Yes, we had a small gathering of 17 people here in Warroad, Minnesota--- we are a border community with Canada and three people from the New Democratic Party in Manitoba came to see what was going on. No one had any idea what was going to come out of this Coffee Party movement and there wasn't much confidence it would continue. I brought a sign that said:
Peace = socialized healthcare + jobs.
And another one that said:
Wars kill people and jobs.
We talked about what the Tea Party movement was all about quite a bit and determined the Tea Party people have three main points:
1. fiscal responsibility
2. limited government
3. free markets
They claim not to get into social issues but we know that is not true because they can't talk about these three points without getting into social issues and the three points themselves are social issues.
Actually, this information was from a radio interview with the head of the Tea Party movement in Minnesota that we listened to.
We also agreed that the Tea Party movement is not having much impact because their conservative ideas run in the exact opposite direction of what most people want and need to improve their lives.
We didn't see much hope for the Coffee Party movement either unless it can capture what the American people expect, and serve to galvanize people into action around solving their problems.
People were really upset that Moveon.org is attacking Dennis Kucinich for opposing the healthcare deal and they were extremely worried that this Coffee Party movement would evolve into a similar fiasco like Moveon.org.
Nobody saw any future supporting Obama because it has become obvious he never intended to deliver on the "change" he insinuated he was for.
We asked people to bring several things to share with each other so we could get better acquainted politically.
We asked everyone to bring a book that best reflected their own views, and we asked everyone to bring a book they had read which reflected best the views they opposed--- everyone brought a book that best reflected their own views but only two people brought books from opposing views--- the others said they don't bother reading books by conservatives.
We also asked everyone to collect and bring along newspaper and magazine articles that best reflected what they thought were the main problems in the country. We had quite a stack of newspaper articles--- over two-hundred; everyone brought at least 4. There were 11 issues reflected in the newspaper articles with the largest stack relating to the wars.
People were very leery of being used by the Democrats for 2010 elections and no one wanted any part in supporting candidates. One woman said the whole thing reminded her of the Howard Dean "Meet-ups."
We discussed how we characterized our political views which ran from a moderate Republican, most people calling themselves liberal or progressive with two people being communists and one a socialist.
A couple people wanted to get the entire group to go to the upcoming demonstration in Washington against the war. Everyone thought that was a good idea. Someone was going to find out about the costs.
You couldn't find a more "on the bottom" group of people than what we had.
The discussion about giving the Coffee Party movement direction was that this direction has to come from the grassroots.
There wasn't really much enthusiasm for the Coffee Party movement per se; but, there was a lot of enthusiasm for getting people together working on issues.
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