Something, maybe something big, just started in Phoenix. 74 delegates from 19 states attended the first national Convention of States since the Civil War. They met to talk about Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment, and how to get seven more state Resolutions, and how an actual Article V Amendment Convention would function.
In this process, something came into being. The 74 delegates who met and came to know one another are now members of a cadre, a core group, who have the shared experience of an historic occasion. And this group will continue in existence beyond Phoenix. These people are now the leaders of the Article V movement. They welcome the responsibility. It is rightly theirs.
They decided to meet again, in 2018, some time after the November election. Some eastern state, such as Tennessee, will call for another Convention of States, and attendance at this one should be north of 30 states. I suspect almost all of the Phoenix veterans will be there. We probably won’t have 34 Resolutions by then, but we’ll have more than we do now. The newcomers who attend the 2018 Convention will be recruited to the job of completing the mission, and getting that 34th state. I think there will be hundreds of them.
Equal in importance to the 2018 Convention, a Phoenix Committee of Correspondence (PCC) was established. It will have, initially, 23 states represented on it. (The 19 states which sent delegates, along with the four states that had observers.) All states are invited to join, and this membership will grow, and quickly. It will be responsible for maintaining communication among the states with respect to Article V and the BBA, and for establishing communication with the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate. The date and location of the 2018 Convention will be decided by the PCC.
The PCC is a creation of the state legislatures, and, ultimately, a means of communication for and between all of them. This is new. This is an official vehicle for any one of the 7,383 state legislators to communicate with their colleagues in the other 49 states.
If the PCC continues in existence, and the states begin to meet, in Convention, on an annual basis, the Phoenix Convention could be the beginning of a revival of federalism in this country. And that would be a new thing in American history.
It would be like a phoenix.
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