The American Democracy Institute held its third-annual Empower Change Summit last weekend at UCLA. The goal is nothing less than to reconnect the American public with its governance by encouraging active participation. The project is of course with good reason focused on young people, because they’re the future and they’re the ones with the energy to party all night Friday and get out at eight crazy thirty on a Saturday and start to change the world.

Staff reporters Torey Van Oot and Chris Nelson were there.

Coffee and sea mist and bad music made Torey all contemplative-observer like. She focused her thoughts on the event by talking to ADI founder John Hart and some of the Los Angeles-area teen attendees. Read her essay on our peer-to-peer political future here.

A week later, Chris is still reeling from the speech given that morning by Gene Nichol, head of William & Mary College, a podium performance that somehow left Bill Clinton’s perfectly respectable keynote sucking air. Read Chris’s take and get at the mp3 here.