Coffee Party Wakes Up US Radicals

[bluak47]

for that stand up crowd amongst us, go ahead and work with the system.

... oh, special plus for your sleepy heads, free coffee with the handouts

Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
Coffee Party Wakes Up US Radicals

by Ed Pilkington in 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 theweb, 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."
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

[lsmurphy]

They are easy targets, let the fun begin.

Scott

[lsmurphy]

just three days of anarchy Blu, that's all it'll take.

Scott

[partymember]

a dodge charger, some lynyrd skynyrd 8-tracks and a browning A-5

wana have some fun?

[Dirt Diver]

Load them silly Liberals back on the short bus...

[LuzRD]

i like fun

[partymember]

Originally Posted by LuzRD

i like fun

hurrah!

tear-assing around Brock Samson style. Fun will be had by all who attend

[LuzRD]

can we have catch phrases and cool theme music of our own that plays between Skynyrd songs?

[partymember]

hopefully

I like "Stayin' Alive" to play when i run over hippies

[lsmurphy]

Originally Posted by partymember

hopefully

I like "Stayin' Alive" to play when i run over hippies

BGs? huh?

Scott

[6526]

Originally Posted by lsmurphy

BGs? huh?

Scott

just be glad it wasn't "Believe"

[Etek]

Play 'Wind beneath my wings' just before they 'accidentally' fall out of a 10 story building.

[akinnepa]

I still think the song should be "last dance" it will really screw up any wedding in the future.

[bluak47]

snort coffee out both nostrils ...

what did you expect from the starbuck set?

wonder what the MSM would make of this thread.

so, you guys aren't worried about the latest fiss-attack
on We The People, i take it

just had to get y'all off my ass, heehee!

beers on me, round 'em up, fielders choice.

[bluak47]

'Grassroots' Coffee Party Organizer Exposed as Obama Political Operative
By P.J. Gladnick
Created 03/02/2010 - 17:47
Surprise! Surprise!

It turns out that the "grassroots" organizer of the "progressive alternative" to the Tea Parties, the Coffee Party [0], has been exposed as an Obama political operative. If you had read the profiles of the Coffee Party founder Annabel Park (photo) in the Washington Post [1] or New York Times [2] you wouldn't have had a hint as to her extensive political activity in the 2008 Obama campaign. So how did William A. Jacobson of Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion [3] discover this "deep secret" that the two major newspapers with their vast resources were unable to find? Well, it required the "tremendous effort" of tapping a few keys and a whole mouse click to find this subject matter as Jacobson explains [4]:

In fact, a simple internet search (which the NY Times apparently is not capable of doing) reveals that Park organized the Coffee Party for the specific purpose of undermining the Tea Party movement.

Park is a former Strategy Analyst [5] at the NY Times who was one of organizers and operators of the United for Obama [6] video channel at YouTube [7]:

A strategy analyst for the New York Times who was one of the organizers for United for Obama? Some grassroots person! Perhaps in the rarified air which Times reporter Kate Zernike breaths. After all she was the same reporter who somehow managed detect [7] racial overtones in the Brooklyn accent of Jason Mattera speaking at CPAC. So what was Zernike's lame excuse for failing to reveal Park's background working as a political operative for Obama? Jacobson provides the laugh lines:

Interesting, I received a phone call from Kate Zernike, the author of the NY Times article, who felt that I did not sufficiently credit her article with disclosing Park's background and motives. Specificially, Zernike pointed out that the Times' article said the Coffee Party "was formed in reaction to the Tea Party" and offered "an alternative" to the Tea Party. Zernike also felt that the pro-Obama nature of the Coffee Party was adequately disclosed because the article pointed out that one of the organizers in California (not Park) had campaigned for Obama.

I explained that I did not feel that the NY Times article adequately disclosed (i) the depth of the connection to the Obama campaign reflected in Park's background, or (ii) that the specific purpose of the Coffee Party, as expressed in Park's Tweets, was to undermine the Tea Party.

I told Ms. Zernike that I would do an update to this post, and I hoped that she would do an update to her article to explain Park's Obama connection and apparent motivations. Ms. Zernike declined, explaining that she had to limit her article to 700 words.

Yeah, and it would have taken another dozen words or so to have explained about Park's political past. Hey, 700 words is the hard cutoff point. Right?

As to Park herself, she was a bit more than disingenuous when she made this claim of solidarity with the Tea Party movement:

“We’re not the opposite of the Tea Party,” Ms. Park, 41, said. “We’re a different model of civic participation, but in the end we may want some of the same things.”

Unfortunately her own words on Twitter [8] belie her phony claim:

Are we going to sit & watch the tea party take our government & media? Come on! That's inexcusable. Get off of your butt.

we must deal with reality instead of indulging the paranoid fantasies of the #teaparty [8]. join #coffeeparty [8]

we're not going to take this tea crap anymore. let's work for change! #coffeeparty [8]

Jacobson makes this spot on conclusion about Park and her "grassroots" Coffee Party:

It is very clear from Park's background, and her own Tweets, that the Coffee Party simply is part of the perpetual Obama campaign, a means by which to subvert the real grassroots Tea Party movement by co-opting part of the message, but in a way which supports keeping Obama in power.

Source URL:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gla...ical-operative
_________________

[XSAPPER]

Makes me want to quit drinking coffee.

[akinnepa]

For how long this lasted they could have called themselves the "Tea-baggers", at least then they can let everyone know their idiots up front.

[bluak47]

Originally Posted by akinnepa

For how long this lasted they could have called themselves the "Tea-baggers", at least then they can let everyone know their idiots up front.

poorly espressed,

weak french pressed.

just drips and grinds,

rotten every drop.

(i could keep going...)

[akinnepa]

Originally Posted by bluak47

poorly espressed,

weak french pressed.

just drips and grinds,

rotten every drop.

(i could keep going...)

nice

.

[Fast Eddie]

A couple of well placed snipers would cure a lot of liberal crap thats going around

[partymember]

Originally Posted by bluak47

snort coffee out both nostrils ...

what did you expect from the starbuck set?

wonder what the MSM would make of this thread.

so, you guys aren't worried about the latest fiss-attack
on We The People, i take it

just had to get y'all off my ass, heehee!

beers on me, round 'em up, fielders choice.

Oh my GAWD! Maury! Get yer lap-top, we have BLOGGING to do!

DAVID! WHY DID I JUST SEND MY MOTHER TO ATLANTA, DAVID?

[partymember]

Originally Posted by Fast Eddie

A couple of well placed snipers would cure a lot of liberal crap thats going around

semtex and armalites

because the Irish are under-represented