The head of Harpo wants change, America! Here’s the Big O at UCLA on Sunday: “I want to thank all of you who love football and all things football and love people who love football because I know what this means to be out here today… I know what you said to yourself, you said ‘That super bowl party has got to wait, it’s got to wait a minute because we got another kind party going on over there at UCLA…’ We have the chance California to go from Super bowl Sunday into Super Tuesday for Barack Obama. We can do that. … For the first time in our voting lives, we are moved to think about politics and the power of its possibility in a different way. Because when was the last time anyone in here was at a campaign rally? We are all energized. We are excited and we’re fired up— for the change that has already come. Obama has already shown us the change. I know you can feel it. You can feel the spirit. You can feel it already…”
ucla
UCLA in the rain, superbowl sunday
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008It’s (Saturday) morning in America
Monday, November 12th, 2007
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.