I certainly see where you’re coming from, and look, a lot of those present at the conference (myself included) are not big fans of the police. Apart from the obvious reasons, three years ago, Perth police attacked that conference’s action and bashed and arrested numerous people, including our then queer officer and deputy queer officer, both friends of mine. As a general principle, encounters between queers and police is something to be wary of.

The issue that was raised here is that actual situations where one might need to seriously call the place are not necessarily a hypothetical situation, considering this conference’s history with nasty incidents happening internally. There’s also a strong secondary concern about vigilantism after the disastrous 2007 conference, which could have killed the entire event for good. In short, the sorts of issues where we’re talking about having to actually engage cooperatively with the police are ones where there’s unlikely to be serious trouble, especially since the compromise wording called for LGBT liaison officers to be called if it had to happen.

The final issue that was raised is that the police don’t care whether the conference wants them there or not. It’s not going to anything about police abuses either way, but the people that are going to have to deal with its consequences are the delegates. Considering (esp in light of past lessons) that police may actually need to be called in the future, putting pressure on delegates who have a good reason to do so not to do winds up amounting to shaming.

And that was precisely the point: the assault people thought had happened didn’t, and the entire conference came away feeling very unsafe - such that half of this conference had to be spent discussing issues of dispute resolution so the conference could actually continue.

I would also say that it would be very sensible, not just from a viewpoint of anarchist principle, but from a very pragmatic viewpoint of self-protection, because police coming into a queer/trans conference effectively equals queer and especially trans people getting beaten, raped and maybe even killed by police.

On the other hand, i suppose explicitly having such a statement in conference policy *might* give police more of an excuse to come in in the first place, so… dunno.

I’ve got to say that, if someone who actually had committed sexual assault was attacked at such a conference, and attempted suicide as a result, then… fucking WIN (see Kyle Payne)… but, it’s something that you REALLY shouldn’t do without ABSOLUTE certainty…

Question: were many of the socialists queer?