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Local governments turn to green energy
In 1995, Daryl Stockberger was faced with a decision that would affect the environmental course of Bowling Green, Ohio for generations. In his eighth year as Utilities Director for the city, Stockberger had an opportunity to push Bowling Green in a direction of “green energy.”
Local governments and municipalities throughout the country had similar decisions, some gradually transitioning toward renewable energy.
Years later, he remembers hearing that renewable energy in Ohio lacked quality. Most communities nearing the millennium sided with conventional wisdom over innovation.
Around the United States, other municipalities with visionaries like Stockberger were realizing that renewable resources would soon become economically feasible for energy projects. Nearly two decades later, Bowling Green has proudly worn its role as one of Ohio’s pioneers in local government energy efficiency.
Today, wind turbines scatter the countryside, thrusting their surfaces above the harsh, Northwest Ohio landscape. Solar panels perch atop the courthouse, hockey rink and other buildings throughout town and horde sunlight like foragers. Bowling Green even owns a significant portion of the Belleville Hydro Plant, a hydroelectric power plant on the Ohio River.
When Stockberger left his post in 2005, renewable resources made up 20 percent of Bowling Green’s energy, he said. Sustainable resources will nearly double to 35 percent in 2015, according to American Municipal Power, an energy facilities operator.
The overall picture of energy in a municipality the size of Bowling Green is larger than most realize.
The city’s acclaimed wind farm, a collection of turbines towering over nearby cornfields, cost around $1 million each, Stockberger said. With initial construction and installation investments taking up the bulk of the price, the turbines begin to pay the investment back over time.
Estimates were unclear as to how many years it would take for the turbines’ returned value to hit their investment, but it may take less time than expected, Stockberger said.
Despite the significant investment and impact the project has made on the community, wind turbines are “not a very large part of the overall power supply,” Stockberger said.
Just how “not very large” was wind energy of the city’s overall resources in 2010? One percent, or one-twentieth of the total amount of Bowling Green’s renewable energy.
“We’ve always had a history of being a proponent of green energy resources,” said Brian O’Connell, Bowling Green’s current utilities director since June 2011.
O’Connell directs the city’s energy and utilities divisions (such as electricity and water) and serves as advisor to the Board of Public Utilities. This group of five citizens, appointed by the mayor, makes ultimate decisions regarding Bowling Green’s energy projects, O’Connell said.
Bowling Green joins 127 communities in seven surrounding states as members of AMP, which develops green projects to sell to their members.
Municipality ownership of projects allows for cheaper costs for citizens, who, in the case of energy, are also customers.
“AMP was formed by engineers in the late 1970s, early ’80s so that municipalities could buy cheaper electric in quantity,” said Mark Triplett, Assistant Superintendent of Galion Electric.
“We buy power the best we can sell it back to the customer for,” he added.
This “strength in numbers” approach, O’Connell contends, provides a stronger outlet for energy opportunities to cities like Bowling Green. AMP members can opt-in to projects they see fit for their community, leaving over 100 other utilities directors like O’Connell and Triplett throughout the Midwest and Appalachia with vastly different choices depending on their municipality.
The variables for approaching a project leave O’Connell and others playing several different roles—as economist (how will this affect the price of power?), as political scientist (how will environmental policies and regulations change or affect this power?) and, in the case of envisioning the project’s success, as soothsayer.
The ultimate goal of energy efficiency helps a community’s environment in a variety of ways, according to an EPA guide on local government energy operations. Such efficiency helps to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and provides municipalities with the independence to make their own energy choices.
In recent years, Bowling Green expanded their energy reach hours south to the Ohio River, buying a portion of the Belleville Hydroelectric Plant. The plant uses the gravitational flow of water to generate hydroelectricity, its power contributing to 10 percent of Bowling Green’s energy in 2010, according to AMP.
The projects can be safe, too—in 2010, the plant received an award for safety excellence by the National Hydropower Association.
While the EPA calls for a national action plan consisting of specific yearly annual goals, Bowling Green has no environmental master plan, O’Connell said.
Ohio Senate Bill 221, however, mandates that 25 percent of the state’s energy must come from alternative energy resources, according to American Electric Power Ohio. Half of this may be generated from advanced energy resources, the bill states.
Between several other hydroelectric projects being constructed along the Ohio River Bowling Green holds stock in and the ever-rotating wind turbines, the impact of green energy continues to grow.
As municipalities gain more energy independence, they allow choices for their citizen customers, too.
An “EcoSmart Choice” developed by AMP and made effective in Bowling Green in 2010 gives citizens the choice to increase their energy bill slightly to provide an amount of green power in the city’s power grid, O’Connell. While the power is not necessarily distributed to their home, the upcharge guarantees payment for renewable energy resources somewhere in Bowling Green, they said.
Bowling Green’s environmental policy has changed dramatically since Stockberger’s helm. Energy is more sustainable. The city’s ownership of renewable resources is rapidly expanding.
O’Connell, finishing his first year as Utilities Director, continues the city’s tradition of pushing for energy with a lessened impact on citizens’ wallets as well as the environment.
A large, aerial portrait of Bowling Green fills the side wall of his downtown Church St. office. The checkerboard fields extend from the city outward into infinity, the farmlands patterned intricately as if by an electrical grid.
Local governments turn to green energy
In 1995, Daryl Stockberger was faced with a decision which would affect the environmental course of Bowling Green, Ohio for generations. In his eighth year as Utilities Director for the city, Stockberger had an opportunity to push Bowling Green in a direction of “Green Energy.”
Years later, he remembers how the general consensus was that renewable energy in Ohio lacked quality. Most communities nearing the millennium sided with conventional wisdom over innovation.
Around the United States, other municipalities with visionaries like Stockberger were realizing that renewable resources would soon become economically feasible for energy projects. Nearly two decades later, Bowling Green has proudly worn its role as one of Ohio’s pioneers in local government energy efficiency.
Today, wind turbines scatter the countryside, thrusting their surfaces against the harsh, Northwest Ohio landscape. Solar panels perch atop buildings throughout town and horde sunlight like foragers. Bowling Green even owns a significant portion of the Belleville Hydro Plant on the Ohio River, greatly contributing to the city’s resources.
When Stockberger left his post in 2005, renewable resources made up 20 percent of Bowling Green’s energy, he said.
“We’ve always had a history of being a proponent of green energy resources,” said Brian O’Connell, Bowling Green’s current Utilities Director since June, 2011.
As the overseer of the Utilities Department, O’Connell directs the city’s energy divisions (such as electricity and water) and serves as advisor to the Board of Public Utilities. This group of five citizens, appointed by the mayor, makes ultimate decisions regarding Bowling Green’s energy projects, O’Connell said.
Like the directors before him, O’Connell himself is faced with long-term energy decisions.
But the scope has changed since Stockberger.
When the price of power was cheap, Bowling Green opted towards energy contracts such as wind turbines and landfill gas. With rising costs, however, the dynamic changed and local governments like Bowling Green buying their own projects.
This ownership, O’Connell says, helps cities control costs for their citizens, who, in the case of energy, are more thought of as customers.
Bowling Green joins 127 communities in surrounding states as members of American Municipal Power. AMP, an energy facilities operator, develops projects such as the Belleville Hydro Plant to sell to its members.
“If we were by ourselves, or if we were one of a group of 10 municipalities who wanted…to try to buy power, or build something, there’s no possible way we could do that,” O’Connell said.
This “strength in numbers” approach, he contends, provides a stronger outlet for energy opportunities to cities like Bowling Green. AMP members can opt-in to projects they see fit for their community, leaving O’Connell and over 100 other Utilities Directors throughout the Midwest and Appalachia. The variables for approaching a project leave O’Connell and others playing several different roles—as economist (how will this affect the price of power?), as political scientist (how will environmental policies and regulations change or affect this power?) and, in the case of envisioning the project’s success, as soothsayer.
Local governments and municipalities throughout the United States are gradually transitioning towards renewable energy. Even the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium Progressive Field operates a wind turbine above its upper deck.
“Energy efficiency…helps reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, improves energy security and independence, and creates jobs,” according to an EPA guide on local government energy operations.
The benefits, as AMP members like Bowling Green are beginning to enjoy, make a compelling case for this environmental change in focus. The projects are safe, too—in 2010, the Belleville Hydro Plant received an award for safety excellence by the National Hydropower Association.
Lowering energy costs for citizens is an increasingly important function for the Utilities Department, O’Connell said. The EPA estimates that energy accounts for up to 10 percent of a city’s annual operating budget, which continues to rise as energy prices do.
Take wind energy, for example. Each individual turbine cost around $1 million, the initial investment taking up a bulk of the price, Stockberger said. As the years pass, the turbines begin to pay themselves back as the money saved through wind energy offsets the minimal labor costs.
The area’s flat terrain makes Bowling Green an environmental gold mine for wind energy. Despite the significant investment and impact the project has made on the community, wind turbines are “not a very large part of the overall power supply,” Stockberger said.
Just how “not very large” was wind energy of the city’s overall resources in 2010? One percent.
While the EPA calls for a national action plan consisting of specific yearly annual goals, Bowling Green has no environmental master plan, O’Connell said.
Although, if there were certain renewable resource goals in the coming years, the city would almost certainly surpass them. Sustainable resources like wind, solar and hydro power generate 20 percent of the city’s electricity and will nearly double to 35 percent in 2015, according to AMP estimates.
Between several other hydroelectric projects being constructed along the Ohio River Bowling Green holds stock in and the ever-rotating wind turbines, the impact of green energy continues to grow.
An “EcoSmart Choice” developed by AMP and made effective in Bowling Green in 2010 allows citizens the choice to increase their energy bill slightly to provide an amount of Green power of their choosing.
“By paying that upcharge, you’re paying for a renewable energy source somewhere in the grid, somewhere in the system, and that’s how…you’re helping to pay for that renewable energy resource,” O’Connell said.
By Tyler Buchanan
Bowling Green’s environmental policy has changed dramatically since Stockberger’s helm. Energy is more sustainable. The city’s ownership of renewable resources is rapidly expanding.
O’Connell, finishing his first year as Utilities Director, continues the city’s tradition of pushing for energy with a lessened impact on citizens’ wallets as well as the environment.
A large, aerial portrait of Bowling Green he presides over fills the side wall of his downtown Church St. office. The checkerboard fields extend from the city outward into infinity, the farmlands patterned intricately as if by an electrical grid.
This I Believe – Strength through distance
By Tyler Buchanan
For us, love has been neither patient nor kind.
It was raining the evening Lauren’s car slid off the road into a brick wall. Her car totaled, we walked away unscathed.
It was raining again three weeks later as we approached our highway exit a quarter mile away. The slick roads and heavy traffic meant we couldn’t avoid the stalled car in our lane.
Fifty miles an hour. Slam.
Months later, I’m still reminded of our feelings of desperation and helplessness each time I take that exit in driving four hours across the state to visit her.
The crash left our doors jammed inward. Fighting to escape, we watched behind us as dozens of semi-trucks and cars came directly towards us at high speeds, some nearly spinning out of control on the wet highway. Many came within a few feet of hitting us as we did the first car.
We freed ourselves from the wreckage and were met by the other car’s driver who’d watched from the highway’s shoulder.
She told us her car had ran out of gas and that she was going to get help. She fled the scene, walking off the exit we didn’t make it to, never to return.
It was just us two in the rain, scared and shaken, but safe.
We are stronger together through these experiences. Improbable chance has kept us safe, along with further evidence of circumstance which brought us together to begin with.
At first, she was merely words on a computer screen.
“21 years old, female, Ohio, dream job: travel writer,” read her post.
The author, Tyler Buchanan, and his girlfriend Lauren Schneider on the campus of her Ohio University.
Neither of us were single at the time or on any kind of dating site. At the break of dawn, I must have refreshed the page at just the right time to even see it.
“Oh, you’re a writer too?”
“No,” she replied, “I just put something down.”
Going to college in southern Ohio and being from North Carolina, she’d never even heard of Bowling Green.
I believed in following my heart, even if it meant taking a 168 mile chance a few weeks later to meet her in person.
David Coleman, the “Date Doctor” and inspiration for the movie Hitch, spoke at BGSU last year on the perils of long distance relationships. Over 90 percent eventually fail, he warned, and communication becomes increasingly difficult.
But who says we’re normal?
Over the past year, maintaining a strong relationship has been aided by the wonders of modern technology. I’ve learned to appreciate, however, the significance of the occasional phone call or even a simple letter in the mail.
Through the tribulations, the countless thousands of miles back and forth and the growing number of wrecked vehicles, our hearts have only grown stronger. If we’ve survived through such impossibilities and troubles apart, I’m sure we’ll do just fine when we’re finally together for good.
I hope and believe that our engagement will come sooner rather than later, provided our finances cease going to more car down payments.
Within a few months, she’ll move in with me and we’ll begin a life together. The intangibles we’ve gained through experiences, good and bad, will sustain us both forever.
Moonville: a journey to the past
Broken glass and scattered piles of wood litter the ground of the Moonville tunnel. Night-time travelers hold bonfires and graffiti the stone walls as high as they can reach.
Dusk began to set on brick letters spelling out Moonville which poked out of the top of tunnel. Some letters, that is. The M and V are now missing.
Brick letters spell out Moonville at the top of the tunnel. Photo by Lauren Schneider.
Dozens of homes used to line those tracks, tucked away in Zaleski Forest, miles away from any other community. Moonville, a secluded group of coal miners and iron workers, was the archetypal southeastern-Ohio village in the late 1800s.
Now, it’s a ghost town.
***
I first found Moonville by accident. Searching area counties for a summer fair to visit, I came across Vinton County’s Wikipedia page. The largely uninhabited county features no towns or communities. Scrolling down, I paused at the listings of several ghost towns.
“Seriously? Ghost towns?”
The search for county fairs forgotten, my girlfriend and I packed our bookbags. It was time for an adventure.
View Moonville in a larger map
***
The story of Moonville’s rise in the 19th century resembles that of dozens of other villages throughout what is known as the Hanging Rock Iron Region. A stretch of land from Hocking County, Ohio, down to the Ohio River and into parts of northern Kentucky, the region had rich deposits of limestone and iron ore. Soon, the area became Ohio’s first chief industrial center.
“The ‘Hanging Rock’ iron…is everywhere celebrated for its superior quality,” J.S. Newberry wrote to then-Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes in an 1870 geologic survey.
Soon, iron furnaces towered all over the wild, forest-inhabited landscape.
An Ohio Historical Marker rests at the steps of the Hope Iron Furnace. The year it closed in 1874, it was one of 65 furnaces in the Hanging Rock region, according to a geologic report of southern Ohio by T. Sterry Hunt, a 19th century Massachusetts Institute of Technology geology professor.
Moonville residents walked miles to work at the Hope Furnace, now an Ohio Historical Landmark and part of the Lake Hope State Park. Photo by Lauren Schneider.
“The charcoal iron industry was responsible for the rapid development of southern Ohio,” a Ohio Historical Marker reads.
A hundred years before, residents of Moonville and other villages walked miles to the flat-topped clay pyramid that was the Hope Furnace, producing iron for the growing railroad system throughout the expanding United States.
Moonville’s iron production expanded rapidly when the Marietta-Cincinnati railroad built its southeast Ohio rail line through the village’s forest, according to the Ohio Exploration Society. In the geographic cross-hairs of the growing railroad and mining industries, Moonville thrived.
* * *
When I first visited the abandoned tunnel last summer, I was aided by an existing drought.
A bridge used to connect the rail line over Raccoon Creek, a waterway at the base of the hill.
By the late 1980s, when the line ended and the tracks were pulled up, the trestle was removed, OES explains.
Fortunately, the rainless summer meant I could cross by foot and climb up the other side.
The existing stone path of the rail line dug itself through the forest. Suddenly, there it was.
The Moonville tunnel lies deep within the Zaleski Forest. Photo by Lauren Schneider.
The Moonville tunnel thrusts its surface into the landscape, as if swallowed by the surrounding mountainside. Even in the daylight, the deep recesses of the tunnel are nearly pitch-black, its length reaching into infinity.
I had heard the tunnel was haunted. If ghosts loomed in the shadows, I never saw them as I traveled in the daytime.
Soon, however, I would learn that Moonville was haunted in a much different way. I couldn’t get the ghost town or the tunnel out of my mind.
In the weeks and months that followed, I read everything I could find about Moonville. My mind was insatiable—I needed to learn more.
With Ohio University in close proximity, I contacted more than a dozen of geology, geography and history professors, to no avail. None had ever heard of the ghost town or knew much of the area’s geologic history. The Lake Hope State Park surrounding the Zaleski Forest provided similarly disappointing results.
Modernity was evidently no help for my historical exploration. The history was deep, and my search became even deeper.
I had to go back to the tunnel.
***
What was a ghost town like before it earned its distinction?
In 1856, a man named Samuel Coe offered parts of his land for free to the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad company. In exchange for the railroad being routed through Coe’s land, the line would haul coal and clay off his property, according to OES.
In searching through a resource database for information regarding Moonville, I stumbled on a true historical relic—a genealogical tree of Robert Coe, a prominent New England Puritan of the 17th century. Of the dozens of Samuel Coes in the family’s lineage, one listing stood out.
Samuel Coe, born in 1813, “became a farmer and in early manhood settled at Rue, Moonville Twp., Athens Co., Ohio…” the listing read. A seventh generation descendant, his reported home in “Moonville Twp” matches the OES description.
Most notably, his being a farmer fits the motive of the railroad arrangement. A 43-year-old in the back woods of Zaleski Forest wanting coal and clay shipped off his land would certainly make planting crops significantly easier.
Other than the tunnel, the only remnant of Moonville is the village’s cemetery, located on a hill down the road from the tracks. Scattered around the open grass were a dozen tombstones, many unmarked, worn down by a century of erosion and decay.
Unmarked graves fill the Moonville Cemetery, which rests on a hilltop down the road from the tunnel. Photo by Lauren Schneider.
Beside one stone, a small American flag was dug into the nearby dirt. Someone saw fit to honor a Civil War veteran of generations past, despite the cemetery’s location in the heart of the forest and the fact that its most recent burial was in 1914.
“30th Ohio Infantry, Wellington Coe,” the stone read, the flag waving erratically in the sharp February wind.
Coe?
My mind was spinning. The plot thickened.
“Who was this man?”
Several online databases of Civil War soldiers found a “Coe, Wellington C.” who had served in the 30th Ohio Infantry for the Union Army. The soldier was 38 when he was discharged in 1862, according to one report.
The Coe family tree lists two Wellington Coes, neither of which match the age or the plausible location.
I felt stuck, as if I were wandering around the forest fruitlessly searching for any other existence or remains of the ghost town.
Suddenly, like an abandoned house in the forest, I found it.
A third Wellington, not listed in the database’s index.
It was Samuel Coe’s brother, Lewis Wellington Coe, born in 1824. Lewis Coe would have been 38 years old in 1862 (as described in the Civil War database).
Of the thousands and thousands of names, hundreds of pages of over 500 years of family lineage, the only other connection to the name “Wellington” just happens to lie so close to the man responsible for Moonville’s creation.
“Lewis Wellington Coe…[died] in Ohio, Feb. 28, 1870. History untraced.”
Can forgotten history of 132 years ago ever be traced? It certainly appears so.
If he were the man buried in Moonville Cemetery, he sure never went by the name Lewis. Neither the stone nor civil war database gives that name.
But if this man, hobbled by his “discharged for disability” in Virginia in 1862, decided to travel north 100 miles to his brother Samuel in Moonville rather than at least 700 miles to his home of Windsor, CT., it would seem reasonable. His decision to travel to Ohio rather than return home would also explain why his history was left “untraced.”
The more I looked into Moonville in trying to find the explanation for its decline, the more research took me in a different direction. Searching for southern Ohio environmentalism of the 19th century led to a nightlong quest of finding Wellington Coe as I dug through pages of family records, civil war databases and tried to piece together this historical jigsaw puzzle.
What I thought was the story, the rise and fall of a ghost town in the Hanging Rock Iron Region, turned out to be much more, an expansive search and understanding of our geographic history.
My unquenchable thirst for the truth revealed an unbelievable, historical domino effect.
As I’d learn, Moonville may have been a product of the same theme of unintended consequences.
***
How, perhaps, did one man unwittingly transform the United States?
Samuel Coe, new to southeastern Ohio, wanted his Zaleski Forest farm to provide for his wife and three children. But his land’s coal and clay got in the way, so a lucrative deal with a railroad company, so he thought, would solve everything.
Suddenly, with the addition of a rail line through the area, towns like Moonville sprung up like iron ore being mined to the surface. Iron furnaces were being built everywhere in the region, and with rail traffic increasing, demand for the area’s resources grew as well.
Then came the nation’s Civil War. Hanging Rock iron makers provided resources during the war for canons and other military equipment, according to the Ohio Historical Markers Committee.
And who used such equipment? The Union Army, the one Samuel’s brother Wellington may have served under in the Ohio 30th infantry, which won the Civil War and dramatically changed our nation’s history.
By the early 1900s, coal mines around Moonville were drying up. The war was over, the mines began to close, and the industry demand lessened significantly, according to OES.
Hope Furnace had been closed since 1874, and by 1916 the Hanging Rock Iron Region industry was dead.
Samuel Coe died in 1883, never knowing that soon, the village of Moonville he created through his farm, would reach its end.
The last family moved away in 1947. Only the tunnel, cemetery and the occasional ghost story remain.
***
If a ghost town disappears in the forest, does it make a sound?
The history lies somewhere deep in Zaleski Forest. With nothing else left, perhaps it exists mainly in our fantasies.
I’ll return someday for a third trip to the Moonville tunnel, and maybe I’ll even see a ghost or two.
The darkness of the tunnel surrounded me, even with up daylight ahead. I thought I had figured the story out, when in reality the mystery had its grips on me the whole time.
In that sense, Moonville truly is haunted.
This trip, a cold, February journey into the forest, I walked back out the tunnel as the darkness hastily settled over Vinton County. A now-filled creek forced me through the forest towards Moonville, as if I were heading home after a long day at the furnace.
Trudging through the path alongside Raccoon Creek, I noticed footsteps lying below me in the mud.
Either they belonged to fellow tourists, or a tired villager on his way back from the mines.
Even in daylight, the tunnel's darkness encompasses its path. Photo by Lauren Schneider
Occupy: The fire of peaceful protest
Gilbert Bentley waited patiently in the first row of Bowling Green Municipal court amid half a courtroom of supporters. They wore orange armbands with the word Occupy on them in protest of Bentley’s trial.
Within a few minutes, it was over. Bentley and his friend Taylor Johnson both pled no contest to charges of obstruction of justice and were sentenced to 15 hours of community service.
Bentley has had a long history of political activism.
At an age when most are uninvolved and disinterested in politics, Bentley attended a Farm Labor Organizing Committee rally in Toledo at age 14.
Six years later, he joined over 200,000 others to Washington D.C.’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a satirical protest headed by comedians Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
Now, Bentley sees his sentencing as the easy part.
“It was a lot harder being out there than it was dealing with court stuff,” he said.
For him, “out there” meant a small alleyway on East Wooster Street in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he and countless others camped out for six weeks in peaceful protest.
When his trial ended, Bentley knew this part of Occupy Bowling Green was over, but his fight was only beginning.
* * *
Bentley says it’s always hard to pay attention to politics and not get involved. He credits a love for politics to an early “obsession with history and literature.”
His influences, political and literary, range from authors Oscar Wilde and Jack Kerouac to philosopher Noam Chomsky, and leave Bentley with a rich blend of social skepticism and desire for direct democracy.
His interests in Egyptians and Mayans may have been out of his reach, but the Toledo streets were much more physically and ideologically accessible.
The creation of Occupy Toledo satisfied both his political philosophy and his need for democratic activism.
The Occupy movement began in September of 2011 in New York City as Occupy Wall Street, a non-violent, civil disobedient protest. Angry over wealth inequality and corporatism, protesters took over Zuccotti Park, a plaza near Manhattan’s Financial District, according to Occupy Wall Street’s website.
Many other concerned activists realized these themes elsewhere. Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, protesters in cities around the globe set up tents and created their own Occupy movements.
Traveling to and from Toledo to participate, it wasn’t long before he said he wanted to “bring that sound home.”
“We have a responsibility to our home town,” he said.
He and others assembled a march at Bowling Green State University’s Student Union to the Happy Badger, a local business. It was there, he said, that the protestors decided to create Occupy BG.
The idea was simple. No one person spoke for or led the group. From the very first decision to form Occupy BG, every idea has been discussed and decided upon by the entire group.
They chose to set up camp in an alleyway in downtown Bowling Green known colloquially as “Fight Alley” due to its proximity to bars where some customers settle their differences outside. Violence at Occupy BG, however, was never an option.
“We needed to display that we’re not a violent group,” Bentley said.
Public perception of the group became as important as their message itself. Bentley and others knew that if the media and public could not respect those protesting, they would in turn shy away from the message Occupy BG protested for.
While Occupy protesters welcomed a variety of perspectives and opinions, its goals were to provide factual information and spread awareness of social issues.
Scott Hevner, a BGSU Firelands teacher who frequents the Bowling Green coffee shop where Occupy BG holds its meetings, said that while different ideologies are acceptable, it doesn’t make them more correct.
“People have this twisted sense of what constitutes equality,” Hevner said. “Democracy doesn’t mean everyone’s voice and speech is equal and ‘right’…people unfortunately interpret democracy this way.”
Day and night, there were usually at least one or two protesters camped out in the narrow alleyway, stopping any passersby to raise awareness of wealth inequality or to simply have a civil conversation of politics.
“It’s not a case of getting the message out, but getting more people to admit how they already feel or live,” Bentley said.
Bentley likes telling people about the approximately one in three children who are raised in low-income families, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.
Or perhaps he will remind them that 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined, a fact corroborated by PolitiFact, a non-partisan fact checking website.
For six weeks, Bentley repeated these arguments and many others to the hundreds of people who walked by, with mixed results of support and disapproval.
He worked to get his messages through to everyone who walked by in the hopes that awareness and knowledge of political and social issues would rally support in the fight against what the Occupy movement stood for.
Many at first were not receptive, shouting to him “This isn’t Wall Street” or “Why are you here?” he said.
Taylor Johnson, another protester, remembers an early encounter when a person driving by told the occupiers to get a job like the “successful businessmen” who pay for the sidewalks they stand on.
“I thought to myself, I have a good opportunity and duty to pass onto these ignorant people who don’t know their taxes pay for these sidewalks,” Johnson said. “It’s sad when victims don’t even know they’re victims.”
Bentley believes all Occupy movements, no matter how small, have their place in civic discourse, because the issues they fight for exist everywhere.
“You have to have Occupy in every small town, every nook and cranny, every dive bar, everything all around the country at once,” he said. “You infuse people into a movement where they’re actively talking one on one.”
That’s why he was there, through rain-soaked nights and sunless days: for the ability each day to stop a person on their way to work in the morning or to the bars at night. All the devotion, the weeks of time spent on the streets, all to make a person think, maybe even care if just for a moment, about wealth inequality or corporate greed.
Support and assistance came in ideological agreement, but also in tangible donations. From financial contributions to donated food and supplies, Occupy BG continued to grow, its message of social equality beginning to take shape.
Then came the eviction notice.
Dated Nov. 29, 2011, the city of Bowling Green sent a notice to Occupy BG, giving protesters until noon, Dec. 1, to remove their tents, tables, chairs and other personal belongings.
“The First Amendment protections of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech do not include a right to use public property as a storage area,” the eviction notice said.
While city police ordered their belongings and materials to be removed, the protestors themselves were allowed to stay.
On Thursday, Dec. 1, the nearby city clock tower struck noon as over a dozen reporters waited for a potential confrontation, but the police never showed up. It was a small victory for Occupy BG, but Bentley knew what was coming.
Choosing to stay in the tents after the eviction deadline, Bentley went to sleep every night with a mass text to dozens of protesters and other supporters upon a police raid already typed out. The police waited, and when the cameras weren’t running and no one else was watching, they moved in.
Bentley was ready.
* * *
Four days after their ordered eviction date, Bentley and Johnson awoke suddenly to the sound of steel pans hitting one another. The pans were tied to the tent’s opening as a makeshift alarm.
As one police officer ripped the tent down, another poked his head inside and read the city’s eviction notice.
“When I saw him, I clicked send,” Bentley said.
Before the officer could finish the notice, other officers began cutting the tents with shears, he said.
Bentley and Johnson were given two minutes to leave the premises or be arrested. Days before, the two had already made their decision to stay.
Amidst police shouting and threatening them, Bentley says that when their time was up, the police gave them one last chance to leave.
Johnson stepped back inside the tent. Bentley stood his ground.
They were soon handcuffed and walked down the alley where they had lived in peaceful protest for a month and a half.
According to BGPD’s police report, 27 officers were involved in the raid that resulted in the arrests of Bentley and Johnson for obstruction of justice, who were “taken into custody without any issues.”
When he thinks about his decision to stand up peacefully to the officers, Bentley says he’s never been more proud of himself.
In all, Bowling Green spent two weekends and almost $10,000 training police for the Occupy BG raid, according to the Sentinel Tribune.
Public reaction, Bentley said, has only driven more support for Occupy BG.
“I’ve gotten a lot of free drinks.”
Ultimately, Occupy BG carries on, finding new ways to bring awareness to its fight for social equality.
“It’s surreal how much we accomplished,” Johnson said.
For six weeks in downtown Bowling Green, Bentley and others challenged citizens on the issues. The alleyway now sits empty, as it did before their occupation.
While their camp is gone, their spirit and drive for working for a better, fairer America continues on.
“When the people are informed, they will make the better choice.”
Tyler Buchanan
12 years
by tbuchan
in Student Contributors
My name is Tyler Buchanan, and I’m a Junior Journalism major and political science minor at BGSU. I am from Bellevue, Ohio.
I write for the BGNews, in my first year as a reporter and third as a columnist.
I also write for the Examiner, a hyper local online news website. I cover the Elections 2012 and Gambling beats for the Cleveland Examiner.