The "Coffee Party USA" is having a sort of grand opening, if you will, this Saturday, March 13. It's been carefully orchestrated nationally to appear to be grassroots, but we'll see why it's not in a moment as we look at a Chicago event. That event, in the north side neighborhood of Rogers Park, is being coordinated by
Baxter Swilley, 34, a very busy Democrat operative who most recently served as
Scott Lee Cohen's downstate director. He was also a major player with U.S. Rep.
Jan Schakowsky. (Also see
Ron Paul Supporters Aiding Coffee Party USA)
The Tea Party movement - hundreds of groups across the country with no central committee or governing body - have been falsely criticized by the Left and Democrats as being controlled by the Republican Party. That is simply not true.
What is true, however, is that a bizarre response to the Tea Parties has arisen, and it is the spawn of the Democrats. They call themselves, laughably,
"The Coffee Party USA." We'll call them CPUSA (which, of course, could also stand for "Communist Party USA").
While the Coffee Party USA attempts to make itself appear to be grassroots, it is not. In an attempt to be "grassroots," CPUSA has distributed hundreds of form letter press releases for local organizers to send out. Chicago News Bench intercepted one such press release, which announces a March 13 event in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood. It is quite amusing.
Click here to see the full press release for the Rogers Park event,
then
click here to see the identical press release for a Kansas City event.
The cookie-cutter press releases are, of course, intended to be localized and personalized by the senders. Local organizers are suppose to put their own names on the releases, along with the times and locations of their events. In the case of the Rogers Park event's press release, organizer
Baxter Swilley, neglected to add "Today's Date." Swilley sent the release as an MS Word attachment. In the body of the email, he accidentally admits that this event and all of the others on March 13 have been orchestrated by a higher authority. Swilley wrote this (emphasis added):
I hope you all can join me at the Coffee Party USA kick-off on Saturday, March 13 at Charmers Cafe, 1500 W. Jarvis in Rogers Park - 10:30 AM. Clearly, this organization is not led by someone from Chicago. Otherwise they would know that we'd all be at a huge parade on this day and instead of drinking coffee we'd be drinking green beer. So, let's compromise... after a cup of coffee and civil dialogue on the important political issues in our communities we will go next door for one of those beers at the Poitin Stil - a quaint Irish Bar.
So much for "grassroots." According to Swilley's own email, CPUSA ("this organization") is not led locally. That's no secret, of course, but it is an admission that they are getting their marching orders from some central authority. Namely, CPUSA, which performs a function that the Tea Party movement has no equivalent of: A controlling, order giving central authority. The CPUSA people are drawn to a central committee, whereas the Tea Party people are suspicious of any attempt to form such a body. Tea Partiers are independent thinkers. CPUSA appeals to those who look to a Big Uncle figure for guidance and thought suggestion.
Swilley, by the way, is big-time Lib operative. He was behind
Citizens for 2016, a group that supported Mayor Daley's bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago. He was the Political Director for the
John Edwards-Campaign Organization - Missouri, where he is listed under the "Edwards for President, Inc. Missouri Leadership." His short bio summary there says that his experience
"includes political director for US Representative Jan Schakowsky and campaign manager of Jackson, MS Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.'s 2001 re-election campaign." (Harvey Johnson was the first Black mayor of Jackson.)
Swilley has also worked for U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Chicago, a former Black Panther. Oh, and
Scott Lee Cohen, who won the Illinois Democrat primary for Lt. Governor in February, 2010 but was forced out of the race by the Illinois Democrat Party.
Swilley was Cohen's downstate coordinator and
spokesman. He's been a busy boy.
In 2002, as Schakowsky’s Political Director, Swilley was instrumental in creating a 2,500 person field organization to designed to give Democrats a landslide win that November. (
Source: http://www.hicsocial.org/Social2003Proceedings/Judith-Rae%20E.%20Ross%202.pdf - page 13)
What we have in Baxter Swilley, is a devoted Democrat operative who moves around from state to state, organizing locals in "grassroots" efforts even though he himself is an outsider. Originally from
Maywood, a suburb 13 miles due west downtown Chicago, Swilley embedded himself in Chicago's north side in Rogers Park
in 2001. That's the same year, not coincidentally, that Jan Schakowsky hired Swilley as her Political Director. Ironically,
his Democracy For America page shows that his favorite quote is
"Keep it real."
The CPUSA, it is claimed, was "founded by" Annabel Park, a big-time Democrat operative. According to Frank Ross at BigJournalism.com, the CPUSA is, to paraphrase him, a front group for Democrat Party diversionary and fakery tactics:
Yet there was nothing accidental about Park’s anti-Tea Party activism; the Coffee Party’s roots are about as grassy as the signature surface of the old Houston Astrodome; and Park’s facade of cooperation is undermined by her “tea bagger” epithets on Twitter.
Meanwhile, her claim that the Coffee Party is “purely grassroots” and “independent of any party” is laughably rebutted by the fact that the registrant for the website was listed as “Real Virginians For Webb, 14461 Sedona Drive, Gainesville, Virginia 20155” until the information suddenly went private behind a proxy. That’s “Webb” as in Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, one of at least two elected Democrats for whom Park has actively campaigned (as evidenced by this campaign video, “Real Virginians for Webb”... Full Post at bigjournalism.com...
To listen to Park herself, however, she did this all by her lonesome. She tells that lie
in a video posted at the CPUSA's website. "Keep it real," as Baxter Swilley likes to say, just doesn't play with the CPUSA.
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