Knowing isn't Doing: The Self-Education of Activism

Knowing the importance of grassroots isn’t the same thing as doing grassroots.  

Doing it is real and it takes practice. Before the practice, there’s the will to act, followed by the knowledge of what to act on.

Just starting in Convention of States, I’m beginning to understand, although still a greenhorn, that getting results against Statism is more than taking a position in politics. It’s more than understanding that we’ve got a serious problem in our nation and we need to do something about it.

It’s even more than having the will to get involved.  

When I signed the petition in August and then signed up to volunteer, I felt like I was accomplishing something and going in the right direction. However, there’s suddenly this feeling of “now what?”.  I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know what was next.

I had this feeling of excitement of getting to the Convention eventually and fixing everything.  Then there will be term limits and spending limits and authority limits on the federal government and all would be fixed. We could all go back to our lives and the Constitution would govern over the tyrants.

I’m starting to understand why I keep hearing from COS leaders that Convention of States is more than our greatest goal…the Convention.  

We’re here to learn how to be The People of the United States. We’re here to learn how to understand activism on a new level. An experienced and practiced level.

We’ve learned in present generations how to have a political affiliation. We know how to vote.  We know how to argue our values. We know how to do this peacefully, overall.  I mean, I’m hearing talk in the news and on the internet that we’re in a fight for this or for that, that there’s a war of something or other and there’s a battle of ideas and morals.  

But words are words and violence is violence.  We want to practice peace and institute values of liberty.

We want peace and we want liberty but we don’t have many skills in our generations to act in a grassroots way to trigger our power and authority over a tyrannical government.

I know this is true because we’re doing what we’re supposed to do. We put our kids in public schools. We never questioned what the government was teaching our kids because our parents put us in public schools. They sent us to universities. It was just what we did. It seemed like a good value.

Now we see that it’s become a government institution set to radicalize and activate our children to become cattle.  

COVID, although a horrible disease thrust upon our nation, somehow became a tool for our government to break apart churches, remove parental authority, govern over employment if you chose not to meet their healthcare requirements, mandate private businesses, and educate society on how to obey government authority over our own authority.

These are a couple of many examples that are coming into the light. We assumed liberty governed itself. It doesn’t.

Now we must learn how to be active participants within a free nation. Convention of States has set the foundation of grassroots activism to protect who we want to be: free folks.  

Now what do we do? That’s the part I’m starting to figure out. You have to first learn how to self govern. That means you take personal responsibility in your own activism.  

You start getting to know the Convention of States volunteers within your community.

You figure out what you’re good at and how you’re going to volunteer.

You make it valuable to your life. It has to be important to you so that you will begin to act weekly.

You keep showing up to events. Even when they’re small or an event you’ve invited thirty people to but only one showed.  That person is worth the event.  You create that value within yourself.

You don’t quit because tyranny never quits and you have to be ahead of it for the next generation.

You ask God to stand ahead of us and protect us as we gather peacefully and figure out what to do next.

You do it to set an example for your kids that this is how The People lead a free nation. It’s a physical participation. It brings your community together and it doesn’t allow tyranny to fester and grow within our public institutions ever again.  

We learn through practice how to say no to government overreach. How to make phone calls to strangers until they’re not strangers anymore.  

The most important thing is that we learn how to govern ourselves, even after we accomplish a Convention of States. We must continue operating locally all around our great nation and hold our government accountable to our families, our private businesses, our schools (and they are our schools), our Constitution.  

We won’t all agree with each other.  With our religions, our speech, our politics, on the issues.  That’s what the great round table is for.  Not for the people who agree but for the people who disagree, like ladies and gentlemen, not mad men.  

The Constitution is called The Great Compromise.  That’s because it was built and signed by people who disagreed with each other.  They came to the round table and hashed it out until they found what they could compromise on.  

They left room for future citizens to amend because they knew that future generations wouldn’t agree either and there needed to be room for more debate.  They also knew that Congress was no good at limiting themselves so they created the Convention of States in Article V.

We need you at the round table.  You must engage with us.  We know you have work and family like we do.  It’s not your entire life but what you’re willing to give back to your nation.  

A couple hours a week to do follow ups to new volunteers?  District Captain?  (We need them more than any other job), Veteran outreach?  Writing?  Social Media Warrior?  Collecting petition signatures?  Assisting any of these teams by organizing events?  Showing up at council meetings?  There’s no way to know unless you start asking and finding out.

There’s so many possibilities but it starts with you signing up to volunteer. Get involved. Make it a part of your life so that our kids and grandkids learn from us. So tyranny doesn’t get so near them that they can feel it brushing up against them like we have felt in the last few years.

Sign the petition today and sign up to volunteer.