Mardi Gras’ Anti-Trans and Genocide-Denial Turn Is Trumpian, Says Pride in Protest’s Miles Carter

This year’s Sydney Mardi Gras parade was something of a travesty. The Mardi Gras board banned the pro-trans rights/antigenocide Pride in Protest contingent from marching at the last minute, while NSW police officers then brutalised marchers from other floats over waving Palestinian flags.

So, Pride in Protest is petitioning for and demanding an extraordinary general meeting of the Mardi Gras membership be held.

This 28 February 2026 decision to bar Pip from marching wasn’t the first sign that Mardi Gras management was shifting in a conservative manner, as in January, board cochairs Kathy Pavlich and Mits Delisle sent out an email asserting that despite a successful 2025 annual general meeting (AGM) resolution to prioritise trans rights at this year’s festival, that would not be happening.

In mid-March, this creeping conservatism from the globally renowned LGBTIQA+ organisation continued, as Pride in Protest board directors Damien Nguyen and Luna Choo were stood down and a mediation process was announced, while the pair claimed that this had occurred due to their pro-trans and antigenocide advocacy.

Indeed, both these directors took out the most votes at the respective Mardi Gras board elections they contested.

Yet, as Pride in Protest director Nguyen was again stood down from the Mardi Gras board on Monday, 4 May 2026, and because this once more appears to be due to Damien continuing his vocal advocacy for trans rights and against the Gaza genocide, PiP is heightening its campaign for an extraordinary meeting, as well as calling for the sacking of the Mardi Gras board cochairs.

A globalised trashing of rights

Pride in Protest was established in 2018, as a pushback against a Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras that it considered too corporatised and so institutionalised that conservative politicians and law enforcement were being embraced by its management, whilst the fight for trans rights continued, as did police violence against queer people, as evidenced at the notorious 2013 Mardi Gras parade.

But over the last eight years, Pride in Protest’s advocacy had significantly shifted political and social stances amongst both the festival’s membership base, and also within Mardi Gras management itself, so that they held more just and rights-forward positions in general.

The drastic shift in the Mardi Gras board’s policies and actions this year, according to PiP, sees this queer liberation organisation being co-opted by domestic institutions shifting to the far right in allegiance with the US Trump White House agenda.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Pride in Protest’s Miles Carter about what has been unfolding on the ground in terms of the attacks on pro-trans rights and antigenocide stances held amongst the Mardi Gras’ grassroots membership, the fact that this has particularly affected PiP and its members, and the broader rise in global and domestic reactionary politicking that’s reflected in this saga.

Pride in Protest is running a campaign against the current way the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras board is operating, because the half-a-century-old institution has taken a “further step to the right”.

This conservative shift occurred after last December’s annual general meeting (AGM), when Pride in Protest’s social justice reform agenda gained huge support amongst the regular Mardi Gras membership base.

Miles, can you give us a rundown on what’s been occurring with Mardi Gras over 2026? And why does PiP consider that Mardi Gras, an institution founded on seeking social justice and queer liberation, has taken such a dramatic shift over the last four months?

The 2025 AGM saw the Mardi Gras membership support resolutions to embrace trans rights in the parade, to demand antidiscrimination reform from state and federal members of parliament and to pursue a 100 percent publicly funded Mardi Gras.

In response to these AGM commitments, the Mardi Gras cochairs, Mits and Kathy, sent out correspondence in January, publicly announcing they were shutting down these member resolutions, and signalling their intent to ignore the membership base and ignore the political, radical core of Mardi Gras.

What followed in the leadup to the 2026 festival was a series of systematic efforts taken by the Mardi Gras leadership to shamelessly disenfranchise, censure and silence the voices of pro-trans, antigenocide community activists, including Pride in Protest elected board directors Damien Nguyen and Luna Choo.

We saw the leadership’s disastrous cancellation of the annual Mardi Gras party, which was reportedly being organised by genocide-complicit Live Nation subsidiary Kicks Entertainment.

We also saw thousands of people, including members of the queer community, take to the streets of Sydney for the antigenocide protest of Israeli president Isaac Herzog, just a week before the Mardi Gras season was set to launch.

This involved the NSW Police Force, empowered by Chris Minns and the NSW Labor government, unleashing a shockingly violent assault against protesters, with 78ers at the protest, later remarking about the similarities of this police violence to that seen at the first Mardi Gras 48 years ago.

We then saw the current Mardi Gras leadership work alongside the Zionist lobby, with the support of NSW police to expel Pride in Protest’s annual pro-Palestine float from the parade, while both the American and Israeli regimes were launching airstrikes on Iran and destroyed a girls’ elementary school in Minab.

And this didn’t end here. Hours later we saw aftershocks of the same police brutality against queers marching in the parade itself for mere association with these antigenocide views.

Police attacked and detained trans people for holding a Palestinian flag and officers forcibly ejected participants from the march, primarily participants from the Drag Kings Sydney float.

The images from all these incidents combined have been deeply disturbing.

However, the worst of it was that at every step of the way in the months since Mardi Gras, the cochairs and leadership have only reinforced that these responses are not only acceptable but warranted.

By continuing to stand down popularly elected directors for their outspoken advocacy and continuing to put out correspondence demonising the antigenocide movement all while welcoming police violence against queer people at the parade, the dramatic political shift from the leadership is self-evident – so, we won’t stay silent.

Yesterday, Mardi Gras cochairs Mits Delisle and Kathy Pavlich stood down Pride in Protest Mardi Gras director Damien Nguyen for a second time. Nguyen was earlier stood down around the time of the 2026 Mardi Gras, along with Luna Choo another PiP director.

Both these candidates came in first in terms of the grassroots election votes for the board at the 2024 and 2025 AGMs.

So, why have the Mardi Gras cochairs decided Nguyen needs to be stood down a second time?

The Mardi Gras cochairs have continued this attack on the Pride in Protest elected board directors and as to why, it’s a good idea to look at the platforms that Damien and Luna were popularly elected around, and in particular, the one that Damien was elected on in 2024.

The Pride in Protest platform in 2024 involved ending violence against trans people and sex workers in immigration detention, stopping police violence against the LGBTIQA+ community, and further, divesting from genocide complicity, supporting the fight for Palestine and opposing police brutality and raids.

What is interesting about the act of continuingly standing down directors, is it is a tool of political leverage. But it is also a misuse of power in order to prosecute Zionist and anti-trans arguments.

So, to continue to stand down these directors constitutes a suppression of the popular community demands that the Mardi Gras membership had expressed at the AGM.

The cochairs also continue to not pursue these demands that have been made.

And notably in 2020, we saw that previous Mardi Gras director Charlie Murphy was then stood down by the leadership for supporting refugee rights. So, there is precedent here, and it is becoming more severe at this current time.

I seem to recall that at one point in recent years, there had been a groundswell of support for the long-term Pride in Protest demand of “cops out of Mardi Gras” and that even saw a change of heart from the board at the time. What happened to all that? 

In 2024, we had the off-duty police officer perpetrated double murder of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies and that led to a concession from the board to have consultations around police involvement in the parade, and that consultation returned a majority response in favour of removing police.

But at the AGM in 2024, the motion was not successfully passed in spite of the consultations and a similar outcome happened at the last AGM with the cops out of the parade position. So, that is not currently a position held by the majority.

Somewhat bizarrely for a queer liberation organisation like Mardi Gras much of its recent conservative shift seems to be a pushback at gains made in terms of transgender rights over the last decade or so.

Can you talk on what Mardi Gras is up to here? And further can you put it into the broader context of what is now happening in this country and around the globe in terms of transgender rights?

We have seen an increase in rightwing populism globally, which has been emboldened by Trump and Trumpian politics. This is not limited to attacks on queers, migrants and disabled communities.

Now we can see this same political momentum unfolding across this continent with the rise of One Nation.

The issues surrounding trans people are inseparable from the global fight for inequality and justice for marginalised peoples, and this inherently includes the fight against genocide and the fight for a free Palestine.

We believe that Mardi Gras has been co-opted by the political establishment to soften the dissent against Zionism, while actively silencing the voices that would ensure that Mardi Gras actively stands for trans rights and a free Palestine.

The first Mardi Gras in 1978 was a protest march for the rights and freedoms of queer people. In fact, it was a direct expression of international solidarity, and it was a protest in support of the most marginalised people: Black peoples, sex workers and Palestinians.

The spirit of Mardi Gras has always been rooted in radical protest and has always existed in solidarity with all experiences of oppression.

So, this coalition of the Labor Party, the Zionist lobby and the NSW police has seeped into many of our cultural institutions, and it’s why the current leadership of Mardi Gras insists on silencing any dissent from the queer community, who are exercising their democratic right to ensure that Mardi Gras is accurately reflecting the demands of the community.

Another point that PiP is making is the pushback on transgender rights and gains is occurring as part of a much larger and broader conservative shift amongst institutions across this continent and the entire globe. In many cases, this conservatism is creeping towards authoritarianism.

So, what is happening with this creeping societal conservatism more broadly, in your opinion? And what are the sorts of issues that PiP has been raising in this broader sense that the Mardi Gras board has decided are no longer appropriate?

The further that we see the rise of these far-right Trumpian politics in the form of One Nation means that the influence of these political groups on our cultural institutions will only result in a further pivot to the right.

The reality is the strategies that the Mardi Gras has taken to silence victims of police violence, antigenocide activists and trans rights activists will not work, and I say that because, what makes Mardi Gras significant is the way that oppressed people, including queer people, have the opportunity to speak truth to power.

The fact that the board does not have an adequate response to our speaking this truth to power leaves them with the only response they do have, which is to silence us.

We can see how this looks currently on the global stage with the way in which the Israeli Occupation Forces have been raiding the Global Sumud Flotilla over the last week and kidnapping civilians in international waters.

We can also see how there was an intense media campaign by the conservatives to force the City of Sydney and Clover Moore to cancel the booking for the public forum on the proposed banning of the protest slogan “Globalise the Intifada”.

These acts of political censorship to silence pro-Palestine activism remain a central focal point to fight in Mardi Gras because of the inherent link between these battles for liberation.

And lastly, Miles, Pride in Protest is running a campaign and petitioning for an extraordinary general meeting to be held. 

PiP started calling for the meeting at the time the notorious email from the cochairs was sent out in January. And the campaign too involves serious questions about their leadership.

So, can you fill us in on what PiP wants to see achieved from this campaign? And what sort of support is there amongst the broader Mardi Gras membership and the grassroots queer community in general?

Pride in Protest is running a campaign in order to call for an extraordinary general meeting, which will assert resolutions to affirm the motions that were popularly won at the 2025 AGM.

The resolutions involved standing in favour of trans rights and antidiscrimination reforms, and we are now also calling for the removal of cochairs Kathy and Mits from the board.

The actions of the Mardi Gras leadership this year have been disgusting, to say the least, and there needs to be more done in terms of action and accountability in response.

The Mardi Gras board cochairs are responsible for the undemocratic removal of email access, censuring and standing down of the Pride in Protest directors Damien and Luna, and in doing so, there was also an instance of misgendering.

Mardi Gras cochairs Mits and Kathy are responsible for this political censorship, and the same cochairs have turned their backs on the queer and trans community by ignoring the resolutions put forward at the 2025 AGM.

They have also worked together with the Zionist lobby and the NSW police to shut down any dissent on the genocide happening in Palestine, resulting in the antigenocide float being barred, as well as brutal displays of police violence that occurred during the Mardi Gras parade this year.

Broadly, across the country, we have severe crackdowns on the right to protest, attacks on migrant communities and increased police violence.

There has also been an increasing presence of rightwing ideology in public, and we need our cultural institutions to stand up against this violence.

The community has identified that the current leadership of Mardi Gras does not represent the values and demands of queer and trans people, and it is for these reasons that Pride in Protest is popular amongst the queer community because its demands are the same as the community’s both at Mardi Gras and on the street.

So, if you happen to be a Mardi Gras member and want to join us in calling for this extraordinary general meeting to vote on sacking the leadership and taking back Mardi Gras for the people sign our petition and join our upcoming meetings.