Thousands gathered for the Texas Youth Summit, where speaker after speaker memorialized Kirk and encouraged young attendees to rise in his place.
James Swank Jr. traces his interest in politics to the COVID-19 pandemic. As he left middle school for high school, a mask meant to stop the spread of the virus was always on his face, except for brief moments between bites at lunch. Meanwhile, his social life — whether in the classroom or on Friday nights — was suspended with no end in sight.
“There wasn’t much for me to do at the time. It was really a difficult time,” Swank, who grew up outside of Houston, said of social distancing precautions and business restrictions aimed at preventing infections that could overwhelm hospitals. “I wouldn’t say it radicalized me but it definitely opened my eyes to what government overreach could be.”
Swank’s interest in government and politics was only fortified when he one day turned on Fox News and saw conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom he viewed as a well-spoken 20-something with “brilliant ideas” about the U.S.-Mexico border, the 2020 election, abortion and the Christian faith guiding his views.
Swank, a 19-year-old Christian with hopes of holding public office, found there was little on which he and Kirk disagreed. Soon, Swank became a loyal listener of Kirk’s podcast and admirer of how religious devotion permeated through everything Kirk believed.
That admiration among young conservatives has come into sharper focus since a gunman last week assassinated Kirk, 31, while he spoke at a Utah college campus. It was on full display throughout this weekend’s Texas Youth Summit, an annual gathering of young conservatives in The Woodlands north of Houston. Interviews with nearly a dozen attendees suggest the activism among young, religious conservatives that Kirk pushed for is now reaching for new heights in Texas, where the GOP already has dominated state government for longer than many young attendees have been alive.
Swank predicted the movement Kirk started will only grow. He’s already seeing fresh faces at a Republican club on his Texas A&M campus and at church.
“It’s what Charlie would have wanted,” he said.
Few modern political figures have held as much influence — or caused as much controversy — as Kirk. As an 18-year-old, he set out to tour college campuses during the Obama administration with a message that conservatism was “not evil,” one student said, and that Christian conservatives were neither alone nor a force to be easily dismissed.
In 2012, Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
At events, Kirk debated students who disagreed with him and fired up those who shared his views. Along the way, his comments stirred fierce criticism and deep dissent from people who felt he dehumanized already marginalized people, pointing to Kirk’s own words on race, women and LGBTQ+ people.
At the Texas Youth Summit, some attendees said Kirk influenced their public speaking and posture in front of audiences, and inspired them to use scriptures from the Bible to back their political opinions. Kirk, some said, was the reason they signed up for debate clubs and speech classes. He taught them to argue effectively and be comfortable with disagreement, they said. Bereaved, they no less vowed to keep pushing Christian conservative values from preventing abortion access to infusing their religion in public education.
“It’s horrible that he passed but I feel like he’d be glad to know that his death has affected so many people, and just allowed people to be more excited to be involved,” said one 16-year-old attendee.
A leader in her high school’s Turning Point USA chapter, she credited Kirk’s debating skills for shaping her opposition to abortion, pointing to Kirk encouraging someone advocating for abortion access to first watch a video of the procedure. Texas has a near-total abortion ban.
“I feel like he enhanced my beliefs,” she said.
The summit drew a larger crowd on Friday, the night of a memorial for Kirk, when thousands of people gathered to remember him. Speaker after speaker, from state lawmakers to influential MAGA cultural tastemakers, shared stories about how Kirk made them and others feel like their Christian-guided views mattered. They called him a “hero,” “miracle,” and “martyr for Christ.”
“So where do we go from here?” asked Alex Clark on Friday night, who worked with Kirk for six years and launched a Turning Point USA show that established her as a leading conservative voice. “We fix it by telling the truth loudly, relentlessly, without apology.”
Energy continued radiating through attendees on Saturday as they stopped to check out stands promoting everything from tighter border security to healthier lifestyles. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, also had a stand — and received a shoutout from the summit’s organizer.
Elijah Carabes, a 17-year-old high schooler from the Houston area, helped recruit people at the stand for Turning Point USA. Standing in the lobby instead of listening to speakers, he recounted sitting in band class last week when he learned Kirk had been shot. He immediately asked to be excused and found his mother, who works at his school. They prayed for two hours, he said.
As Carabes tried to square with Kirk’s death that afternoon, he remembered that despite his grief he had a big day less than 24 hours away: the school’s club fair at which he had to court new members to the school’s Turning Point USA chapter that he leads.
Carabes said he wrote a speech to urge his peers to fight for Kirk’s unapologetically Christian vision. By the end of the fair, Carabes said he had enlisted 30 new members to the club.
“I was surprised by how many conservative voices were actually in my school that had been so scared to actually speak up about their beliefs,” said Carabes, wearing a crisp white Donald Trump baseball cap. “I instantly saw a shift in many different people who said, I’m tired of being silent — I’m a conservative, I’m Christian.”
Meanwhile at the event’s only stage, a parade of GOP stalwarts — including numerous Texas Republicans — urged the youth in attendance that the fight Kirk had embarked on was far from over and was theirs to win.
“Charlie Kirk’s legacy is gonna be based in part by what is done by the people in this very room today,” Gov. Greg Abbott said. “We need you to remain involved, encouraged, bringing other people in, expanding your forces, and continuing to reach what he preached.”
Part of what Kirk preached, many attendees said in interviews, was being OK disagreeing with others. They said there is no clearer example of that than how he died: On a college campus, taking questions from anyone.
“He always tried to find middle ground, and I admired that of him,” said Nicolai Matallana, a 17-year-old conference volunteer who attended two years ago when Kirk was a speaker. “I think this is a reality check for everyone, like, this is not a game anymore. This is very sad. This is very serious.”
Source: Alejandro Serrano and Colleen DeGuzman, The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: Texas Youth Summit attendees recite the pledge of allegiance on Sept. 19 in The Woodlands. Credit: Mark Felix for The Texas Tribune
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