"Coffee Party Wakes Up US"

[Him]

Coffee Party Wakes Up US

Just when the Tea Party movement appeared to be spreading
across the US, a radically different vision of America
has emerged, courtesy of Facebook

By Ed Pilkington
March 2, 2010
Guardian (UK)

(New York) -
Just when the Tea Party movement appeared to be spreading
across the US, a radically different vision of America has
emerged, courtesy of Facebook.

Its title might not be imaginative, but the Coffee Party USA
is making waves. In just a month its Facebook page has
acquired more than 50,000 fans; and supporters of this left-
of-centre alternative were logging their interest at a rate
of a thousand an hour today.

On the face of it, the rivals share features beyond their
beverage titles: offspring of social networking websites;
self-consciously harnessing energy unleashed by populist
frustrations with the political establishment; and strong
views on the nature and role of government.

There the similarity ends. The Coffee Party crowd believe
government is not an enemy of the people but the voice of the
people. Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker who started up
the Facebook page from Silver Spring, Maryland, said: "We
want to see people representing us moving towards solutions
to problems rather than strategically obstructing any form of
progress." In a video on www.coffeepartyusa.org (motto: wake
up and stand up) she says she decided to act after "listening
to news coverage that made it seem the Tea Party was
representative of America. I completely disagree with this."

Though she wants the phenomenon to be seen as a bottom- up
movement, it is clearly adopting a pro-Obama stance in
contrast to relentless and often virulent opposition extended
to the president by the opposition. Park herself has
campaigned with Asians for Obama and on behalf of the
Democratic senator Jim Webb.

The Coffee Party is yet another example of the democratising
potential of the internet. Over the past two years it has
allowed the political energy to swing wildly between opposite
ends of the spectrum to a degree and at a speed unthinkable
in pre-digital times. At first Barack Obama appeared to have
a dominant grip over the web, using social networking to
attract enormous financial and organisational support.

Barely had he been sworn into office, however, but the Tea
Party activists grabbed the initiative and applied it to
their own purposes. Now the Coffee Party is attempting to
seize it back.

Like the Tea Party groups, it is using Facebook and Twitter
to spread the word and to encourage individuals to form local
outposts. Already some 45 Coffee Party chapters in at least
30 states have been set up, and meetings are being staged in
several cities from Martinsville in Virginia, to Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, and Los Angeles.

The coffee metaphor helps: "It's unfortunate that Tea is no
longer soothing," posts one supporter on Twitter. "It now
makes me tense."

c Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

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I am amused but not impressed. Sure could go for coffee though.
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A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[Yorick]

maybe it's time to just start over.

and stop wasting time on "movements".
_________________
Currently experiencing: not summer.

[Yorick]

unless it's a bowel movement AMIRITE
_________________
Currently experiencing: not summer.

[Yorick]

HEY OOOOOOOOO
_________________
Currently experiencing: not summer.

[Uncle Benny]

I like both coffee and tea, but unless the coffee enema party is willing to be out there and be bat shit bananas, they will never entertain me as greatly as what the tea baggers will provide.

[CTrees]

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

[reasonablymad]

father raper.
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...

[tinkeringIdiot]

father raper sittin' right there on the bench next to me!

[WheelsOfConfusion]

Spah sappin' mah draft

[LD!]

Why they gotta be "causing a nuisance"?