Deanna “Violet” Coco never imagined that she would end up in jail.
Three years ago Coco was an entrepreneur, living in Sydney and running an events management business. She had “never considered” engaging in the kind of protest which currently sees her facing a maximum of 15 months in prison.
In late 2019, though, when Sydney was blanketed in a thick plume of smoke for weeks during that summer’s bushfire crisis, she had what she described as “a wake-up call”.
“My sister was pregnant and couldn’t leave the house because of the smoke,” she said on Wednesday.
“It really scared me. My life was very different then but that’s when I first started to really feel how bad things were. Before that I had never considered doing anything like this.”
This week, Coco was released on bail after spending 11 days in Sydney’s Silverwater prison. She was jailed after pleading guilty to a string of offences following a protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in April, in which she parked a truck and stood holding a lit flare. Three others were arrested at the same time.
Her sentence – a minimum of eight months in prison – caused an outcry as she became the first person jailed under controversial new New South Wales laws introduced in response to a string of high-profile environmental protests. So, too, did the fact she was denied bail while she appealed the sentence, a verdict the district court overturned this week.
The appeal of her sentence will now be heard in March. In the meantime, she told the Guardian in her first interview since her release, she is just happy to be home in time for Christmas.
“It’s been a really tough two weeks,” she said.
“It was very challenging. We weren’t allowed outside for most of the time I was there because, ironically, the prison staff were on strike a lot of the time. You’re in a two-by-four metre cement cell. I like to try to keep myself strong though. I could see the birds outside through the grate in my window and that kept my spirits up.
“But what’s really kept me hopeful and well is the massive support of everybody who has stood up and not let these outrageous laws go unchallenged.”
The laws increased penalties imposed on protestors who block major roads and bridges in NSW to a maximum of two years in jail, or a $22,000 fine.
They came after a string of similar protests which caused disruptions to the city’s CBD, as climate activists sought to force the climate emergency onto the front pages and into the front of people’s minds.
The protests caused a backlash among conservative media, and the government, with deputy premier and police minister Paul Toole calling for law enforcement to “throw the book” at the protestors.
Her eight-month sentence was “a shock”, Coco said, but she had “steeled herself” for the worst.
With her appeal still pending, Coco was unable to discuss the protest at the centre of her prison sentence and was cautious about discussing the new laws, except to say it was “distressing” to see others like her facing potential jail time.
Plenty of others have spoken up, though. A coalition of unions, environmental groups and civil liberties organisations have condemned the laws, while federal senator David Pocock has criticised them for falling on the “wrong side” of the line between protecting the right to protest and “the inconvenience it can cause to everyday life”.
Months out from the next state election, politicians have been less sympathetic. The premier, Dominic Perrottet, said last week that her jailing was “pleasing to see” and insisted protests should not “inconvenience people”. Labor leader Chris Minns said that he did not regret supporting the laws, saying there needed to be “action” when “mass protests were shutting down half the city and in a repeated fashion”.
In response to such claims, 170 civil organisations released a statement saying that “peaceful but disruptive protests” had “won many of the rights we take for granted today” including voting rights and the end of conscription.
“The freedom to protest has been a central part of many of the most important movements across this country, from land rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to voting rights, to achieving the eight-hour work day,” Alice Drury, acting legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, said.
Coco, who has a number of previous convictions for protesting in NSW, the ACT and Victoria, said she had “thought really deeply” about the role of protest in the climate movement, and the increasingly dramatic actions taken by activists both in Australia and overseas.
“I remember hearing Greta Thunberg saying, ‘I want you to act as if our house is on fire’ – and it is,” she said.
“I thought really deeply about that and what it meant to me, to act as if it was an emergency. I spent a long time on petitions, on one-day marches, gatherings on the lawn of parliament.
“I’ve got young kids in my family [and] seeing the fear in them at what is happening to our environment, with fires and floods, and understanding that it is going to get worse unless we take immediate action, it made me feel inspired to be part of the change to that story.”
