Aachen: Muffeter Weg 5 squatted

Machine translation from deutsch

Invitation to the resistant action week

Today, on 30.06.2018, the Muffeter Weg 5 in Aachen was occupied. It is planned to stay in the vacant building for a week. This week will be filled with all sorts of activities and space to meet, learn, try, network, make, fight, talk, read, celebrate or whatever comes to mind!

We invite all interested parties to come along and help shape. There is enough space – bring your friends / family / neighbors with you and make you a nice time or organize workshops, discussions, concerts, actions or whatever you feel like!

Why occupy?

There are many reasons to occupy houses. Some people occupy out of necessity – because they just have to live somewhere and maybe can not pay the rents. Others need space to build social / youth centers or – like us – to just break out of the deadlocked states and get a taste of how we could make life better. Occupations can be quiet or loud, offensively advocating political demands, or rather hoping that they stay undetected for as long as possible. But they somehow all have one thing in common: they override the existing ownership that governs our society, free themselves from the sense of powerlessness that so readily leans into our heads in the face of circumstances, and take their lives into their own hands.

It’s damned unfair that there are so many people who live in small or shitty homes or even have no shacks at all, while many homes just stand empty and dilapidated. It is simply not a condition that a large part of the houses in a city belong to huge companies or simply private people, who exploit the basic need of “living” of other people in order to increase their own profit. Examples of this are “Vonovia”, which as the largest housing company in Germany without batting an eyelash to his tenants all possible renovation or even maintenance costs imprints or “Home Company”, the centrally located apartments equipped with Ikea furniture and then for a slack 23 Rented per square meter.

The city belongs to everyone

It can not be that the targeted “revaluation” of certain parts of the city means that the cost of living rises so high that people who have lived there for a long time, are displaced and it can soon afford only a certain social class, there to live. And we do not even mind that in the city we live in, the city center is being designed more and more so that it is almost entirely geared towards consumption and the prestige needs of the city.

A city should provide space for all people who live there. We do not just want to consume and look good, we want to be able to shape the space that surrounds us and do the things we enjoy!

That’s why we decided to cast. We have observed that the building has been empty for several years and is not being used. The attached to the house, heated (!) Greenhouses have been unused for years. We did not want to take that anymore.

We have noticed that everyday life annoys us, that the world around us often makes us sad or angry, that working / eating / sleeping and watching a movie in between is just not enough for us. Therefore, we now take our lives into our own hands – even if they are spatially and temporally limited. We have taken this vacant space and have all sorts of ideas on what we can do better than just leave it empty.

Participate!

There will be a broad program – but this program is not finished, it is not immutable, but it should live on the fact that as many people as possible contribute and help shape their ideas and abilities. Therefore: if you can garden well, give guitar lessons, always wanted to talk about what gentrification actually is and how it works or just hang out with a nice coffee in the sun – make it easy! Take the organization into your own hands or find people who want to help you, but do not wait for somebody else to do it for you. We are all responsible for what will happen this week.