If you can afford to buy food, but decide to shoplift instead as a moral stance, you are hurting the poor. The stores will raise prices to cover the loss and the poor can’t gamble on a $2,000 fine.

You can argue that stores ought not raise the prices, you can argue that the law ought to not consider shoplifting a crime, but neither of those conditions are the case, so your moral stance ends up being a material cost to the very people you claim to be fighting for.