Category: Over 1000 people marched through Sydney for the last Reclaim the Streets rally in September, protesting the NSW lockout laws and advocating for a rollcall of worthy causes from affordable rent to mental health funding.
Now, Reclaim the Streets (RTS) is making its return, marching once more from Newtown’s Camperdown Memorial Park on Saturday December 12. The RTS team are calling on Sydneysiders to show up and advocate for a more liveable city: “It’s not fair to be locked out of your city by excessive rents and curfews. The city is not just an investment portfolio for the super rich, it’s our home too,” RTS write on their Facebook event. “Would you rather a park or a car park? A casino or a dancefloor? A community or a ghost town?”
The Reclaim The Streets movement has been celebrating civil disobedience and public partying in Australia since its first Sydney protest in the mid-90s, staging regular “unrehearsed, informal, illegal ‘guerrilla’ street festivals” on the roads and in the parks and laneways of the city.
ITM called the last Reclaim the Streets rally “part parade, part demonstration and part celebration of nightlife and dance culture,” while RTS’ main instigator Jahnine Skaif said the rally was about giving people the chance to fight back. “Sydney’s mood is down to the point where people seem ready to give up,” she told inthemix. “This protest was sorely needed and the right thing to do, to lift the spirits and remind our community we have a voice on this issue and so many other causes needing our attention.”
The Reclaim the Streets rally kicks off at 2pm on December 12 – be there, and RSVP to the Facebook event now.
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