Las Vegas Weekly

Waking up the Democrats

The fledgling Coffee Party hopes to start civil discourse on the issues—but is anybody listening?

Drink and be … political: Rep. Dina Titus supports the Coffee Party’s message of passionate, but civil, discourse.

Photo: Chad Lundquist/AP

It doesn’t have the membership of the Tea Party. it doesn’t have the funding. It doesn’t have the catchy slogans, the sound bites, the easily digested gobs of O’Reilly, Beck and Hannity.

At first glance, all that might appear to be going for the Coffee Party is that it has a catchy name. But this nonprofit organization, started by filmmaker Annabel Park earlier this year, cannot endorse any candidates, and its overall impact on politics is certainly iffy. As a force that’s going to get headlines and command attention, this particular party appears a bit … decaffeinated.

Not everyone agrees with that sentiment. Congresswoman Dina Titus recently took time out from her schedule to spend 30 minutes talking to about two dozen attendees at a “Coffee With Congress” get-together at the Las Vegas home of Liza Powell—and some of them weren’t even from her district. It was a subdued affair, more akin to a Sunday social than a political movement—a coffee pot on a table in the back yard, along with bottled water and soft drinks, and folding chairs set up at the edge of a pool. Titus discussed her recent victory with health-care reform, anger and frustration were expressed from the gallery over the utter absence of bipartisanship, and Titus was blunt about executives of bailed-out companies getting million-dollar bonuses: “They should be in jail.”

It’s all so … low-key. There’s no shouting, no finger-pointing, no threatening. With the Coffee Party, that’s kind of the point.

Unlike the conservative tea-baggers, the goal of the Coffee Party (in the interest of fairness, let’s call them coffee-grinders) is to Gandhi-ize the process—whatever is being discussed, make it civil, dammit! That means no loogies hocked at congressmen, no racial or homophobic epithets, no threatening phone calls, and especially no hate-mongering signs. (Their website doesn’t mention bumper stickers, but I’m guessing they’re out, too.) From that standpoint, this meeting was a complete success.

Most people I talked to that day had found out about the Coffee Party—and the get-together—on Facebook, which at last glance lists about 300 friends in Las Vegas. Titus found out about the gathering at an Organizing for America event, and says the Coffee Party can make a huge difference in close elections—especially if it can coordinate with groups such as OFA and MoveOn.org.

“I hope it’s got the legs,” she says. It certainly didn’t lack for passion. Justin Almeida, a volunteer, became involved after returning from a three-year stint with the Peace Corps in Romania. “When my wife and I returned to this country, we were horrified at the hate coming out of people.” Dick Collins, a former educator from New York, says tea-baggers remind him of those who fought Medicare and voter rights in the ’60s, “only now they’re not wearing hoods and sheets.”

Robert Krouch, a manager for a local cab company, echoed Titus’ hopes about the various groups coming together. “There are groups that care, but they’re not cohesive and don’t come up with slogans. Short of buying Fox News, I’m not sure how we combat [the Tea Party].