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Proletarian Shopping: The Cost Of Living Meets Popular Expropriation
June 30, 2023 @ 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm BST
Join us for another session at Mayday Rooms on everyday direct actions as processes of survival. This month we’ll be looking together at small everyday proletarian actions like shoplifting to wider political expropriations bringing free food to the community as a direct counter to the cost of living crisis.
Some examples we will look at in print and on short film are The Forty Thieves women’s shoplifting gangs from South London in the 50’s to armed political militants in 80s Chile hoisting meat trucks to Spanish trade unionists taking essential items from supermarkets and giving to poor families in 2012. Also we’ll think about ‘Can shoplifting be activism?’ and mention the teenage girls who participate in “Liftblr,” an online community of shoplifters who swap tips and share pictures of their hauls on Tumblr! Lastly, some time for todays German activists ‘The Price is Hot’ taking food from supermarkets and giving it away as well as running popular assemblies and demos in the streets.
What links these long histories is the moment where the glass shopfronts of supermarkets or the secure insides of commercial delivery trucks or freight trains become magically open as people break the illusions of private property and take back items useful for all? What are the messy everyday politics of individualised actions of shoplifting and larger collective expropriations of useful and useless stuff?
Come and enjoy a wholesome evening of radical examples of global proletarian shopping and bring your own favourite stories and tales too. Print material, short films and discussions. Come on down!
Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/proletarian-shopping-the-cost-of-living-meets-popular-expropriation-tickets-643005716407