A Facebook exec told Reason magazine that “events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook.”

That’s why we at the Convention of States created OpenTheStates.com– we believe “we the people” should be able to express themselves.  We don’t concur – as the Raleigh, North Carolina police declared – that protesting is a “non-essential activity.”

As the COVID-19 outbreak sweeps the nation, governors and local officials are taking advantage of the crisis to impose rigid, draconian restrictions on our civil liberties. 

This is where we draw the line.

We encourage all Americans to practice the individual safety and social distancing guidelines recommended by the CDC. But we’ve always been a nation of self-governing citizens, and we don’t take kindly to measures that infringe on our freedoms. 

Local and state governments should allow the American people to practice common sense compliance with an attitude of defiance. Rather than stifling the liberties of the American people, they should empower us to take the common-sense measures necessary to slow the spread of the Wuhan Virus and get our economy back on track. 

The grassroots uprisings in states across the country are truly inspiring. Convention of States wants to provide tools and resources for those patriots to connect, engage, and inspire change in their local communities.

Check out the new site here, and use #OpenTheStates when you talk about it on social media.

Image Credit: Flickr

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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