Leadership and Inspiration from Jim Dean and Arshad Hasan!

Written by: Patrick Briggs on Feb 27, 2008 9:32 AM EST

The Pasadena DFA leadership got to meet with Jim Dean and Arshad Hasan yesterday evening. The last debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was on when they arrived but that quickly faded into the background!

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Two days ago we got an email from DFA National letting us know that Jim and Arshad were in the Los Angeles area and they asked if we'd like to meet with them. Of course! It was a bit of a scramble because everybody on our steering committee has pretty busy schedules, but a few of the committee were able to meet. It was the coolest "house party" we've ever hosted!

Jim and Arshad, for those of you who've not met them, are two very hard traveling leaders in DFA. They do this kind of thing all over the country, meeting with local DFA chapters, finding out what they're doing, getting feedback from the chapters, and providing inspiration. It would be very easy for the leadership of DFA national to lead from afar. Not Jim and Arshad! It also would have been easy for their meeting with us to have been a meet and greet kind of thing that lasted 30 minutes. Not Jim and Arshad!

These guys engaged us at a substantive level on all the issues that a DFA chapter like us faces. We looked at issues like:

• candidate endorsing (what we're doing and what other chapters are doing)
  
• growing our chapter and our leadership
• DFA Training
• using the local media to get our issues out front of our community
• hearing about how other chapters (getting perspective on what works)
• organizing precincts for GOTV
• engaging with other chapters as way to have a greater impact
• organizing around issues (i.e. SB 840 Universal Health Care here in California)
• working with other local progressive groups, especially local Democratic Clubs
• effective field organizing for a campaign
  

We were also very excited to share with them our upcoming endorsement of Russ Warner, who is taking on Congressman David Dreier this year in the California 26th Congressional District. We are truly looking forward to unseating this 25 year Republican and being a significant part of that effort.

As Jim put it, DFA is about "online organizing for offline action". We agree!

Pasadena DFA wants to thank DFA national for what it does to enable chapters like us to organize the progressive community and empower local citizenry! This kind of engagement from the national leadership is real and powerful. Thank you Jim and Arshad for a great working meeting. We feel a part of this great organization and inspired to do more!

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Location: Pasadena, CA 91104