The name is absent

164

2009), the act of their striking out in public against state-authority was indeed notable¹⁴⁵.
The observant few researchers who considered their participation explained that
minorities, like the broader group they joined, made no direct demands. Instead, and
again like their co-actors, they expressed outrage at their treatment by the state and the
police. In effect, they joined a general cry for human dignity. This cry also resonated
with the Romani youth population; a group completely overlooked by academics
studying the December 2008 social unrest until now.

The Roma participation in the street violence against a perceived murderous
police force was inspired, in part, by this community’s experiences with police brutality.
The Romani youth I spoke with explained that they identified with Alexis Grigoropoulos,
despite the fact that he was from a white upper-class family. In fact, the Roma I spoke
with had inserted Grigoropoulos as the latest case in a history of police brutality against
innocent Romani victims. This simultaneously situated the Roma struggle for equality
within a broader pan-Greek struggle for basic human dignity while claiming a particular
kind of violence (unprovoked shooting) as a Romani experience which other Greeks were
only now coming to endure. This perceived joining of a pan-Greek struggle while
claiming the broader population has experienced a Roma-specific violence, provided yet
another discursive space where the Roma and Greek identities could come together.
Consider this more closely. The April 1998 shooting of Angelos Celal in Partheni,
Thessaloniki, for which the accused police officer was found guilty but received no jail

¹⁴⁵ Evidence of the participation of immigrants and undocumented migrants in the December 2008 events is
difficult to provide. Besides the interviews I conducted with several participants, one can also take as
evidence the Greek Ministry of the Interior’s website (http://www.ekato.gr) which posted information
about the number of arrests of undocumented migrants specifically related to the December 2008 unrest.

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