Occupy Dayton Oral History Project

The Occupy movement began in New York City in the late summer of 2011. The location for many of the initial Occupy Wall Street demonstrations was the Wall Street financial district’s Zuccotti Park. These demonstrations soon spread throughout the country with Dayton holding its first protest in early October, 2011.

According to Occupy Dayton’s Facebook social media page, the movement started with four people on a “blustery afternoon, October 1st, 2011.” Three days later Occupy had a large weekday rally, followed by its first large Saturday rally. All of these gatherings, or “camps’ as they were called by the movement, were held in Dayton’s Courthouse Square. Occupy Dayton also began having meetings at an old church on 3rd Street. As time passed, the occupiers were asked to move their “camp” to Dave Hall Plaza, a public park, further south along Main St. The city held its annual tree lighting celebration in Courthouse Square and perceived that the Occupy movement, if not a disruption, would prove to be a distraction at the event.

As stated by one of the interviewees, the Occupy Dayton movement splintered somewhat when the city asked them to move to Dave Hall plaza. The issue presented an early riff. According to one of this project’s interviewees, soon after the move to Dave Hall Plaza, the assemblies at the camp began shrinking from the October and November crowds of 150 people to around 20.

At the time of Mr. Pitzer’s interviews during the winter and spring of 2014, the camps that sprang up in public spaces throughout the United States were long gone, and each of the interviewees here addresses the question “is Occupy dead?” The Dayton movement had become fractionalized early on and the interviews in this collection all relate that by December 2012, early 2013, the movement had all but disbanded. That said, they all relate as well that the ideas of the movement still live on and manifest themselves in other methods of civic and social involvement and activism.

Occupy Dayton Oral History Project was a capstone project initiated and completed by Wright State public history student, Kyle Pitzer. Mr. Pitzer interviewed six participants and leaders of the Dayton manifestation of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Kyle R. Pitzer was born March 27, 1990, and died unexpectedly on July 3, 2014, near New Vienna, Ohio, as the result of an automobile accident.