Coffee Party Fairfax Round 2!

The Coffee Summit, round #2-- legislative issues for change included: filibustering, fact checking and corporate funding. We all agreed no simple fixes or easy time stamps but understanding the process we could assess how being informed would enable us to act. Agreement was unanimous that promoting civility as a standalone issue would bear more immediate results. Already some of our members have put together a conflict resolution workshop for our next meeting, great. The suggestion of creating a presentation ( Coffee Sphere included) for High School history classes on how civility or lack thereof, impacts the democratic process--Mark, our History teacher member offered to work on an outline. A Fairfax County "Civility Day"--something like a political truce day inviting elected officials/ potential candidates to take a civility pledge or similar is another possibility for immediate action. The timing perhaps 6 weeks before the primaries. The one idea we all laughed at (besides dressing up as referee outfits calling fouls from the congressional gallery), was a meter/report card on our website to monitor Congress's civility level during their session as well as fact checking info. I do agree with Robert, our coffee and comments blog host-- we should exchange advocacy opportunities that other organized groups are tackling on issues that we feel aligned with. I think we all agree these are dangerous times and it is so hard to decide where we all could make our volunteer advocacy time count. The "all welcome" Coffee Party banner gives us right now one of the best opportunities to put our collective feet into the doorway of political culture, which if we keep them there, change will absolutely come--40 years ago, I saw that validated. And, that is BIG.