OWS's Account of the "Trashed" Brooklyn House
About 2 weeks ago, I posted about Occupy Wall Street and Mr. Ahadzi. A few days ago, I received an email from an anonymous OWS supporter, offering OWS's side of the story.
With the supporter's permission, I'm reprinting it here.
You need to understand something about 702 Vermont Street and Wise Ahadzi. Firstly, Mr. Ahadzi left his home in early 2009. According to neighbors, the home became rodent-infested and was being used for criminal activity. Neighbors were very upset to be living next to an abandoned house. Mr. Ahadzi went into hiding. He was being chased by creditors, not just Countrywide Mortgage, but the utilities, credit cards. His business was trading in and writing about penny stocks. That was bankrupt as well...and god only knows who he owed money to from that business.
The house, being abandoned, was ransacked for anything valuable. Long before Occupy moved in, the appliances were stolen. There was no kitchen on Dec 6, 2011. There was lots of water damage in the kitchen. Occupy removed heavily damaged drywall from the kitchen.
Mr. Ahadzi showed up one day after the big hoopla on the news. He had been unreachable by Occupy and by Bank of America, successors to Countrywide. That's why they hadn't yet foreclosed. He is still the rightful owner of the property and could have asserted that right on December 7, but he is "negotiating" with Occupy, and with Countrywide.
Don't get sucked into the simple narrative of hippies trashing stuff. There's more at work here.
I'll just say that even with all of that information—OWS still didn't actually manage to do much with the house. By this account, OWS managed to remove some drywall from the house. Given that Habitat for Humanity can manage to build a house in a matter of days (or hours, in some cases), that's not especially impressive.
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