On 5/31/12 11:45 PM, koltzenburg@w4w.net wrote:
Hi Sarah, hi @all,
thank you, Sarah, for this new thread and thank you for sharing your activitities with us, I particularly like the teahouse :-)
Yeah! Glad you like the Teahouse. I can't wait to share the data with people and explore more ways to get it in the hands of women who need help editing!
at the annual meeting that picks up a 1920s Berlin tradition of lesbians who meet over the extended weekend of Whitsuntide, we met in Nuremberg (city of human rights) this year for another fabulous self- organized non-commercial bunch of worshops, plenary sessions, cultural programme and a manifestation in downtown Nuremberg - and all of this in 90% barrier-free arrangements, one of the acknowledged hallmarks of this meeting, called "LFT" (Lesben-Fruehlings-Treffen, lesbian spring meetings)
I love how you always share information about these gatherings. I do think that German lesbians surely must be the most active when it comes to intellectual gatherings, merely based on all the activities you share with us.
for the first time, a Wikipedia workshop was held (initiated by me and spontaneously co-moderated by a visually-impaired translesbian colleague), with 8 participants
Wow. I'd love to learn more about how a visually impaired translesbian participated and what she shared about editing Wikipedia.
for a short round-up of what "Lesbenfruehling" meetings are doing to promote transparency and openness also in other respects: the meeting also included a panel discussion on the current situation for lesbians in neighbouring countries like Croatia (to be joining the EU in July 2013), Poland (EU member since 2004), Hungary (EU member since 2007) and Russia (member country of the Council of Europe http://www.coe.int/ that is human rights- related), with Poland clearly on the upside, Croatia almost, and Russia and Hungary on servere downsides, with Russian regional parliaments having introduced explicitly homo- and transphobic bills that we are fighting against in international solidarity. By way of an example, our panel speakers from Croatia belong to the team who form the lesbian feminist mixed choir "Le Zbor" (www.lezbor.com) and the last song of their evening programme was from Russia and sung in Russian. We also had workshops dedicated more specifically to the situation in Russia and Hungary and in Germany, e.g. on an initiative to finally put up a specifically lesbian memorial stone on the site of the former concentration camp Ravensbrueck that was women only. At the downtown rally we read out the names of known lesbian individuals that died because of persecution during the Nazi regime (i.e. those who could not or did not want to leave the country early enough in those years).
Wow, sounds really moving and powerful the work that people are aiming towards. The unification of these womyn is pretty amazing!
this is just to give you an example of how LFT meetings work on a culture of openness that I think is close to what Wikipedia is aiming at, too,
Really great stuff. Thanks for sharing as always Claudia!
-Sarah