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SCHENECTADY
Coffee Party organizing as an alternative to Tea Party
BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporter

    The Schenectady Coffee Party will hold an organizational meeting at 4 p.m. Saturday for new members at the Moon & River Cafe, 115 South Ferry St.
    The Coffee Party is an alternative to the Tea Party, said organizer Heather Lewis.
    “We choose not to be loud and abrasive, and we want to recognize that government is not the enemy, that there are good pieces there we can engage in,” she said.
    The Tea Party is considered a conservative group, with smaller government as one of their core aims.
    “We have talked about counterprotesting [against the Tea Party], but we don’t just want to be like them. Then it is two groups of people yelling at each other,” Lewis said.
    The Schenectady Coffee Party intends to function as a discussion group, “but we would like to get into political activism at some point. We would like to focus on getting people engaged in the political process,” Lewis said.
    The Coffee Party launched itself in April first on Facebook and then across the nation in coffee shops, according to CNN.com. The group’s mission statement states that it wants to give voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government.
    “A vast majority of people are frustrated with things going on in the country,” Lewis said. “Yes, the government is dysfunctional, but it is not necessarily one person. There is a good system in place if we get people involved in it,” she said.
    The Coffee Party calls itself a grassroots movement without ideology. However, Lewis said she and her co-organizers consider themselves progressives, while political observers label the Tea Party movement as populist.
    Lewis, a social worker, said that she is a Democrat and that if someone with Tea Party views came to a Coffee Party meeting, “they would be in the minority, but they would be welcome.”

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01805&AppName=1

Coffee history....when coffee was being sold on the docks by chase and sanborn....it became popular then it became a public traded company(at that time they used arabica beans) then when the dividends
were less due to the cost of arabica beans, the company switched to robusto beans(a lesser quality).....

the coffee party is just that(robusto at best)

They have a stronger message then the Tea Party's, but meh.