Firstly I must say Australian mainstream media is an absolute cancer. I see these reporters at these events and they have zero interest in reporting what is going on, everything has to be some sort of narrative. I guess they just don't have souls, any journo's on here care to talk me through how they sleep at night?
Despite the misreporting however the event was a massive success.
We had in excess of 500 people attend with thankfully minimal representation of the ''alt-right' crowd,these groups were advised they would not be welcome..glad they didn't show because a skinny 5'8" bloke in a high vis like myself might have struggled to kick out 6'4" steroid abusers.
The ferals had their counter protest of maybe 100-150, bravely protesting against nazism, facism, the kkk, homophobia, rape, transphobia, mysogyny, immigration control, pollution..eating meat, drinking milk (excluding soy). Just kinda sad for them that we weren't actually rallying for any of those ideals.
Some protesters managed to sneak in and bravely pulled out a megaphone with a siren on it in order to drown out one of our speakers talking about her experience living in an domestic violence shelter with her 3 children. They were evicted with a bit of a scuffle.
There was also another siren in a chilly bin that went off, again bravely drowning out a young man speaking about his experience of being sexually abused and his multiple suicide attempts.
Any neutral walking past would have immediately seen who the good guys were and who the deranged lunatics were but thankfully aussie mainstream media can do the thinking for the folk at home by labelling it an 'Anti-feminist march' (SBS) or the MC as 'Extreme right campaigner' (Channel 9)
Anyway a bit of a rant but it was really successful, huge turnout had some amazing conversations with the public. So many don't know that 40 Australian men commit suicide every week and when I explained these stats to most folk they fully understood what we were about and couldn't believe the protesters. Had some chats with Mens rights campaigners nearly in tears finally seeing public support for something they have been fighting and being demonised for for nearly 20 years.
The best news however of the whole day was a call from 'Dads In Distress' the charity we were raising money for. They had been inundated with calls from men who had been watching the march live on youtube and for the first time felt some hope in their lives about the situations they were in. Many were suicidal and reaching out for the first time because of what we were doing.