How a tea party-linked group plans to turbocharge lockdown protests
THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!
CONFEDERATE AMERICA BREAKS OUT OF ITS REPUBLICAN DISGUISE TO CHALLENGE LINCOLN
FEDERALISM OVER STATE'S RIGHTS
By Tina Nguyen April 24, 2020
The Convention of States, an activist network with tea party origins, did not originate the coronavirus lockdown protests across the country. But it’s got a plan to take them to the next level.
Publicly, the group claims no affiliation with the organizers agitating for state governments to lift social-distancing measures. Yet behind the scenes and on their social media channels, the group’s leaders have made no secret of their desire to boost the protests, if not elevate them to a bigger, more professionalized and media-friendly network with a more broadly appealing message.
Over the past several weeks, the group has scooped up dozens of URLs for sites aimed at organizing future protests in key states — OpenWINow.com, opencalifornianow.com, openfloridanow.com, openarizonanow.com. On private forums, activists affiliated with the Convention of States are coordinating their own protests. And in Facebook livestreams, the organization's leader has been advising protesters to avoid divisive features that marked some early lockdown protests: stand apart from each other, bring hand sanitizer, and, most importantly, do not openly carry guns, even if you’re protesting in an open-carry state.
“You want to create a narrative that says, ‘Those people look like they're using common sense. I want to be one of them,’” said Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States, in a Tuesday livestream.
The group is also directing protesters to channel their energy into political activity, launching a website, “Open the States,” which allows users to send automated petitions to the White House, Congress, governors and state legislators. The site also links to Facebook groups across the country that are organizing protests, with the largest ones — boasting membership rates into the hundreds of thousands — targeting states run by Democrat governors.
Cars line the north and south bound lanes of Lincoln Blvd. during the Let's Get Oklahoma Open For Business rally at the Oklahoma State Capitol in Oklahoma City, Okla. on Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Participants drove their cars around the Capitol to protest the hardship Oklahoma citizens are being placed in due to businesses being forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Chris Landsberger/The Oklahoman via AP)
The protest organizers appear to be taking the cues. Many of these Facebook groups include rules that reflect Convention of States recommendations, like not posting coronavirus memes or conspiracy theories.
Taken together, it’s a slate of tactics that indicates protests in the coming weeks may only grow in size, sophistication and coordination. And it reveals an effort among conservative leaders to tap in to growing anger as lockdowns across the country have forced over 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. As the debate intensifies over when and how states should gradually reopen their economies, groups in more than a dozen states are planning rallies for the coming days.
The tactics are reminiscent of the early tea party movement, an inchoate collection of populist anger following the 2008 recession that quickly coalesced into a professionally organized, if loosely built movement fueled by money from conservative donors. Meckler himself was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and pioneered many of these tactics.
“It kind of feels like deja vu to me,” Meckler told POLITICO in an interview. “There's all these groups independently doing their own thing, but at the same time doing the same things and taking cues from each other, clearly”; such as giving themselves the same names, like “Reopen” and “Liberate” these states. “That’s the very definition of a movement—that people start to pick up the same ideas, same terminology.”
All he was doing, he said, was giving them tools and advice.
“When people are engaged in politics, the question is: Do they want to accomplish their goals, or they just want to go out there and do crazy stuff? And so you can have the right end goal, but you can still act crazy in pursuing that goal. I'm not in favor of that.”
But while this push is similar — leveraging an American suspicion of big government and elites dictating individual behavior — it’s a radical departure for the Convention of States. Since its founding in 2014, the group’s goal has been to get Republicans in power in at least 34 state legislatures, persuade them to call a “convention of states” — as outlined in Article V of the Constitution — and rewrite the country’s founding document to reduce the federal government’s power.
“It does strike me as very strange that a group that claims to be devoted to turning power back to the states is protesting in an area where the states are leading rather than the federal government,” said David Super, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University who has written about the Convention of States’ efforts.
Meckler pushed back against the idea that the group was acting differently. “We've always believed in taking power away from centralized government and returning it to the citizens. And one method for doing that is to take power away from the federal government and return it to the states. But we've also always promoted that people could be involved in their state politics and reclaim their power at the state and local level as well.”
This time, he added, the states were playing the role that he always worried the federal government would. “Unfortunately, the state legislatures and mostly the governors and the municipalities have overstepped their bounds and are doing things that a lot of the people really don't like. “
The Convention of States’ efforts are among several national conservative groups, such as FreedomWorks, that have helped organize anti-lockdown protests across the country. Others, such as the Koch family juggernaut Americans for Prosperity, have declined to participate. “The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work? We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” Emily Seidel, CEO of Americans for Prosperity, recently said in a statement.
Meckler said he and the groups he supported were not working with the Kochs, and understood why they would publicly decline to be involved, citing his early, underfunded experience in the Tea Party Patriots.
“What happens is when people see something is becoming successful, that's when the wealthier people invest in it. They're smart and they don't invest in something nascent because they're worried it's going to go off the rails,” he recalled, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if they changed their mind: “At some point, they're going to take advantage of the momentum.”
At the White House, President Donald Trump has mostly backed the protesters, declining to express any concerns about the large rallies, which have not always adhered to the government’s social-distancing guidelines. He has even tweeted out calls to “liberate” certain states, like Virginia and Minnesota, that have had protests targeting Democratic governors.
“They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion, and my opinion is the same as just about all of the governors,” Trump said during a recent briefing.
The medical community, including Trump’s own scientific advisers, have been less sanguine. Public health experts worry that lifting social-distancing guidelines now would result in another spike in coronavirus cases, and, ultimately, an even longer economic recovery period.
“So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist and a main medical voice on the White House coronavirus task force, during a recent appearance on “Good Morning America.”
The Convention of States officially encompasses several tax-exempt, 501c(3) nonprofit groups that Meckler runs. It was founded with a $500,000 assist from the conservative megadonor Mercer family. Since then, the organization has received significant funding from Donors Trust, a conservative fundraising network primarily affiliated with the Koch family. And it has gathered a slate of endorsements from high-profile conservative politicians like Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, popular conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro and former Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee, according to a recent copy of their activist handbook.
The group aims to build vast political networks in at least 40 states, across at least 3,000 state legislative districts, each captained by a district coordinator responsible for recruiting at least 100 people to their cause.
Though their regularly stated goal is to relentlessly petition their state legislatures to call for an Article V convention, the coronavirus crisis presents a unique opportunity for their movement, said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, who has monitored the group and its involvement with other right-wing groups focused on state legislatures.
“The Convention of States is interested in showing any type of image or anything that shows that people don’t like their government. I mean, that is their end goal, to overthrow the federal government and rewrite the Constitution,” Riestenberg said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for them to show that.”
And Convention of States repeatedly hammers home to its activists that a message goes across better with a degree of professionalism. In recent days, Meckler and his deputies have been dispersing tips on how to protest effectively and present a good image.
During a recent livestream on the Convention of States’ Facebook page, Mark Ruthenberg, executive vice president for the affiliated Center for Self-Governance, told viewers that it was crucial that they maintain a 5-foot distance from each other.
“It looks so much bigger when people are so far spread out,” he said. “So it just makes sense that we maintain our distance, that we show common sense because then the government will most likely say,‘Oh yeah, I guess these guys know what they’re doing.’”
The group has also used the protests to help fundraising.
In recent weeks, Meckler and his affiliated groups have amped up their outreach, launching a campaign in memory of the late senator Tom Coburn to fund their efforts to flip legislatures.
According to one fundraising email, an unnamed donor has offered to match every donation, in addition to an initial $50,000 donation. Meckler himself has started a podcast, where he rails against governors and health officials for being too overcautious. And he launched a private, subscription-only social network for his fans to “keep in touch with other humans” in a place “without the censorship, data mining or trolls.”
In the event that Facebook bans groups for promoting rallies that directly go against public health laws, Rutherberg said that the Open the States project is the organization’s backup plan.
“Should Facebook continue what they're doing — and they're literally working with the governors to find out what the policy is and they're trying to shut [us] down,” he said during a Convention of States Facebook livestream on Tuesday. “So what we're trying to do is we're trying to create other ways to communicate with people about what we're doing.”
As for the URLs, Meckler said that he’d purchased them just in case. “I don't know if we'll ever get around to using those. I don't have an actual purpose for them right now.”
The Open the States project launched its activist forums on Thursday. Already, the Convention of States coordinators have started advertising their own protests.
Joanne Laufenberg, the Wisconsin director of Convention of States, posted that she was organizing a protest in Madison this weekend, as well as several requests to keep things looking orderly.
“Please social distance,” she wrote. “Staying in our cars is even better. We don't need to give the ‘opposers’ any extra ammunition to criticize us. Trust me, I know all the reasons — they are full of it. But let's consider the optics.”
How Some Anti-Quarantine Protests Are Being Promoted by National Players With Ties to Trump
Anti-Lockdown Protests Across the U.S.
Lissandra Villa April 22, 2020
Across the country this week and last, protests have sprouted up against the social distancing measures in place to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. They’ve featured blocked traffic, confederate flags, picnics with people wearing few facemasks, and protesters pushed up against each other, receiving outsized attention relative to the number of people participating.
There are nearly 45,000 confirmed deaths in the U.S. related to coronavirus, and more than 800,000 confirmed cases total. In desperate efforts to slow the spread of the virus, much of the country is under stay-at-home orders that have been deemed necessary by health experts, taking a historic toll on the economy but which polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with.
Protest organizers say events like these are coming together organically — a grassroots uprising against measures they argue are creating more harm than the virus itself. In some places, the protests do appear to have sprung up on their own. But some demonstrations have been guided or promoted by a conservative network of national players with ties to President Donald Trump.
While organizers supportive of the protests all insist there is no national coordination, there are multiple examples of national groups prodding along some of the political demonstrations. The engagement by national organizers appears aimed at amplifying the resentment brewing on the local level. The President himself has stoked the protesters in his tweets and comments, but some of his allies have also done more, including advising or promoting local protest groups.
Among the national figures supporting the protests is Stephen Moore, a fellow on leave from the Heritage Foundation and founder of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax advocacy group. Moore, who is also an adviser to Trump, has been advocating for the economy to reopen by May 1 and is heading the “Save Our Country” coalition, a conglomerate of conservative groups who also want to see the economy reopen and are advising the White House on how to do it.
Moore says “there’s no national group or national movement behind” the protests, which have so far taken place in more than a dozen states. But Moore says he has personally advised three groups from Ohio, Wisconsin, and Colorado, which he would not name, on how to approach protesting the stay-at-home orders. (“I kind of lost touch with what they’re doing,” he added.) The advice he says he has been giving includes stressing non-violence, respecting health measures in place, and going out of their way to do things seen as constructive.
“And then not having things like MAGA hats, you know? Those aren’t helpful,” Moore says. “And look, I’m the biggest fan of the President there is. … but MAGA hats just turn people off, and so you’re not persuading people.”
Moore says the Save Our Country coalition considered getting involved in the protests as a group, but ultimately decided not to “because we thought it would be a distraction” from the organization’s goals. At least two groups within the coalition are also providing guidance or promoting the protests. Both insisted that was independent of any of the coalition’s activity.
“Tea Party Patriots Action, outside of this Save our Country coalition — separately — we are figuring out where the protests are happening and making sure our supporters are aware of them,” says Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. That awareness campaign involves sending out email blasts targeted by state, something it often does regularly, she says.
Martin said feedback from “a few thousand” of her group’s members suggested they were eager to participate in protests, but also aware of the danger the virus poses. “A lot of our supporters, they said they could go if it was in a car, but they couldn’t get out of the car because they know they would be considered high risk. They either would not participate because they’re high risk, or they would only go if they’re staying in their own car and then going back.”
FreedomWorks, another member of the Save Our Country coalition, has also been providing guidance for some of the protesters and is also careful to draw a distinction between its work with the group and its own involvement in the demonstrations. The New York Times and NPR have reported that FreedomWorks — which also has roots in the Tea Party movement — has been giving local protesters guidance on setting up websites and has been conducting polling around reopening the economy.
THE ORIGINAL TEA-PARTY RIOTERS WERE WHITE SLAVE OWNERS
About two weeks ago the group’s base began getting frustrated with the no-end-in-sight restrictions, Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks tells TIME. “Now we’re hearing that these [restrictions] could last until August, if not longer? Whoa, wait a second, that’s not what we signed up for. So that’s where you start seeing this like pivot … more into reopening the economy.”
Brandon says the group is not organizing any protests, but is supporting the activist community. “One thing I have to do is put a big brick wall between our work on the Save [Our] Country Coalition, and the grassroots protests. Two completely different efforts,” he adds.
One of the largest protests so far was “Operation Gridlock” in Michigan last week, where thousands of people took part in a drive-by protest in Lansing and blocked traffic. The event was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, and one of the key organizers was Meshawn Maddock, who sits on the board of Women for Trump and is a co-chair of the Trump campaign in Michigan, according to her Twitter account.
In response to an inquiry asking whether Michigan Conservative Coalition was “in contact” with members of the Save Our Country coalition — including Moore, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Patriots — for guidance while organizing, a Michigan Conservative Coalition representative said in an email that “‘any ‘contact’ might mean a phone call or conversation in a Zoom meeting. MCC had no substantive contacts with any group mentioned.”
Operation Gridlock’s Facebook page also listed the Michigan Freedom Fund as one of the hosts. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has said that group has financial ties to the family of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and said it was “inappropriate” for a Cabinet member to be “waging political attacks on any governor.” The DeVos family and Michigan Freedom Fund have denied any involvement by DeVos in the protests.
Tony Daunt, MFF’s executive director, says the group was listed as an event host because the group spent $250 in promoting the event, which he says was the extent of their involvement outside of covering it via his group’s social media. Responding to accusations by Michigan’s governor that the DeVos family helped fund or organize the protest, Daunt says, “That wasn’t the case. That is not the case.”
The President himself endorsed some of the protests, even as they undermined his own administration’s social distancing guidelines. On Friday, Trump shot off multiple tweets calling on his supporters to “LIBERATE” Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia, the latter which he tied to the Second Amendment. “It is under siege!” he tweeted.
The White House tells TIME it is not coordinating with any of these groups. An official with Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign says that if the President supports the protests, then the campaign is “100%” behind him. “If you look, there are states that have gone way over the boundaries on what should be considered safe limitations on what people are doing,” the official says. “The President has talked about where he thinks it’s gone too far.”
Not all members of the President’s party feel the same way. Several Republican governors have deemed the national social-distancing measures necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus in their states, and a recent Quinnipiac poll showed nearly 70% of Republicans agreed with stay-at-home orders. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, also a Republican, criticized the President for encouraging the protesters, noting it was not “helpful.”
Online organizers who have been supporting the protests and have no apparent link to the White House insist that the protests are not being coordinated, and simply reflect a widely shared concern that Americans cannot afford to stay at home much longer.
“This is very parallel to the work that I did in the early days of the Tea Party movement,” says Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States project, which started a website calling to “Open the States”. “My goal is just to give [people] a place where they can congregate and talk to each other and put up notices about whatever might be going on in their own states.” Meckler, who co-founded Tea Party Patriots, says they are not working with any other group. Meckler also said that he’s not coordinating with the White House in any way.
Chris Dorr, a conservative activist who works with his brothers on Second Amendment issues in several states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Minnesota, has created Facebook groups with his brothers in several states against “excessive quarantine.” The Washington Post reported that as of this weekend, the brothers’ Facebook groups had more than 200,000 members combined. It’s the type of group where support for events like a recent rally in Pennsylvania have gathered steam.
“There’s no top-down approach to this. I hate to tell everybody that,” says Dorr, after attending the Pennsylvania protest where he says he got a sunburn. “I wish I was this all-seeing guru, and all-powerful dude, but this is the people that are just rising up here.”
Dorr says he and his brothers have not been in touch with the President or his campaign. “I’d take a call from the President, that’d be kind of cool. But we just really support whatever the President is saying as far as reopening the country.”
—With reporting by Tessa Berenson/Washington
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IT SPREAD TO CANADA
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