Over my desk, I have a grease board.  It tells me what to do.  For weeks it has been telling me to write about the Trespass Bill, and I will, but not today.  Today, I have more pressing matters to address with you.

As you know, Occupy Jenkintown started here a few weeks ago.  I expressed, and still experience, excitement about the Occupation and my hopes for what it can accomplish.  There are problems, already, however.  These are not problems unique to this Occupancy.  In fact, they are the same problems that plague many Occupations and are of serious detriment to the movement if they are not addressed swiftly and effectively by all involved.

The Occupation in Jenkintown has taken its residency at the center of town in the “square,” which is a small space with a gazebo and a brick pavilion where we conduct most of our town events.  Everything from the annual Christmas Tree Lighting to the seven month-long weekly farmer’s market takes place here.  The farmer’s market, which is already being threatened by borough politics and a nearby indoor market about to open 7 days a week, draws considerable business to the community on what used to be the slowest day of the week.  With the market season quickly approaching, and local business owners on the far side of the pavilion already sweating over (what they claim to be) negatively affected sales, the relationship between Occupy and the community went from temperate to tenuous overnight.

Nothing is friendlier to the wildly passionate, the motivated protester, or the inner-hippie than a group of tents, but for those with more conservative life formats – even if they have shared political views – the tents seem messy, intimidating, and unapproachable.  Almost immediately, rumors of homelessness and filth erupted, as they have around all Occupations.  Swift “not in my backyard” mentalities roared to the surface.  A few people have approached the camp to discuss concerns (and the Occupiers are working out a new location so to not harm local businesses), but fewer have done so to find out more about Occupy and get involved.  This is a problem.  After all, isn’t raising public awareness and spreading the important messages of the movement the purpose of the Occupations?

In places like New York City, where tourism is everywhere and the population is incredible, the characteristics that make Occupations unapproachable to some seem to have less of an impact on the camp’s overall success, but it is all a game of averages.  The percentage of the population that is offended impacts the success of camps a lot less when the total population (100%) numbers into the millions.  In a small place, like Jenkintown – for example, the same ratio has a much greater affect.  Moreover, in smaller communities, where the majority of people already know (and have established feelings toward) one another, rumors and slander fester more quickly, more venomously, and more detrimentally.  You don’t have to get the vote of a board representing a million people with a million interests to push Occupy out.  All you have to do is get four friends to call “Fred,” the police chief who lives down the street.

If Occupy is going to meet the challenges of camping in small communities, its members cannot simply set up and sit in.  They have to show up and reach out.  The focus of small camps has to be on becoming part of the community.  Making this even more dynamic is that approaching people at random can be a bit of turn off to the blasé, non-political, and avid head-in-sanders, also creating a bad taste in the mouths of those we need to enlighten.  So, what do you do?

Invite them in.  Everyone loves a party, so throw one.  Sponsor small events cheaply by talking to local bands, business groups, and charitable clubs.  Bring some attractions to the space, and while the people are there, hand out information on Occupy’s issues, have fact sheets posted, organize tables that represent different local and national interest groups, and have a GA schedule posted.  Have sign-up sheets for specific types of emails: petitions, food news, women’s issues, local issues, etc., and narrow down what you are sending them.  (When I see a bunch of emails from one group flooding my inbox, it isn’t long before I put that group on my mental “auto-delete” list, highlighting for deletion as I read the sender, not the subject.)

While you are chatting it up with the locals, about more than politics – please, remember to ask questions about what needs to be done in their community, what their local concerns are, and how Occupy can help them meet the challenges they are facing.  In Jenkintown, we have a problem with vacant store fronts, a local economy that is surviving but not meeting its full potential, and property owners who don’t want to renovate crumbling commercial properties.  A reasonable way to reach out to the community would be to set up a space for a town meeting to address the issues, flyer the neighborhood advertising the meeting, and then head a local group that corrects the problems.  Every town has its issues.  Find out what they are and head organizations to address them.

I’ve heard a huge number of people take issue not with what Occupy wants but with what Occupy does.  They don’t feel that living in tents, blocking traffic, interrupting public speakers, and civil disobedience are mature and effective ways to combat the system.  Now, I’m not saying I agree.  I think every tactic has a time and a place.  I do, however, understand that we are not going to reach the rest of the 99% by continually reapplying the same tactics over and over.  What’s more, we are going to offend them and lose any chance we have of bringing them in.  Those we have not reached in six months need to be approached other ways.

It is harder to win a heart than take a park, to open a mind than pitch a tent, to create change than to recognize problems.  If you are going to win the war, you have to win the people.  I’ve been reeling (and often retching) over politics since I was old enough to understand what is unjust and unfair – and if you have kids, you know how young that can be!  The closer an issue is to home, the more important it is to people.  If you help them solve their problems, you win their trust and loyalty… which is exactly what we need if we are going to fix the problems within our Occupations, in communities around the country, and in the halls of America’s most powerful addresses.