Posted by Conservative Generation for Left Coast Rebel

The veil of lies surrounding the Astroturf group the Coffee Party is starting to fall. It was released today in the American Thinker and Big Journalism.com that the Coffee Party website was hosted by Real Virginians for Webb, a group Coffee Party founder Annabel Park is well associated (see the article below) having previously been a member. We detailed on Left Coast Rebel, Annabel’s long list of political contacts. However, there is something else provocative about founder Annabel Park; everything she is doing with the Coffee Party, she’s done it all before with the 121 Coalition.

Just before Annabel went to work for the Obama administration, she helped found the 121 Coalition. The Korea Times has a piece from July 2007 on how Annabel Park established the movement. From the article:

Annabel Park is the founder of Korean American Community Corp (KoAmCo) in the D.C. region. Previously, she organized the Asian American outreach for James Webb’s 2006 Senate race in Virginia and co-founded the multi-ethnic coalition, Real Virginians for Webb, that helped him win the election. Therefore, she already had a close network of political and social activists, in addition to some filmmakers, to initiate the 121 network.

The 121 network began with an e-mail that Annabel sent out on March to her network of contacts who would act as the original kernel around which a more relevant social network could be formed by bringing in their own sets of contacts who would be interested in the effort.

The use of the Internet, including many social networking sites such as Facebook, proved crucial in setting up and tightening these links. After the initial network emerged, Annabel immediately began a process of forming a consensus on reworking the argument.

The proponents had originally argued that Japan, as a leading nation of the world, must deal with its past abuses against the peoples it had subjugated during WWII. However, such an argument was vulnerable to a counter argument that this issue was all about Japan-bashing by other Asian nations intent on taking some measure of revenge by shaming Japan. Therefore, U.S. lawmakers tended to be easily persuaded that Resolution 121 was not in the interest of the U.S., although the plight of the old comfort women was pitiful.

In response, newly created network members reframed the argument in the following way. They couched the comfort women issue firmly in the language of human trafficking and wartime rape. Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point, made the following point in her testimony at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on February 15, 2007: “The most important tool in prosecuting/stopping sexual violence in war in the future is the precedent of past recognition of sexual violence, enslavement, and exploitation.

Japan’s wartime military rape camps are the modern precedent for all the issues of sexual slavery, sexual violence in war, and human trafficking that so dominate today’s discussion of war and civil conflict _ in Bosnia, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Darfur and Burma.”

This reworked argument _ collectively deliberated via the Internet, championed by the social network of second generation Korean Americans, and driven by the passionate commitment of first generation Korean Americans _ eventually created the successful momentum for the resolution, heralding the birth of a promising new model of an inter-generational Korean American social network that can be mobilized for other causes in the future to influence American policy. It beats K-Street anytime.

Sound like you’ve heard it before? The same AstroTurf that brought about 121 Coalition is going on right now in the Coffee Party. You can imagine the lists of contacts Annabel now possess after working on the Obama campaign. When Annabel sent out her Facebook message to start the Coffee Party, who answered? Obama Administration official Kalpen Modi? Senator Webb?

Updated:

PS. Just want to take a moment to thank the Coffee Party for posting the Left Coast Rebel website on their Facebook page. We at the Left Coast Rebel agree that your members should be privy to the articles like this one that expose the truth about your founder. Please feel free to come back, I’m sure that we’ll have more news in the days to come.

Update #2: Who’s following this story

Potluck via Fuzzy Slippers (some of the best conservative women blog here)