NYPD Implicated in Establishing "Technicality" for Evicting Occupy Activist (Surveillance)

[snot]

Per tweets from David Graeber, "There is a pattern here: almost everyone mentioned in press as involved in early days of OWS has been getting administrative harassment . . . . There have been evictions, visa problems, tax audits... Endless minor harassment arrests".

David Graeber, author of Debt: the First 5000 Years, was evicted from the home that his family had lived in for 52 years yesterday. He says that the NYPD intelligence department played a role in establishing a "technicality" on which his family could be evicted, despite not having missed a single payment in 52 years. He blames the eviction on retaliation against high-profile Occupy Wall Street activists, whom he says have been targeted in a wide-ranging series of administrative attacks: "evictions, visa problems, tax audits..."

Abi Sutherland writes,

Knowledge is power, and there are people who have more of it than we do. . . . We individuals have to filter out our knowledge out of a soup of misdirection, denial, fragments1, and propaganda. {The Powers That Be}, meanwhile, seem to get their knowledge undiluted at source.

* * *

This imbalance is a palpable problem, not just for Graeber, but for us all. Whether it’s prosecution for the three felonies a day we are all alleged to commit, or mere public humiliation, the risk of abuse by means of knowledge (and the lying pretense of knowlege) is a real engine of fear. I don’t know anyone who has not chosen to do or let be, speak or be silent, with an eye to whom they might piss off and what the consequences could be.

More at http://boingboing.net/2014/04/03/david-debt-graeber-evicted.html .

Knowledge is power, and a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge.

[rhett o rick]

1. I guess this is a big win for those DU posters that have disparaged Occupy since the beginning.

They seem to hate anyone that dares speak truth to power. I think they call themselves Centrists or The Third Way.

[struggle4progress]

2. "... currently Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics ..."

according to Wikipedia and "... currently reader in social anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London ..." according to his profile at The Guardian

Presumably that means he currently lives in or near London

Maybe he'll eventually shed some light on his tweet: I am cleaning out my family home in New York. Evicted. (police intelligence seems to have played a role.)

Until then I'll withhold judgment

[snot]

3. Um, I'm confused. To me, this info concerns surveillance, and abuse of the power it yields.

Personally, I don't actually need Graeber's example to know that surveillance, and abuse of the power it yields, is happening. A personal attack on Graeber is relevant how, then?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Anyone know what this "technicality" was? The link seems notably light on specifics. N.T.