This week Rhode Island became the 49th legislature to officially introduce the Convention of States Article V application for consideration.
The resolution calls for an Article V convention that would propose term limits, fiscal restraints, and other limits on federal power.
There is an inspiring story behind this important milestone.
In September of 2019 Convention of States mailed literature to a lady in Rhode Island. Let's call her Mrs. Barry. The packet included a request for Mrs. Barry to send a letter to each of her legislators, informing them of her support for the Convention of States Project and asking them to do so as well.
Mrs. Barry sent a small donation to COS, as well as a note to her state representative, K. Joseph Shekarchi (D), the Majority Leader of the House. It was uncomplicated, telling Rep. Shekarchi that she was a constituent and asking him to support Convention of States. She invited him to visit the COS website if he wanted additional information.
He did.
Cindy Nation, who fields all such communications that come in to the website, forwarded his request to COS Rhode Island State Director Tony Isabel. As he reviewed the information, he realized that State Information Analyst Danny Marso was also a constituent of the Majority Leader and forwarded the request to him.
Danny faithfully contacted his legislator and arranged a meeting to personally introduce our resolution. At that meeting Rep. Shekarchi agreed to file the resolution, based on the request of his constituents.
Last night, Danny was informed that the resolution had been filed, and today we have Rhode Island House Resolution 7630 formally on the calendar.
What if Mrs. Barry had thought she didn't know enough about Convention of States to ask her representative to support it?
What if Cindy Nation had not processed her request?
What if Danny Marso had decided that, since his representative was a Democrat, it would be useless to ask for his support?
Rhode Island has never filed our application before, so this is still in the early stages. But for the first time, the Rhode Island legislature has our application in their hands, and without it, they can't do anything.
It takes each one of us to do the next thing we can do to restore a culture of self governance in our nation. Please don't think what you can do isn't worthwhile.
Thanks to Danny, Tony, Cindy Nation, Mrs. Barry, and Rep. Shekarchi for being willing to do what they could.
What can you do?
