by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

Pasadena DFA had their Chapter meeting last week and used it as an opportunity to get behind a local issue. It's progressive, community-oriented, and will make a lot of people's lives in the San Gabriel Valley better - light rail.

by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

Pasadena DFA worked with the national Moveon.org rallies to create an event to mark the 5th Year Anniversary of the Start of the Iraq War yesterday evening.  The event was successful beyond our expectations!

Almost all the Pasadena DFA Steering Committee members were present!  We attracted a few new members and some regulars.  Altogether, we had 120 plus Pasadena neighbors show up.  Some of those neighbors came from as far away as La Puente and downtown Los Angeles.

Hats off to Maddie Gavel-Briggs for doing a great job coordinating with the local press.  We got our main paper, the Pasadena Star News to run a story on our vigil front page!  We also got about a minute of TV coverage on channel 4 - KNBC!  Here's a link to the newspaper coverage (wish they had gotten our group's name right):

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_8632169

For a different approach to our rally, commuters saw a Burma-Shave style signage before even getting to our intersection.

More on the flip:

by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

Pasadena DFA isn't satisfied working just in its own CA 29th Congressional District. No, we want to help a neighboring and very red district go blue. The CA 26th Congressional District has been represented for too long by a 25 year Rupublican incumbent - David Dreier. This year will be his last year representing this district!

Pasadena DFA is endorsing Democrat, Russ Warner, for Congress in the CA 26th Congressional District!

by Bev Huntsberger [courtesy of Blog for America]

270 DFA members from congressional district CA-29 signed the Voters Decide petition and we delivered it to the Pasadena office of Congressman Adam Schiff. We admit it! We had it a little easier than most - it was sunny and 75 degrees in Pasadena - a great day to walk around town!

We emphasized that the signatures were from Democracy For America members who live and vote in Congressman Schiff's district, and they expect him to represent the voters will at the Democratic convention, when casting his vote as a superdelegate.

Photo #1: Bev Huntsberger with petition, Maddie Gavel-Briggs and Fred Mazie meeting outside the congressman's office building on Raymond Ave.

Photo #2: Fred, Bev and Patrick Briggs (Chapter Coordinator for DFA-Pasadena) standing in front of the congressman's U.S. House of Representatives office seal, just before presenting the petition.

by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

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!

More below the fold: 

by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

I wanted to write a brief post to say how incredibly proud I am to be a member of such a great group of DFA'ers in Pasadena. We got together for our monthly meeting a little later than the rest of you but we really got to work.

This is the tangible result of a night's work. 52 letters to our state, congressional and senatorial representatives on two subjects we feel very passionately about:

Shiela Kuehl's SB 840 - Universal Health Care

and

Fighting the Democratic Senate's failure to strip telecom immunity from the FISA bill today.

 We're also excited about taking on Republican Congressman, David Dreier ("FIRE DREIER") and supporting Russ Warner in the San Gabriel Valley. In fact, our next meeting will be held in the heart of the 26th Congressional District - Monrovia, CA and will be all about how we can tie ourselves into Russ' campaign.

by Patrick Briggs [courtesy of Blog for America]

We often hear that we should think local in our politics. Pasadena resident, Peter Dreier (proud to say he lives on my block!), has an important essay out on the centrality of affordable housing, an involved citizenry with their city council, and a good public education system, to a socially just Pasadena community. Please read these links to find out more:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/print.php?id=18365

Here is a link to a report commissioned by the Pasadena Educational Foundation. It was written by Richard Kahlenberg, an educational consultant. The report pointed out that Pasadena has more world-class institutions colleges, museums, theaters, hospitals, and science-based businesses -- than any other city its size. If these institutions and the broader community got behind our public schools, there's no reason that PUSD couldn't be a first-class school system.

http://www.pusd.us/article.php?story=20060606114711995