Organisers are disappointed with a turnout of about a thousand people in Brisbane at a Black Lives Matter and Stop Black Deaths in Custody rally.

July 4, 2020

Fewer than a thousand people have gathered for a Black Lives Matter protest in Brisbane city, leaving organisers disheartened by the poor turnout.

The rally against First Nations deaths in custody comes just a month after about 30,000 Queenslanders rallied following the death of African American man George Floyd.

“I can not explain the disappointment,” Gomeroi Kooma woman Ruby Wharton told the small crowd gathered at King George Square on Saturday.

“It was okay for people to come out here and want to be a part of it when they were chasing a hundred likes on Instagram.”

“That is shameful and tokenism,” she said.

Organiser Bogaine Spearim told reporters the rally was intended to be a continuation of the global protests that kicked off in the wake of Mr Floyd’s death in May.

“Deaths are continuing to happen in Australia – Dave Dungay Jnr said ‘I can’t breathe’ before dying in custody,” he said.

“We will continue to hit the streets and disrupt until there is justice.”

Despite the small turnout, the protestors were vocal, shouting “Always was, always will be Aboriginal land” and, “No justice, no peace, no racist police”.

Garrwa and Butchulla man Fred Leone called on the Queensland government to conduct a broad review into black deaths in custody.

“F**k all has changed since 1991, since the last royal commission,” he said

“Black Lives Matter. They do not just matter cause it is trending, they matter every single day.”

More than 430 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are known to have died in custody in Australia since a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody delivered its final report in 1991.

Organisers are also calling for anti-racism training in schools and an end to racial profiling by police.

Mr Dungay died in 2015 after he was restrained by five prison officers in Sydney’s Long Bay jail after he refused to stop eating biscuits.