I just received a phone call from a very old friend, my contact in the Occupation of Dayton Ohio. Apparently, the proverbial excrement has hit the ventilation system in that location. The camp had been located in the very public Courthouse Square for its first month, and then last weekend a decision was made to move camp to a greener and more comfortable space in conjunction with mounting pressure to evacuate Courthouse Square in advance of the annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. Now the city has decided, like so many before it, that public property is not public, and they have arranged to simultaneously declare camping at BOTH sites illegal and begin to arrest everybody in the camp at 5:00 pm.
Dayton is a small rust-belt city that has been systematically impoverished by the offshoring of manufacturing starting thirty years ago. The camp itself is miniscule; just a half-dozen tents in permanent occupation. The vast majority of the protesters have jobs and homes in town and show up twice weekly for GA and then irregularly to participate in specific projects and/or run supplies and assistance to the campers. Arresting a dozen people will remove the camp and the symbolic presence of the group, while risking little in the way of bad PR typically incurred with mass arrests. Although the protesters have an amazing core of sympathy among the general population, the general population has its own concerns during the Christmas season. Not to mention that Winter is finally falling, after holding off for an unusually mild autumn. It's been cold and rainy for four days after the same for four days last week, and tonight we are expecting our first snow of the season. The kids JUST bought a Russian military tent for winter shelter; I'm not certain if that's been set up yet, but they were supposed to be doing that on Sunday. If so, a raid at this point could confiscate their best hope of making it through the winter.
I live an hour's drive away, got four hours sleep last night, and have to get up for work at 2:30 this morning. Going over there right now would cost me my job if not put me back in the emergency room after a nasty incident last spring. But Ed asked me to reach out to anyone I knew on the internet to ask that anyone nearby who CAN go, heads over in a show of support. I told him that he needs Twitter, and I don't do that. He doesn't either. Apparently the Dayton movement is composed mainly of old fogeys like us who don't Tweet, and we haven't a clue how to organize a flash-mob.
Anyway. I have to get to bed in the next hour, so I'm not putting this up to field questions or answers. I don't have any answers; I'm not there. But if anyone seeing this knows what to do or who to call, we'd appreciate the help. Their website is Occupydaytonoh.org, but I just checked over there and there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to post an emergency message that anybody is likely to see. The only general-purpose forum hasn't had a post in three days. So it looks like this is one Occupation that is a far cry from the stereotypical "youthful social media experts" organization we all expect from the protest. All I can say is, they're there. They've put something together in DAYTON, OHIO, for heavens' sake. They've been out carrying signs and showing their presence in the mud and the freezing rain. They deserve help. I'm just not much use in a "do something inside of fifteen minutes" kind of crisis, and Ed should KNOW that given that we've only known each other for thirty years.