In March, I did something I'd not done since the late 1980s...got off my rear and decided to do more than give money to causes I believed in. As an individual with an advanced degree in public administration whose first career was in municipal management, I'm a strong believer that government is not evil. It's not the problem. It's part of the solution, and we are government - or should be. Tired of all the yelling that passes for political discourse these days, I decided to join the Coffee Party Movement. That was the easy part.
It's incredibly easy to press a Facebook button and join a cause, be part of a movement, or proclaim your allegiance to something or somebody. It's a lot more time-consuming - and frustrating - to accomplish something. And with a mandate as amorphous as cooperation and participation in government so that it expresses our collective will and addresses our challenges in a civil and positive manner, it's all the more difficult. How to translate a wish for "good government" into action?
I attended a planning meeting in March, then one of the hundreds of local meetings held throughout the country. The planning meeting made the local news and another of the local meetings did as well. Though attendance at the first meeting was high, and even higher for the second, for today's meeting there were a grand total of six of us in attendance...and as far as I know it was the only group to meet in Dallas county. While the movement remains strong and vital as near as Fort Worth, it's died in Dallas, and I'm one of those committed to reviving it. I decided my skill set would be best used in communicating with Dallas area members via this blog and through a Twitter account I've yet to set up.
This will be an experiment, for me, and for those of you who decide to participate by reading this blog, posting to the local or national Facebook page, or deciding to attend or even lead a local meeting in the future. I've included the movement's official mission statement, a link for those who'd like to sign the civility pledge (it's a jump link because the pledge is hosted on the national site...click it and a new browser window will open, allowing you to toggle back and forth), and activated sharing and subscribing abilities for those who are interested. Next will come links, and then the blog structure should be complete, and the real hard work of communicating will begin.
That's where you come in. As a grassroots organization, we are all responsible for determining our direction, but at the same time, many policy issues are time-sensitive, which means that among movement members locally and nation-wide, we need coordination. I'll be up front and share that the topic of most interest to me is campaign finance reform in light of the January's Supreme Court decision that under the First Amendment, Congress may not bar corporations and unions from using their own money to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates for office. 
But right now banking reform is number one on the to-do list because of on-going congressional hearings. In fact, there's a documentary film showing at the Angelika Mockingbird in the very near future that we hope you'll consider attending.
Look forward to more from me on that in upcoming days, but please, please, please, share your interests as well. Comment at will. I've blogged, run discussion lists, forums, and websites since the mid-1990s and feel well able to keep my ego in check. I plan to be a two-way conduit of information more than anything else, and that won't work without your participation.
~Laurie G
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3 comments:
I agree with the current thrust of the Dallas group as Laurie states it. 1) Financial Reform, 2) Campaign Finance Reform.
I am passionate about CFR. With the advent of the Internet and all its information, we now know better than ever that our government is being run for the benefit of moneyed interests. I've been politically involved at varying levels since 2000, but since the HCR debacle I became very discouraged at the realization that no matter how many letters or phone calls I made, or even my measly single votes cast, the system was gamed against my interests as a common citizen.
Until we gain the power to have our representatives actually represent us, this is all folly.
I'll be reading the posts here and elsewhere and warming up to get out of the house to get my hands dirty.
Laurie, thanks for your efforts to keep this group going; it must feel very discouraging today, but I believe there are many of us in the Facebook wings sending you support. Hopefully, others will follow suit.
Hi Laurie,
I went to that first coffee party meeting as well. I haven't been to one since, but I really haven't seen much actual meetup info gong on since then either. This movement needs some leadership locally IMO, and I think you're doing the right thing.
Maybe this movement needs some baby steps locally. We need a series of smaller meetups that have specific and achievable goals in mind. We need reasons to motivate action, because even things like campaign finance reform are too big and amorphous to really get people out of their houses.
Also, I'd encourage some scheduled chat sessions so that we can get our local agenda in order.
Having a more clearly defined reason for existing will get the movement off the ground. The national movement suffers from some of the same issues with specificity.
We need real reasons to get out of our houses and into the coffee movement. Last weekend over 20,000 showed up in downtown Dallas to protest the Arizona immigration law. They were motivated by a single event and essentially formed a flash mob protest at lightning speed in response to it.
There are more than six people in Dallas willing to organize and demonstrate in support of fixing the system. We just need to find the right catalyst.
Thank you both for your comments. I am still in the process of feeling things out, and just set up a new twitter account - @dallascoffee - and hope you'll consider being a part of that feed.
Be patient with me, though, as I try and figure out how to manage all this. Figuring out what to blog and tweet for the Coffee Party as opposed to personally, not just in terms of content but the logistics, is a bit daunting at the moment.
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