Gutter of Milk

I hauled myself onto a traffic barrier for a better view. Every direction was teeming with humans. They filled in until the streets brimmed as a mass of flesh. The Kooris and Murris mounted Sydney’s Town Hall stairs. Sovereign. One Koori caught my eye — Young and slim with cropped hair and a beard. Leaning on the concrete balustrade. His face seemed stranded in the crowd, dark eyebrows set deep with pain. Amongst him stood a group of young Africans. One Black girl’s straight, pushed back hairline made her look like Sade on the cover of Diamond Life. Beside them and into the distance, it seemed the entire left was out: greenies, green-lefties, reds, pinkos, anarchists, syndicalists, anarcho-syndicalists, tankies, trots, socdems, sovcits, libs and stray tourists. My posse of Asian punks stood around the barrier with signs reading: ‘Not your model minority,’ and ‘yellow peril for black power.’
 
‘Yo its like the blob from Akira,’ I told my crew.
 
‘Shut up dork,’ said Emil leaping up beside me. ‘More like the Spanish Civil War… fractured left and a fuck ton of strapped fascists.’ A police helicopter thumped its rotor. Too far up for the sound to reach the ground.
 
‘Either way, don’t think this is gonna end well.’ I said, dropping down off the blocker. Emil had tattoo of Manny Pacquiao on his calf. ‘Oi, speaking of Spain, durrys are Covid safe right?’
 
Emil reached into his cargo pocket and handed me a scrunched tobacco pouch. I rolled myself a thin smoke and thought about how my mum once told me that a Diamond Life cassette was the only piece of music she brought to Australia from Java in 1990. 30 years later, it’s her most played album on Spotify.
 
We marched through the city chanting ‘Too many coppers! Never any justice!’ and ‘I can’t breathe!’ until the sun sank. That’s when the Land Cruisers drove by. All black gloss and steel, marked: NSW Public Order and Riot Squad. The tiny tanks groaned past Central station. I could feel a lens aimed at my mask. A shutter released through the tinted window. The sound snapped at space like a shadow boxer striking.
  
‘Oi! The PORS are here to bash some poors,’ a khaki clad comrade shouted through Aboriginal flags and hand-painted BLM signs. The convoy of Land Cruisers pulled up and boots hit the pavement. The pasty pink puppets stood and stared in their taxpayer armor. Sweating at every adlay, HK, First Nations, Pasifika, African, Asian, Latino and Arab. All staunch and side-by-side screaming ‘FTP!’ The cops linked bodies like pawns and pushed forward. A border. Something they could understand. They kettled us backward and through the train station turnstyle.
 
‘Ay boys where’s the riot? I can’t see one,’ I saw a Leb with an Adidas cap yell from somewhere.
‘Too unco for raptor squad? Unlucky cuz.’ Joked a tall Fob gripping the morning star of West Papua on a flag post.
 
I backed away from the stand-off to find a place for the crowd to run. Sprinting through Central station I thought about my family. My mum, who saved me from the New Order, escaping authoritarian Indonesia with only her hands and her Honda. My Aunty, who tasted tear gas in the student movement that toppled the Suharto kleptocracy. All for Merdeka. All so I could have soft feet and a round belly.
 
I peeked around the corner, spot another squad of long noses — bored-looking PORS fingering their yellow plastic tasers. Ran back to the group but it was too late. I saw a young White lad first, suddenly drenched and shivering, spider-webs of saliva dangling from his pale face. All shades and shapes of body were sprawled over the tiles, writhing and clutching at their eyes and noses. Black, White, Yellow or Brown; pepper spray burns the same. Street medics in hi-vis poured milk and soap over their faces, looking for signs of shock and hypothermia. I helped the drenched White boy stay warm. I asked his name. Through shivers and a runny nose, he replied ‘Are youse. guys. cops?’
 
‘If I was a cop,’ I told him slowly. ‘I’d run off and you’d be left for dead.’
 
‘…Dogs…’ he sighed, falling unconscious.