Pasadena DFA at Sierra Madre 4th of July Parade

Written by: Patrick Briggs on Jul 5, 2008 1:16 PM EDT

Linked to groups: DFA Pasadena

Happy 4th of July weekend 2008!  Pasadena DFA gathered in Sierra Madre at the home of member, Ahmed Kassem.  He and our good friend Linda were kind enough to host us.

Pasadena DFA has made this an annual piligramage to celebrate the 4th of July.   This year was the funnest by far!

You can see all the pictures from the parade that passed right by us here (my Flickr photo site).  We'll still put a few photos in this post.

We innaugurated our brand new canopy at this parade.  It's the perfect, easy-to-set-up shade we'll need as we table at farmers market this summer!  Notice how nicely our Pasadena DFA Banner fits on it!

We had fun but we also had some work to do.  Some of our members marched with the Russ Warner contingent in this fun small-town wonder of a parade.  Russ is our endorsed candidate to defeat the 28 year incumbent Republican, David Dreier. 

Others of us tabled in front of Ahmed's house on the parade route.  We walked around the crowd with campaign literature and bumper stickers.  For those not familiar with the politics of the 26th Congressional District here in California, it is decidedly Republican red.  We got an unexpectedly positive reception from those in the crowd....some of whom knew little about our candidate but were anxious to throw Dreier out.

We got support from many in the parade itself too!  Maybe it helped that we were a source of cooling people off (it was about 95 degrees), but I also think that people, even in red districts are ready for a change.

We also got some appreciative support from fellow Democrats in the area who were happy to see us representing them along the parade.  Including these Obama supporters:

We had some great conversations with local Dems and I think we helped fire them up - showing up so boldly in Red territory....goin' purple if we have anything to do with it!

Dreier was in the parade, but interestingly enough he was all by himself in this little car and its driver.

We shouted out to him in unison, "this is your last year in office!"  How telling that nobody marched in the parade on his behalf.  Contrasting that with Warner's campaign which had 40 supporters, boisterously shouting out the need to end the war and vote Warner in this fall.

We had plenty of good eats and drinks and we stayed plenty cool while doing some pretty serious political engagement this 4th of July!  Who knew political work could be so much fun!  The parade ended not far from our location and the Sierra Madre Fire Department surprised us all by cooling off the whole crowd!  What fun!!  Go Russ Warner!  Go, go Pasadena DFA!!

Membership, if you want to have a good time and do the work needed to build out our progressive community, you have no finer place to plug in than with your own Pasadena DFA.  Next time you see an event notice come through your inbox, JOIN US!  You'll be glad you did!

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Location: Pasadena, CA 91104