Jeffrey Abelson

Jeffrey Abelson is a writer and filmmaker, and founder of “Song Of A Citizen” — a unique collaboration of prominent thinkers and artists creating innovative web videos, exploring what it really means to be an engaged and effective citizen in modern times — how we-the-people are measuring up — how we can do better — and why we must.

John Avlon

John Avlon is senior political columnist for ‘The Daily Beast’ and author of ‘Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America’ and ‘Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.’ He formerly wrote for the New York Sun, where he also served as associate editor. He is a CNN contributor, where he also created the ‘Wingnuts of the Week’ segment. Mr. Avlon has appeared on ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS, and C-Span. He has spoken at the Kennedy School of Government, the Citadel, and the State Department’s visiting journalist program.

Rebecca Baird

Rebecca Baird is a recent college grad with a B.A. in History and a passion for people, culture, and organizing. Hailing from Champaign, Illinois, she has been involved with the Coffee Party from its early days and is currently on the Interim Board of Directors and a national coordinator of Coffee Party University.

Elisa Batista

Elisa Batista is a co-founder and moderator of the progressive parenting website MotherTalkers, which was named by Ms. magazine a “favorite mom blogger.” She also blogs and is an advocate for the family organization MomsRising.org, and as if she were not busy enough, she helped start an independent Spanish-immersion school in Oakland, California, called Escuela Bilingüe Internacional. Batista lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and founder of the Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, and their two children.

Rich Benjamin

Rich Benjamin is the author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America,” winner of a 2009 Editor’s Choice award from Booklist and the American Library Association. His work also appears regularly in the media, including on MSNBC, CSPAN, Fox, NPR, USA Today, CNN.com, and Salon. He is senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan think tank.

John Bonifaz

John Bonifaz is the Legal Director of Voter Action and has served as the Director of the Free Speech For People Campaign since its inception. Prior to joining Voter Action, he worked for more than 12 years (as the executive director and then general counsel) with the National Voting Rights Institute. Mr. Bonifaz has been at the forefront of key voting rights battles over the past 15 years. He led the fight in federal court for a recount of the 2004 presidential vote in Ohio, pioneered a series of court challenges that have helped redefine campaign finance as a basic voting rights issue of our time, and prevailed in Pennsylvania federal court on the eve of the 2008 election to ensure Pennsylvania voters would receive emergency paper ballots when facing long lines caused by voting machine breakdowns. Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Eric Byler

Eric Byler’s multi-media collaborations with partner Annabel Park include Coffee Party USA and the acclaimed documentary “9500 Liberty,” premiering on the MTV network Sept. 26th. Eric’s films have won 16 international film festival awards, garnered two Spirit Award nominations, and paved the way for a new generation of Asian American filmmakers.

Marco Ceglie

As a Billionaire For Bush (or Wealthcare), Marco auctioned off Social Security on eBay in 2005, created the first-ever ironic think tank to help fight against Estate Tax repeal, and staged “Public Option Annie”, the guerilla musical interruption at AHIP’s 2009 conference. He also helped deliver 37,000 copies of the U.S. Constitution to the Bush White House via Santa and sleigh, co-produced “No, You Can’t” during the 2008 Presidential campaign, and produced “Celebrate the Dream”, a massive art installation on the National Mall that both honored Dr. King’s fight for social justice and countered Glenn Beck’s attempt to distort the record.

Lt. Dan Choi

Daniel “Dan” Choi is a former American infantry officer in the United States Army who served in combat in the Iraq war during 2006-2007. He became an LGBT rights activist following his coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show in March 2009 and has been publicly challenging America’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which forbids lesbian, bisexual and gay (LBG) service members from serving openly.

Sam Davidson

Grassroots movements are integral to growing anything, from a nonprofit to a company to a political movement. But they can’t happen without the passion and outreach of countless volunteers. In this hands on session, Sam Davidson will walk through proven ways to recruit volunteers online and in person, and why a detailed volunteer strategy is needed when building a vital grassroots network. Participants will leave this sessions with ideas for attracting and retaining a corps of young, talented, and motivated volunteers.

Col. Morris Davis

Colonel Morris Davis is a retired Air Force officer and attorney. He was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for two years, but resigned over the issues of torture and political interference in the trials. After retiring from the military he worked for Congress as a senior specialist in national security. He is now the executive director of the Crimes of War Project, a collaborative effort among journalists, academics, and attorneys to raise awareness of the laws of war.

David Deutsch

David Deutsch is Principal and Founder of Synergi Communications, a strategic communication consulting firm which specializes in narrowing any organization’s unique value proposition to three words or less and creating a harmonized communication strategy so all stakeholders receive consistent messages. He has a BA in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a Masters in Communication Management from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. While an undergrad he studied Chinese in Shanghai and can speak Mandarin like a very intelligent five-year-old. He’s also really ADHD, so give him credit for being able to do anything, ever.

David Donnelly

David Donnelly is serving as the campaign manager for the Campaign for Fair Elections, a multi-organizational effort to pass comprehensive citizen-funded elections in Congress. He is also serves as the national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund and the director of its Campaign Money Watch project. A 15-year veteran of money in politics work, David has directed or consulted on campaign finance reform victories in seven states, including managing the ballot campaign to pass Maine’s landmark Clean Elections law. As the director of the only campaign finance-oriented electoral project, he has designed, raised funding for, and run strategic issue campaigns over the last five election cycles, including a multi-year, national campaign to drive Tom DeLay out of elective office.

Joshua Gordon

Joshua B. Gordon is the Policy Director of The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to educating the public about federal budget issues and their consequences for the future. Mr. Gordon directs The Concord Coalition’s research on the federal budget, health care policy and tax policy and is the editor of Concord’s blog: “The Tabulation.” He also directs Concord’s academic outreach and educational activities, including its classroom curriculum and its budget simulations. He has been with Concord since 2001.

Mr. Gordon has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida and wrote his dissertation on the budget process and the House Appropriations Committee. He also has a Master’s degree from the University of Florida and taught classes there on American Politics and on Congress. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

John de Graaf

John de Graaf is the Executive Director of Take Back Your Time (www.timeday.org). He is a longtime producer of PBS documentaries, including the popular special, AFFLUENZA, about over-consumption in America, and the recent BUYER BE FAIR, examining the worldwide Fair Trade movement. He is the co-author of AFFLUENZA: THE ALL-CONSUMING EPIDEMIC (2001) and of the forthcoming, WHAT’S THE ECONOMY FOR, ANYWAY? (Bloomsbury, 2011), and editor of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME (2003). He is currently coordinator of the Seattle Happiness Initiative and has taught at The Evergreen State College.

Ray Hudkins

Ray Hudkins joined the Coffee Party Movement in March and organized the Pensacola, Florid chapter. This is his first venture into the world of political activism. He is retired after serving 20+ years in
the Air Force and for 23+ years as a defense management consultant. He is the Interim Florida State Coordinator and has been focusing his energies on growing the membership. He is an ex-Republican and current Independent that has been part of the “silent majority” for far too long. He has been collaborating on a project to clarify Coffee Party values, purpose, goals, and strategies to draw even more people to the movement.

Michael P.W. Lewis

Independent Kentucky represents the sum of 200,000+ voters in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We are here to provide Kentucky’s Independent voters an organizing center. We have an empowering mission to provide the Independent movement a progressive nonpartisan approach to state government. We are here to build our base of Independent voters to organize were we become a vital part of Kentucky politics.

Tim Karr

Timothy Karr manages all online initiatives — including SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com and InternetforEveryone.org. Tim speaks and writes about the state of journalism and the future of the Internet. Before joining Free Press, Tim was executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., the New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Tim has been quoted in publications across the country and has been featured as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, FOX News Channel, NPR and ABC News Radio, among other places. He blogs for The Huffington Post and at MediaCitizen.

Stephen P. Kiernan

STEPHEN P. KIERNAN is the author of Last Rights. His numerous awards include the Gerald Loeb Award for Financial Journalism, the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Freedom of Information Award, and the George Polk Award. He lives in Charlotte, Vermont.

Linda Killian

Linda Killian is a Washington journalist and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is currently working on a book called “SWING” about Independent/Centrist voters for St. Martin’s Press. She is a columnist for U.S. News & World Report.com, Politics Daily and Politico and is the author of The Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution? She is the creator and former director of the Boston University Washington Journalism Center and the former senior editor of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

Gennady Kolker

Gennady Kolker is the Online Communications Coordinator at Demos, a national think tank headquartered in New York City, where he oversees a variety of online engagement and media relations efforts. Gennady also serves content editor for Demos.org, the Ideas Action Blog, and affiliated Demos websites. Formerly, he interned in Demos’ Economic Opportunity Program, the Brennan Center for Justice and in the Office of then Senator Hillary Clinton. He is a graduate of NYU.

Amy Kremer

Amy Kremer is Chairman of the Tea Party Express. Originally active in politics through social media from early 2009, she was one of the original founders of the Atlanta Tea Party and nationwide event coordinator for the original round of tea parties. She has since spoken at many tea parties and rallies across the country, including the March on D.C. and the Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Ms. Kremer participated as a panelist at the Value Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. in Fall 2009, and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, NBC, and MSNBC (among other media outlets) as one of the movement’s original grassroots coordinators.

Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. She is the co-founder of three national organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty and environmental crises, as well as solutions now emerging worldwide through what she calls Living Democracy. Her most recent book is Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want.

James Lardner

Jim Lardner is a senior policy analyst at Demos and the author of the upcoming Demos report, Good Rules: Ten Stories of Successful Regulation. His report on credit-rating agency reform advanced a proposal that was subsequently incorporated into the financial reform bill approved by Congress in June.

Phil Lawson

Creator of the Coffee Sphere: author, inventor, entrepreneur and engaged citizen, Phil Lawson is the founder and CEO of Spherit Inc which works with individuals, organizations and communities to visually ‘connect the dots’ in complex situations. His approach and patented technology are used in many applications including the US Army for marriage counseling; non-profits in working with high risk youth; adults for education and job readiness; colleges and state departments of labor, education and human resources. Details of Lawson’s approach are explained in the book Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century. Prior to his work in the business, technology and art worlds, he and his wife spent 10 years in the Southern United States in a volunteer ministry working in social change and integration activities.

Jamie Laurie

Jamie Laurie (aka Jonny 5) is a lead vocalist and founding member of Flobots. A graduate of Brown University and veteran Americorps volunteer, Laurie has been integrating music and activism for fourteen years, including in 2004 when he created VoterCrews to mobilize young voters, more recently as Board Chair of Flobots.org, and soon as Coffee Party Music Jam emcee and featured performer.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused his work on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. His current work addresses “institutional corruption” — relationships which are legal, even currently ethical, but which weaken public trust in an institution.

Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer

Lukensmeyer, Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, has made her mark as an innovator in deliberative democracy, public administration, and organizational development. Prior to founding AmericaSpeaks, Carolyn served as Consultant to the White House Chief of Staff from November 1993 through June 1994, and as Chief of Staff to Governor Richard F. Celeste of Ohio from 1986 to 1991. Dr. Lukensmeyer led her own successful organizational development and management consulting firm for 14 years.

Gwen Mandell

Gwen Mandell is a national coordinator for Independentvoting.org, a national strategy and organizing center of the independent movement and has been a grassroots organizer for 30 years.

Joseph McCormick

A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and Yale University and a former officer in the U.S. Army Rangers, Joseph McCormick spent nearly a decade as a Christian Coalition activist and former Republican nominee for the U.S. Congress. He learned the hard way that the most destructive force in our nation’s politics is Americans taking sides against other Americans. Since 2004, Mr. McCormick has pursued his passion to facilitate cooperation between grassroots groups from all sides utilizing tools gained in a series of ground-breaking national retreats he organized to bring Americans into dialogue in search of opportunities to collaborate.

Heather McGhee

Heather McGhee graduated from Yale University (B.A.) and University of California at Berkeley School of Law (J.D.). She served as Deputy Policy Director for Domestic and Economic Policy for the John Edward for President 2008 campaign. She works as Director of Demos’ Washington office, developing and executing strategies for increasing the organization’s impact on federal policy debates in Washington. Ms. McGhee contributed to the book ‘Inequality Matters” The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences,’ and her writing and research on fiscal policy and concerns have appeared in the ‘Wall Street Journal,’ ‘USA Today,’ the ‘Detroit Free-Press,’ and CNN.

Mark McKinnon

McKinnon is an award-winning media producer and communications strategist who has served as principal media advisor for hundreds of corporate and political campaigns around the world. He has been awarded more than 30 Pollie and Telly awards, honoring the nation’s best political and public affairs advertising.

Heather Meyer

Heather Meyer has been a political writer and activist for the last ten years. She is a a citizen lobbyist, a blogger, and a contributor and assistant producer for talk radio. Heather joined the Coffee Party early on, and currently leads one of the oldest chapters in the US, in Los Angeles. Additionally, Heather has worked on various national campaigns, including Coffee with Congress, Fair Elelctions, and the ongoing development of the Declaration of Unity campaigns.

Bill Moyer

Bill Moyer is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Backbone Campaign. Bill’s intersecting paths as activist and artist generate a unique set of skills and insights that he employs in his movement building work. Though Bill’s Artful Activism takes him around the country providing trainings and imagery in service of progressive causes, his home community of Vashon Island, WA is the local laboratory and foundation for his and all of Backbone Campaign’s efforts.

Kwazi Nkrumah

Kwazi Nkrumah is a nationally respected community organizer and labor activist. He has led campaigns against mortgage foreclosures in Maryland and California and has organized and represented working people – from steel workers in Baltimore to the faculty and librarians of the University of California. In addition to his organizing work, Mr. Nkrumah is well known for his presentations as a political analyst, and is valued for his skills as a consultant for numerous non-profit organizations and as a work-site facilitator in both the public and private sectors.

Annabel Park

Annabel Park is the founder of the Coffee Party USA and a documentary filmmaker.  She is the co-director 9500 Liberty, an award-winning feature length film documenting the 2007 immigration battle in northern Virginia, which in many ways mirrors the Arizona situation today.  In 2007, she coordinated the historic grassroots campaign for H.Res.121, the “comfort women” resolution, addressing the trafficking of girls into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army during WWII. She studied philosophy at Boston University as an undergraduate and then political theory at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. She was born in South Korea and emigrated to the United States with her family when she was nine years old. She grew up Houston, TX working at her parents’ truck-stop diner.

Dave Rauschkolb

Dave Rauschkolb, a Florida restaurant owner and surfer, was the original mind behind “Hands Across the Sand” (www.handsacrossthesand.com). This initiative, in which environmental activists held hands on beachfronts to protest offshore drilling, was actually organized twice. The first was in February 2010. The second demonstration was in its planning stages when Deepwater Horizon exploded. It went on to attract thousands of attendees from across the country.

Jason Rzepka

Jason Rzepka is vice president of public affairs at MTV, where his job description is five words: “use MTV’s superpowers for good.” Jason does this by marshaling the network’s forces to engage and activate America’s youth on the biggest challenges facing their generation. He is responsible for the strategic direction of all of MTV’s “pro-social” campaigns, including the Peabody-winning “It’s Your (Sex) Life” and ground-breaking “A Thin Line” ; Jason also serves on the board of directors of PopTech , a renowned social innovation network.

Ben Roberts

Ben Roberts has been active in the Coffee Party Movement since March, working at the local, state and national levels. He is particularly focused on the potential for non-hierarchical organizational development, based on the power of the internet to connect large groups of people combined with the effectiveness of conscious dialogic processes in bringing forth co-intelligent collaboration. He has recently formed a partnership with Amy Lenzo of the World Café Foundation to offer professional hosting of transformative conversations using internet-based conference calling platforms.

Jim Rough

Jim Rough is a social innovator and business consultant, the originator of Dynamic Facilitation (www.DynamicFacilitation.com), the Wisdom Council Process, and the Wise Democracy Amendment. He is author of the book, Society’s Breakthrough! Releasing the Essential Wisdom and Virtue of All the People, cofounder of the nonprofit Center for Wise Democracy (www.WiseDemocracy.org), and host of “The Jim Rough Show” on community access TV.

Katie Saddlemire

Katie Saddlemire is a New Media associate at Fission Strategy, which specializes in delivering social media and mobile-driven strategies for nonprofits and foundations. Her background is in online community management and product development for websites like Meetup.com and The Huffington Post.

Rebecca Sager

Rebecca Sager is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Her first book Faith, Politics and Power (Oxford 2010), examines the role of conservative evangelical movements in state implementation of faith based initiatives. Rebecca is currently working on several research projects she began as a research fellow at Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion last year including a new project looking at the role of progressive religious movement politics within the Democratic Party and state implementation of church/state policies. Before moving to Los Angeles, Rebecca worked as the American Sociological Association’s Congressional Fellow in Washington, D.C.

Mark Stein

An international mediation consultant and graduate of Vanderbilt University, Mark Stein has mediated thousands of cases across a broad spectrum of issues. He is the co-author of Resolving Conflict Once And For All. Through his illustrious career, Mr. Stein has served as a consultant for the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, been featured as a mediator on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” and has testified before the President’s Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations.

Rena Steinzor

Rena Steinzor is professor at the University of Maryland Law School. She is the author of Mother Earth and Uncle Sam: How Pollution and Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids, and the co-author, with Sidney Shapiro, of The People’s Agents: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment.

Zephyr Teachout

Zephyr Teachout is an Associate Law Professor at Fordham, where she teaches election law and writes about corruption and reform. She is a co-Director of A New Way Forward and was an active member of the structural reform subcommittee of Americans for Financial Reform. She was previously the National Director of the Sunlight Foundation and the Director of Online Organizing for Howard Dean’s Campaign.

Bart Turner

Bart Turner is the President of the Board of Directors of Arizona’s Clean Elections Institute, and former Executive Director of Metropolitan Phoenix’s Valley Citizens League. He has served on the Boards of Directors of Public Affairs Professionals of Arizona, Arizona Common Cause, and the Fair Districts Fair Elections campaign committee, and as the Designated Lobbyist for the League of Women Voters of Arizona. Bart co-authored Arizona’s independent redistricting initiative, which put Arizona’s redistricting in the hands of a politically balanced redistricting commission. He earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2004.

Paul Weiskel

Paul Weiskel is currently a 20 year old student at UMass Lowell studying history, he was adopted from Colombia and now lives in Massachusetts. His focus is igniting his generation to join in political discourse and bring forth a thriving, just, and sustainable world. He has been organizing for the Coffee Party Movement since the kickoff weekend and is a national coordinator for Coffee Party University, the student outreach initiative of the movement.

Jenny Wilburn

Award-winning producer Jenny Wilburn has been a member of the media for over a decade, and while at CNN, she traveled the world in search of the best stories to air on the best shows. Jenny has worked in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. for shows such as Anderson Cooper 360 and NewsNight with Aaron Brown. She was also responsible for developing a weekend prime time plan for the network, as well as launch of their online news network, CNN Pipeline. Now, Jenny is looking at the media from the other side, and who knows better what producers and reporters want – than one of their own?

Billy Wimsatt

Billy Wimsatt runs All Hands on Deck, an organizing consulting firm. He is former Director of the League of Young Voters and has published five books including: Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs.

Andy Wilson

Andy Wilson is a climate change and campaign finance reform researcher/organizer for Public Citizen’s office in Austin, TX and a frequent attendee to Austin Coffee Party meetings. Public Citizen was at the forefront of calling for corporate accountability for BP in response to the oil spill, even calling for a boycott. Public Citizen has been a frequent critic of BP in Texas, including their deadly refinery in Bay City,

Sabina Virgo

Sabina Virgo has a long history of work in the field of human rights, disability rights and diversity training. She is a nationally known speaker, facilitator, and labor organizer who has received awards for public service from both the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles Human Rights Commission. Sabina has facilitated dialogue groups throughout the country, and has participated in many international fact-finding delegations. Her written works have been published in various periodicals, and her speeches have been aired and used as fund-raising premiums on affiliates of National Public Radio.