DEFEND YOUNGSTOWN, PARTNERS IN CRIME!

DEFEND YOUNGSTOWN is a movement dedicated to the advancement of the city of Youngstown. With supporters numbering in the thousands to include civic leadership, the business community and concerned citizens nationwide, Defend Youngstown is the symbol of civic pride and the battle cry for positive change in the Mahoning Valley. 

 FROM NYTIMES:

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — For as long as anyone here can remember, presidential hopefuls have made this scrappy, blue-collar stronghold an obligatory pit stop on the Democratic stump. Franklin D. Rooseveltand John F. Kennedy breezed through when the steel plants still turned the night sky orange; decades later, after the smelters had gone cold, Bill Clinton and John Kerry came by promising jobs to those left idle by the mill closings. 

Now it is Hillary Clinton playing Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” at her rallies here, and Barack Obama promising local residents middle-class tax breaks. Both campaigns are aware that winning the affection of Youngstown’s lunch-bucket voters and the party faithful can make all the difference in taking Ohio, a swing state whose delegates almost always wind up in the pocket of the candidate who takes the White House.

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But for every optimist here there are two or three hard-bitten cynics who dismiss the pledges and resent the politicians for using Youngstown as a showcase for economic distress. They remember the day Bill Clinton rode into town promising a Pentagon payroll processing center with room for 7,000 workers (it went elsewhere) and the time John Kerry set up his dais in front of a boarded-up building so the cameras would show Youngstown’s ugly rump even though there was a new state office complex on the other side of the street.

“We’re sick and tired of the empty promises and the same old story line about Youngstown and the mills,” said Phil Kidd, 28, a blogger and community activist who has sold 10,000 T-shirts that shout “Defend Youngstown” over the image of a steelworker swinging a sledgehammer. “The problem is that this is a rubber-stamp Democratic area so they know it’s almost a guarantee they’re going to get our vote. We just have to hope that this time whoever wins won’t forget about us.”

Both Democratic candidates have promised to remember, kicking off their Ohio campaigns here with fiery populist speeches they hope will appeal to the 100,000 Democratic stalwarts who live up and down the Mahoning Valley, a cradle of the American steel industry and a place that has been shedding union-wage manufacturing jobs for the last 30 years.

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DEFEND YOUNGSTOWN

A MOVEMENT DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE CITY OF YOUNGSTOWN