sarc/
Annabel Park: I’m glad to hear that the Tea Party has a democratic structure. I think the current problem for the Tea Party is that some of the rhetoric that I see coming from the Tea Party – and they might have at the organizational level a set of democratic principles – but I think their output in terms of their rhetoric is alienating to a lot of people in America.
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Blogging the First Coffee Party Meeting in DC
As an alternative to the Tea Party’s harsh anti-government rhetoric, a bold grassroots experiment to form a “Coffee Party” movement is now underway. The Coffee Party’s stated mission is to “give voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government” and who recognize that a democratic government is “not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will.”
The Coffee Party organizers – and Annabel Park, the “accidental” founder of the effort – emphasized a vision that is very much about changing our nation’s political culture and, in particular, the way we talk about politics. It is an alternative to the Tea Party in that it seeks to counteract the Tea Party’s discourse and tone. It also seeks to “get beyond sound bites” that have made the national political conversation stale and slowed our nation’s progress to a halt. Ms. Park’s tongue-in-cheek description of the event as a “self-help group for sane people” seemed accurate – there was a noticeable absence of crazy people who are usually drawn to meetings where they may have a chance to complain.
As described in a Feb. 26 Washington Post article, the Coffee Party began when Ms. Park – a documentary filmmaker who has focused on immigration battles in Prince William County, Va. – voiced concerns about the direction of this country’s politics on her Facebook page. Her desire for a more civil and informed discourse resonated with friends, and after setting up a Coffee Party fan page, 100 people had joined by the first day. The Coffee Party Facebook page now has more than 31,000 fans.
Ms. Park’s appreciation for democratic ideals is grounded in experience. She grew up as a child in Korea when it was under military dictatorship. Noting that this regime was a result of her country’s civil war, Park wants to “counteract the pressure to divide by building up our sense of unity and community.” Her observation that in many ways, the U.S. never fully healed from our own Civil War underscored her message of the need to build community, reclaim a sense of the common good, and restore faith in our democracy’s ability to produce solutions.
http://democratizeourmovement.blogspot.com/2010/02/blogging-first-coffee-party-meeting-in.html
