Coffee Party USA on Dreamwidth

I began my involvement with Coffee Party USA in February 2010, when my wife showed me "The Snowy Video," which showed Coffee Party co-founder Annabel Park explaining why and how she started the Coffee Party on Facebook the previous month, along her vision for it as she stood holding a covered coffee cup as snow fell around her. I was hooked. Within the month, my wife and I followed the Coffee Party USA Facebook page, then called Join the Coffee Party Movement, participated in organizing calls, and organized and co-led the inaugural meeting of the Ann Arbor Coffee Party as part of the Coffee Party Kick-off on March 13, 2010, one of hundreds of meetings with thousands of participants that day. That day, I created the Ann Arbor Coffee Party Facebook page (now Coffee Party USA-Pennsylvania; I created the Ann Arbor Coffee Party Facebook group to replace it) to communicate with members of the local chapter. I then created the Coffee Party USA community on LiveJournal on March 20, 2010. My wife and I returned two weeks later for the second in-person meeting of the Ann Arbor Coffee Party on March 27, 2010 as part of the National Coffee Party Summit, which featured nearly 500 meetings nationwide. At that meeting, we handed over leadership of the Ann Arbor Coffee Party meetings to another member, as we were moving out of the area. However, I am still the administrator of the Coffee Party USA-Pennsylvania page and the Ann Arbor Coffee Party Facebook group, so my involvement continues.

I wasn't the only person hooked, as "The Snowy Video" helped draw national attention to the Coffee Party. 90,000 people followed the Coffee Party Facebook page by the first week of March and the Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and C-SPAN all covered the Coffee Party during February and March 2010, including CNN reports on the meetings of the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., chapters and C-SPAN coverage of the National Coffee Party Summit.

( More behind the cut. )

Today is the last day to join and receive a Founding Member card with a unique membership number and an Official Coffee Party USA bumper sticker with the motto "Incite Civility & Reason." Deadline is 11:59:59 P.M., Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time. That's just one second before 5 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 4 A.M. Central Standard Time, 3 A.M. Mountain Standard Time, 2 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, and 1 A.M. Alaska Standard Time.

To sign up for a 1-year Founding Membership, click here and to sign up for a Sustaining Membership with automatic renewal, click here. Minimum donation is $10, which is for unemployed and students. The standard recommended donation is $50.

The membership drive was originally scheduled to last only until the end of February, but overwhelming last-minute demand resulted in the extension until just before Midnight March 3 in the farthest west inhabited U.S. states.

As of yesterday evening, more than 3000 people had contributed more than $115,000 since the membership drive began. More than $70,000 of that was donated between Monday afternnon and Tuesday night. This last amount is as much money as was donated during all of 2010!

( For more details on Coffee Party USA's membership drive, join me behind the cut. )