DFA Meeting - State College, PA

Thanks to everyone who journeyed to State College on Saturday, especially Jim Dean and Ilya Sheyman who traveled from Connecticut to address the assembled group and lead the meeting. The feedback has been good and we anticipate future meetings and regular conference calls going forward.

Over 30 DFA'ers from around the state were in attendance. The following local groups were represented:

Democracy for Pittsburgh
Montgomery County DFA
Philly for Change
Lower Bucks for Democracy
Upper Bucks for Democracy
Northeast Philadelphia for Democracy
Capital Area DFA
Democracy for Lancaster
Gettysburg Area DFA
LEAD (Lebanon)
Western PA DFA

We were also honored by the attendance of three Congressional candidates:

Tony Barr - PA-09
Don Hilliard - PA-05
Mike Waltner - PA-08

Jim Dean opened things up with remarks followed by a brief Q&A. Jim reviewed the many successes of DFA both nationally and locally, and extolled us to continue the difficult but necessary work of overcoming the culture of incumbency with a culture of activism by growing our community and developing the necessary skills to compete in the political world. You can view his address to the group on YouTube (2 parts) here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0PAoqVvd18 and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBLi2TMJUJ4

Next up was Ilya Sheyman, DFA's Field Director, who took us on a tour of DFA's plans and goals for the 2008 election cycle, then split us into two groups and facilitated parallel discussions of Best Practices for attracting and retaining group members. Outcomes:

Our Best Recruitment Tools:

1) Forums/Panels/Teaching Events
2) A Good Venue
3) Working on Campaigns
4) The Right Wing's Policies

1) Speakers/Movies
2) Political Event with a fun twist
3) Working in Coalitions
4) Meetings in Public Spaces

Our Best Retention Tools:

1) Regular Action
2) Maintaining Community
3) Forming Action Task Forces

1) Lobbying as a group
2) Goal Setting
3) Developing Leadership

DFA's Recommendations:

1) Have Fun
2) Recognize Your Attendees Self Interest
3) Hold Regular Meetings (Time, Agenda, start and end on time)
4) Delegate responsibility
5) Message Success

After a short break, we reconvened and split again into two groups. One group enjoyed a presentation by the newly minted Adams County Democratic chair, Gettysburg DFA'er Roger Lund, on how to work within and without the party (I'll try to get more details on this presentation soon). The rest of us patiently sat through a truncated tutorial by your faithful correspondant on using DFA Link (truncated because DFA Link is soon to receive a major overhaul!! Woo-hoo!!).

As our final activity of the day, We all privately made lists of our three top state and national issues. Ilya then collected all the issues on the big board in the front of the room and granted each attendee three wishes. They could vote for any of the issues on the board, choosing up to three, to be our top priorities going forward. The following are the top issues in PA and the nation as selected by the attendees.

Top PA Issues:

Health care
Education funding
Environment/Campaign Finance Reform (tie)
Election integrity

Top National Issues:

Iraq
Universal health care
Single payer health care
Trade and tariffs
Global warming

The feedback after the event has been positive. The most frequent complaints were that Pennsylvania is just too damn big and, due to the long travel times, there wasn't enough time left for socializing. We'll try to address the first concern by meeting more often via conference call and the second by meeting more often in person, maybe regionally to save travel.

Thanks again to everyone who came out and Jim and Ilya for running a great meeting.

See you soon!

Kevin Shaw

PS, Your contributions to DFA make these events and all the other great work that DFA does possible. If you haven't recently (or even if you have) please drop a few bucks in the jar on your way out. Thanks!!