Marty Hagedorn doesn’t just listen to kids because it is his job. He’s a teacher at Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education. He listens because he believes young people are uniquely qualified to create change and civil discourse in these less-than-civil days. He’s an adviser for a weekly radio show called Youth Rising Up on Riverwest Radio. Marty arranges to have elected officials and other figures within the community come on the program, not just to be interviewed, but to sit and listen to what young people have to say and to ask questions. He hopes the grown-ups will see how it’s done. “We speak things into existence,” Marty says of the all-inclusive forum, giving an example. When the students read a news story about racial slurs in a suburban school, they talked about it, shared what they were feeling and thinking about it. Then, they invited students who were part of the incident onto the show for more discussion. The whole group went to a school board meeting in Franklin, organized with prepared speeches. Eventually, they ended up in a sit-down with the superintendent and witnessed the changing of policy as it relates to honoring Martin Luther King Jr. every year. “So, it’s like a real-life thing that happened.” The radio program grew out of Pathfinders, which provides services to youth in crisis.