Rick Green to speak at Eastern Nebraska Coach Conference here
Civic-minded Americans from Nebraska and at least three other surrounding states will be converging on Aurora Sept. 13 to learn more about the U.S. Constitution and how they can be agents for positive change within their communities.
The Eastern Nebraska Coach Conference for the organization, Patriot Academy is a five-hour seminar at the Bremer Center that will feature academy founder Rick Green as the keynote speaker.
The event is intended to train coaches for the multi-week local Patriot Academy courses developed by the organization, but is open to the general public at a fee which includes a meal.
Local organizer Lee Benson, who has led local Patriot Academy classes for the past several years, said Nebraskans from as far away as Lincoln and Wood Lake (near Valentine) are planning to attend, as well as people from Iowa, Kansas and Kansas City, Mo.
In a telephone interview, Green said the inspiration for starting Patriot Academy came to him in 2010 when he was running for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court. During the campaign he was traveling around the state talking about the Constitution and discussing such things as the proper role of government, the separation of powers and the role of the courts as opposed to that of the legislature.
“This guy, when the campaign was over, he said, ‘Hey, you know, I was really intrigued by what you were teaching. I think other people would want to learn this.’”
Green said the man invited him to teach a several week course on the Constitution to a group of people.
“My response to him was, well, that’s going to be you buying me dinner for four times in a row because nobody else is going to show up,” Green said. “I just didn’t think people would be interested in coming to study the Constitution. And, believe it or not, he got 50 people in the room and every week we would walk through the details of the Constitution and then I would post on Facebook, ‘Hey, tonight we studied executive orders or we studied... impeachment of judges.”
Over the next few weeks, Green says, those Facebook posts began to draw responses from people all over the nation inviting him to come and teach the same principles.
“That’s what caused it to explode,” Green recalled. “I took that four weeks of us coming together in that first class and I developed the Constitution Alive course and started going out and doing that all over the country. And then we made the video series and filmed it in Independence Hall and it just grew from there. And, of course, the worse things got in Washington and the worse our government got out of control, the more people became hungry to learn ‘how do we fix this?’ How do we turn this around and put government back in its box, and so it just continues to grow every year by 200 to 400 percent every year.”
Green said his ultimate goal is to have a class and a constitution coach in every community in America, noting that with 26,000 coaches currently trained, he is seeing that goal being met.
“I’ve always thought that the magic number was to get about 5 percent of the population to go through these courses and out of that, massive change would happen,” Green said. “And so when you take a community (the size of Aurora), you really only need 100 be able to go through the course and then start taking action on it... And so, I think... that’s really the numbers that you need to turn that around. And I say that because we’re seeing that happen even with fewer numbers in a lot of towns across the country and we’re also seeing states that are now starting to do these classes in virtually every county.”
Green believes part of the attraction to the classes is that people are frustrated with the problems facing their country and feel helpless to do anything about it.
“They’re looking for ways to make a difference and their yearning for knowledge about how to be a good citizen, what they can do locally,” Green said. “I think everybody recognizes no one person can turn it around and Washington is a long ways away and it feels like you can do very little to change it. And so training people on how to change things in their local community and get the constitutional knowledge they need to influence the system as best they can is what we do and we love doing it.”
Referring to the leaders trained in the academy as “the Navy Seals of Thought,” Green said the classes give citizens an opportunity to, “find other people that share their concern about the country and desire to get involved. And then... once a week they get truth bombs... and they walk away going ‘Wow, I learned things. I had no idea... that the system was supposed to work this way. So, it’s essentially an empowerment by education and then getting action steps so that they know they can be a part of the solution. I think it’s really important not to have just truth bombs, just identifying the problem, but also identifying the solutions and giving people ways to participate in that.”
Green said he is excited to be able to bring the training and message of Patriot Academy to Aurora.
“We’re blessed to do what we do and every time we go do one of these coaches trainings, I come home fired up and excited and hopefully the coaches leave the same,” he said.
The Aurora event will include the coach training from 4 to 5 p.m. followed by various speakers, including Green. Benson said the event is open to anyone who wants to learn more about the Constitution and the academy. Preregistration is available via the website, PatriotAcademy.com.
Two weeks after the coach training, Benson will launch another set of Constitution Alive classes which will take place Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Alice Farr Library. Benson said the classes will begin Sept. 28 and will last 10 weeks. They will feature videos of Green and organization co-founder, David Barton presenting a citizen’s guide to the Constitution. The course is free of charge but preregistration is required. Those interested in attending may contact Benson by phone or text at 402-631-7701.