By Sheldon Traver
With fewer than 700 residents, the agriculture community of Scio isn’t a place most people would consider as part of the Occupy movement sweeping the nation and the world.
However, on Oct. 19 hundreds of people flocked to the town to Occupy Scio.
They didn’t come to protest big banks or cronyism, but to celebrate what most attendees felt was the best part of America, its people and the opportunity to earn a living.
The Big Red Pavilion was filled with vendors selling T-shirts, desserts, arts and more.
Americans For Prosperity Oregon had a booth and many people received photos with Uncle Sam. Each vendor received free space in exchange for a voluntary donation to repair and expand the Big Red Pavilion.
The Occupy Scio event was first envisioned by 1430 AM KYKN radio host Bill Post during a weekday afternoon broadcast.
A quick joke telling listeners they should go to Scio to protest the capitalist owners of the Scio Feed Store, became a Facebook page with more than 1,000 fans within two weeks.
“I was mad one day about the Occupy Portland protests so I just said I’m gonna ahhhh… occupy Scio and it just came out,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve used Scio as the butt of jokes for more than 30 years all over the country because nobody knows where Scio is.
“I created the Facebook page as a joke and it started with seven people, then it had 350 and then more than 700,” he added. “I knew uh oh, I’ve done something wrong here, but right.” The show caught the attention of Audie Heikkila, owner of the Scio Feed Store.
“One of my customers called me out of the blue and said they were talking about me on the radio,” he said. “I turned on the radio to see what they were saying about me and they were calling me an evil capitalist. It went from that little thing to what it is today.
“It’s all meant in good fun and to delineate the difference between small town America and all the people who are working hard for a living and not getting swept up in all of these politics and lumping all of these businesses into one group.”
Attendees came from across the region, including Carol McKlatchen, a Bill Post fan from Dallas who donned a pair of American flags on her head and drove to Scio.
“I couldn’t wait to get here,” she said. “I’ve been planning this for almost two weeks. This is really what we need to be doing in our communities. Instead of protesting in the streets, we need to celebrate our small communities and the hard work and ingenuity of the people who live in them.”
The day before Occupy Scio, Post was a guest on The Glenn Beck Program and said on the show that he wasn’t planning a follow-up event to Occupy Scio, but would like to see events like it spring up across the nation.
“Wouldn’t it be cool to have these kinds of counter-occupy movements happening in communities all across the country,” he said. “Seeing all the people at the Pavilion selling these great Occupy Scio T-shirts with Big Red on them and stuffing my gut with goodies just makes me want to see more of this.”
