Quotes from participants

Here are some quotes from people who have participated in the Peoples Café's:

"I enjoy participating in the Peoples Cafe. It's a place to talk about what's going on in Denver and share experiences. It also encourages talk about the state of the world and exchanging ideas. I find it refreshing to do that; it opens my mind and actually my heart, because people share their stories. I see the Peoples Cafe idea playing a major role in advancing progressive ideas because progressive to me means evolving into a society that can imagine possibilities. Through discussion of all ideas we do just that; we see the possibilities. Also, the Cafe provides community support and social cohesiveness, which is the foundation for the movement we envision."

-Nancy McGuire

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"A truly great way of building network with the right kind of people - it has given me the opportunity to meet interesting people who share the similar views and most importantly, it has allowed us to share our personal experience in a political sense, learn new ideas of what we can do in our community to bring different groups of people together and what can we do to protect democracy."

-Khadija Qadri

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"Any time we can share ideas in an open environment, it's a good thing. There's room for everyone at the Café. Come on down, you'll love it!"

-Kim Cohen

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"Through the Peoples Cafe, we have one more way of standing outside the White House; one more vehicle of building community at the grassroots level for the tedious work ahead, as we wrest power over our government from the corporate juggernaut now firmly in the driver's seat. And you know what else? It's fun! So join us for high-octane discussion and community building at a locally owned cafe near you!"

-Walt Kramarz

Welcome......

In the opinion of the founder of the Peoples Cafe, the main element that's degraded representative democracy in this country is less about the policies or legislation of today's government, and more about an absence of dialog and critical analysis. The vacuum caused by this absence has been replaced by the monologue of corporate and military-industrial owned big media. It's time to reintroduce truthful and open-minded conversation.

Come and experiment with this new environment of communications, which is very different from what you'll find most elsewhere. Within the Peoples Cafe gatherings, people are going to have differing opinions, viewpoints, and perspectives, but we're not here to argue them out, or to prove how one of them is right over another. We're here to first of all source our commonality, and secondly to exercise that commonality for the good of all, similar to the foundations that this nation was founded upon.

So when you hear different viewpoints, feel free to make a comment on it if you like, ask a question about it, or offer your own perspective, but there doesn't need to be a necessity to prove anybody wrong, because there's nothing to be gained in doing that since we're not in a competitive environment here. Nor are we competing with one another to discover a solution to an identified problem; solutions will come about as a result of discovering our common humanity and then becoming engaged, rather than needing to agree upon a specific intellectual concept.

Peoples Cafe radio interview (2004) (Listen Now!)

2005 radio interview on conversation cafes (Listen Now!)

Newspaper story: Speak your Mind
(Lafayette News, 10/25/06)

Newspaper story: A Modern Salon
(Boulder Daily Camera, 8/19/06)

Magazine article: "Progressive Community Thriving in the Rockies"
(Independent Politics News, Spring 2005)

A quick reference guide for putting conversations together: Cafe to Go

Links to other dialogue groups and organizations