Breitbart Texas’ Editor Brandon Darby was among the first speakers in Columbus, Ohio for Americans For Prosperities 9th annual Defending The American Dream summit. Darby has been at the forefront of reporting on the illegal immigration crisis and last years surge of illegal immigrant unaccompanied minors along the Texas border with Mexico.

Darby along side former ACORN worker Anita MonCrief, who now works for Americans For Prosperity, talked about their conversions from being leftist into conservative activist.

Darby was a young teenager who ran away from home and lived on the streets of Houston who found his internal passion to want to help people and to keep them from being exploited. MonCrief on the other hand was a child of a single teenage mother who was raised by a blind grand-father that joined ACRON out of anger only to realize that ACRON wasn’t doing the “good” work that was being touted. Both Brandon and Anita’s lives were changed forever by the impact Andrew Breitbart had on them.

Brandon spoke of how his “radical” views on helping other people first brought him to work with former members of the New Black Panthers, Michael Moore, and others before and especially after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. In his quest to help people Brandon admitted his opinions on conservatives changed by meeting with and talking to them. By 2009 when the left had turned on Brandon because he helped authorities in a terrorism related case Brandon was approached by Andrew Breitbart to help write at Big Government.

Both Brandon and Anita were key figures in helping to bring down the corrupt community organizing front group ACRON.

Darby also said that the left de-humanizes conservatives because the left doesn’t want people to hear the conservative message; messages that eventually pulled both Brandon and Anita from liberalism and to conservatism.

On getting more left leaning people to join the conservative cause Darby said that center-right groups actually need to stop just showing up in African-American communities with clip boards and golf shirts weeks before an election, because that isn’t an effective means of reaching them or best use of resources. Instead he suggested groups work with African-American churches and other community groups and help them to start up community gardens and other such things as the way to start putting the word and message of conservatism and limited government into their hearts and minds.

Anita added that if Jesus came back tomorrow he wouldn’t show up at the RNC or CPAC he would be in “communities of color” helping them and that is where conservatives should be as well.