Inside the Occupy movement.

• Author: Gupta, Arun

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A long the rutted roads in Youngstown, Ohios factory disrict, cavernous brick and concrete shells crumble, a decaying testament to this city's industrial past. Among the few signs of activity are billows of diesel exhaust pouring from a demolition yard where concrete slabs are being pounded into rubble. In some neighborhoods, empty lots outnumber inhabited homes.

Occupy Youngstown planted its roots in this ravaged soil. On October 15, in the shadow of three different banks, historian and peace activist Staughton Lynd spoke at Occupy Youngstown's inaugural rally, which drew more than 400 people. One of those people was Chuck Kettering Jr., an aspiring actor who was unemployed for a year before recently snagging a position as a bartender at a local Mexican restaurant.

"We were once a huge steel city for America," says the twenty-sevenyear-old Kettering. "In the 1970s, they started closing up all our steel mills, taking all the jobs and shipping them down south and overseas where labor is cheaper. Youngstown's been a city that has been going through this economic struggle for almost forty years now."

His family is living proof of the toll of deindustrialization. His father, Chuck Kettering Sr., fifty-six, calls himself "the poster boy for the Rust Belt." In 1973, he landed a job in the blast furnace division at U.S. Steel's Mahoning Valley Ohio Works. After that closed shop in 1979, he transferred to another U.S. Steel facility near Cleveland, which shuttered in the early 1980s. In 1985, he was hired by Packard Electric, a parts manufacturer for General Motors that was later acquired by Delphi Automotive Systems. His wife also worked at Packard but was forced into retirement by Delphi after thirty years and saw her pension sliced in half.

A few years after Delphi sank into bankruptcy in 2005, Kettering and some co-workers were given a one-time option: Stay on board Delphi with half rations--their pay would be squeezed from $28 to $16 an hour, with similar cuts in other benefits--or jump ship to GM and keep their wages, benefits, and pensions intact.

"It was a no-brainer," he says. But when he arrived at GM'S Lordstown plant, he was stunned to find himself "starting at the bottom, working alongside twenty-one-year-olds and trying to keep up on the line." Soon he was in "excruciating pain" from repetitive stress injuries.

"They tell me I should be happy I have a job and that I should grin and bear it," he says. "But with these companies it's never enough. Bitterness can set in when you've given your all to these companies and they slap you down. It's all about the dollars. That's why I've encouraged my son to join the Occupy movement. And that's why my wife and I joined."

Through the Occupy movement, the Kettering family has found hope amid despair. It is a remarkable story but hardly unique.

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