Coffee Party wakes up the US radicals

[jitterbug]

Group countering Tea Party movement growing in strength

05:55 AM Mar 04, 2010


NEW YORK - Just when the conservative Tea Party movement appeared to be spreading across the United States, 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 one month, its Facebook page has 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 as of Tuesday.

Ms Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker, started up the Facebook page in response to the growing number of "Tea Party" coalitions, made up largely of Republican voters who have been speaking out against President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Democrats have watched in horror as Tea Partiers have surged to prominence by advocating fiscal discipline, reducing the role of the federal government and opposing Mr Obama's health care plans as financially ruinous.

Now, the Coffee Party is calling for its supporters to "Wake Up and Stand Up". Its mission statement declares that the federal government is "not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process"... [read more]

Washington Post interview with Annabel Park

[someguy]

Democrats have watched in horror as Tea Partiers have surged to prominence by advocating fiscal discipline, reducing the role of the federal government and opposing Mr Obama's health care plans as financially ruinous.

Now, the Coffee Party is calling for its supporters to "Wake Up and Stand Up". Its mission statement declares that the federal government is "not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process"...

Not fiscal discipline.......the horror!!!

Seriously though, if the federal government is the "expression of our collective will", then we must be really terrible people.

[jitterbug]

I interpreted that part differently. I took it to mean that perhaps we are not expressing our collective will.

Seriously though, if the federal government is the "expression of our collective will", then we must be really terrible people.

[n4rky]

The issue of collective will is irrelevant and I think this is the real failing of the Coffee Party.

Government long ago ceased being an expression of "our collective will." How long ago? Take a look at the Federalist Papers, particularly No. 10, written by James Madison, who took great pains to distinguish between a republic and a democracy.

Madison feared democracy. He was concerned for minority rights, not of any stigmatized or disadvantaged group, but of wealthy white male property owners. In Federalist No. 10, Madison makes his disdain for the masses clear, trusting wealthy white male property owners to be most able to set aside their own interests and govern in the common interest.

We see how that worked out. While the vote was eventually extended to all adults, the price of admission to political power is a considerable amount of money, needed not least for advertising on mass media. The rich continue to protect their own interests at the expense of everyone else. And if there are two things that Obama's first year have made clear, they are that corporations rule and that myths about democracy in the U.S. are for suckers.