The NYPD's file on me.

• Author: Flaherty, Jordan
• Position: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR - New York Department of Police

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN PREPARED. I KNEW ABOUT COINTELPRO AND its infiltration of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement. I followed the revelations of recent NYPD spying on Muslim communities and activists. And in New Orleans, I had directly experienced the damage created by Brandon Darby, an FBI informant who posed as an activist and created conflict when he moved here shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

Still, finding out that the NYPD had a file on me didn't exactly make my day. It was invasive. It was wrong. And it made me want to fight back.

Here's what happened.

Back in 2008, a People's Summit was organized in New Orleans as a grassroots response to a meeting here of the leaders of the United States, Mexico, and Canada where they pledged to expand "security cooperation" as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Activists from across the hemisphere came together to present an alternative vision of globalization, one that empowered communities rather than corporations. Local groups also participated, including an anti-racist training organization called the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, and the local chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

The gathering consisted mostly of panels, workshops, and discussions, with a couple of protest marches. There was street theater from local day laborers, testimony from Mexican and Canadian workers, and links drawn between the profiteering after Hurricane Katrina and the exploitation that NAFTA encouraged.

Although there were some street protests, none had more than a few hundred participants, and there were no arrests, not even of the symbolic kind. It was an exciting and educational gathering, but there was nothing to justify the involvement of any police force.

The only danger was the threat of ideas.

And yet the NYPD sent agents down to watch people and write up a report. They mentioned me by name, saying I led a discussion on Palestine and called for an international boycott of Israeli goods. They also cited organizations I had worked with in the past, such as the International Solidarity Movement.

The NYPD report was inaccurate: It described me as an organizer of the protests, when, in fact, I was just another participant. It identified me as one of the main speakers, when, in fact, I introduced a film at an arts festival that ran concurrently with the summit.

I couldn't help wondering, "Why me? And...