Wednesday, December 1st, at the Silver Star Diner in Norwalk, we had one of the best DFA Meetups we have had in a long time. Many old friends from the days of Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential campaign were there, as were friends from the Kerry Meetups and from some of the local political parties.

Since I am also listed as the organizer for the Farrell for Congress Meetup, which is probably ending now that the campaign is over, and the Democratic Party Meetup, I rescheduled those Meetups to take place at the same time as the DFA Meetup to help build bridges.

We continue to discuss what will go on long term, since the DFA Meetup is more than just Democrats. We had Greens, unaffiliateds, and even a Republican or two at the Meetup, and we did talk about several nonpartisan activities.

Kim guesses that there were 75 to 100 people there. The event was covered by the local news, which used the headline ‘Local Democrats examine party strategies’ to describe the event. Generally it missed the fact that this wasn’t just Democrats, and that we did a lot more than just examine party strategies. The paper estimated that about 55 people attended the event.

For me, an important part of Meetups isn’t the examination of strategy, the planning of events, or any other meeting like activities. These can take place at committee meetings. A Meetup is a fun time to meet people with shared interests, to get to know them, to have fun, to build friendships. In this, I believe the Meetup was very successful.

We started off going around the room introducing ourselves. Since it was a large crowd and a full agenda, I asked everyone to be brief. We were fortunate in managing to keep the Meetup pretty well on schedule.

Callie Sullivan talked about a Fairfield County Women’s Caucus that she and others are interested in starting. The goal of the caucus will be to encourage women to run for office, independent of their political views.

Brooks Jealous spoke about the Fairfield County Chapter of VotersUnite spoke about what was going on with recount efforts, and we discussed briefly the recount in Washington State as well.

Howard Dean’s brother Jim spoke a bit about what is going on with DFA and about the possibility of Gov. Dean becoming the next DNC Chair. A lot of focus was on encouraging people to run for local office.

Ellen Camhi, who is chair of the Stamford Democratic Party and a Democratic National Committeewoman spoke next. She talked about how she had gotten involved with politics years ago through meetings of the League of Women Voters. She decided to get involved and ran for school board, became chair of the town party, got elected to the DNC. This took years, and even during her time on the DNC, it has taken time to become someone that people listen to. Afterwards, she thanked me for inviting her to the Meetup and commented about how the Meetup reminded her of her experiences at the League of Women Voters years ago. I hope that years from now, someone DNC member will talk to a group of newly energized voters about how their meeting reminds them the Meetups we are attending today. I also hope that every Meetup reaches out to a DNC member and has as great a Meetup as we did.

When Ellen finished speaking, we opened things up for discussion. There were discussions about interests in the media, and I believe we have a new coordinator for the Rapid Response Network as well as about a dozen new members. Hopefully, we can finally get Connecticut responding rapidly the way the Rapid Response Network has been doing so well in other states. One person spoke about concern for health care issues and got a chance to meet others with similar concerns. People spoke about the importance of having a clear view about what the message of DFA and of the Democratic Party should be, and how it should be framed and delivered. There were discussions about the role of electoral politics in providing a bully pulpit to help deliver the message.

As we were winding down, Diane Farrell arrived. Diane had run for U.S. Congress in our district and had given the Republican incumbent the closest race he has ever faced. She spoke briefly, thanking everyone for their support.

The group then broke into many small discussions that continued for nearly an hour afterwards. It was a wonderful event, and many people went away talking about coming back next month with more of their friends.