Northcote Freedom Protest: Police INVADE Peaceful Suburb

By
David Hiscox
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3
Scare grandma to save grandma.

It appears as though Freedom protesters have returned to last year’s tactics, organising smaller protests at suburban shopping centres to make it more difficult for police resources to be mobilised to stop them.

A rally had purportedly been organised for this morning in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, which resulted in a massive police operation which covered the entire city centre. Ordinary people going about their shopping were harassed in the morning by over-zealous police.

The ruse appears to have worked with a strong crowd of several hundred gathering at a shopping centre in Northcote.

Hundreds of police soon flooded the area. Sure enough, they started harassing local residents.

It is probably quite a shocking experience for Northcote’s mostly lesbian population. We have become used to seeing organised lines of police advancing on protesters in the flat streets of the city. Today they marched through a skate park.

And chased after kids.

Some protesters escaped into said All Nation’s Park next to the shopping centre, hotly pursued by police. Suburban streets were turned into scenes from Lord of the Rings, except instead of orcs chasing hobbits it was orcs chasing kids who just want an end to the lockdown.

At the Plaza they made the usual heavy handed arrests.

What appears clear from this is that the protesters are learning. Understanding that this is an information war, the early announcement of a CBD protest appears to have been a clever act of deception to buy themselves time. Targeting random locations throughout Melbourne’s suburbs will make it more difficult for police to plan countermeasures.

It will radicalise residents still slumbering in the illusion that the lockdowns may one day be over if we all just follow the rules. Being asked for identification just for going to the shops tends to have that effect.

Encouragingly, when they say “every day”, they mean it.