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From the Desk of Debilyn
First, a big thank you! The support we receive from the CPM community in spreading civility and sanity in the political arena is greatly appreciated. The work you do in your local communities is equally important to assist our country in moving forward, past political gridlock. The Coffee Party has been busy. And not just with the Enough is Enough! Citizens Intervention Rally. (more about that in another article) Since the last newsletter, here is a short list of what has been accomplished:
Here’s what we are currently working on:
The Coffee Party is a campaign-oriented community. Together we are “taking on” the issue of money in politics, providing accurate and timely information with a tone of civility. Thank you for being part of the community and for doing all you do. Regards, Call For BloggersAre you a good researcher and writer? If you have signed our Civility Pledge please send an email to the editor below with the topic you want to blog about. Visit our blog. It provides a flavor of what Coffee Party is all about and what it does. Our blogs are informative, factual, and vibrant. We want bloggers with of all points of view as this is the place of civil discussion and the exchange of ideas. It is through this dialogue that good policy emerges. Membership UpdateYour Coffee Party Membership Department is working to design ways to improve your membership experience. We have a beautiful new fundraising website that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. We want to provide a personalized experience for our members. Along with the new site, we hope to be able to provide some very unique incentives for our February Founding Member renewal campaign. Watch for it!
Help us grow Coffee Party 2.0 — a 21st century grassroots movement that will catalyze cooperative action, generate sustained influence, and achieve "game changing" impact on key political issues of our time. . Coffee Party Store!
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Occupy Wall Street, Coffee Party synergy around money in politics
Coffee Party Founder Annabel Park was interviewed by Christian Science Monitor staff writer Mark Trumbull about the synergy between the Occupy Wall Street movement and Coffee Party USA. See article below. Coffee Party USA is having a free speech rally at the Capitol in Washington DC on October 29th, 2011 titled Enough Is Enough: Citizens Intervention. Everyday Americans will be able to pick up the microphone and speak their truths about how dysfunction and corruption in our political process has affected their lives. Annabel gave her interview from Brussels. She was invited to speak in Brussels based on the Coffee Party's efforts on two avenues: fighting the corrupting influence of money in politics, and the burgeoning global democracy movement made possible by the advent of social media technology (such as the 405,000 member Facebook community that formed as the result of her single status update). During the conference she gave a celebrated presentation similar to the video seen on the Coffee Party mission statement page, with enhancements based on recent developments. Annabel has been a student of the global democracy movement since its outset in Iran in 2009. Early this year she collaborated with Coffee Party co-founder Eric Byler on the Tipping Point essay which predicted that this sweeping demand for self-governance would soon return to America, in many ways the place of its birth. Coffee Party USA’s Enough Is Enough: Citizens Intervention rally is aimed at bringing Americans together across all political and ideological lines to work toward solutions to the problems brought to national and global attention by Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together. [READ MORE] Coffee Party Interviews Sec. Robert ReichCoffee Party USA September Book Club choice was "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future" by President Clinton's Labor Secretary Professor Robert Reich. After much discussion on our book club page we interviewed Professor Reich on a special edition of our Radio Show Politics Done Right. Professor Reich started with an excellent narration that detailed the plight of our economy and policies that should be implemented if we are to get out of our dire straits with a viable and healthy middle class. He then took a few questions from some of our members. He was very receptive to our peoples' movement and promised that he would be back. |
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Birth of the Enough is Enough Rally By Debilyn Molineaux, Executive Director 
“Congress isn’t getting it.” Annabel said when I picked up my phone in early August. The media was running a circus on the potential US debt default. Emotions were high, as the country seemed headed towards the financial cliff. “We need to give people a place to speak, to be heard. We need to be activists, to hold a march. We need something that will get Congress attention. I want us to host a Speak Out!” As we approach the Enough is Enough! Citizens Intervention Rally on October 29th, 2011, I’m amazed at how much we’ve accomplished since the inception of the idea just over two months ago. Initially, I was skeptical. I was not in favor of a protest march and rally. Been there, done that. I’ve seen polarization up close and personal. Nothing in any previous protest changed policy or convinced anyone of the “rightness” of my opinion. But Annabel was right that Congress seemed out of touch with constituents. A CNN poll from June 2011 indicates that most Americans believe our elected officials are influenced by pressure from campaign contributors. The same poll shows most Americans also believe elections are generally for sale to the candidate who raises the most money. We need a meaningful and interesting conversation on a national level. Whatever we came up to facilitate the conversation and the shift HAD TO BE DIFFERENT. It was time to bring this conversation to the Transition Team. The 9-member Transition Team (TT) is empowered to guide the Coffee Party until the elected Board of Directors is seated in January 2012. After hearing the initial idea, there were mixed feelings on the Transition Team and the decision was postponed until the following week, while the TT conducted due diligence. Items of concern were: 1) Enough planning time 2) Budget details & impact 3) Event success likelihood. After speaking to many of my friends outside the Coffee Party, most were in favor of some type of action. They wanted to participate. My friends are from across the country and across the political spectrum, from liberally liberal to moderately conservative. They were unanimous in support…even if it meant they would not see me for the next 2+ months. They could sense history in the making and the need for someone to step up and lead. My concerns were eased that people would show up |
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Letter to the Occupiers And the 99%by Annabel Park
First of all, I am inspired by your courage and conviction and I thank you for the leadership that you are showing the nation. I just read the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City passed by the NYC General Assembly. I agree with many of the critical statements made about our current financial and political system and I admire the comprehensive nature of the approach. As we further develop our collective vision and political strategy, I submit for consideration, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights proposed in his State of a Union speech in 1944, a year before his death. Although never adopted as an official amendment to the US Constitution, the Economic Bill of Rights became the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, authored in part by his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, and adopted by the UN General Assembly December 10, 1948. The United States voted in favor of the adoption. Martin Luther King, Jr. attempted to advance a version of this in 1968 through the Poor People's Campaign before he was assassinated. While we may need to revise it, it seems to me that the Economic Bill of Rights offers an orientation -- an intellectual, social and moral one -- that addresses many concerns that we all have as citizens and frames our rights as rights; not as "entitlements" for the elderly, the undeserving, or the underperforming. The values and ideas expressed in the Economic Bill of Rights were embodied in the New Deal programs — Roosevelt administration's response to the Great Depression — one of which is our current Social Security program. Professor Lessig Delivers Message To OccupyDC on Money in PoliticsHe will return #Oct29 for Citizens Intervention at US Capitol Professor Lawrence Lessig spoke yesterday at Occupy DC at McPherson Square (video coming soon) about how We the People can fight against corruption in our government and restore our democracy. And he will return to Washington DC as a keynote speaker at the Citizens Intervention rally at the US Capitol on October 29th. Why is our political process so dysfunctional? What is the relationship between lobbying, campaign donations, tax loopholes, and our national debt? The videos below offer an outstanding introduction to Lessig's latest book: A Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop it. Lessig's lectures and his writing have the potential to become a graduate level course on how to save our Republic, a course that America can take together. WARNING: the truth will not only set you free, it will make you a little angry. But these videos not only reveal some of the machinations of what Christopher Hedges calls The Corporate State, they also illuminate a path toward constructive and collective actions we can take to restore government of, for, and by The People; not the Funders.
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Demand The American Dream
George Carlin once said it is called the American Dream because it is nothing but a dream. While for many in our country that statement is ringing truer every day, we must refuse to make it the nation’s reality. As a naturalized American citizen and immigrant from Central America I am seeing in America the same dejection that leads a population to accept defeat and a submission to a less than moral power. Last week I had a multi-purpose visit to Washington DC that reinvigorated my zeal to make a difference by engaging my neighbors locally and engaging in our body politic nationally to do my part in effecting real working middle class centric change. The original purpose of my visit was to meet Coffee Party founders Annabel Park and Eric Byler, and to attend the “Take Back the American Dream Conference.” As I got to my hotel Eric called me and told me to rush over to McPherson Square as OCCUPYDC was getting ready to have their bi-daily General Assembly. I was initially apprehensive about supporting the OCCUPY movement because my thought was that it lacked direction. But then I saw it for myself, and I must admit I was schooled by the younger folks who forced me to remember my activist past where I would not have hesitated to protest for change even if I did not know at that time what policy might achieve it. What I found was a well-organized community working toward a consensus to define the country’s ills that are materially affecting us all. President Obama’s American Jobs Act Just A StartWhen bankers walked America and the rest of the world to the brink of a precipice, our government provided a taxpayer bailout in excess of $700 billion dollars. Through other Federal Reserve shenanigans banks were afforded near zero loans. All in all the Federal Reserve has loaned American and foreign banks in excess of $16 trillion. While a few complain, there is no outcry for the failed job execution, the corruption, or the pilfering effected by our banking sector. Yet, as our President rolls out a jobs program, at an original cost that is but a fraction of the banking sector bail outs and that is effectively paid for overtime, it is met with much dissension from the Right Wing and Blue Dogs. Objection to the President’s bill is not only obscene but immoral giving the state of our working middle class for no fault of their own. In fact the demise of the earning power and jobs of the middle class must be blamed directly on the failure of those that ran our economy into the ground and have yet to pay a price for said failure. Irrespective of the fallacies of the Right Wing, Mainstream Media, and Fox News the stimulus, in 2009 created up to 3 million jobs and prevented a depression. Unfortunately it was much too small given the economic destruction created by an irresponsible financial sector. President Obama’s new jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, is a good bill that if passed will increase economic activity by design though not nearly as much as if it were not crafted for best chance of passage by an irresponsible and recalcitrant Congress. Most economist acknowledge that the American Jobs Act will create jobs and increase economic activity. In fact the Bloomberg article's title alone is prescient, Obama Jobs Plan Prevents 2012 Recession in Survey of Economists
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