# Mark Meckler A California-based conservative activist who emerged from the early-2009 Tea Party wave as one of the most institutionally consequential figures of that movement. Co-founded **Tea Party Patriots** (2009) — one of the largest grassroots organizations of the early Tea Party period — before splitting off in 2012 to found **Citizens for Self-Governance** (the 501(c)(3) parent) and **Convention of States Action** (the 501(c)(4) advocacy organization, co-founded with [[Michael Farris]] in 2013). His Convention of States project — pushing for an Article V state-led constitutional convention on three articulated topics (fiscal restraint, federal-power limitation, congressional term limits) — has become the most institutionally active contemporary push for state-led constitutional amendment. Meckler's secondary public moment was his **2021 stint as interim CEO of Parler** — the alternative social-media platform that emerged in 2018 as a Twitter alternative for conservatives and that experienced a surge in user signups and infrastructure-attack contests around the January 6, 2021 events. Meckler took over as interim CEO in late February 2021 amid Parler's deplatforming-recovery period (Apple, Google, AWS had removed Parler's hosting), serving through May 2021 before the company stabilized and transitioned to other leadership. The Parler episode is informative about the Tea-Party-to-alt-tech career trajectory of the post-2009 conservative-activist generation. For the Right Wing KB, Meckler is the **organizational-builder counterpart** to [[Michael Farris]]'s legal-and-institutional career. Where Farris brought multi-decade religious-conservative legal-and-academic credentials to Convention of States, Meckler brings post-2009 grassroots-mobilization-and-platform-building experience. The combination has been the operating leadership of the contemporary Article V push. ## Biography Mark Meckler grew up in **Northern California** and practices law in the Sacramento region. Before his political career he was an attorney with experience in internet law and small-business advocacy — a professional background that informed his instinct for grassroots-network building and digital organizing during the Tea Party's emergence. ## Tea Party Patriots (2009–2012) On **February 27, 2009** — eight days after [[Rick Santelli]]'s CNBC "rant heard round the world" — Meckler co-founded **[[Tea Party Patriots]]** alongside **[[Jenny Beth Martin]]** and **[[Amy Kremer]]**. Tea Party Patriots became the largest grassroots-network Tea Party organization by claimed membership, distinct from the Koch-funded [[Americans for Prosperity]] and [[Dick Armey]]'s [[FreedomWorks]], which were more top-down operations. TPP's model was a decentralized coordinator network — local Tea Party groups nationwide affiliating under the TPP brand with organizational support, messaging coordination, and rally logistics. Meckler served as national coordinator through 2012. The split from TPP was acrimonious — disputes over organizational direction, financial management, and the strategic question of whether the Tea Party should institutionalize into a permanent advocacy structure or remain a decentralized protest movement. Meckler departed and took a different strategic bet: that the energy of the Tea Party base could be channeled into a specific constitutional-reform project. ## Citizens for Self-Governance and Convention of States (2011–present) In 2011 Meckler founded **Citizens for Self-Governance** (CSG) — a 501(c)(3) educational organization — as the parent entity for what became the **Convention of States Action** (COS Action) project, the 501(c)(4) advocacy arm co-founded with **[[Michael Farris]]** in **2013**. COS Action's theory of change: use the **Article V** mechanism (which allows two-thirds of state legislatures — 34 of 50 — to call a constitutional convention for proposing amendments, bypassing Congress) to propose amendments on three topics: **fiscal restraints on the federal government**, **limits on federal power and jurisdiction**, and **term limits for federal officials**. As of September 2026, COS Action has secured Article V convention resolutions from **20 state legislatures** (needing 34), with active campaigns in additional states; Kansas became the twentieth in January 2026, the first addition since 2022. The project has drawn both support and opposition from within the conservative movement: supporters argue it is the only mechanism capable of structurally constraining federal power without depending on Congress to limit itself; opponents (including some [[Federalist Society]] originalists and groups like the John Birch Society) fear a "runaway convention" that, once convened, could propose unlimited amendments including ones hostile to conservative interests. Farris brought the legal-constitutional expertise and the HSLDA/[[Patrick Henry College]] institutional network; Meckler brought the grassroots-mobilization infrastructure built during the Tea Party era. The partnership has been the operational leadership of the contemporary Article V push. ## Parler Interim CEO (2021) In late February 2021, Meckler became **interim CEO of Parler** — the alternative social-media platform that had been deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon Web Services in January 2021 following the [[January 6 Capitol Attack]], when Parler's content-moderation failures became a focal point of the post-insurrection tech-accountability debate. Meckler oversaw Parler's re-launch on new infrastructure and served through approximately May 2021 before transitioning to other leadership. The Parler episode illustrates the Tea-Party-to-alt-tech career pipeline: Meckler moved from grassroots political organizing to alternative-technology platform management, the same trajectory followed by several other post-2009 conservative-movement figures. ## KB Significance Meckler is the **grassroots-mobilization architect** of the contemporary Article V convention push — the figure who translated Tea Party organizing energy into a specific constitutional-reform project and who partnered with [[Michael Farris]]'s legal-institutional expertise to build the most active Article V campaign in modern American history. The COS Action project sits at the intersection of several KB threads: states'-rights constitutionalism, post-Tea-Party institutional conservatism, and the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] (through the Farris connection and the project's overlap with religious-conservative state-legislative networks). ## See Also - [[Convention of States Action]] - [[Michael Farris]] - [[Tea Party Patriots]] - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]]