On this International Coffee Day, I do not send you marketing slogans or polite applause. I send you wishes that are demands, spoken from the core of The Better Coffee Standard.
To every farmer in the mountains, to every barista behind the bar, to every roaster, trader, teacher, and drinker whose life is tied to this plant — may dignity be your first measure. Not price per pound, not medals, not hashtags. Dignity.
For too long, coffee has lived in a Severance reality. The “working self” — the producers, baristas, roasters — have been condemned to work for the pleasure of others. Their labor fuels the global ritual, yet they are expected to remain silent, faceless, and invisible — severed. The consumer self drinks without wanting to know who you are, how you work, how much of your body and spirit you give for each cup.
This is not just unfair. It is violence disguised as normality.
My wish is that the working self of coffee finally breaks out of this severance. That the hidden half of our system demands its voice, refuses invisibility, and insists: we are not here to be consumed — we are here to be heard.
May knowledge be shared, not sold. May equality be radical, not decorative. May contracts defend, not exploit. May solidarity be structured, not improvised. May joy be reclaimed as resistance, not a guilty luxury. May health be treated as essential, not optional.
And may democracy mean more than expos slogans. May it mean coffee people shaping trade agreements, rejecting imposed tariffs, and rewriting the rules of their own survival.
So here is my wish: that International Coffee Day ceases to be a latte festival of silence, and becomes a day of unsevered voices. A chorus of farmers, roasters, baristas, and drinkers speaking together — aligned in dignity, impossible to mute.
Raise your voice. Refuse severance. Let coffee people be whole again.
— Krzysztof Blinkiewicz, Creator of The Better Coffee
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