not dampened by the endlessly renewed bouts of rain, nor by the police’s sudden decision to block the end of the bridge and make everyone march back the other way. A protester, who on any other day looked like she worked in the quietest part of the library, fumed past: “It’s just a fucking power trip. Absolutely pathetic fuckers cannot hack that we beat them in court”. But perhaps for once in their life, police were telling the truth: at up to six times the anticipated size, the rally might have been simply too big to take the planned route into North Sydney. Not a bad problem to have.
Turning back did not mean giving up. The crowd left the bridge in perfect safety and order, proceeding all the way back to Wynyard Station, and then spilling out onto George Street until reaching Town Hall. “Show me what democracy looks like!” called the megaphoners; “This is what democracy looks like!”, we replied. 
After the march, leading Palestine Action Group organiser and socialist activist Josh Lees wrote on social media that it was “an absolutely incredible day. Minns predicted chaos. Instead, we had what we knew we would: a beautiful outpouring of humanity, marching side by side to end a genocide and demand our government sanction Israel. We’ve sent an enormous message to the world. Today the people spoke, and they said stop the genocide! Free Palestine!”
Each of those individuals amongst the people made a choice to give up their Sunday, catch overflowing trains into pouring rain, stand for hours and march for hours more, and rail against a genocide that Australia’s entire political, media and university establishment has covered up, excused and enabled. And by the sounds of it, most of those who came had been willing to do so even if all the powers that be succeeded in their uncompromising efforts to ban the march. “I was coming either way”, my GP’s receptionist told me the day before, when the court ruling came in. Facing the horror of this modern-day Holocaust, the spirit that captured Sydney on Sunday is exactly what gives socialists hope in the possibility of a better world—one run by ordinary people and not our genocidal masters. 
There’s one more reason that Sunday made history. For the first time ever, the Shit-Eater of the Year Award has been called five months early. Judges say they’ve never seen any nominee, let alone a sitting premier, eat so much shit over a single weekend. Give us a big grin, Chris Minns. With a movement this determined to end the unbearable slaughter of Gaza, there’ll be plenty more for you to come.

April Holcombe

Making history on Sydney Harbour Bridge: massive March for Humanity

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the world's iconic landmarks. The Palestine Action Group has organised for tens of thousands to march across it on Sunday 3 August to oppose the genocide in Gaza. We’ve just won a significant victory in the NSW Supreme Court: the NSW Police application to overturn the right to march has been struck down.
The right to protest this Sunday is a serious win. As Josh Lees, Palestine Action Group organiser, told media during the court proceedings, “Humanity in Gaza is at stake, and our humanity here is at stake”. The entire population of Gaza is starving. The Israeli aid blockade and constant bombardment have killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians already. The situation is acute, and it calls for urgent action.
The outpouring of public support for this protest has been immense. The original Instagram post advertising the event has been viewed nearly a million times. More than 300 organisations have endorsed the rally. At least eleven trade unions, including the Maritime Union, the United Workers Union, the Nurses and Midwives’ Association and the Electrical Trades Union, have pledged their support. Political organisations, NGOs, religious groups, and cultural institutions are on board, and the list of endorsements includes celebrities such as Stella Donnelly and Craig Foster. It’s been enough to pressure Sydney mayor Clover Moore to lend her approval to the rally, and fifteen NSW Parliamentarians, including five Labor members, signed a statement declaring their support for the protest. Even Sydney’s most popular meme page “monkeyboy.sydney” has shared the protest details.
Despite this, Labor Premier Chris Minns and the NSW Police have done everything in their power to prevent the rally from going ahead. On Thursday, Minns told the media that "the last thing we want, and the last thing police want, is chaos in Sydney streets". On Friday, the police took Lees to court on behalf of the organisers, claiming the protest on the bridge would be a threat to public safety. But it's not impossible to close the Harbour Bridge, and “public safety” was a cheap excuse to deny us the right to protest. 
The bridge has been closed plenty of times: twice in 2023 for a Ryan Gosling film and the World Pride march, in 2000 for the Walk for Reconciliation and in 2009 for a picnic. It’s also regularly shut for marathons, including one coming up in four weeks. None of these events have caused threats to the public, and in most cases they are far less urgent than taking a stand against genocide. In response to the argument made by the police that it would create disturbance to the public to allow the protest to go ahead, the Supreme Court judge was right to find that, “if matters such as this were to be determinative, no assembly which would cause disruption would be permitted”. 
Chris Minns and the police did everything in their power to suggest that the protest was already or could be banned. This was a lie. We have the right to demonstrate in NSW. But the fact that they threw everything at preventing us tells you something important about how society works, and why socialists think mass politics matters.
The late Marxist cultural critic John Berger once wrote of mass demonstrations that they pose to the state a challenge—either the capitalist class and the state repress them, and in so doing show their true, unjust motivations; or they're forced in the face of mass numbers and determination of ordinary people to let them go ahead, and in so doing reveal that there's a greater power than theirs below the surface. Our rally is not a revolutionary rehearsal. But it's important that we won this small test of wills between the forces of injustice and imperialism, and the humanity of ordinary Sydneysiders standing up to a genocide. The world is watching Gaza, and the world will be watching us.

Making history on Sydney Harbour Bridge: massive March for Humanity

Thousands will march across the Harbour Bridge for Gaza

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