Coffee Party Is Brewing

Who else wants to join the Abstinence Party?

The Brian Lehrer Show / March 12, 2010 / Coffee Party

National spokesperson for the new grassroots movement Phil Lawson explains the foundations of the ”Coffee Party” and what it's brewing up in reaction to the Tea Party movement.

By Patrik Jonsson / Staff writer / March 13, 2010

Decatur, Ga.
If the big "tea party" protest in Atlanta last year had the trappings of a rock show, complete with a riding “Paul Revere,” Saturday’s “coffee party” get-together at Java Monkey cafe in nearby Decatur came off more like a well-attended poetry slam.

Hand-painted signs at Java Monkey ranged from pro-healthcare reform to “jobs for Americans.” The crowd of about 40 " visibly more diverse than the average tea party gathering " included school teachers, a dreadlocked guy, young children, and even a visiting reporter from Le Monde.

Despite their caffeinated drink of choice, the people who gathered here were not nearly as hard-charging as the tea party crowds who took to the streets last year, including the hundreds of thousands who packed into Washington on Sept. 12. Even so, one of the overriding messages that emerged is not all that different: Washington has lost touch with reality, meaning Americans are being taxed without proper representation.

“People here might run me out of the room for saying this, but while on the front these two movements don’t look anything alike, I think they might actually be able to meet in the back,” says Gerry Landers, a social studies teacher and coffee party attendee. "Coffee and tea drinking together, it could happen."

Either way, woe to the incumbent.

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Even if the messages sound the same, the two movements differ in substantive ways. Tea partyers tend to berate the federal government as a whole (or most of it). Coffee partyers seem to be more in favor of government involvement " as in envisioning a greater role for government in the future of healthcare " but denounce the "corporatocracy" that holds sway in Washington.

While asserting to be independent, coffee party activists tend to back President Obama and want “obstructionists” in Congress and the media to get out of his way. To attendees like Mr. Landers, the tea party, though demanding a return to American representative ideals, seems co-opted by social conservatives such as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and even Ralph Reed (though tea-partyers see themselves as stressing fiscal and size-of-government issues).