Backstory: Rubbing out racism

In Dresden, the thinking changed after around 1,500 Dynamo fans charged a woefully undermanned police force of 150 following a match in September 2002, causing thousands of dollars of damage and injuring a mounted police officer. The city freed up money for a position that would coordinate efforts to sensitize young soccer fans. At the time, Kabs was a sociology student who had come to Dresden from northern Bavaria and was working on his thesis on soccer hooliganism. "It was a lucky coincidence," he says.

He applied for the job and got it before finishing up his paper half a year later. The fan project at Dynamo began in March 2003. Three people now work on the initiative: Kabs, project founder Torsten Rudolph, and Sebastian Walleit. The group works out of a two-story gray "fan house" near the Dynamos' stadium in Dresden.

Their central thrust is to get to kids early with an antiviolence, antiracism message. The trio talks to youth groups and provides a room where teens can congregate after school. It organizes soccer tournaments between Dresden fans and teams of immigrant children. Kabs and colleagues will do role-playing with young people in which the teens are asked to defuse a situation, like a violent encounter with a fan or a racist remark in a stadium.

Schools are a central focus, too. Organizers often bring black players, such as Daniel Wansi, a Cameroonian who played for Dynamo in 2005, into classrooms. Once they took students to a traveling exhibit on racism in soccer. "When we began discussing it, you could see that some of them had already been exposed to that sort of [anti-foreigner] thinking," says Kabs of the students. "A lot of their classmates who had immigrant parents were shocked at what was coming out of their mouths."

The biggest challenge may be to reverse what young people have learned sitting around the dinner table at home. An unemployment rate of 18 percent in Saxony, of which Dresden is the capital, contributes to an anger that fuels extremist ideology. Some racism is reinforced by comments posted on Internet chat rooms. "We have a lot of unemployed people here who are extremely frustrated," says Mr. Pätzug. "There are armies of disillusioned [people] who don't reject right-wing philosophies."

Isolated monkey chants still occur occasionally. In the second half of the Cottbus game, Dynamo fans begin chanting "Gypsies FC, Gypsies FC," an insult to Cottbus fans that reveals a lack of sensitivity as much as any visceral hate.

Kabs and his colleagues know there is only so much they can do. For one thing, they're dealing with deep-seated social behaviors. For another, they're doing it on a shoestring budget: The Dynamos sponsored the project with 25,000 euros this season and money may be even tighter next year, after a 15th-place finish by the team.

As the sun begins to set on the Cottbus match, the mood among Dynamo fans is quiet after a scoreless tie. Most are getting ready to make the 10 minute walk, complete with police escort, back to the train station. Kabs is relieved that things on this day went smoothly.

"The problems aren't going to disappear," he says later. "But ... we need to band together and say, 'Ok Dynamo is not a Nazi club and there are many, many people who are sickened by it.' If we accomplish that, it will be a big step."

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