Crossover-Conference 17. -20. January 2002 Bremen, Germany

During during a weekend in January the northern German city Bremen has been place of one of the biggest German ‘radical left’ conferences in the last years. Over 700 people joined the ‘Crossover Conference’ to discuss and ‘attack networks of power’ –as the motto of the gathering was. Issues had been: the links between patriarchy, sexism, racism, anti-semitism, islamophobia, globalisation, neoliberalism, nationalism and the demonstration concept ‘Pink and Silver’ its perspectives and chances, or the chances and limitations of Queer politics.
The intention to organize such a conference, which was planned and carried out by the antiracist antisexist summer camp project(  http://www.summercamp.squat.net ) was to embed (pro)feminist perspectives in the radical left discourse and let them become a matter of course, to observe networks of suppression systems as a whole and to bring people with different political focuses and from different countries together.
The latter was obviously stressful: people from Poland, Greece, France, Spain, England, The Netherlands and other countries participated. If the first listed intentions will become true won’t be clear until the next years, but the unexpected huge number of interested people seems promising. Also there will be continuing events:
19/04/02 - 22/04/02 the ‘Crossover seminar’ in Berlin. Topics will be an evaluation of the Crossover Conference and the question how to link theoretical enlightments with practice.
03/08/02 – 10/08/02 the ‘Crossover Summercamp’ in Germany, Poland or somewhere else.( depends from which countries the people will join in the preparation group!) The new preparation group was founded during the conference in Bremen, but it still searches for more participation especially from other countries like Germany.

Two days before the beginning already five hundred people have been registrated. In the evening of Thursday the 17th the majority of people arrived for registration or check-in. Different prices for different wages or no income groups, and travel-cost- support enabled many people financially to join the Crossover Conference.
Very soon it became clear that more than 700 people arrived to join the Crosssover Conference and would need a sleeping place for the following days. Many people went to the different organized sleeping places in the city, most of them really close to the different venues. Shared flats/houses and housing coops offered people space to live during the gathering. Nobody of the organizers had expected that number of people interested in exchange and networking, in discussion and (particular) action around the mentioned issues.
The ‘Paradox’ a self-organized, left wing lecture and workshop centre- was transformed into the information centre and one of the eating places during the conference. Rampenplan a cooking collective from The Netherlands prepared vegan food with help from the Crossover Conference participants. Although the organizer handed out a city-map with the special locations to everybody- the result: you could see lots of searching rucksack or left-wing people in the special district in Bremen. For those who needed or decided for a little break it was always possible to go out for a coffee especially because the atmosphere was quit relaxed referred to nazi and/or police repression.

At the opening ‘gala’ at the Thursday evening a variety of workshops, films and plans have been presented to the audience so that they could better dicide to which workshops they would like to go and it they rather would like to choose a discussion group ar a practical workshop.
The first workshop phase started on Friday morning. In the next two days several other workshop blocks followed. There have been a number of prepared workshops for which it was possible to download some texts from the internet web page in advance to the conference as a kind of background knowledge. (They are still there have a look!  http://www.summercamp.squat.net )
This material was also available as a Crossover-Reader in German and English. Some people decided spontaneous to offer workshops to the different participants of the conference to come to a process of interchange not only because the number of people caused particular problems especially with small workshop rooms, translation and the which to discuss afterwards.
The workshops have been for example about: Prostitution; Gender Binarism; Sexual Violence; The Military and War-Towards an Antisexist Antiwar Resistance; Racist Mobilisation after September 11.; Postmodernity, Education and Class; Gender roles in the Globalisation; Children Games under the focus of exclusion; Radical Cheerleading, Pink and Silver- Chances and Limitations; Lesbian, gay and queer issues connected to questions of capitalism; Masculinities; Power; Critique of science a workshop about the new ‘Antiterror law’ in Germany and one about the Nato Congress in Munich in February ; Questions of normality in the context of disability has been another issue for example. Queerruption from London and the NO-Border-camp-team presented their plans for 2002 to the participants of the conference. A kind of kindergarten was organized for those who came with children.
Events like a pink and silver action, the workshop about children’s games and a cross dressing or up dragging evening have been more actively. Another important action was a spontaneous demonstration against the deportation of Kurdish-Lebanese people on Sunday morning. The Crossover Conference showed that it is difficult to bring people from different backgrounds together but not impossible. Not seldom the accusation of academic speech was mentioned-something which should be recognized within new plans…
After the last workshop block on Saturday the ending event started-dance and party in different self organized venues. A colourful and long night, which allowed mobility between the different places…
On Sunday morning the last day, the different workshops presented the results to everybody in a huge room, so that the participants could imagine how and what other people did on the Crossover Conference.

The Conference has been a great event in Bremen with some difficulties like the problem for everybody to get out of the consumer role or translation problems. Positively was the feedback about the antisexist/(pro) feminist atmosphere of many ‘women’ who decided to come for the first time again to a mixed meeting.

Continued and developed again on the Crossover Camp (from the 03/08/-10/08/2002)? The organisation team still needs more participants to make this idea happen….
Mail to:  summercamp@squat.net