Minutes of the Last FOUR Oak Park DFA Meetings

Written by: W A Thomasson on May 12, 2008 12:39 AM EDT

Linked to groups: Oak Park DFA Meeting

 My apologies, everyone. I got busy and just couldn’t keep up. But here is a synopsis of what has been happening.

 February 6

 Five people attended despite the absolutely abysmal weather. We discusses the previous day’s elections, including the disappointing lost by out supported candidate, Mark Pera. We also discussed further actions we might take, including possible forums we might sponsor and working through national DFA to urge Al Gore to say he would endorse whichever candidate would make global warming an first-100-days priority. There seemed little hope that national DFA would take such a stand, however. No concrete action was taken on future forum sponsorship, although the idea remains very much on the table.

MORE BELOW THE FOLD

March 5

Perhaps because everyone knew Eric would be out of town on business, no one but yours truly showed up. I had a very nice meal, but it would have been better with friends and conversation.

April 2

Attendance increased dramatically, to 400% of what we had seen in April. Discussion focussed on the future of the group. Why were we not seeing the attendance we once did? Is it because many of our former active members were interested primarily in discussion rather than active electioneering, while those whose primary interests are in working for candidates are now so heaving involved with the DPOP/Obama effort they have no time for DFA? Should we just focus on discussion and on sponsoring forums, which have been very successful in the past? Or is the low attendance because people perceive La Majada as a place where they must spend real money for a meal, while they can just get a cup of coffee at the Buzz Café?

One concrete decision was that we would return to the Buzz, even though it is in other ways less conducive to a large meeting. We had good attendance, but aside from the initial meeting with Pera as the speaker have generally not at La Majada. And when Pat said that he was primarily interested in working for candidates, he was persuaded to take on the post of coordinating our electioneering efforts. 

The discussion then turned to encouraging green development. There was some surprise when Eric, a professional architect, said that most development is now green. Of the 15 projects currently in his office, 14 incorporate at least some aspects of the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. Eric then continued with the “smart growth” concept and how he had recently attended a conference in Atlanta where teams worked to design “cities of the future.” His team’s concept was “node cities.” These are high-density developments at transportation hubs such as the Hillside Strangler. Today that land is largely going to waste. But build a bunch of high-rises and extend the Blue Line out there and you have a lot of people who a) won’t be moving out to the exurbs and b) are likely to be taking public transportation. And this is immediately relevant to Oak Park because Oak Park is also a transit hub. “Smart growth” may be controversial in an Oak Park context, but that alone would make it a good subject for a forum. No decision was made at this meeting, but we expect the revisit the idea in the future.

May 7

Attendance is moving up: We had 5 people tonight! But the big news is that we’re going to have a speaker at our next meeting, although it turned out to require moving the meeting to Tuesday, June 17, to accommodate his schedule. The speaker is Scott Harper, running for Congress against Judy Biggert in IL-13 (roughly southern DuPage and northern Will Counties). Ben wondered what Scott’s chances were, since he didn’t want us to always be supporting hopeless causes, but those of us who had been following Scott’s campaign were able to report that he has raised a sizable amount of money – more than $100,000 cash on hand – and has a highly professional staff. He might well win this time around if Obama’s coattails are long enough, and if not is prepared to run again in 2010.

One question is whether we could have a big enough attendance to justify him coming. It was decided that each of us present would take responsibility for phoning 10 or 12 people who used to attend fairly regularly but haven’t been seen in a while. Another question was where we should meet. Ron has seen the upstairs room at the Buzz and is quite favorably impressed, but Bill pointed out that it is not accessible to wheelchair users. And aside from the principle that our meetings should be accessible to everyone, we do have a wheelchair user who often attends during the summer. Ron also mentioned that another group as a reservation at the Oak Park library that it is not using. Not only would that call for us to change our meeting date, however, but our previous attempt to meet at the library was not highly successful.

There was also discussion of whether we should devote the entire June meeting to Harper or should also schedule a discussion topic that might develop into a forum. Topics suggested included smart growth in Oak Park, single payer (which seems to be making headway in Illinois), and global warming. At the end, however, it was decided to devote any extra time to talking about how we could help Scott and writing letters to his constituents.

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Location: oak Park, IL 60302