America Wakes Up to the Coffee Party

"The Civility Pledge was
language we came up with on a national level," Wayne Jacques, one of the
facilitators of the meeting, told me. "We wanted to make sure this
thing doesn't dissolve in to a shouting match. The country is in such a
moment of crisis, and we've had plenty of that already."

This
particular gathering of frustrated and progressive-minded New Yorkers
was just one out of over 400 similar meetings that were unfolding
simultaneously across the country. From a phenomenon that only existed
on Facebook a few weeks ago (now at 150,000 fans and counting), to a
juggernaut that has been covered far and wide by the mainstream media (including
the Guardian), the Coffee
Party movement is only the latest twist in the bizarre emergence of
competing beverage-based social movements in the United States. It is hard to think
of a more telling sign of the extent to which our dysfunctional
legislative process, atrophied two-party system and horror-show economy
are alienating ever-expanding swaths of the citizenry. "Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote Yeats. It is uncertain if the
Irish poet was a partisan of coffee or tea.

"I'm just tired of
feeling hopeless, like we don't have any influence over the government,"
19-year-old psychology student Matthew Collura tells me during the
meeting. "This seems like a new format. We're doing this out of a gut
reaction, a need for discourse."

In normal times, a group of
liberal-leaning New Yorkers meeting at a place called Le Monde Cafe to
discuss the politics of the day would hardly count as news: armchair
liberals to the barricades! But these are far from normal times.

"There's
just so much dysfunction in government right now. Just look at New York State. We have a $9bn
deficit, schools and senior centres are closing down, and yet our
politicians aren't talking to each other like adults," says PJ Kim, an
NGO consultant who lives in lower Manhattan, and who helped spearhead
and facilitate Saturday's meeting.

Like most other Coffee Party
adherents I spoke with on Saturday, Kim doesn't claim to have jumped in
to this out of commitment to any one particular burning issue. Rather,
Saturday's many and varied conversations appear largely driven by a
feeling of anger about a governing process completely overrun by
corporate cash (with near unanimous condemnation of the recent supreme
court decision that opened the floodgates even further), and
frustration that the shrill voices of a newly energised grassroots right
(ie the so-called Tea Party) are getting all the attention.

"It's
so polarised, that's why I came here," says Katherine Bernstein of
Hell's Kitchen, who I find arguing, albeit civilly, with fellow
Manhattanite Richard Borkowski. Richard takes a tougher line on the role
that corporate lobbyists should have in crafting policy (none), whereas
Katherine, who has worked in the corporate sector for 30-plus years,
thinks these things should be judged on a case-by-case basis. While the
two aren't able to reach any consensus on this particular issue, they do
come to an agreement on at least one other - healthcare. They both
agree that insurance companies shouldn't be able to kick people off
their plans due to pre-existing conditions. The Coffee Party's live and let live,
pro-dialogue creed seems especially suited for this "agree to
disagree" kind of conversation for a multi-issue crowd.

After two
hours the meeting ended with plans for a second Coffee Day (27 March)
and an upcoming lobbying blitz titled "Coffee with Congress" (29
March-11 April). There was talk of a summer march on Washington, and
involvement in the Congressional elections this autumn.

Before
leaving I asked the youngest person there, aforementioned student
Matthew Collura, if he'll be coming back for more coffee. "Hell yeah,"
he tells me. "It gives me a little bit of hope."