Sicko Action in Pasadena a huge success!

Written by: Patrick Briggs on Jul 2, 2007 4:31 PM EDT

Pasadena DFA was successful in combining our group's progressive community stance with a very worthy effort to gain universal health care for the state of California.  We did this by tabling in front of the Laemmle's Playhouse 7 here in Pasadena.  We combined the tabling with a discounted ticket purchase such that 26 people signed up for our event!

Our goal was to increase awareness of universal health care within our group (with the discounted tickets being a draw to our event).  This is an issue we plan on pushing in our community and there's nothing like Michael Moore's film, SiCKO to jump start things for us.

Our other goal was to increase public awareness outside of our group.  We did this by having a table outside the movie theatre the evening of our event.  Several DFA'ers helped with the tabling.  What orginally was going to end at 5, so we all could catch the 5 p.m. showing, turned into a 3.5 hour tabling event!

Originally, Maddie and I were going to see the show but the response and energy at the table was so great we sold our discounted tickets and kept on going!  We were fortunate to be working with the local representative of Health Care for All - California - http://www.healthcareforall.org/ - Irma Strantz.  With her help, we had 200 flyers with pre-paid postage postcards to go to the Governor demanding his support of SB 840 (California State Senator Sheila Kuehl's universal healthcare bill).  Thanks to Irma we also had 200 flyers for the organization, http://www.onecarenow.org to hand out, also in support of Sheila Kuehl's SB 840!  We gave out everything we had by the time 7:30 rolled around!!  It was a very festive and exciting last half hour of tabling when our fellow DFA'ers rejoined us, having seen the movie!  Wow!!

We are looking forward to organizing another tabling event for SiCKO later this month.  We also hope to organize a signature gathering process in support of SB 840 by walking door-to-door.  It will give our members a chance to get out into the community and meet neighbors face-to-face (boots on the ground i/o relying so much on the electronic community).

It's all about empowering our members and the community towards political change for a healthier community.  We are so glad to be a part of this concrete community building for progressive values.  We are filling a gap that the local Democratic Party isn't filling and we're glad to do it!

Hats off to a great group of DFA members here in Pasadena who made this event such a success!! 

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Location: Pasadena, CA 91104