The Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act — known universally as VLAD — was Queensland legislation introduced in October 2013 that targeted declared criminal organisations with mandatory sentencing provisions harsh enough to alarm civil libertarians well beyond the motorcycle community. The response from riders across the state was immediate: a convoy through the CBD, followed by a rally in Roma Street Parklands that drew several thousand people.
I photographed both the convoy approach and the rally, and what struck me was the range of people involved. The assumption that this was a gathering of one particular demographic was wrong the moment you started looking carefully. There were veterans, tradies, women with children, and people who appeared to have no connection to motorcycles at all beyond a shared concern about what the laws implied about the exercise of state power.
On the portraits: The faces at this rally were extraordinary to photograph. The combination of leather, open outdoor light, and the particular intensity that comes with genuine political grievance gave me portraits I would be happy to make at any event. The bald man with the grey beard, seated against the stone wall smoking with complete composure — that is the image that defines the day for me.
On the speakers: Several speakers addressed the crowd from a portable stage. The best were the ones who had clearly been through something with these laws personally — they spoke with the flat certainty of people describing their own experience rather than making a general argument. A woman in a black NYPD shirt gestured her way through a speech that had the crowd listening closely. A man named Sir Grant, in a denim vest covered in patches, spoke with the kind of gravel voice that carries without needing much amplification.
On the group photograph: Near the end of the rally, a group of about thirty riders gathered around a hand-lettered sign that read “VLAD Laws are bad politics.” They were smiling. After several hours of speeches and marching, the mood had landed somewhere between defiant and celebratory.
The VLAD laws were substantially amended in subsequent years. The protest was one of the largest civil liberties demonstrations Brisbane had seen in some time.