Spain's 'Robin Hood' Mayor, Robs Supermarkets, Gives Groceries To Poor

[ComradeChe]

MADRID, Aug 15 (Reuters) - A Spanish mayor who became a cult hero for staging robberies at supermarkets and giving stolen groceries to the poor sets off this week on a three-week march that could embarrass the government and energise anti-austerity campaigners.
Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, regional lawmaker and mayor of the town of Marinaleda - population 2,645 - in the southern region of Andalusia, said food stolen last week in the robberies went to families hit hardest by Spain's economic crisis.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/juan-manuel-sanchez-gordillo-spanish-mayor-steals-food_n_1778253.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I wholeheartedly endorse trolling the bourgeois electoral system. Keep making a scene until the guys upstairs remove you. :cool:

[The Idler]

Surely we can aim higher than trolling until being removed from the electoral system?

[Robespierres Neck]

Awesome.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Surely we can aim higher than trolling until being removed from the electoral system?

No, they won't let you.

[The Idler]

No, they won't let you.
We're revolutionaries, we're not asking for permission.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

We're revolutionaries, we're not asking for permission.

They don't need to offer permission. Bourgeois "democratic" states already have structures and institutions in place that can effectively shut down or co-opt any attempt at meaningful reform. The best you can expect is capitalism with a human face, if that.

[bricolage]

there's an interesting discussion about this on libcom, a bunch of spanish posters saying gordillo didn't organise the supermarket action but both he and the media like to make it seem like he did. I don't this is all as clear-cut as the article makes out.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

there's an interesting discussion about this on libcom, a bunch of spanish posters saying gordillo didn't organise the supermarket action but both he and the media like to make it seem like he did. I don't this is all as clear-cut as the article makes out.

Someone on libcom said that Gordillo was being made into a icon for a reason. I think it is to build him up as a figure, meaning that resistance will crumble once he goes as everyone is fighting for him. Not many news reports actually focussed on the real drive behind it, the unemployment and bin scrabbling for food.

[DDR]

Someone on libcom said that Gordillo was being made into a icon for a reason. I think it is to build him up as a figure, meaning that resistance will crumble once he goes as everyone is fighting for him. Not many news reports actually focussed on the real drive behind it, the unemployment and bin scrabbling for food.

Gordillo has been an icon for the andalusian jornaleros (peasants without land) for almost 30 years and an example of a honest politician for all the spanish left, so that's utter ridiculous. The attention only was focused in the fact that he took the grocerys in an illegal way (It is not illegal to steal food in Spain in cases of extreme necesity or without profit).

[Crux]

I wholeheartedly endorse trolling the bourgeois electoral system. Keep making a scene until the guys upstairs remove you. :cool:
Uh Gordillo's been around for 30+ years. If the higher-ups in the IU wanted to and could remove him they would have done so by now.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Interesting documentary about Gordillo and the town of Marinaleda - in spanish with english subtitles (with a poor translation I might add).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rlqT4NPM9E

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Uh Gordillo's been around for 30+ years. If the higher-ups in the IU wanted to and could remove him they would have done so by now.

Fair enough, I thought he had only achieved office recently. Has he done this sort of thing before?

[DDR]

Fair enough, I thought he had only achieved office recently. Has he done this sort of thing before?

Hes the mayor of a town called Marinaleda, in which there's no police, no unemployement and the townhall gives you a house for a morgage of 15 euros per month less if you work in the building of the house. Also hes a member of the Andalusian parliament for IU (he's form the CUT-BAI, colective for the union of workers-andalusian left bloc, wich is in IU) for many years too. And the union in wich he is, SAT, is prone to make things like expropiate lands, this summer for example there were two, Somonte wich is from some aristrocrat (still expropiated) and Las Turquillas wich is from the Military (was evicted shortly after this things)

So yeah, he's been for long doing this.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Fair enough, I thought he had only achieved office recently. Has he done this sort of thing before?
Have a look at the video I linked to above your comment.

[The Idler]

They don't need to offer permission. Bourgeois "democratic" states already have structures and institutions in place that can effectively shut down or co-opt any attempt at meaningful reform. The best you can expect is capitalism with a human face, if that.
We can't be shut down or co-opted since we're committed to revolution - a higher expectation than attempting meaningful reform. Any state structures, institutions obstructing revolution will be swept away by the tide of popular suffrage.

[Pawn Power]

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/08/27-0

The dude has a photo of Che in his office.

[ckaihatsu]

Interesting documentary about Gordillo and the town of Marinaleda - in spanish with english subtitles (with a poor translation I might add).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rlqT4NPM9E


Excellent documentary -- it shows what's actually possible, and that people are really doing it (on a modest scale) in the real world.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll add, as a comment, that the material *costs* of a decent communal-type living are lower than ever, due to globalized capitalism's contemporary productive prowess.

The means for handling common, everyday logistics for practically *any* endeavor are now literally freely available, using any computer that's been made from the last 10+ years. I posted a number of guides at the following thread that point to these free, critical computer resources:


computer technical support thread

http://www.revleft.com/vb/computer-technical-support-t160520/index.html


This isn't to say that everyone can just *escape* capitalism, of course, but rather that the higher-level material availability of today, as for ready audio-visual cultural production and distribution, is simply there for the doing -- something that cannot be claimed for past decades and centuries. This can enable a political consciousness and organizing on more solid ground, etc.