Meet a National Team Member
Tom Dufour, New Media Coordinator

My name is Tom Dufour. I'm 25 and reside in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm an Interactive Web Developer for a small agency in town. I have been active in web development since I was 12 years old. I always found myself taking interest in things at an early age, and politics was no exception. When I was 15, I became deeply interested in politics, particularly after 9/11 and the start of the war in Afghanistan.

I became involved in the Coffee Party after seeing CNN's original story in March 2010. I was interested in the concept of civility and was part of the onslaught of individuals who joined in those first moments. I became even more interested in the Coffee Party after I became engaged in several of the debates which were springing up around the initial questions the group was asking on Facebook. I remember being enthralled by the concept of having a civil conversation that looked for truth and solutions rather than jockeying for positions based on political talking points, and largely that's why I'm still a member today. I also attended the Coffee Party national convention in Louisville, KY, last September.

I'm currently working on several projects for the Coffee Party. Most recently I'm working on streamlining our social media workflow and developing a new media strategy to get our message to the public. In the past, I have designed several fliers and designed the brand new membership cards.

Contact us. We will help you organize locally.

Northeast
States: CT, DC, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VA, VT, WV
northeast@coffeepartyusa.com

Southeast
States: AR, AL, GA, FL, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN
southeast@coffeepartyusa.com

Midwest
States: IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE, OH, WI
midwest@coffeepartyusa.com

Southwest
States: AZ, CO, NM, OK, TX
southwest@coffeepartyusa.com

West
States: AK, CA, HI, ID, MT, ND, NV, OR, SD, UT, WA, WY
west@coffeepartyusa.com

Coffee Party 2.0
Board Election Update

One of the most important tasks delegated to the Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team was to design and implement an election process for the Board of Directors for Coffee Party USA. As a non-profit organization and a grassroots movement, the Coffee Party (CP) requires an innovative, 21st century design for its leadership structure in order to maintain its democratic values while developing the operational agility to make effective and efficient decisions toward its ultimate goal of having a sustained impact on our nation’s deliberative process. This is an exceptionally important and exceptionally difficult challenge.

Over the past month, our six-member Board Formation Work Group collaborated on the following plan, approved by the Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team on Monday, May 9.

Board Structure:
Coffee Party USA will have a nine-member Board of Directors, elected by the membership. Three of its officers will be elected directly by the membership: (1) President, (2) Secretary, and (3) Treasurer. A forth officer, the Vice-President, will be chosen from among the six others elected to the Board of Directors in a vote by the Board of Directors. Board members will serve two-year terms. However, for this inaugural election, 5 will be elected to 2-year terms, and 4 will be elected to 1-year terms, so that we will not have a complete turnover in any given year. Board members are limited to 3 consecutive terms, and no more than 8 out of 12 years.

The CP Board will be a working board. Each board member will also serve in a Work Group and be expected to accept Work Group responsibilities in addition to maintaining regular contact with fellow Board members, corresponding with Coffee Party members, and participating in monthly Board of Directors conference call meetings. Board members must be willing to spend a minimum of 25 hours per month (possibly more in the first year) on CP Board and Work Group activities.

Who Can Run for the Board Elections:
Any dues-paying Coffee Party member who is at least 18 years old can be nominated, or nominate themselves for the election. His or her nomination must be supported by 3 other dues-paying members. All nominations will be vetted by the Board Development Committee (made up of 4 members from the Board Formation Committee and 4 outside of that committee and outside of the Transition Team). Seven of the Board of Directors slots will be correspond to specific duties and be responsible for overseeing specific Work Groups, while two will be elected to at-large positions and also serve on Work Groups. Thus, the vetting and voting criteria will include consideration of the particular skill set candidates bring to Work Groups, as well as their understanding of the CP vision and their past involvement with the Coffee Party.

Tentative Timeline:
Our goal is to publish the election ballot in mid June and have the elections take place in late June. On or before May 23, we will publish a call for nominations on the official website with detailed descriptions, instructions, and criteria for vetting. Members will have at least two weeks to submit nominations.

Report from the Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team

It has been another busy few weeks for the Transition Team since the last report.

In designing a sustainable and engaged Coffee Party, the Board Formation Committee recommended and the Transition Team approved that elections be decided by dues paying members of the Coffee Party. Many other voting options were considered. In the end, to avoid duplicate voting, it was decided to use the dues-paying member database. A May membership drive is now underway with many affordable levels, starting at $10. See the Board Election Update article for more information.

The Transition Team also devoted considerable time to its charge to construct methods to communicate effectively with, and integrate the input of, Coffee Party members at various levels within the movement. One of decisions that resulted was a plan to host a series of orientation calls intended to connect people to what attracted them to Coffee Party USA in the first place and providing them with pathways to more integral participation in the Coffee Party.

In order to improve efficiency, the Transition Team voted to delegate day-to-day operational coordination to a Project Coordination Team. The members of the Project Coordination Team are Diane Owens, Leah Spitzer, Eric Byler, Lynda Park, and Billy Sears from Coffee Party USA and Walt Roberts and Debilyn Molineaux from Changing the Game, with Annabel Park of Coffee Party USA serving as adviser.

The immense challenge of designing Coffee Party 2.0 is being delegated to seven Work Groups. Those Work Groups are: (1) Board Formation, (2) Strategy and Organizational Design, (3) Pathways to Participation, (4) Internet Infrastructure, (5) Development: Fundraising and Revenue, (6) Advocacy Action and Messaging, and (7) Chapter Formation. The Work Groups are at different stages of development, but all are making progress. In addition to designing strategies and putting them into practice, the Work Groups will create documents that recommend best practices, work flows, and organizational structures to the Board of Directors once they are elected.

Stay tuned for more news about what Walt Roberts of Changing the Game calls "a design project for Coffee Party 2.0 that builds on what we have learned and accomplished so far, and puts in place an organizational design and impact strategy that will allow the Coffee Party to communicate more effectively, grow more quickly, and offer state-of-the-art Internet platforms to 'make the truth go viral' and organize collective action."

Thank you all for your continued support as we work to create an infrastructure capable of sustaining the Coffee Party Movement for many years into the future.

Contact us at: 2.0team@coffeepartyusa.com or (301) 259-1869.

--The Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team

Coffee Party of Greater Champaign-Urbana, IL

By Delann Williams

The start-up of any group focused on social change can be challenging. Developing a working strategy to decide how exactly the group can be effective in its methods is definitely a system of trial and error. That can be said for the Coffee Party of Greater Champaign-Urbana, IL.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the formation of our local Coffee Party in the Champaign-Urbana area, it is appropriate to reflect on the past year. A review of our successes and slips along the way as well as opportunities for future successes should be discussed, if for nothing more than to present an honest assessment of our group’s attempts to pull off the unfamiliar and untested.

The initial gatherings of the Coffee Party of Greater Champaign-Urbana occurred at Café Kopi in downtown Champaign in March 2010. The founder of Coffee Party USA, Annabel Park, had made excellent use of her Facebook account to express her frustration with media coverage that made it seem that the Tea Party was representative of the American population. While she saw areas of agreement with the Tea Party, like fiscal conservatism for example, she had become more and more frustrated with the level of vitriol and how even simple dialogue had broken down in dealing with issues of importance to the American People.

One of the greatest assets the Coffee Party USA has to offer is our volunteers. We are an all-volunteer organization. This has translated well, in that we truly believe in the work we are doing.

Another asset is that our volunteer organizers, like myself, are hardworking Americans who have never organized anything in their lives. But like Annabel, we have felt a sense of urgency. A sense that, while our greater days as a nation are ahead of us; we cannot expect the same old solutions to continue to work, or, in some instances, hope that a thirty year policy will begin to work.

The first two meetings of our local group were “get to know each other” events. None of us were too sure what to think, or what to expect. We got to know each other, expressed our disillusionment with the current political climate, and in some cases expressed our feelings of exclusion. We discovered that we were the true silent majority.

We were normal citizens who felt displaced from the political process by the extreme tactics presented by the Tea Party and their “talking heads” in the media. We felt that our voices are needed and should matter in determining the course of our country. We also felt that the small minority of people who did feel represented by the Tea Party should not be the lone voice where an inclusive conversation was required.

In the past year we have met with several different elected officials, as well as candidates for office - folks running for Congress, Senate, Mayor and City Council. We have been fortunate to cultivate great working relationships over the last year with our representatives.

Community outreach has also been a big part of the Coffee Party of Greater Champaign Urbana. We have held several food drives, hosted a community information booth and performed volunteer outreach. We want to be a part of our community and want our community to support our group.

Looking forward, we are excited about our second summer with our community booth at the Urbana Farmers Market. We are also excited about our summer film series. We are screening “Casino Jack,” “The Corporation,” and “Inside Job.”

We are also looking to make a more visual impact through several organized demonstrations that will take place in the Champaign-Urbana area over the summer. It is our hope that these demonstrations will help generate more community interest in the message and values of the Coffee Party.

Join us on Facebook and Website.

Recovering a Missing Cornerstone of Democracy

By Tim McDonough

One of the greatest dangers we face, as a democracy, is internal faction. Difference in a large public is expected, but hostility toward others and a narrow-minded promotion of self-interests undermine the democratic process. The Coffee Party began as a means to counter the growing threat of faction. It cannot be avoided in our politics today. Faction has become institutionalized. Not only the most radical and reactionary members of our government, but even the moderate members of our legislature can no longer work together, across party lines, to produce laws and policies required to meet new challenges to the commonwealth.

James Madison defined faction as “a number of citizens…who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” The prevalence of faction in politics is not regarded today as a danger, but rather a reality. The greatest internal danger to democracy – recognized by our founders as well as by Aristotle and Cicero – is now a routinized practice of our government.

Something crucial is missing. An essential ingredient or foundational principle has been neglected. Freedom and Equality, Individualism and Reason, Enterprise and Innovation – these are cornerstones that reflect the Enlightenment beliefs of our founders. The rugged individualists using their creativity and will to solve problems that confront them on the path to happiness, unimpeded by old habits and barriers put in place by an aristocracy – this is the vision that captures the essence of our early politics.

What was neglected, the missing cornerstone needed to maintain the structure over the long haul, was the means to maintain concord amongst individuals with different and often competing interests. Locke and Hume, political theorists of the Enlightenment, believed that representative legislatures would provide the means to manage differences of interest through reasoned deliberation. In this they were partially right, but they relied upon a notion of the individual skilled in deliberation, able to compromise, and put aside self-interest in the pursuit of the common good. They assumed individual representatives of such character and ability, making no arrangements for their education.

Aristotle and Cicero recognized education of the citizen-statesman to be a requirement of a democratic state. They described an education in friendship as the path to democratic statemanship. It is in friendship that we learn the skills and virtues required for ongoing deliberation and sharing of the means to attain a common good. Aristotle famously states that amongst friends there is no need for justice, but for those who are just friendship also is required. Cicero refers to friendship as the midwife of virtue and the only path to happiness. But for those beholden to the Enlightenment, for all its benefits, the import of friendship to politics was pushed aside. Friendship was thought to be merely a private matter, a “delicacy” and a “trifle” to be savored away from the practical roughness of the public realm.

If the U.S. is to overcome the current stranglehold of faction, it is time that we recognize the absence of a foundational principle needed to sustain a democratic polity. We need to reawaken to the importance of public concord promoted through the experience of friendship. This is not too great a reach. Though the principle has been neglected and shunted aside, it has not been renounced. Whitman sings it loudly and Fraternity still registers as a revolutionary slogan. But what is required of us, as coffee partiers, who began our alliance in despair over the factionalization of our politics, is a tigers’ leap back to recover a principle that has been lost, but whose need is becoming ever more apparent if we hope to make our democracy work as it should, toward the attainment of our common good.

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