Conservative activists help promote ‘grassroots’ protests of stay-at-home orders
If those protests to “reopen” the country seem reminiscent of the Tea Party movement, there may be a good reason: Some of the same folks who were instrumental in mobilizing public opinion a decade ago in the midst of the Great Recession are once again channeling some Americans’ rage against perceived government overreach.
Among them is Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.
The advocacy group Meckler currently heads, Citizens for Self-Governance, has played a big role in coordinating the reopen movement by creating a clickable directory of the Facebook groups that have sprung up this month to advocate for a swift end to the stay-at-home edicts state and local officials ordered to check the spread of the new coronavirus.
Dozens of these Facebook pages were created between April 9 and April 16, advocating protests like the one held in Jefferson City on Tuesday and one scheduled for Thursday in Topeka.
The 16th is also when Meckler launched openthestates.com.
The site includes an interactive map of the country, linking to more than 40 ostensibly grass-roots reopen Facebook pages in all but a handful of states. It also includes sample language to write your local officials to ask for an end to the shutdown, as well as a video call to action with Meckler as featured spokesman.
In a phone interview, Meckler denied having any role in instigating the reopen protest movement. But he said he wants to help it thrive.
His role, Meckler said, is to bring together what he contends is a truly organic effort that has spread from coast to coast since a crush of vehicles brought traffic in downtown Lansing, Michigan, to a standstill on April 15 as part of “Operation Gridlock.”
“There is a spontaneous citizen uprising taking place all across the nation,” Meckler said. “We’re just giving them a place to organize, something I learned from the Tea Party movement. When people want to organize, giving them a place to...connect with each other is about the most helpful thing you can do.”
The Lansing protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and Michigan Freedom Fund, which has links to the family of Education Secretary Besty DeVos. Common Cause and other liberal groups say Meckler and Citizens for Self-Governance have long been aligned with conservative groups tied to Charles and the late David Koch, but Meckler laughs at the notion his group receives Koch money.
“If you know anybody with the Kochs and can arrange for financing, I’d be happy to talk, but it never happens,” he said.
Many if not most of the other protest groups on social media appear to have been started by ordinary people seeking a forum to vent and organize, The Star found in checking the origins of more than three dozen Facebook pages at openthestates.com.
Those posting range from average citizens who’ve been put out of work, to gun rights advocates, to people who refuse to get their kids vaccinated. Many are supporters of President Donald Trump, but not all.
What they do have in common is an objection to government stay-at-home orders aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.
People like Ryan Lawson, the founder of Reopen GA, who have concerns about the state of the economy and restrictions on personal liberty.
“The stories I’m hearing in this group of destroyed businesses, dreams and in some cases lives, is truly awful,” Lawson posted on the Reopen GA page 12 days into that state’s stay-at-home order. “Literally, thousands of lives here in GA have been economically and emotionally devastated.”
Other agendas
Meckler seized on those sentiments as an opportunity to push his cause: convening the first constitutional convention since 1787 to limit the role of government in Americans’ lives.
Others with their own agendas are also using the reopen movement to press narrower issues.
The Star and other news outlets have documented instances where advocates for expanding gun rights have set up Facebook pages designed to appear as if they were created by ordinary folks who are fed up with the shutdowns.
“Astroturf” is the term political scientists use to describe faux grass-roots efforts.
Edward Walker, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles has researched astroturfing extensively. He defines it as public activism that includes three elements: some sort of material incentive, like paying protesters; hiding the source of financial or infrastructure support; and some type of fraud like identity theft.
He said this movement doesn’t exactly fit that definition. Still, Walker said the protest efforts appear to be highly organized with centralized coordination in creating websites and social media presences.
The Star’s review found that the Facebook pages often share common branding. The most common names for the sites are the simplest: Reopen Montana, Reopen Missouri and, well, choose the state. There is a Reopen (fill in the blank) for most of them.
Examples of the other brand-name family are Mainers Against Excessive Quarantine, Delawareans Against Excessive Quarantine and Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine, etc.
Second Amendment activist Aaron Dorr of Des Moines, Iowa, and brothers Chris and Benjamin prefer the latter.
Since last week, they’ve created Facebook pages advocating the end to coronavirus quarantines in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. They chose those states, Aaron Dorr said, because the brothers are working to change the firearms laws there and wanted to help provide an outlet for residents who feel their rights were being trampled on.
“There’s a big hunger for freedom in these states,” he said.
From reading the pages created by the Dorr brothers, it’s not obvious they were set up by out-of-state lobbyists who specialize in Second Amendment issues. But they link to gun rights sites.
The one Aaron Dorr set up in New York slams the state’s Democratic governor without ever mentioning gun rights in its introduction.
“While seizing power at a breathtaking pace, Andrew Cuomo is sending NY’s economy into a death spiral!” it reads. “This is madness. We are fighting back, with action steps for New Yorkers who want to make their voice heard! Get involved, and invite your friends, too!”
Six days after it was created, the private group had 25,000 members.
Partisan divide
Trump lent his support to the protest movement on Twitter in recent days, tweeting “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Walker at UCLA said a recent survey of 3,000 Americans found that partisanship is shaping attitudes around the virus more than any other indicator.
It found that Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans to say they had increased the frequency of washing their hands. Likewise, Republicans were half as likely as Democrats to be avoiding crowds, the study’s authors wrote in the The Hill.
“To me that was really telling for setting the stage for these protests that are happening,” Walker said. “Here we have a moment where you’ve got a supportive president. But then you’ve got a public health crisis tied in with an economic crisis all at once. And you’ve got conservative media saying this is nothing to worry about. You had the president himself saying this is a lot like the flu. So there’s a lot of material there to work with.”
Facebook is not happy that the movement has used its platform to organize demonstrations where social distancing guidelines might be violated and potentially cause further spread of the virus.
On Monday, the company said it has taken down messages from pages aimed at protesters in California, New Jersey and Nebraska.
“We’ve now heard that Facebook is going to lock down, shutting down a bunch of these groups,” Meckler said. “I believe they’re going to shut down most of these groups eventually.”
If that happens, he said, his website will be happy to provide them a forum, albeit with some advice.
“We recommend social distancing and masks,” he said.
He thought the Michigan protesters made a responsible choice by mostly staying in their cars and suspects public protests will continue to occur until the country is reopened for business.
“What I think most people feel is give us the information, tell us everything you know and then make recommendations as to how you can believe we can be safe and keep everybody safe. And then allow us to go about our lives and do those things and to exercise personal responsibility.
“The idea that the government needs to be the nanny state and in charge of everything is something that people just naturally bristle under.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
