On a warm Friday night in Edmond, Okla., more than a dozen teenagers gathered around picnic tables in a park, ate slices of pizza and listened intently as CJ Dumitrescu explained how the night would unfold.
“We all know the importance of First Amendment rights, civil discourse – that’s one of the things Charlie stood for. So today, we’re gonna practise our debating skills,” the 18-year-old said, referring to Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative advocacy organization for students Turning Point USA.
Mr. Kirk was killed last month while debating university students on campus at Utah Valley University.
Lazarus Elliott and Karina Payton make their points in a mock debate organized by Turning Point USA’s chapter in Edmond, Okla. The group’s president is Emily Gordon, in top photo.
Mr. Dumitrescu and the teens who met that night are part of Central Oklahoma’s Activism Hub. The group’s president, Emily Gordon, 17, told The Globe and Mail that before Mr. Kirk was killed, the club consisted of just herself and a few friends.
“I was feeling a little discouraged about it. It’s really hard to get young people motivated and active,” she said. But the day after Mr. Kirk died, she received 10 inquiries. More followed, and by the day The Globe met her, the club stood at 55 members.
Mr. Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012, but his organization, along with his own popularity, gained momentum with Donald Trump’s first presidency. He became well known for debating college students on campus. College, he often argued, was a scam.
TPUSA’s website says it now has more than 1,000 high-school clubs. Activism hubs, like this one in Oklahoma, are meant for people who don’t have a school chapter to join. The organization told The Globe that there are 85 clubs across Oklahoma, including 21 college clubs and 64 high-school chapters.
The fast growth of Ms. Gordon’s activism hub is reflective of what TPUSA says it’s seeing across the country: a surge of interest from young people. TPUSA wrote on X last month that after Mr. Kirk’s death it had received more than 121,000 requests from high-school and college students to either start a chapter or get involved with one.
Oklahoma’s youth involvement with Turning Point USA was put into the spotlight in September when the state’s then-superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, announced that Turning Point chapters would be opened in every high school. “For far too long, we have seen radical leftists with the teachers union dominate classrooms and push woke indoctrination on our kids,” he said in a video, announcing the partnership with TPUSA. He resigned days later, however, so the future of his proposal is uncertain.
As TPUSA inspires Republicans to organize, Democrats in the state told The Globe they are grappling with how they can do the same – either by creating their own clubs, or by finding ways to communicate more effectively with those who share their views in a deeply red state. Both sides seem to agree on the importance of youth participation in politics and that there should be more open debate and a freedom to discuss ideas without fearing repercussions.
Ms. Gordon, who says she plans to major in political science and hopes to one day run for office in Oklahoma, said her interest in politics began when she was a child living in Saskatchewan.
The word “socialism” came up at home in the context of conversations about Canada’s health care system.
“What is a socialist?” she remembers asking her dad, and his explanation, along with her own reading into the topic, brought her to a determination at a very young age that has remained to this day. “I’m like, yeah, I don’t think socialism is good.”
For now, she says, her main goal is inspiring young people to participate more actively in their democracy, which is part of what drew her to Turning Point.
“I think it’s something America really needs right now, what Turning Point is doing. They honestly mobilized like thousands upon thousands of young voters this election cycle.”
She’s also drawn to Turning Point because of the values she says it supports, such as freedom, free speech and the right to bear arms. “All things that America was built on, and trying to restore those to young people because young people, I think, have lost a lot of those values,” she said.
Ms. Gordon, who briefly lived in Saskatchewan as a child, felt from a young age that socialism was not a good idea.
Ms. Gordon said freedom and patriotism especially need to be reinforced.
“One thing I noticed in my generation is we just don’t love our country anymore,” she said, adding that she knows “a ton of people who hate America.”
“If I were to say something to those people – like, if you hate America so much, you have the right to go somewhere else, nobody’s keeping you here. But they continue to stay here and use American values like freedom of speech to say things like ‘I hate America.’”
At the same time, she says, she believes conservatives need to be a “little bit bolder” about speaking up about their ideas and values. She says many people her age have strong ideas they want to stand up for, but they don’t.
That’s where she sees left-leaning individuals succeeding, as she thinks their opinions are more present on social media, in schools and on college campuses.
“We have a really big problem on college campuses in our country – like promotion of leftist ideologies, critical race theory, LGBTQI teachings in classrooms where they shouldn’t really be focused on and DEI issues.”
Many educators have balked at Mr. Trump's anti-DEI initiatives: University of Michigan president Santa Ono, a Canadian, faced heat for scrapping a diversity policy before leaving for another job in Florida.Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail
But what the left doesn’t have, she says, is an organization for young people like Turning Point; she thinks they should, even though she doesn’t agree with their perspectives.
While most of the kids in her activism hub are home-schooled, she said there are a few members of her group who attend public schools, and she’s thinking of encouraging them to create chapters in their high schools.
She’s been inspired by the momentum that followed Mr. Kirk’s death. “I looked up to him a lot, I came close to meeting him, I followed him for many years on social media,” Ms. Gordon said. “So, it was really hard when he passed away, but I think God is definitely working through that and it’s all happening for a reason, for a greater purpose.”
On the campus of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Justin Cypert-Worley, the president of the Young Democrats of Oklahoma, agrees that Democrats are missing a nationwide rallying organization like Turning Point. He says there’s a feeling on both sides of the political spectrum that speech is being restricted.
“We live right now in an age in American politics where no matter what you believe in, it could potentially lead to your voice being quieted, right?”
Mr. Cypert-Worley, 25, is from southeast Oklahoma, which he says is “very rural, very red, very conservative.” He grew up in a Southern Baptist household listening to his father talking about how much he despised Barack Obama.
He wasn’t going to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I was like, man, I really don’t want to be a hateful, angry person. I don’t hate anybody,” he said. “And the problem is, he’s not the only one. … I am surrounded by them in Oklahoma.”
Justin Cypert-Worley leads the Young Democrats of Oklahoma, whose GOP counterparts far outmatch them in membership and official support.
Mr. Cypert-Worley said that the Young Democrats of Oklahoma have only about 150 members, adding that they’re in a “rebuilding phase” and don’t currently have any high-school chapters.
He said a lot of religious parents want to raise their children specific to their beliefs and feel that teachers interrupt that, in some cases by simply encouraging children to read certain books.
That sentiment was present earlier this month at the Tulsa State Fair, where Jeremy Moore was volunteering at the Republican booth. He told The Globe that he pulled his daughters out of public school when they reached senior year. “Turning Point in the high schools needs to be an option because these schools are pushing this other agenda.”
Parent Jeremy Moore supports having a Turning Point presence in high schools.
School-board representative John Croisant challenges the idea that teachers are forcing left-wing points of view on Oklahoma students.
John Croisant, a former long-time educator and school board representative for District 5 in Tulsa Public Schools who is running as a Democrat for Congress, said he’s taught in Oklahoma and that teachers aren’t imposing leftist ideology, or any ideology, on kids.
“The majority of the people I’ve taught with are Republicans,” he says.
The criticism of teachers extends to university professors, Mr. Cypert-Worley said. “There is this misconception that professors are these liberal brainwashers and that they have it out for students who are conservative, and it’s not true.”
He also disagrees with the notion that Democrats who criticize the United States hate their country.
“They want us to leave their country, because to them we’re not a part of their country – we’re different and we don’t believe in the U.S. that they believe in. And that’s true, we don’t. We do not fundamentally believe in the same country as each other, but that doesn’t mean that we hate the country because of our politics.”
Mr. Cypert-Worley said Democrats need to start standing firmly for what they believe in, saying young people should make it more popular to believe in human rights and women’s reproductive rights. “I think that if we can make it cool to be a liberal, which is sad that that’s all it takes, you know – I think we’d be in a way better spot.”
As one of the few Oklahomans taking on a leadership role for young Democrats, Mr. Cypert-Worley said he would consider running as a state representative but likened the idea of succeeding at the polls to climbing Mount Everest.
“This is kind of depressing and sad, and I won’t let it stop me in the future, but I don’t think I would win, even if I could do that, because I’m gay, and I don’t think that that district would elect somebody who is gay.”
Mr. Cypert-Worley said he grew up thinking the U.S. was a “shining beacon on the hill” where anybody could become anything. Now, he says, he’s even considered leaving the country.
“We’ve talked about Canada,” he said of him and his partner. “You know, it’s kind of like Handmaid’s Tale. Like, I fear that, you know, one day Gilead is just gonna grow, you know?”
Ultimately, though, he wishes he didn’t feel pushed out. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave the U.S. because I love my country,” he said.
Back at the Friday night debate, members of the activism hub wrapped up their closing arguments as their friends cheered them on.
Mr. Dumitrescu, the vice-president of the hub, said he sees Turning Point as an opportunity to make a difference. He’s from Washington State and says his family moved to Oklahoma because of the “anti-Christian culture” there. He found someone to relate to in Mr. Kirk.
Mr. Dumitrescu said he believes the solution to finding common ground with others is civil discourse.
“Even if I disagree with you on 99 per cent of political beliefs, you’re still a human being and I’m still a human being, and we still have all of our inalienable rights that are given to us.”
Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press
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The Charlie Kirk killing supercharged a debate about political extremism, violence and free speech. How does U.S. law differ from Canada’s on those issues? The Decibel spoke with James L. Turk from the Centre for Free Expression about Canadians’ rights and proposed changes to federal anti-hate laws. Subscribe for more episodes.