On February 16 the Convention of States Maryland team hosted a “Citizen Action Day” at Harry Browne’s Restaurant in Annapolis, Maryland.
The event convened nearly 100 constituents with their Maryland legislators to advocate for passage of a Joint Resolution in the Maryland legislature (HJ0006) calling for a national convention of states to discuss three areas of specific amendments to the US Constitution.
Although the national COS organization has separate efforts in states across the country to advocate for a discussion of constitutional amendments, this event was unique in nature.
Led by an all-volunteer team of leaders and hundreds of citizens across Maryland, the largest and fastest growing grassroots organization in the country that has more than 22,000 supporters in Maryland, recently sprang into action prior to the event and the filing of the Joint Resolution in Annapolis.
They made over 5,000 contacts with legislators across Maryland through emails, phone calls, and letters. A dozen Maryland legislators participated either in person, via Zoom, or by sending staff representatives, making this the only such hybrid event during this unique, COVID-restricted legislative session.
District 27C Delegate Mark Fisher, the two-time lead sponsor for the COS joint resolution in the House of Delegates, stated he was a huge fan of this bipartisan mission as “the pioneer in the United States to bring this country back to a constitutional republic.”
Fisher said he was honored to work with the Maryland team of volunteers to educate citizens and legislators about the benefits of the legislation to restore constitutional freedoms.
Both Convention of States leaders and Maryland state legislators tout this legislation as bipartisan. In his speech on Tuesday, Delegate Dan Cox vociferously pronounced his support of the effort in Maryland, citing his decades of experience as an attorney defending constitutional rights of citizens in Maryland.
Cox remarked that one area of his specific support was term limits, noting that ordinary citizens, regardless of their political stripes, have long supported term limits at the federal level.
Setting term limits is one of the three issues set forth in the resolution supported by the COS in state legislatures across the country, 15 of which have already passed the resolution.
The other two topics of the legislation relate to imposing fiscal restraints on the federal government and reducing federal overreach by transferring power back to state legislatures, as the Founding Fathers intended.
“To comply with Article V of the U.S. Constitution, each of these resolutions passed must have the exact verbiage and be passed in two thirds of state legislatures in order for a Convention of States to convene and debate possible constitutional amendments,” stated Mark Meckler, a founder of Convention of States Action organization, as he spoke to the group at Tuesday’s luncheon.
Meckler noted that the nation’s founders provided for such a convention to take place with each state represented, because they had the foresight to understand that power given to a federal government would quite likely never be given back to the states as it was originally intended.
He said he “couldn’t possibly dramatize this moment in history more... History swings in an arc from tyranny to really bad tyranny...and if we look at the United States, we are an exception, we are an outlier in history. And the question is, will we do what it takes to preserve that outlier...status? Will we cheat the history that has befallen all other republics, or will we fall to the same fate?”
Meckler went on to state “Only the people can save the United States of America and by the people, I mean the legislators, because the legislators are our last line of defense…the power to call a convention, to propose amendments, to ultimately ratify those amendments… Only state legislators have that power…and they can operate and can use that power on the people’s behalf and that’s what we are doing. The nation is in trouble, and people in blue states and red states understand that and every state needs to be in play.”
“Tuesday’s Citizen Action Day was a resounding success and will positively impact the Maryland legislature and help bolster growth of our movement as we continue to build our grassroots network of educated and engaged citizens” said Stephen Patten, the Maryland State Director for COS.
Learn more about the growing Convention of States movement in Maryland and across the country!
Contact Stephen Patten, State Director, COSA-MD, for more information.
Additional Video
Senator Justin Ready
Senator Johnny Salling
Aysia Rodrigues on behalf of Delegate Sid Saab
COSA-MD Bob Betz, State Information Analyst
COSA-MD Mike Rilee, State Communications Coordinator
For a more detailed summary of the event
