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Dayton
Business Journal...
Officials
ask occupy protestors to
leave for holiday fest
by Joe Cogliano
Thursday, November 10, 2011
A
clash between local officials and
Occupy Dayton protestors may be brewing if protestors don’t move during
an
upcoming three-day downtown holiday celebration.
Sandy
Gudorf, president of the
Downtown Dayton Partnership
, on
Wednesday met with Occupy Dayton protestors to ask them to move to
another
location during the popular event, which takes place Nov. 25 to 27 and
includes
a tree lighting ceremony. A video of the meeting was posted online by
The
Dayton Informer.
Occupy
Dayton, the grassroots group
protesting corporate greed and corruption, has kept a presence at
Courthouse
Square downtown for more than a month.
One
member of the group suggested
moving the protest to Oakwood, instead of keeping it in downtown Dayton
during
the holiday celebration. The protester said that Oakwood would be a
fitting
location because it “represents the 1 percent” in the Dayton region.
Oakwood
City Manager Norbert Klopsch
said the city has not yet heard anything from Occupy Dayton about
potentially
moving their protest to Oakwood.
“If
they show up, we’ll just make sure
they comply with our city laws and ordinances,” Klopsch said.
He
said Oakwood’s laws are similar to
those of neighboring communities and only limit protestors from
intimidating
the general public and protesting on public property.
In
the video, Gudorf appeared to
suggest that the city and Montgomery County has been lenient on
protestors in
letting them continue to occupy the square, and that may come to an end
if they
don’t cooperate. One protestors said they thought she was issuing a
threat to
the group, but Gudorf responded she wasn’t issuing any threats but
merely
reading from a letter from the city.
Occupy
Dayton’s General Assembly is
slated to vote on the proposal Saturday
Gudorf
on Thursday said the parties
involved are hoping for a “collaborative response.”
“The
offer was put out in good faith.
We respect their right to protest but, at the same time, this is the
39th year
of a community tradition,” Gudorf said. “We just want everybody to have
a
wonderful time. It’s a holiday celebration, not a political rally.”
Gudorf
said she didn’t know how Occupy
Dayton would vote nor how the city and county would respond if the
group opted
not to move for the event.
Read this and other
articles at Dayton Business Journal
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