Page 124 - Hunter - The Vigil

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In the States, it started with the Labor movement at the turn of the 20 century.
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Workers in factories and mines began to unionize, coming together to support and
protect each other, the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the
common folk against the powerful forces who would exploit them. A group of
mobilized, politicized workers in Chicago discovered that the disease that plagued
their children was no natural phenomenon. As they saw it, things other than

factory owners exploited the masses, squeezing them dry for flesh, blood and souls
just as much as grasping bosses used them for cheap labor. Alone they were weak.
Together they were strong, and just as industrial action forced the fat cats to
take notice, so, too, did organized resistance drive back terrible evils. The
Chicago Union stayed together for a few years. When their fight was

over, they disbanded.
Across the Western world,
the labor movement spawned
more than just trade unions.
It happened in England in
the late 19 century, and
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in the 1920s. It happened
in Australia in the 1930s and
1970s. Each time, as people band-
ed together to support each other,
someone or other discovered the
creatures that preyed upon them,
and did something about it.
For a long time, they were localized,
short-lived movements. This changed in 1999 when Holly Ramirez, an
active member of one of these “unions,” started looking for resources
online. She found a number of people across the English-speaking world
who had banded together for mutual defense against the monsters. We-
blogs and online forums made oblique, coded allusions to the struggles
these blue-collar hunters faced. Messages posted on bulletin boards
dedicated to parenting made reference to things a person could only
understand if she’d been through the things Holly had been through.
Holly, a student of the labor movement, began to bring people togeth-
er from all over the world and all across the Internet. The first Hunt-

ers’ Union bulletin board started up in March 2000. By June, it was
gone. Naïvely, the board hadn’t vetted its members. It was publicly
visible. Too many people volunteered enough information for them to
be pretty conclusively visible. More than a dozen people — who were
too busy with day jobs and hunting monsters to be Net savvy — died
because they didn’t realize who was reading.
Still, Holly and her growing number of friends persisted. Since
that disastrous spring, the Union forum has moved addresses four
times,each time becoming more secure.. Now, possible members have
to be invited. The administrators of the network, who rotate every
six months, take notice of news stories, blogs and forums. If there’s
someone in the region, they send them in to investigate and, if
there really are fellow hunters out there, to offer them the oppor-
tunity to get a bit of support.
On the message boards, members of the network contribute

financially not only to the upkeep of the site but to each others’

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