We the People Congress is a grass-roots group that argues that the federal government is exercising powers not granted to it by the Constitution and has no intention of reining itself in.

David Justice, the group’s Colorado coordinator, said Monday that the next step is “to bring together the states so that we could begin to discuss, as a sovereign people, what is the next right move.”

Thus the Continental Congress 2009, which begins next week in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles, Ill. Delegations from all 50 states are expected.

Justice, who hails from Gunnison, came to the Springs on Monday to publicize the event and introduce two Colorado delegates: Kevin Tebedo, of Colorado Springs, and Gary Coats, of Delta.

Colorado’s other delegate — each state is supposed to send three — is Terry Dodd, of Parker.

Justice’s voice rose every time he addressed the group’s essential beef: the failure by the federal courts to order the White House or Congress to respond to We the People’s lawsuits, or what he called “petitions for redress of grievances.”

Among them is this: the United States, Canada and Mexico are in merger talks.

“It’s going on behind closed doors in the government,” Justice said.

He said the group had also challenged a litany of more familiar complaints of the far right: the Federal Reserve, gun laws, wars without congressional declarations of war, the Patriot Act, the progressive income tax, aid to Israel and illegal immigration.

He argued that by failing to address We the People’s complaints, the government was saying it isn’t accountable to its citizens.

“Elites in Washington are trying to tell us we’re just a bunch of serfs,” Coats said.

“What are we supposed to do,” Justice asked, when “the very means that was given to us to hold the government accountable is taken away from us?”

The Continental Congress 2009 is “not to amend our Constitution but to defend the one that we now have,” Justice said. It is not trying to incite revolution or form a political party, he said.

“I think what we’re seeing in this country is a revolution,” he said. “We’re a counterrevolutionary movement. We’re the check and balance against the government stepping outside and moving into a dictatorial, fascist, Marxist regime.”

All the Colorado delegates received more than 100 votes in a We the People-sponsored election, Justice said.

Tebedo acknowledged that the vote totals were low, but he said “it did show that people were interested.”