„Train for the Marathon!“
Brief Report from the No Border lasts forever – Conference in Frankfurt
More than 400 participants from all over Germany and a few other European cities joined the antiracist conference from 21st to 23rd of February 2014. About half of the participants have been refugees and migrants and also the most inputs on the stage-podiums and in more than 20 workshops came from speakers of selforganised groups or from activists from networks in a mixed composition.
It was the third conference under this title and it was not only the biggest but also the most powerful and multilingual coming together within last years with a fruitful exchange and strong mutual inspiration. Moving between multiplicity and unity and touching also internal conflicts of last years a series of productive discussions took place in an atmosphere of respect and solidarity. Reflections on the past experiences could be connected with interesting projects for the future months. The strengthening of lasting structures to undermine the borderregime on a daily level could be combined with new ideas of mobilisations to common events. The movements calendar of next months includes now a lot of networking activities, be it against the campsystem, against Dublin II/III regulation or deportations. But in the same time all groups and networks agreed to converge in the most transnational and ambitious project of next time: in the march for freedom from Strassbourg to Brussels starting around 20th of May and in the following common actiondays in the european capital from 21st to 27th of June.
Ending with a few quotations from the final plenary: „The conference was perfect in exchange and inspiration. Our movement has the potential to change Europe. But we are not sprinters, we have to be Marathon runners.“