Open the States movement declares: “On Friday, the lockdowns end”
“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.”
The repressive, often petty and irrational, lockdown measures implemented in many states and localities has caused a backlash that grows daily.
Increasingly, we see hairdressers, restaurants, gyms, and other small businesses saying they are willing to risk arrest in order to reopen and save their businesses. People who normally obey the law are engaging in acts of civil disaobedience against orders and restriction that are viewed as illegitimate, both constitutionally and from a health perspective.
The movement has been mostly spontaneous, but that has not stopped the mainstream media, which clearly is hoping for lockdowns to continue, from portraying the movement as astroturf. These are the same false accusations we heard about the Tea Party movement. There may be some organizational help to it, but look at the Resistance and other movements which were highly organized in their coordinated protests around and after Trump’s election.
According to Politico, Convention of the States, which we have covered before, is helping the movement:
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….
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.
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.
The widespread and spontaneous rebellions in various locations have had an impact. More and more states are opening up — some faster than others, and invariably blue states are the most repressive and vindictive.
OpenTheStates has declared On Friday, the lockdowns end:
It’s time.
It’s time to stand up to overreaching governors, mayors, and bureaucrats. It’s time to open up our businesses while adopting responsible, common-sense safety measures. And it’s time to support those businesses by showing up to purchase their goods and services.
We’re calling all Americans to Stand Up, Open Up, and Show Up this Friday, May 22.
For months, we’ve complied with lockdown and “stay-at-home” orders supposedly designed to “slow the spread” of the dangerous COVID-19 virus. But even as the infection rate slowed and rural communities saw virtually zero transmission, power-hungry and terrified governors and mayors maintained the lockdown orders….
We’re pushing back in the only way we know how: by empowering the American grassroots.
If you will commit to Standing Up, Opening Up, or Showing Up, we want to tell your story, too. Here’s what you can do:
Use your phone to record a short, 10-second video explaining why you’re Standing Up, Opening Up, or Showing Up.
Click the button below.
Upload your video to the forum.
We’ll use our national media reach at Convention of States to blast this message out to the entire country. We want the world to know that the American people are ready to Open the States, and you can be a part of this historic movement.
Having readers send in photos and videos. Sound familiar?
Reminds me of the hugely successful National Empty Chair Day in 2012 that stated here at Legal Insurrection and then went national. Readers send in hundreds of photos, and we even made the national news.
Will the lockdowns end Friday? Perhaps it’s the beginning of the end.
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Comments
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
It’s exactly the kind of spirit this country needs right now. Open ‘er up.
…Lockdown Ends When ‘We The People’ Withdraw Our Consent…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/19/the-covid-lockdown-ends-when-we-the-people-withdraw-our-consent/
It must be — wait for it! — THE RUSSIANS!
….. said the Communist Chinese and they’re bought and paid for Democrat Stooges…..
Governors will be like Saruman running around looking over as their tyranny ends.
There are many errors. First, the blue states have murdered (not exaggerating) Nursing Home residents as we knew from Kirkland their vulnerabilities. Whom has died?
Second, the “You can buy greens but not seeds”, or “buy clothes at Wal-Mart or Target but not at the Mom&Pop Botique” are obviously stupid.
The rational among Americans (dispersed in the deplorable flyover country) are science based. They see that if you aren’t elderly or sick you aren’t at risk, but otherwise need a hard lockdown. And are willing to do the RATIONAL thing, not what the evil witch in the governors office decrees.
Those governors and mayors need to be Turpintined with a corncob like the dirty dogs they are!
Lacquer Thinner works better.
Wire brush is better than a corncob for the intended use.
Politico whining about right wing front groups co-opting leftist tactics and coordinating activist campaigns.
I can see the soybois in the newsroom spluttering through a teary fit right now…
ttttTEABAGGING ssssssSCIENCE dddDENIERS!
The governors and mayors who have been the most threatening to average citizens’ rights are the same ones who released violent criminals to “protect them from the virus.”
Criminals got freedom and law-abiding citizens got treated like criminals.
And you know that none of the criminals followed social distancing rules or wore masks when they got out. But if you or I did that, we would be put in jail – without the governor or mayor caring about us catching the virus.
Evil.
Number of deaths: similar to the yearly flu.
I do NOT SEE PANDEMIC any where…
I was more scared during Ebola – that was nasty.
OPEN UP
OPEN UP
Life is full of risks… DRIVING A CAR is more deadly than COVID19…
This whole thing was a massive FU, started by that camera nut Farquaad Fauci. What a useless little ….I believe that everyone knows it and now is trying to save face. The CDC is useless. The NIH is useless. Blue State governors are useless.
USELESS
I’ve been planning on Friday to be my break-out day for weeks now. I’ll be in Arizona exercising my constitutional freedoms and spending my vacation money on a road trip planning my escape from Calenzuela.
Phil, Safe travels – Yavapai county (where Prescott is located) is great. Our taxes are less than the southern part of the state and the Republicans still run the county.
The country is way past due to return to business. I absolutely reject “new normal”, it may be new,but it’s not normal. A large problem, as I see it, is local pols, and Governors use of administrative punishments. Revocation of Professional licensing, Liquor licenses and the like. Many of these can be done be direction of a City Council or Mayor and will cost thousands of dollars to appeal.
So we go back to the days of having a healthy underground economy which has always been sizable, maybe 30-40%. Now it’s going to explode. Tax-free income baby!
I call it “the new ABnormal” myself.
just watch a msnbc montage on youtube, lasted about 2 minutes, lot of opinion but few facts about Florida, but then not surprised, when Florida is thrown in governor cookomo face as an example how the Wuhan virus should have been dealt with, nothing less should be expected.
Needs accopmanying info ops:
— Frist hand reporting of the events themselves. Don’t let them lie about what happens, or gaslight the participants into giving up. (Tea Party was taken down by organized propaganda ops.)
— Factual info clearing, kinda like Slashdot. Whatever Dr. F says about Hydorxy-cut, there are multiple, consistent, first-hand, clinical reports. “OK, so make the case that this guy is lying?” Trump’s not dumb or crazy on this one. Kinda like he was on in-lung light therapies — the slavering press can spell Cedars Sinai, right? And FWIW “lavage” is a thing — look it up.
We’d never know about the nursing home orders, the antibody positive vs. “case” rates, and so on without alternate reporting.
— Guidance for followup political participation. Write your congresscritter: here’s how. Vote n keep the vote straight: here’s how.
Protests n so on need to be supported with information ops of three kinds. Without they get Tea Partied (Is that a term, like “Borked?” It should be.)
I am on balance heartened by this exercise in tyranny.
As we are forced to don our masks, we have forced our “rulers” to divest their own.
Better than any activism we could ourselves have accomplished, this three-month “dry run of totalitarianism” has hammered it into the skulls of a huge portion of America’s middle class that government isn’t something that charges them money to save them from danger, it is a visible source of danger to them all on its own. Just as “nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged,” nothing so starkly exposes the true relationship of an independent business person to his government as the necessity of deciding whether he will choose to go bankrupt or to flout liberty-killing ordinances.
America is richer today simply by having taught a significant class of people that they and they alone retain the power to disobey, and that sometimes that is the right thing to do.
I live in Florida so have a sane and rational governor who hasn’t dabbled with tyranny as have others we all know and loathe. That said, I will enjoy my freedom of movement and ability to shop and go where I like on Friday. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if Friday marked a banner day for our economy as tens of millions break out of their state-enforced imprisonment to support local and area business? Kind of like Chik-fil-A Day on steroids.
Remember “We the People.” WE are the sovereigns. They work for us.