Dear Occupy Diary

NOTE: This is a part of a different online diary/blog that I started on November 17th, 2011. I will copy those relevant posts here, then continue with new posts here where things are more open to the public. Thanks for reading.

Ok, it occurred to me that I am missing a great opportunity to journal my experiences with a local Occupy and to get some feedback (maybe) in the process, so I'm setting up this thread to record, and if anyone else has experiences to share on the same subject, please chime in.

For the record, I'm working with the Occupy Elkhart group in Elkhart, IN, USA. Elkhart is a pretty small city, population of 51,000 in 2010. Heretofore, its claim to fame was as the "RV capital of the world" (no joke). That pretty much changed with the meltdown which resulted in many RV manufacturing plants locally closing, and the city and county with an unemployment rate that, at one point, was nearing 17%.

Ahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elkhart,_IndianaI

Around Jan 1, 2009, MSNBC announced that they would follow the city of Elkhart for a year to see how it weathered through the financial crisis. You can read about MSNBC's "Elkhart Project" here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31369315/ns/us_news-the_elkhart_project/

Ok, I won't go into right now how I got involved in the local Occupy Elkhart, or try to catch up to explain all of the personalities involved. I hope this will come out in the course of the journal. I will say that, when Occupy Elkhart started here, I tweeted MSNBC and told them that "Elkhart has a new project" and asked if they were interested. We haven't heard from MSNBC directly, but Rachael Maddow did mention (just barely, but still) Occupy Elkhart on one of her broadcasts. So yea, I guess we're famous :-)

I'm going to try and be disciplined and write a bit every day, but no promises. I'm pretty busy. Or, if enough people say "shut up," I likely will.

Tomorrow I will put down more, but for now, I'm dead tired. I spent 3 hours earlier tonight dancing with a sign at the plaza. And had the time of my life.