Yes, let`s squat again
Trapped by contracts, orders an regulations – it’s time to break free.
If the legal contract with an autonomous center is terminated we* are able to take a new step towards empowerment. The uprising takes shape and we can already feel it´s warmth, like numbed hands coming back to life in a mad tickling. We won´t complain no more, that the shitsystem as it is won´t let us have spaces of dissent. We understand that we will always have to fight for our politics, art and culture, since our ideas draw a line against the ruling class – razor sharp.
The autonomous center in Cologne has been the crystallization point of our debates and struggles in the last years – may all of it continue. The ideals that have been present in this house, for which we argued and which we celebrated, for which we had discussions and worked for, those ideals are independent of any rigid building. After all a building is just a small space in a world of force and oppression.
Defending a loved project may be a symbolic act in this respect or it could as well be the starting point for a new wave of squatting and bringing about a resistant every-day life.
The attack on the autonomous center in cologne is indivisible from the general threat that is forced upon any self-governing, libertarian and emancipatory project wherever it may be. We don´t want to answer this attack from a mere position of defense, we want to widen the cracks within the idea of a consumable and dictated city. Filling the cracks with life – thistles in gray concrete!
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Comment on the use of *:
The text employs a construct of “we” which is not aiming towards discrimination or othering. We are conscious about the fact that a text originating from a predominantly white, male, heterosexual, academic and able bodied context might reproduce such dominating positions. The text was furthermore written from the perspective of an affinity group closely associated with the AZ and it’s structures. Still it is our intention that this “we” especially includes and may speak to socially marginalized groups like People of Colour, FemaleLesbianTransInter* and many more. Allready this intention may be contradictory in itself.
Gather & Resist
http://gatherandresist.blogsport.eu/
Autonome Zentrum Köln
http://az-koeln.org/
