Alaska Coffee Party Report
This past weekend, almost 400 Coffee Parties took place across the U.S. Each one was different, had its own agenda, and asked its own questions. The people who attended were those who recognize that something is wrong in this country, but they don’t think drawing a Hitler moustache on something is the way to fix it.
Awesome and engaged Mudflatter ‘Valley Independent’ was our Boots On the Ground at the Coffee Party in Wasilla, Alaska. She tells me she’s feeling more energized about politics than she has in a long time. Here’s her report.
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from Valley Independent
The Coffee Party is off to a good start here in Wasilla. The attendance wasn’t huge, but pretty darn good for short notice. Thanks to Jay for organizing it, and to AKM and Shannyn Moore for helping to get the word out.The Metro Cafe is a warm and sunny place on Lucille Street, a very busy north-south corridor in Wasilla. I have been wanting to visit since they opened this summer, so this was a great excuse to do just that. Their website is here. Carmen and her assistant were lovely, and make great coffee.It was fun and exciting to see some familiar faces from around town, and also to have the opportunity to meet several new people, all of whom are willing to work constructively on the challenges that face us on all political levels.Several good suggestions were brought forth – we’ll be working on those at future meetings. Speaking of future meetings, our next meeting will be at the Metro Cafe at 10 am Saturday, March 20th. This is a non-partisan event, so anyone who wants to engage in civil discussion about the issues and be a part of finding solutions is not only welcome, but encouraged to attend.Phil Munger has a post with pictures on his blog, Progressive Alaska, found here. Bill Hess also stopped by and is working on something for his blog, Wasilla, Alaska by 300, which can be found here. Thanks to both of them.***************************
Saturday night, I stopped in at the Coffee Party in Anchorage at Cafe del Mundo. There were about 35 people at the event. We made signs and took pictures, and talked about civility in discourse. We agreed that being civil doesn’t mean taking things lying down, and it doesn’t mean always agreeing or being meek. But, we see the angry mobs screaming “Obama and the Democrat Party are a buncha Socialist, Marxist, Fascists who want to wipe their feet on the constitution while they steal our guns!” And we realize that name calling and shrieking and uninformed rhetoric is the refuge of those who don’t know the issues and are more interested in mob-mentality politics than in finding solutions to the problems that affect us all.We also decided that we’d like to get involved in politics on a local level too, and not just in national issues. We think it would be great if a group showed up at the Anchorage Assembly meeting on March 23, to hear Harriet Drummond’s resolution read (hint hint), and if we showed our support for an independent investigation (rather than an in-house one) into why the city just had to pay a $193,000 “life insurance policy” for the death of a mayor from 2 and a half decades ago to his son who is the current mayor, after the whole thing got slipped in under the radar and Assembly members were misled about what they were voting on. Yes, I wrote that all in one breath. Don’t get me started.
[So, that's Tuesday, March 23 at 5:00pm at the Assembly Chambers in the Loussac Library]
Thanks to Barb Clark for running the event, and to everyone else for showing up, speaking up, and deciding that you’d like to DO something other than drawing Hitler moustaches, and yelling about how you want the government out of your Medicare, and how you don’t want to pay taxes while you protest in a public park, after having driven on well-lit maintained roads that are monitored for safety by city police officers. Just sayin’.
For more information on Coffee Parties that are happening near you, and to see pictures posted from Coffee Parties across the country, check out CoffeePartyUSA.com. You can also find the Anchorage Coffee Party on Facebook HERE and the National Coffee Party page with links to local ones HERE. They’ve already got more than 160,000 fans!
And one of the best parts about this, there is NOT an existing slang term “coffeebagging” for some sexual act, eh?
I LOVE the idea of this. Civil discourse… who knew?
May you never have to relocate to a venue with bouncers….
Cheers all.
Bravo indeed… let’s grow this movement!
I think that’s a lot of people for the first and rather last minute meeting. Well done. Thanks for the report.
There is a coffee party just outside of Philly at a place called “Gryphen Cafe.” Wonder if he’ll live blog from there… just kidding!
I have the perfect theme song——–”JAVA JIVE”
This is an oldie!
Great report, Valley Independent!
“Wake Up and Stand Up”….I like that. (Much better than the visuals of dangling tea bags, I might add.)
Coffee Parties? I don’t get to see newscasts for a few days—ok I just got sick of the b***s**t and wouldn’t watch or listen.Then I tune in to Mudflats for some sanity checks and there they are, coffee parties. Checked out the sites and signed up. People talking to each other? Discussions without accusations, lies and hate? WOW !!! Happiness.
Wohoo Valley Independent! Coffee Party, indeed! I am partial to coffee over tea, thank you very much!
Not that tea is bad, mind you. It’s just that the thugs took it over, and if you take the tea away from the thugs, you just get hugs.
I wish the movement had a 3rd ‘leg’ to its logo/motto ~ “Speak Up!”
For too long, I think, we’ve watched and listened while the loony likes of SP, Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Malkin, Coulter, et al, have had, pretty much, free run of the airwaves/media/politics with their ever-increasing loonery. I think we (those of us who are more than a little disturbed by loonery –from both ’sides’–) *have* been awake and *have* been standing up; we *have* been doing so for a looooong time. It’s just that…
It’s just that a number of ‘us’ have been awake and standing up … with our hands on our hips while we’ve been shaking our heads in stunned disbelief that ‘they’ are ‘getting away’ with the chit they’re spreading; we’ve been tsk-tsking the truth-stretching, misdirections, idiocy, and outright lies coming from the aforementioned folks, instead of giving a *clear* and *immediate* voice to our objections over/to their on-going blather.
I’m a thinklin’ (proposing that): If ‘we’ can coordinate Alan Graysonesque-, Al Frankenesque-, Barney Franksesque-type (i.e.: factual, pertinent-to-the-*issue*, reality-based, and polite … but unequivocal!) voices to meet/challenge *consistently!* the loonery and garbage spewed by ‘them’ (at *all* levels of our politics), we’ll have success. And if {when} ‘we’ speak that voice and have that voice heard by *others* who’ll *also* pick it up, we’ll have Great Success. Until then, though…
Yeah, I do wish it were: “Wake Up ~ Stand Up ~ Speak Up!” beth.
–How in the world can the so-called “Coffee Party” ‘movement’ possibly work…it doesn’t have [left-ish, progressive equivalents of] Beck, SPalin, SCOTUS Justice Thomas’s wife, Faux News, or any other ‘grass root movement’ *non*-organizers *behind* it [read: backing/promoting/funding it like crazy]? [/snark] b.–
thinklin’ = thinkin’. [But 'pups already knew that, didn't they? Sweet, sweet, 'pups.] b.
If I were in Wasilla or Anchorage, I would have been there in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, I’m out in the bush, and would have had to fly in to a meeting — (sorry – cost-prohibitive).
So, my question is:
How can I participate in this with just a computer? Is there a blog or something?
Oh yeah, one more thing –
I have dial-up, so it doesn’t really work to do anything that needs high-speed internet.
YBG-
Is that why your blog name isn’t yukwasillagrma? LOL!
Oh I’m so bad tonight. Full of excitement over the Iditarod, I guess.
MUYS:
Aw, I really like “yukwasillagrma.” Oh well …….. guess it just doesn’t fit.
Yup, you’re just plain bad. hahahahaha
Tea is so elitist, really. Now coffee…..I see cowboys making campfire coffee, not guys in bow ties drinking weak tea with pinky fingers flying out.
I love this idea but I do miss the hitler moustaches