Thessaloniki: Supermarket expropriation as a token of solidarity with imprisoned anarchist Rami Syrianos, who is on hunger strike since May 15th

Text that was shared out during the supermarket expropriation:

We won’t beg for a pittance from no boss. We live in a reality full of inequalities. Others wonder what to throw out from their filled fridge, and others look for food in the garbage bins. Others are looking after a career with high salaries, and others chase after a day wage to survive. Others wonder about the ways of exercising their civil rights while others have absolutely no legal right. The balances developed for the preservation of this reality, as it is, are vulnerable; we will be striking right there.

Expropriated products from the supermarket will not be missed as staple goods by anybody; they will only be missed by the store’s boss as profits. Rather than begging a boss for mercy or for a few poorly paid working hours at his/her service, we prefer to take goods without paying when, otherwise, we cannot obtain basic necessities. Thus, we see that for a while we break this cycle of slavery, claiming a few hours of our day for doing something more constructive.

The war rages on. No need for us to declare one. There’s need for us to organize, to defend ourselves against the bosses’ onslaught by finding ways to deal blows to them. Far from the cliché that portrays us as modern-day Robin Hoods, and without claiming any avant-garde position, we want to share motives and incentives. Moves like this one are a way but not an end in itself. We’re not content to simply have bosses around to steal or beg from, or to live from their garbage. We wish to be responsible for ourselves and our relationships, and we don’t want anybody over our heads to arrange things for us.

An open wager that may come at a price…

As we choose to move in this way, we don’t forget the comrades from Larissa who are still prosecuted and awaiting trial on charges of abetting predatory theft, punishable with imprisonment between 5 and 20 years, for an action in February 2009, just like ours today (18/5).

We neither forget comrade Rami Syrianos, who has been imprisoned because he expropriated money from the dealer of stolen property ODDY, an organization that plays the role of the State’s fence by selling cars confiscated from people because of debts at auctions. His trial is rescheduled for May 21st. In Nigrita prisons, where he is now being held, Rami has been targeted by the prison service because of his participation in the inmates’ struggles and his resistance against the humiliation of strip search. A special regime of isolation has been imposed on him, as he has spent the longests time in solitary confinement in this prison, alone in the newcomers’ cells. From May 15th he went on hunger strike demanding an end to this regime as well as his transfer to another prison. We are by his side.

… Yet a wager that’s worth winning.

May 2012