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If poverty is a crime, what are those who enforce it and protect it?

from a-infos

Text with some thoughts on my persecution and detention in the LEROY MERLIN case

In a department store of a large multinational company, 2 people because of the poverty imposed on them, try to remove some products without paying them. This move is perceived by the store's security men. On their way out, they are asked to be checked by security guards and taken to the interrogation room of all commercial chains. Usually, the issue is resolved by paying the money corresponding to the value of the products that they have received. ---- For anyone who has an elementary touch with social reality, the above description is not a scene from a gangster and gangster action movie or an excerpt from a science fiction book. It is a snapshot of the raw everyday life that we are experiencing large chunks of the social whole that has intensified at all levels in recent years of the economic and social crisis. Such petty thefts in department stores and super markets are a necessary condition of survival for those who are strangled by the gluttonous world of "capitalist bliss". As a result of this financial impasse, I attempted to remove, from a French multinational Leroy Merlin store, products (related to my work ie plugs, insurances) worth 180 euros. But the ending...
The particulars of how this story evolved and how it came about, for me as well as for the other comrades involved in the events, are none other than our political choices, our political identity and action. From the consistent and unyielding, for almost 20 years, choice to be an integral part of the anarchist movement.

The facts
In summary, for almost 3 hours the insurance company Ovit SA At the behest of the employer Leroy Merlin, holding me and Comrade Thymi A. illegally, he threatened and blackmailed us into demonstrating as a collaborator - unionist John A.
In the first instance, we were asked to pay the amount corresponding to the products, which also results from the receipt cut from the store to end the event there. Due to our inability to pay on the spot, a partner was rushed to the store to pay the sum and contacted security officers to let him know he had brought the money. While waiting, I informed the security officers of my previous conviction, explaining to them that the involvement of the police and a new arrest might lead to a new arrest, as it did. They assured us "trousers" as the male reason in patriarchal society counts more ....

After a long wait, the whole "friendly" climate changed with the arrival of Constantinos Driva, the owner of the Guard Company. When he was introduced to us, he said that he should speak with the company's management. Throughout our hostage life, Drivas was in dialogue with his employers as he went out to talk to them. At one point he informed us that they were no longer interested in the money, letting us know that their priority was to have John Collins as a co-worker at the store.

But what happened all these hours and they were no longer interested in the money? Knowing now my open accounts with the state, they felt that they had a weak link in their hands and should not leave this opportunity untapped, so they called the expert. Driva, a former Army officer and trained in interrogation through threats and blackmail to NATO standards, was the right man to handle the situation, so he came to the store.

Appearing as a co-worker, John was automatically removed from his job, unburdening the company of the gangrene, as the security officer typically mentioned. At some point he asked us to write a responsible statement that we would mention as our partner otherwise the police call was a one-way street. After we made a statement that we had removed some items and the amount without mentioning the employee, Drivas got upset and tore them. At the same time, John had already been summoned and talked to the store manager, who was pressured to resign. Drivas returning from a meeting in which John A. was not able to succumb to the blackmail for his alleged involvement and thus launch his dismissal, she told us that the police had been called. Realizing that all this 3 hours of blackmail and threats were fooling us, we told them we would leave.

When Drivas began to become aggressive, the comrades and comrades who had come to give money, and were waiting outside the store, were informed of the turnaround. We didn't let LEROY and her minions hand over to the police as trophies, and we tried to get rid of our illegal detention. At this point, Drivas also practiced physical violence by injuring Comrade Thymi A. Finally, we managed to get out of the store and get away with our comrades.

From this point on, the formal repressive mechanisms of the police and the "justice", which have another priority, take over the case. My involvement in the events that took place at LEROY immediately sounded an alarm to ELAS. that went out of my way. The following afternoon I was arrested in downtown Athens. I was flown to GAD Piraeus with a hitting face and a hood. Following the arrival of 3 specific security guards and the Financial Manager of the Leroy Merlin store who were testifying as (false) witnesses, I was prosecuted for 3 counts of gross misconduct. The paradox is that, while it appears from their own testimonies that we were held hostage for over 3 hours, they were not prosecuted for illegal detention.

Immediately, a security guard conducts a 3-hour thorough search of my home, seizing objects that apparently have nothing to do with the events of the previous day but with my political identity. The next day, Prosecutor Maria Angeloudi, with the popular sports in the courts building their pop career by ruining lives, taking advantage of the inaccuracies and lies of (pseudo) class witnesses by upgrading this number and expanding that number. the way to my jail. The question that arises here is how to steal when there is no violence on our part and when the thefts are in the store.

Two days later, the interrogator George Pantelidis who during my 3-hour interrogation focused on my political action and past rather than on the facts of which I am now accused, asking me about the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, about the action of my collegiality, about the what is the position of the anarchists on violence and if we are financed by illegal acts it also gives official political character to the prosecution and the prosecution as well as with prosecutor Kamiliari who for the only thing asked me were the names of the rest of the comrades I naturally refused to answer, they gave me on paper a justification for my imprisonment with an unprecedented rationale, criminalizing the financially weak.

... We with our ideas... ..

The warmth with which the different pillars of domination moved can only be fully understood by looking at it from the perspective of class competition. To the question, then, which may reasonably arise in some "but why in you this treatment?", The answer lies in the position and attitude of life that we have both individually and collectively over the existing system of power.
As for the targeting of Yannis A. by Leroy Merlin and OVIT SA, it concerns his trade unionism, his choice to strike as well as his solidarity with his fellow employers. With the outbreak of the global crisis at the economic-political-social level, there is an attempt by the sovereignty to even tarnish the pretexts of "social contracts". In this way they are trying to get back what they had won in the past decades through claims and struggles. In Greece, the memorandums raised were a slew of anti-social-anti-reactionary measures that strengthened the ruling class, which is an integral part of large multinationals such as Leroy Merlin.

And while alienation is prevalent among the oppressed nowadays, trade unionism as a means of struggle has lost those characteristics of vigorous collective claims and has become either a means of personal enrichment and individual advancement through employers' associations or partisan paramilitaries. reproducing their mediating role and party interest.

Yet, even within this social condition, there are examples of selfless struggle. One of the most consistent struggles of recent years is the one against the abolition of the Sunday holiday and the opening hours of trade. Yannis A. is an integral part of this struggle from the first moment through his involvement in grassroots labor unions (and as a member of the Piraeus Trade Union), as a worker and striker actively contributing to the workers' resistance to employer stigma. solidarity with his colleagues targeted by the employer, setting the living example of class-solidarity. All of the above options are in fact hostile to the interests of a business group.

And when Leroy could not accuse him of firing him, he tried to involve him as my moron in my choice of expropriation, basing this assessment on the fact that we talked during my stay at the store, which was recorded by camera. For all normal people, greeting a Friend when you are in the same room with him is the usual thing. Now for those with sanity and mentality this may indeed be suspicious. Against this backdrop, anti-terrorist police officers go to anarchist trials and say "a normal life is a cover for someone who has an abusive behavior ...".

But this is not an exaggerated or misplaced interpretation on the part of the security forces, but a conscious choice to target it with many implications and recipients.

If that category was automatically granted, it would have allowed the company to fire him by unraveling the internal "gangrene", while sending a message of deterrence to every one - who was fighting for his rights - thus falling into the eye of the insurgents, and downplaying. depoliticising the fighters by presenting them as common criminals. Its
targeting continued as expected from the repressive mechanisms. Initially, he was brought to testify in the case, but the next day after the charges were upgraded, due to the political profile of the perpetrators, prosecutor Maria Angeloudi prosecuted him for the crime of direct complicity in robbery!!!!

My 'sinful' past was what played a catalytic role in the evolution and upgrading of the case. For the police-judicial cluster the problem of the "healthy" social body was me, so a team was immediately set up to identify and arrest me, which is what police say. It would be inappropriate or out of the question if he believed that in every complaint of attempted theft the Greek police fired at people. And home research went in a timeline, failing to search for thefts since they never left the store, seized political texts, convention minutes, an antique typewriter, digital media, and parachuting.

The investigator in turn has shown disproportionate interest in the structure of the collectivity I am involved in, what the anarchists' relationship with violence is, what the collectivity's relationship with EA is, and many others irrelevant to the attempted theft.

The justification for my detention could not, of course, include my earlier conviction for participating in a revolutionary organization. A category that I rejected from the beginning, at all stages of it, and I refuse to date. A conviction based on logical leaps and bounds. In this condemnation, whether I accept it or not, the judges see the actual challenge of the oppressed in the monopoly of the violence sought by the power, they see the attempt to destroy the exploitation system as an integral part of it. A system that seeks to shield itself with special laws, special services, special courts, and special treatment of prisoners, employing whatever means at its legal arsenal.

All of the above illustrates the political dimension of persecution. My purpose and case management in this way is of course not a personal vendetta, though it has a direct impact on my life, but on a more comprehensive and multilevel effort to exterminate the anarchist. - the anti-immigrant movement.

Part of this effort is the criminalization of partnerships, the criminalization of solidarity and mutual support, which are a key element in how we act and relate to the here and now, as well as our social proposition as anarchists. So the choice of some partners to come to the store to bring the money we were originally asked for and the protest over the three-hour hostage status was baptized by a criminal gang and cared for. They did as everyone and everyone with our own worldview would do. This choice is our actual challenge to the "values" of individualism, individualism, and the loneliness that sovereignty gathers in its citizens in modern societies.

The prosecution with the help of the informal investigating officer Konstantinos Driva, who fails to understand that not all people work in their own centralized way of thinking and maintain a disconnected relationship try to present the flow of the above events as pieces of a single story. on our side, which is not the case. They even try to assign different roles to it, through the police forwarding to the prosecutor's office, describing that I try to guide the others during our departure from Leroy. Let them know that we structure our relationships completely differently from caravans, cops and judges, we do not obey the orders of our superiors because there is simply no superior and inferior, there is no hierarchy.

... And you with your money and your guards...
Our era is one of those historic times dominated by the madness of riches, the
international immunity of multinational capital, the emergence of competitions through warfare, the explosion of inequality, creating the paranoid universe of modern man.

Historically, what sovereignty always strives for is to emerge as the only way out of these "natural" phenomena by juggling social reality. Masked with the mask of redemption fooling the good faiths, it has continued for centuries to carry out all its vivid openings against humanity and the planet.

Thus capitalist barbarism is promoted as a market economy, capital immunity as globalization, unemployment and redundancies as labor market flexibility, leveling of the poor as fiscal consolidation, concentration camps as migrants, barbarism as a protection of the citizen, Poverty as a lack of sociality... and so on.

In this mire of reversal also floats the anthropocentric clothing sold by large
multinational companies such as LEROY MERLIN. Behind the blatant advertisements and successful events, it seeks to conceal the on-going robbery it has committed against thousands of workers. Through the resilience of working hours, the dozens of accidents at work, the hiring of cheap manpower by the manpower company MANPOWER, the extension of
working hours without overtime pay, the 9-hour effort, the layoffs of workers with multiple sclerosis (case of sclera) , the abolition of Sunday holidays, the targeting of trade unions, etc. a Leroy recounts the true dimension of the crime that is committed daily to the exploiters of the adulterous beast of capital. This is the 'growth outlook' and the 'healthy entrepreneurship' that unruly politicians call on unreliable entrepreneurs.

This condition of unsatisfied enrichment by the few to the detriment of many inevitably slowly creates the desire to challenge the sacredness of personal property. The obstacle to this challenge lies in the twin ownership of property, security. Emperors, queens, politicians and every personified authority have always had their own armies, guards, and police.

Over the last one and a half centuries, security has become yet another area of profit, claiming a place in the world of market and demand. The first private security companies in the mid-19th century served as mercenary armies against strikers. The first and most well-known company for atrocities committed against the working class was the Pinkerton agency in the US that turned every strike into a bloodbath.

Today, the horror and fear delirium that prevails in the western world creates the ideal environment for the economic development of such companies. It is no coincidence that last year, out of the 1000 European companies with the highest economic growth, 7 were selling securities. Fear, threat and crime are the driving force behind their profitability.

In this favorable treaty, dozens of such companies have, in recent years, been founded and framed by cops, caravans, fascistos and army squatters in Greece. One of them is Ovit SA, which, in addition to the Leroy Guard, also enters into contracts with the Public Guard for Hospitals and Municipal Facilities, the most important of which is for the guarding of the port of Myrina Lemnos where NATO ships are also anchored. Its founder and director is former military officer Konstantinos Drivas with specialized training in the collection, collection, management and utilization of service information and a series of military seminars on NATO standards. Important knowledge that he is trying to convey to other gurus through seminars across IEKs. So expert on threats, in the blackmail and physical violence where needed, he proved this by the evening of July 12 to his employers. Those who rob workers on a daily basis for decades and those who have dyed their hands with blood from the brutalities committed by the NATO forces will blame us ...

Leroy Merlin and Ovit SA. So, they will talk about morality, they will talk about theft, violence, threats, 'gangrene', if this is not a reversal of reality then what is?

As for their efforts to renounce responsibility for the development of the case by throwing it at the state mechanisms saying that they have not been sued, for the prosecutions of all the comrades and especially for my detention, let them not frustrate trying to hide Leroy's director and chief financial officer, and Ovit's security officers are fully responsible for the outcome of the case.

The teeming scales of Thames.
"Of course we are all equal in the face of the law. It is forbidden for both the rich and the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg and steal bread. "

East France

Although the above quotation was written over a century and a half ago, it still
ironically describes how in a world where inequalities are imposed, there can be no justice. Thus, "justice" by acquiring a profound substance through its laws and its functions is an integral part of the mechanism of repression, discipline and punishment of the ruling complex of state, capital, patriarchy against both the internal enemy and the dangerous classes. The violent downturn of recent years through the burdensome taxation, the rising cost of living, the steep rise in unemployment, and the resilient and precarious forms of work have created an environment of deplorable social groups that are
raising the capitalist building.

At the same time, there is a systematic and orchestrated effort by all pillars of
domination to make social poverty or poverty as a condition that we are responsible for it (which has a dose of truth as long as we do not release those who oppress us, We are). So various policy bumps throw us the slacker of our bankruptcy once we have eaten them, calling us jabbers and scum because we do not hit public transport tickets, saying we were inept and lazy when we were euro. This is the day-to-day life of capitalism that 80% of humanity cannot meet basic survival needs.

For this reason it is compelled by the power to place as a dangerous and harmful to the healthy majority whole societal groups which have 'dangerous' class, political, gender, origin and other characteristics. The major good in this treaty is public order, which is seen as a prerequisite for the proper functioning of the system and for the further looting of our animals. For this reason, in times like these that we are experiencing, there is an extreme shift of repression and punishment from practice to existence, with the most typical example being the incarceration of people in prisons and concentration camps simply because they have no papers.

So it doesn't matter what you do, but who you are. Are you toxic-addicted and have small amounts of drugs? Inside. Are you armed and transporting tons of drugs? Outside. Are you x unemployed and owe a few euros to the public? Inside. Are you Aristide Floros a business executive and have you misappropriated 256 million euros? But of course Out. Are you anarchist and you question the system? Inside. Are you a cop and you are a fifteen year old anarchist? Of course outside, are you a woman and resist your rape? Inside. Are you a big bastard entrepreneur? Outside, the counterexamples are not over.

The judiciary system acts as Siloam's cradle to wash away the crimes of the rich, the superficial, and their subordinates. At the time the French frigate Hugues Mulliez, a majority-owned family parent and head of the Leroy Merlin business group where he started his business career, has killed two people and injured one more. with his speedboat in Porto Heli is in free circulation while I am incarcerated for attempting to remove items worth 180 euros from a department store!!!!

Although my pre-trial detention is about a month before the tragic incident in Porto Heli, the reasoning of the jailed judges explains in a brutal way the class characteristics of justice, which says "in view of his financial inability to earn sufficient income. His purpose is to misappropriate income and to incite him to commit crimes of theft and robbery as an element of his personality. " Simply put, my adverse financial situation is directly linked to the commission of crime, which are elements of my personality. Of course, they bypass the fact that because of my previous conviction, my bank account has been blocked (the payroll account is considered to be a travesty.

In the above passage we see the criminalization of Poverty in all its glory. In this inhumane situation, some try to expropriate a small share of the wealth they themselves produce and are violently abducted by the ruling class. Petty thefts in department stores and supermarkets and other self-reducing practices (car refusals, hitting tickets, paying tolls, etc.) are phenomena that have been exacerbated by their ownership of major social pieces years of crisis. This move in practice calls into question the essential point of commodity relations which is money but also the fundamental principle of exploitation, ownership.

Such "criminal" and "illegal" acts of defamation have left their indelible mark on the world history of the oppressed, from the mythical Robin figure of the forests to the social robbers and anarchist secular bankers, to their bank robbers. of the Italian autonomous. As part of this tradition, the only theft that I recognize as anarchist, worker and social being is that of exploiting man by man, by those who enrich us.

Dystopia, the dominant regularity.
If we look at human history we will see a complete repetition of it, a pattern we find again and again, wars, exploitation, slavery, hunger, torture, death. The aspiration for power and money leaves no room for the harmonious coexistence of humans, both with us and with Nature. Some times, of course, the reality is far more raw than in others, one that we experience today, both locally and internationally. The doctrine of law and order is applied (with varying intensity) from corner to corner of the planet as it seems to be the means of survival and of the reproduction of the capitalist system after the last crisis.

The last decade has been applied with undiminished intensity here by all political administrators. The fiscal consolidation and growth came hand in hand with the anti-insurgency strategy as the outbreak of the crisis coincided with the uprising that erupted throughout the country following the execution of anarchist A. Grigoropoulos in December 2008.

This strategy has spearheaded the multilevel attack of the entire state-state mechanism against the anarchist-antiwar movement that has gained much momentum and social roots in recent years. New terrorists, new police forces, new propaganda scenarios have come to bolster this effort to exterminate and terrorize both the anarchists and anyone who questions the government's choices. In this context, dozens of anarchists were found imprisoned, dozens of our squads were evacuated, dozens of invasions were made to our homes. In expanding this framework an entire village in Skouries was prosecuted with the tronomer, entire areas turned into police-demarcated areas such as Keratea and Lefkimmi.

The return of the right restores security and repression as a central political agenda. The first examples of this policy are the management of the case for which I am in custody, and six other comrades are being persecuted, with the rigor of the law exhausted and the indictment being extended, the police unexpectedly attacking a demonstration in Koukaki, the abolition of the university, the exterminated fall of the Exarchies that began with the evacuation of four squads in the area in recent days, the kidnapping and threats against a partner in the above business and the targeting of anarchy Rubikon's collegiality.

Poverty, repression, oppression, fear, despair will continue to be the regularity of power. The question, however, is not what they do but what we do, so that we can get rid of one and the best perceptions, especially of the persons who keep us trapped in the moving sand of the oppression and exploitation system. We have nothing in front of us, we have everything in front of us.

Either we are fatal to our extinction, or we are going individually and collectively to a world of equality, communion, solidarity and freedom.

The choice is ours.

Christopher Cortes, Korydallos Prisons, September 2019

https://vogliamotutto.espivblogs.net/2019/10/10/an-i-ftocheia-einai-egklima-aytoi-poy-tin-epivaloyn-kai-tin-perifroyroyn-ti-einai/