Kathleen Chandler's class that is coming up at the Independence Institute. It's not at the Independence Institute. It is a zoom class, to be clear. So you could sit in your jammi's at home and take this wonderful class about how to get involved as a citizen. It's part of their Citizen Involvement project, and Kathleen is here to talk about it. First of all, Kathleen, how did you dip your toe in the first time? Like what brought you to be the civic involved minded person that you are now?
Well, at age eighteen, I got involved in my first campaign in Colorado Springs. Back in the day. Someone was running for mayor and I thought, Mayor, I can help with that, and so I got involved with her campaign. And ever since then, I've just been keeping my self abreast of what's happening in my community. I got a degree in political science. I'm a Colorado native, like, I want my state to be good. I want my state to be what did they say, Colorado again? Yeah, make
Colorado Colorado again. And so over time, John Caldera about eight years ago now sat down and said, hey, we want to try to figure out how to start taking back Colorado one little bit at a time, because we didn't get here overnight, and we're not going to get out of this overnight. So we set out a strategy of trying to help people understand that they are the actual reason and way to stop the overreach of government.
And so I came up with a way to kind of infiltrate these boards and commissions and help people to understand that they can actually have an effect on government without being elected. And I've been placing people and strategically around the state in you know, in very specific places, with the hopes that maybe one of them would be lit on fire and decide to run for office, because not everybody should, not everybody can run for office. And in the end, it's not really the be all and
all be all. It's about cultural change. And so what we really want to do is have a cultural change of citizenship is really important, and running for office happens to be an outgrowth of that citizenship. But it's really about just realizing, you me, all of us really need to be good citizens and be involved.
You know what's funny is that when citizens do show up, it has a powerful effect on what happens. We just saw this happen in Littleton where there was zoning changes that were going to be put through and the citizens showed up in force. And now they've tabled to measure indefinitely, and it really had looked like it was going to
coast a passage, no problem. So what you're doing is critically important, especially in an era where I feel like there are in the metro area a variety of different levels of government that are really working double hard to obfuscate everything. They're doing, the legislature exempting themselves from certain aspects of KORA, you know, the school boards creating policies to be between parents and their children. So we need people to be paying attention. We need people to be
pushing back and be engaged. So what can people expect from this class? How long does it last? Give me all the details first?
Sure, Well the details are. It's going to be held on Tuesday, January fourteenth at six thirty pm. As you mentioned, it is by zoom. There's a link on our website. Go to thinkfreedom dot org. Think Freedom dot org and at the very top there's a little thing for the Citizen Involvement Project and there's a how to register for the class. There is a ten dollars fee that'll give you the link to the class. It just helps us to kind of keep track of who's in the class
so that I can do some follow up. But this is an opportunity for a couple of hours for you to get step one. Like what do I do? I find most people just don't realize what step one is. They want to do step five. But I'm going to help you get to step one. And if you can get to step one, and I'll coach you in two and three and four. And if you want to get step five and run for office, fantastic, I will be
happy to help you there too. But the point is, we need good people on the Water Commission, the Citizen Advisory Commission, the Fair Commission. We need good people on all levels of government in all areas helping advise so that the best happens for the most people.
You know, Kathleen, one of the things you don't talk about is actual like partisan politics.
Here.
I noticed there's not any mention of that.
No, we really aren't about partisanship, right. This is about freedom. This is about the best ideas for the most and that obviously means that some people are inadvertently left behind. But that's where we believe charity picks up a lot of that. But once we let government in, we are less charitable. So our idea here is government needs to be small so that charity and people are big. So if we can get good people in there that always are asking is this the role of government? Should government
be doing this or that? Then it allows people to go, you know, maybe government shouldn't do that. Maybe government can do this and do this well, but the rest should be left up to charity. And that's not a right or left issue. It's not a blue or red. It's an issue that makes people good at heart and allows people to flourish in their God given capacity.
So when do people have to sign up by to do this? January fourteen zoom call.
It is unlimited number of people. It's a statewide obviously even nationwide. I have people that have attended from California. Because of the format, zoom is available for all, so there's really no sign up time. I usually cut it up about three o'clock on Tuesday, just because I want to get a roster together. But you're more than welcome to sign up as late as the link is available on the website till about three o'clock on Tuesday, January fourteenth,
and the classes at six point thirty that evening. I'd love to have you attend just so that you can see why should I be involved? How do I get involved? Kind of the nuts and the bolts and the why.
Well, I think it's the one way to put it, says like if you're involvement curious, like you're not ready to take the leap, you think maybe there's some issues that you might want to engage it the do the class because it's it's not very much time. It's it's a measly ten bucks, which at this point is you know, a cup of coffee at the rate we're going. But do the class and at least then you'll have a clear picture. Because the reason I'm encouraging that, Kathleen is
twofold one. I think that people don't realize that there are things you can do without a ton of effort, okay without without a you don't have to like commit forty hours a week right away. There's there's ways to make a difference that are kind of low barrier, and I want people to know about that. To do what you can do you know, maybe you're never going to run for office? Yeah, exactly.
Isn't your freedom worth two hours a month or four hours every couple of weeks? I mean I look at it that way. Yes, I'm not going to run for office. I may, I may not. But isn't my freedom worth sitting in and listening to a meeting? We don't have enough reporters, local reports, hyper local stuff, and so when you hear something weird going on, nobody knows about it. So why don't you know about it and then be
nosy if you want? Put it on next door, but at least have an opportunity instead of waiting until it becomes a problem. I guess that's when people tend to get involved.
Yep, I just got this text message. I took this class last year, even though I didn't put it to work as much as I had hoped. This year, I got step one covered and know what to expect and look for when I get my kids into school and I have a little more time.
Great class, excellent, Yay, Okay, success story. See that's it. I mean, I think just educating citizens on what their responsibility is. I mean, because we cannot have a civil society without the citizen being involved and holding accountable each other and the elected officials. Right, thank you for attending my class. Tell your neighbors.
Kathleen Chandler is wonderful. She's doing a great job at II, and we'll be doing a great job on the RTD board. Newly elected rt D Board member. So the class is January fourteenth, Kathleen, thank you for making time for us to talk about it today.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Mandy all right, that is Kathleen Chandler from the Independence Institute.