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Queeruption 2010









QUEERUPTION is a free DIY radical queer gathering that has so far happened in London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Tel-Aviv, Sydney, Barcelona, Vancouver and Amsterdam. Every Queeruption is a little different from the last one, shaped by the people who plan it, the community that makes it happen, and the possibilities of each new location.

In some of its previous incarnations, QUEERUPTION has been dubbed a radical queer encuentro (New York, 1999), an explosion of sex and politics (London, 2002), and a great queer camping trip (Berlin, 2003).

Past QUEERUPTIONS have included shared vegan meals, political discussions, direct actions, skill-shares, workshops, bands, spoken word, dressup and cabaret, dance parties, bands, film screenings, radical sex, spontaneous haircuts, and more.

The first Queeruption happened in the spring of 1998, when about a hundred queers spent a weekend together in a squatted building in South London. The goal of the organizers was to make a politically inspiring and educational gathering that was open to all, and was about us all taking initiative, creating and participating, instead of just consuming a lifestyle sold to us.

Since then, Queeruption gatherings have happened in New York, San Francisco, London again, Berlin and Amsterdam. In London, Berlin, and Amsterdam, Queeruption took place in a single location where everyone who wanted to could live together communally. In Amsterdam, Queeruption was held at the old Afrika and De Zwijger House squat. In San Francisco and New York, the gathering was spread throughout the city space, with events, meals and accomodation in different locations. In London it was possible to squat a building, use it for one week, and then exit, leaving it once again an anonymous, unused space.

In New York and San Francisco, queeruptors were welcomed into a variety of venues, including warehouse collectives, clubs, art galleries, infoshops, an alternative college campus and individual homes. In Berlin, the political crackdown on squatting made it impossible to house everyone together centrally, so the gathering was held outside of the city on squatted land.

While some gatherings have been more communal and others more spread out, some held in the city and others rurally, the overall effect is one of building radical queer community both within the local scene and internationally. Ongoing discussions within the community include\topics of race, class, and cultural exclusivity, ablism, gender binarism/transphobia, and the reproduction of oppresive sexual norms within radical communities. These topics are of central concern to many of us in our personal lives as well as in the political sphere and they also come up within the context of Queeruption itself. As a community, in an evolving way, we are grappling with these issues.

QUEERUPTORS are active and support each other in a wide variety of political projects, including Black laundry (queers against the Israeli occupation), Gayten-LGBT (queer safety, visibility, and solidarity in Serbia), Anarchist People of Color (building a revolutionary anarchist people of color movement), Queer Mutiny and Gay Shame (creating queer alternatives to political apathy and cultural consumerism), Indymedia (international, community-based alternative media), Paper Tiger TV (challenging and exposing corporate control of mainstream media), Women on Waves (providing safe, legal abortions in countries where it's illegal), PISSR (trans rights campaign to legalize unisex public bathrooms), the Noborder Network (opposing border fascism in the EU), Disarm DSEI (protesting Europe's largest annual arms fair), and numerous campaigns against the propagation of state terrorism, economic globalization and wars without end.