From 100 T-shirts, grew the movement: Defend Youngstown

Kidd is part of larger movement using the Internet to promote Youngstown.
By KATIE LIBECCO
VINDY.COM CORRESPONDENT
YOUNGSTOWN -- Phil Kidd wakes up early every morning to walk the streets of downtown and pick up trash before work.
Friends say he knows everyone downtown by name, from store owners to the homeless.
"Everyone downtown is pretty much on the same page, wanting to see the same things," Kidd explained.
Kidd, 27, is the creator of Defend Youngstown, a local movement promoting the city. He's one of several people who are using the Internet to promote and push for positivism in Youngstown.
The movement includes a Web site, & lt;a href="http://www.defendyoungstown.com" target=blank_window & gt;www.defendyoungstown.com & lt;/a & gt;, and a & lt;a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile & amp;friendID=47545631" target=blank_window & gt;MySpace page & lt;/a & gt;.
"I'll never stop doing what I'm doing. I can't stop Defend Youngstown. I can't stop being Phil Kidd," he said.
He's originally from Burgettstown, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He came to Youngstown to study criminal justice at Youngstown State University, where he joined the school's ROTC program.
While at YSU, Joe Gregory, now general manager of the Youngstown SteelHounds hockey team, met Kidd.
Gregory was the Student Government Association president; Kidd was its secretary of finance.
"However he talks to you, he's that intense all the time," Gregory said. "There's no off position for Phil and Defend Youngstown."
"It's funny. I'm usually a pretty reserved person. But when I'm passionate about something, it's very easy for me to talk to people about it convincingly," Kidd said, admitting his enthusiasm for the city.
Gregory and Kidd are roommates now in Boardman, which he is uncomfortable admitting.
"It's not that I don't want to live [in Youngstown]. I'm on the waiting list for the new housing downtown," Kidd said.
As we walk the streets of Youngstown to find photo opportunities, he has anecdotes of every business, every person. And when a homeless man approaches him for change, he doesn't give any, but apologizes.
"I'm sorry, Greg," he said with a smile, accenting the name as the guy walks away with a smile.
Kidd eagerly points out what the housing, through Park South Development, could mean for the city. He's always anxious to say what new projects mean for the city, especially the Chevrolet Centre.
"I think Phil sees the potential here. A lot of the core values are things he can relate to -- the determination, toughness, the grittiness. There's that 'me against the world' personality with who he is," Gregory said.
Kidd said that Youngstown reminded him of a smaller version of Pittsburgh, with the personalities and values in the city. And he's familiar with the way locals feel about the city's past, as his grandfather was a foreman in a steel mill.
"The people here are what I'd call real. They see horrendous things, but there's a great sense of community," Kidd said. "The people here are down to Earth; they're tough."
Kidd said he left YSU his senior year to graduate from a military school in Virginia and go into the Army.
"When I was away, I kept up with everything going on in Youngstown," Kidd said, naming all of the cities he lived in while enlisted.
After getting out of the Army, Kidd said he received job offers in Washington, D.C., and Texas, but decided to return to Youngstown. His return was all but triumphant.
"When I came back, I didn't have a place to stay. So I put a mattress in the back of my truck and stayed in Wick Park," Kidd said.
It was during that time that he began attending every town hall meeting and getting to know the people in the area better. He began working on Mayor Jay Williams' campaign after getting to know him through publicity from the Youngstown 2010 plan.
"I started to think, 'We really need a symbol for this city to rally around,'" Kidd said. "It was around winter 2005. I had a friend in Philadelphia that was an artist who came up with the logo. I didn't want it to be about the steel mills, but it's something that represented blue-collar workers. It's important, because that's who built this city."
Kidd also made sure he put the text "Defend Youngstown" in letters that looked like they came from a factory. He made 25 shirts, giving one to Williams, and the idea began to spread.
"I printed 100 shirts; they were gone in three days. I printed 300 more. Those were gone in less than three weeks," Kidd said. "While I was distributing them, I tried to explain my vision for Youngstown."
Kidd said he stopped counting when he distributed 4,000 shirts, but estimates he's sold around 7,000.
He said through e-mail requests for shirts, he began actively e-mailing people who had the same vision he did for Youngstown.
"It was then it became more than T-shirts and an idea. It became a movement dedicated to civic awareness," Kidd said.
He created the Web site, www.defendyoungstown.com, which he describes as a "feeder site" that combines local media Web sites and blogs. There's also a Defend Youngstown MySpace page with a calendar of local events.
"I take anything that's positive about the city and put it in one concise place," Kidd said. "These are things that people can support and further the city."
Kidd said the important thing about his Web site is that "it's an underground group of people looking for ways to connect."
It's through this underground network of e-mails and blogs that Kidd began speaking with Jim Cossler, director of the Youngstown Business Incubator. Kidd calls Cossler one of the "heroes of the city," along with boxer Kelly Pavlik, Mayor Williams and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan.
"One of the problems with Youngstown is that it never engaged 20-somethings. I think that Phil and the others are doing a phenomenal job at doing something. We have a diaspora of 20-somethings that have left Youngstown," Cossler said.
He and Kidd exchanged e-mails for a few months and he's kept up with Kidd's blog. Now he reads several local blogs, including Kidd's "The Frontline" and John Slanina's "I Will Shout Youngstown."
"These blogs like Phil's are absolutely critical," Cossler said. "We have to engage the talents that are here now."
Cossler said in his experience, the Internet has been the best way to keep connected with the younger generation of Youngstown that has left. Many of those people he talks to left to find work, he said, but are frequently asking about employment in the city.
"They are staying in touch with their hometown online," Cossler said. "These blogs are a great way for people to do that."
Slanina, known as Janko to his readers, met Kidd through his blog.
"Defend Youngstown fills an important niche in monitoring the progress of our region. It summarizes news, promotes various opinions and spreads information about Youngstown to readers throughout the world," Slanina said.
Slanina said reactions to his blog have been very positive.
"What I have discovered is that there is a very unique and engaged public out there who care deeply about this region, but they are often separated by distance."
While Kidd listed Slanina and Ryan as sources of inspiration for what he's doing, Ryan said he's inspired by Kidd and Slanina.
Ryan said of Kidd, "It's guys like him who inspire me."
"What these guys are doing is great. You have these young people like Phil, Jay Williams, myself, Commissioner John McNally, [state Sen.] Boccieri, who come together for what's best for the community," Ryan said. "You have 2010, the Business Incubator, the air base. There's a lot of really positive things happening in the area."
Ryan said he thought the blogs and Web sites supporting Youngstown were an optimistic sign.
"We're finally at a point where we're not letting other people define us. We're defining ourselves," Ryan said. "We're finally at a point where we're not accepting the definition of outsiders. It's a big shift. I think that we've been on the abuse side of that long enough."
And Kidd is careful to say that Defend Youngstown doesn't have a clear definition.
"Defend Youngstown is an ambiguous statement that can be interpreted anyway you want it," he said. "It's just something to think about."
Kidd said that he's not the creator of Defend Youngstown, but more the "father" or "godfather."
"I'm an ambassador connecting people outside the city," Kidd said. "I try to preach as much as I can."
People have been generally supportive of what he's doing, he said, even though he's had some dissent along the way.
"I always hear that the problem with Youngstown is that it's full of Youngstowners," Kidd said with a laugh.
Kidd said he likes to hear other opinions, and talks about the movement's nonbelievers as if he were converting them to a new religion.
Gregory said Kidd's love of Youngstown never stops. He said everywhere they go, Kidd is always trying to spread the word about Defend Youngstown.
Kidd is continuing to study criminal justice in a master's degree program at YSU. He's on a research-oriented track, in which he will present a thesis on the Youngstown 2010 plan and city revitalization.
When he completes the program, he hopes to attend law school in Akron.
"Hopefully, I'll become a city prosecutor. That way I can literally defend Youngstown," he said.
klibecco@vindy.com
Photo by Katie Libecco