By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer 
Friday, February 26, 2010
Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party -- the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending -- Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.
let's start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss 'em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion.
Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called "Join the Coffee Party Movement." Within weeks, her inbox and page wall were swamped by thousands of comments from strangers in diverse locales, such as the oil fields of west Texas and the suburbs of Chicago.
I have been searching for a place of refuge like this for a long while. . . . It is not Us against the Govt. It is democracy vs corporatocracy . . . I just can't believe that the Tea Party speaks for all patriotic Americans. . . . Just sent suggestions to 50 friends . . . I think it's time we start a chapter right here in Tucson . . .
The snowballing response made her the de facto coordinator of Coffee Party USA, with goals far loftier than its oopsy-daisy origin: promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.
The ideas aren't exactly fresh -- Tea Party chapters view themselves as civil, inclusive and fueled by collective will -- but the Coffee Party is percolating in at least 30 states. Small chapters are meeting up, venting frustrations, organizing themselves, hoping to transcend one-click activism. Kind of like the Tea Party did this last year, spawning 1,200 chapters, a national conference and a march on Washington.
"It's like trying to perform surgery in the dark," says Park, 41, a documentary filmmaker. She's exhausted, overcommitted, passing whole days on Facebook, not collecting a paycheck, hopping between conference calls, sending e-mails at 4 a.m., smoothing out conflicts over strategy. She has been swept up in this project, and so have others. Within two weeks of forming, the Los Angeles chapter produced a five-minute video in which citizens yearn for sensible progress and lament obstructionist truth-twisting.
Progress is patriotic, they tell the camera. Wake up. Espresso yourself. Something is brewing, America.
* * *
Need something to wash down that heaping helping of American angst? Tea or coffee? (Must we choose?)
Deep down, underneath the Tea Party's Revolutionary War garb and the Coffee Party's faded HOPE stickers, they seem to want the same thing. To save America. Which raises the question: "From what?"
The easy answer is "each other," when really their complaints are similar and eternal: The political system is broken, elected officials ignore the people, and the media warp truths and pit sides. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that two-thirds of Americans are "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the federal government," the highest level in 14 years, and many have sought solace in social networking. The Coffee Party, whether it grows or fizzles, is the latest effort to turn virtual disenchantment into real-world results. Its members are incited by Tea Party tactics, which they believe obstruct reform and discourage thoughtful deliberation, and the Tea Party -- well, the Tea Party has not heard of the Coffee Party.
The Coffee Party is not so much a party or movement as a slow-drip ripple through online nano-politics. Within the past 10 days, its Facebook fans rose from 3,500 to more than 9,200, which is far more than the 5,900 fans of the central page of Organizing for America, the DNC-funded group supporting President Obama's agenda. What does that mean, though, when nearly 100,000 Facebook users have joined the Tea Party Patriots Facebook page and 1.5 million have joined a joke page titled "Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?"
"So what are we doing here? What's the objective?"
Alan Alborn, a retired executive and former Army officer who voted for both George W. Bush and Obama, crosses his arms over his maroon sweater and leans back in a Manassas cafe last Friday. With him are Park, her boyfriend and fellow filmmaker Eric Byler, and Elena Schlossberg, who co-writes a blog focused on Prince William County politics. The quartet, first united by their involvement in the county's fiery immigration debates in 2007, discusses Coffee Party talking points, staying positive and coming up with a marketable phrase. Maybe "What does America really think?"
"And we need a big idea that's separate and stands alone," says Alborn, 61, who appreciates the basic tenets of the Tea Party but can't subscribe to what he views as its stonewall strategy and jumble of church and state. "We need to find people who will pledge to be one-term candidates, so that we get citizen politicians."
On Sunday afternoon, Stacey Hopkins, a 46-year-old mother of five who lives in Hapeville, Ga., speaks on a conference call with a half-dozen organizers of the Atlanta Coffee Party.
"You're dealing with a nation that's jaded, paranoid, distrustful, broke, angry -- it's like they just woke up from an eight-year meth binge," Hopkins says. "We've become so polarized. Once we say our political affiliations, everyone goes to their corner and then comes out swinging. . . . A lot of people have the same goals and desires."
Park views the Coffee Party as an extension of that desire for conversation instead of closed-mindedness, as an evolution in wiki-government, where technology enables fuller citizen participation.
"We have to relearn how to talk to each other, to deliberate," says Park, driving west on I-66 to the Coffee Party meeting in Manassas. "It's also about regaining confidence that we can come together, that we can come to the middle and agree on things."
The Coffee Party believes the middle is consensus. The Tea Party believes the middle is the Constitution.
The parties continue to post videos and recruit fans of all ideological stripes. On Sunday, a handful of San Antonio Coffee Partiers joined a small MoveOn.org rally to counter a Tea Party event. Coffee meet-ups are planned for this weekend in the District and Herndon, and there's talk of a conference or march in the summer. On Saturday, there will be 50 Tea Party rallies around the country to mark the first anniversary of the movement, and hundreds more are planned for tax day on April 15.
So: Tea or coffee? While the movements are at different points in their life cycles, both view themselves as silent majorities who have found their voice, as sleeping giants who are now awake, caffeinated on activism, ready to persuade or react to the other side, if there are sides at all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022505517.html?hpid=artslot
Coffee Party USA
http://coffeepartyusa.com/
Marni
Bourjois
Lila
Sounds like a promising, positive alternative to me.
1The only problem I had with the article is that they continued to refer to the Tea Party as grass roots movement. We know that's not entirely true.
2of course not, everyone knows only liberals can have grass root movements... duh.
3No need for a display of temper or sarcasm: it's well know that some arms of the tea parties are directed by lobbyists like Dick Armey
4who's showing temper or sarcasm? i'm completely serious.
afterall, wasn't obama's campaign "grass roots"? i mean it's not as if he had anyone interested in him before some random person came up with the idea that he should run for president.
5I love it! I hated yesterday doing the summit when the GOP kept saying that the American people don't want this healthcare bill and that Americans do what this or that. They have no idea what Americans want, they don't speak for me, and neither does the 'Tea Party'. Just because you scream the loudest doesn't mean you speak for everyone. The idea of this Coffee Party is a good counterpoint, I'd love a non fat latte please!
6Why can't we have a chai movement?
7i am starting the jagermeister movement. all are welcome. just bring red bull.
8I think the jagerbomb movement already has a chapter in Jersey
9http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JMOh-cul6M
hahahahahaha i love that video. we had a theme party revolved around that video last year around this time.
10im more of an Ovaltine girl myself.
11Oooh, I'll join your Jager movement Snarky. Just make sure the Jager is ice cold.
12of course it is roar! i have a bottle in my freezer at all times
13Unfortunately for this movement, reactionary mocking doesn't gain ground too quickly.
14And it doesn't surprise me that the Washington Post would lend legitimacy to a such a nonentity.
15He likes his tea bittah.
16The Post also gives the Tea Party legitamcy by calling it grass roots movement. Google Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and dontGO.
17The Washington Post talks plenty about groups who have a hand in organizing the tea parties, such as Americans for Prosperity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR200912...
I'm not sure why everyone is all wound up about whether it's a grass roots movement or not. Grass roots is just a euphemism for poor. First, this movement has money behind it, which means that it could actually effect policy. And second, people are finally seeing what government can do to their economic liberties.
In tandem, these two things scare the liberal news outlets so they mock it with articles like this.
18Grass roots means local, out of the center of power - it has nothing to do with poor.
19And lots of movements have money behind them - that money will be spent on the movement that will best serve the money's interests.
What I said about grassroots was somewhat tongue in cheek. The point that I was making is that it takes money to influence policy, and grass roots movements don't have it. People are still calling Obama's election a grass roots movement, which it obviously was not, if held to the same standard as the Tea Partiers.
20The comparison doesn't work. Freedom works created several different websites and used these "amateur" websites to push protest events.
21So how was Obama's campaign grass roots? No one seems to have clarified the difference.
Other than the obvious "because it's our side" argument.
22It's Org's strained comparison, means nothing to me.
23You're kidding right? It's not strained at all. All we heard about during his campaign was how "grass roots" it was... Oh my God, CONSTANTLY.
So why is that grass roots but the tea party isn't?
24If you're not convinced just google Obama campaign grass roots and look at the thousands of articles.
25Follow the money on Obama's campaign and the various tea party groups - the comparison is strained.
26You have to go beyond how many times someone uses the term 'grass roots' to determine how many times they use it legitimately.
27ohhh thats right, because Obama's campaign started with some random guy and 5 bucks.... not some rich fundraisers.... rigghhhttt...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/politics/06bundlers.html?_r=1&scp=3...
28If I was going to trace Obama's campaign to determine how much of a grassroots start it got, I'd look back further than two months before he got elected - and I'd look to after the election when the money was better sorted out.
But that'd be because I actually cared for an accurate answer.
29"that would really piss 'em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion. "
yeah that really sounds like they are trying to "promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse"
30Geez
It likes those people who cant stand music that is mainstream. I mean once a lot of people like it, it must be lame. I found them first, Im cooler than you are, neener neener neener. Im grass roots, you arent booyah
31"For the Johnny-Come-Latelys in the MSM who will be dispatched by their editors to file obligatory stories about the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Party protests across the country today, here is a cheat sheet to get you up to speed.
Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist” or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen."
Just because people with money jumped on the bandwagon does not make you right. You might want to take some of your own advice and dig a little deeper than what huffington post tells you
32byt the mere printing of an article like this and linking it to different chapters, isnt that the EXACT same thing as what happened with the tea parties?
33You really should have taken a long look in the mirror after posting your Why whine.
34That would be something new.
3535 is not directed at Stolze
36It makes no sense directed at anyone else here.
37Only if you can't read.
38I can read. No one but Stolze posted a Why whine. So #35 makes no sense directed at anyone else.
39None of my post were rude...
40Anyone who thinks the Tea Party movement is "grass roots" is sorely mistaken. I don't care what side you are on Freedomworks which is lead by Dick Armey.
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