Welcome to DFI

I won't kid you, Democratic Fashion Institute (DFI) began as a off the cuff joke I made in 2004. I was commenting on Blog for Democracy and I started to refer to my organization as DFI.

2004 was a big year for Georgia politically and for me personally. Activism, political awareness, and Democratic Party dis-organization all collided and it has never been the same for me since. I met people that year who I can't image how I did without them before. Meet ups, start up organizations, message boards, blogs were quickly replacing the more staid Democratic structures and a new community was emerging, it was very exciting.

In Georgia, after 130 years of being "Democratic", we flipped hard into the Red column. Things looked bad for us as a party and a brand. Those of us who were new and had little or nothing to loose took this opportunity to jump into with both feet and pitch in where we could. Looking back on it, it's easy to see that as a group we all had very different strengths but each in our own way we complimented each other. What were my strengths, well you could say I was all about the "visuals". I 'd hear about someone who had arrived at an event looking like one hot mess, and they would be given a DFI "fine". Then in 2006, I was asked to help someone, and it was a lot of fun.

Working full time in an unrelated industry and volunteering with various boards keep me pretty busy through 2008. I'd write DFI help columns, offer advice, work with campaigns and watched the political tide turn nationally. In late 2008, I too became a casualty of the economic downturn, and after 14 years working for a manufacturing company I was out of work. It was a good news bad news kind of thing, and has freed me to explore various opportunities, not the least of which is carving out a small space of blogosphere for DFI.