Charlie Kirk's Legacy and the Future of His Movement | Christianné Allen
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Christiania Allen, so good to have you on the show.
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
So tell me a little bit about the feeling here at Ampfest.
I mean, I'm a little bit on the older side when it comes to, you know, let's say the general population.
But tell me, you know, you're not, and you're kind of experiencing this as probably the majority of people here are.
How has it been going?
You know, it's a tribute to Charlie Kirk of sorts.
Is the atmosphere somber?
Is it excited?
Is it a bit of everything?
So this is my first conference that I have been to since SAS.
Obviously, it's one of the biggest ones that Turning Point has every year, America Fest.
And SAS would have been my last conference with Turning Point that we had Charlie.
So in that sense, it's bittersweet.
We'll always miss him.
Turning Point will continue on.
It'll carry on.
I'm sure it'll have a different flavor because nobody can ever replace the leader that he was.
But it's a strong force for good.
And it's up to all of us to allow that to continue.
It's always motivating.
It's encouraging.
I mean, the thousands of people that are coming through here, I'm sure you've been tremendously busy.
I think it's one of encouragement.
It's one of encouragement.
It's one that should be and is forward-looking.
We have a lot to tackle as a country.
Faith is foremost to me.
I'm a Christian.
Jesus changed my life.
Jesus changed Charlie's life.
And faith is a big part of Turning Point, in Charlie's own words.
And so to answer your question, I think one of encouragement.
And it's, I mean, how could you not be encouraged when you see the thousands of young people that are walking these halls and want to meet and chat, talk policy, share their ideas.
So yeah, encouragement.
Charlie had this really interesting and valuable, I think, vision.
It was not to treat people that saw him as an enemy, as an enemy.
If that makes sense, right?
And so do you feel that idea is coming through?
Because there's always a tendency when someone, you know, of this important, he was important to many people.
And a lot of people, you know, a lot of people, of course, were very angry and unhappy and kind of, you know, pushed through it.
And there was this amazing memorial service and so forth.
But where's the feeling now around that?
Well, to your point, Charlie extended respect and courtesy to everyone he came across.
He remembered your name.
Literally, the SaaS conference I talked about, I didn't know I was walking in in front of him.
And I was going through security.
He obviously doesn't have to go through security.
And as soon as I came around the corner, he goes, hey, Christiani, how you doing?
And he kept going.
He was getting ready to do his show.
But he loved what he did.
And he loved the movement.
He loved the people.
He loved the idea of all of us continuing to pursue education, to continue to strengthen our ideas and find better answers, better policy.
And so.
I think that this whole conference is a testament to that.
And that's something that all of us, we're all picking up the mic.
We're trying to do our part as humbly as we can in so many ways.
But yeah.
So something we talked about a little earlier on the floor, right, was something that you frame as, you know, extending of adolescence.
I think of it somewhat like I think of it as infantilization, right, of frankly of society as a whole.
There's different ways to name it.
It's not something I've actually covered very much in the past, but it's something that to me is a huge issue.
And I've been seeing it appear in all these different areas of my own work.
Absolutely.
So we were talking off-floor and I was saying that we as a country were prolonging adolescence in a way that need not be the case.
I think the sooner, and I'm a firm believer in this, this is my heart, that the sooner we can get America's next generation involved in what I call the three C's, your church, your community, and your country, the more likely that individual is going to become intentional in every aspect of their life, who they spend their time with.
Perhaps we'll see people wanting to get married younger, right?
Because you start viewing the world differently.
You start viewing it as like, I'm here for a purpose.
What is that purpose?
How can I pursue it?
And so education's important.
It's foremost important.
And Charlie is a testament to this too.
He did start an education.
By that I mean an undergrad program, a four-year program.
He didn't finish it.
He realized that he could work whilst concomitantly studying.
And that's what I did.
I moved out when I was 18 years old.
God has been so good to me.
He's been so merciful for me.
I had no financial backing from my family.
I moved up from Southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., our nation's capital.
And I got my first studio apartment.
I found clients that were willing to work with me at a very young age.
And I did it all whilst concomitantly studying, pursuing my education.
And at the ripe age of 19 years old, after I had had a litany of different clients and was working with some organizations, Rudy Giuliani brought me on as his communications director.
And I was his communications director for the next two years.
We did a lot of wonderful work working with him to build his podcast, Common Sense, and his radio show on 77WABC, all of its digital platforms.
And it's a testament to what God can do when we step out and we say, Here I am, Lord, use me.
And I've never been in a situation where God hasn't showed up when I've acted boldly.
And Charlie talked about boldness all the time.
We're called to be bold.
We're called to be impassioned.
We're called to be alive.
We're called to be salt.
And so when you just stay in education for four years and you've never, and for some people longer than that, and you've never had a real world job, you haven't really become a true stakeholder in your community yet.
And so my whole heart is pursue the education.
I'm not one talking down on education, so don't hear me wrong.
I'm just saying that you can do both at the same time, especially in today's 21st century.
In this whole context, right, I've been thinking about, you know, for example, we live in a very safetyist society, right?
The parents are trying to protect their children from any harm, right?
But the effect of that is that the kids come out not having the experience of having to work through a bunch of hardships.
Coddlement.
What's that?
Coddling their children.
Yeah, something like that.
But this is all connected, right?
Like the safetyism, this infantilization of young people is sort of, yeah, the delaying of the age where you feel like you're an adult and you need to have a family or have a family at all.
There's just sort of like multiple factors in society that are, and then now, you know, sort of AI, I don't even know how this plays out, but it's sort of like thinks for you, or at least the temptation is to have it to think for you on all sorts of areas.
Let's look at this reduction of responsibility, of accounted, personal accountability, maybe even agency.
What do you think?
Well, we're not called to be comfortable.
And it's hard to do something bold when you're comfortable, right?
Boldness happens through making yourself uncomfortable.
It's through challenging yourself.
And so to your point, I do think we have a problem of young people just going with the current.
And I like to think of there's a stone out there that you can hook yourself to, and that can be your foundation.
And that's how you start going upstream against the current.
And I do think that when you start pulling yourself away from what everyone else is doing, that's when you really start to find your passion.
And what more would we want?
What more could we want for America's next generation than for them to find their passion?
And you find your passion by starting, and everyone has a different starting line, and it's going to look differently for everybody.
But I think the whole thing is we should be encouraging our next generation to be alive, passionate, and continuing to pursue what it is that they think they were put on this life to do, on this earth to do.
You're an ambassador for TPUSA.
What does that mean?
What do you do?
Yeah, so in 2018 or 2019, Charlie Kirk's team reached out and brought me on as an ambassador.
That program has since changed, so we're not necessarily called ambassadors anymore, but they bring me out to all of their events and conferences that they have, and I'm so grateful for it.
And it just means playing my humble role in equipping the next generation with the tools, resources, and knowledge that they need to enter their church, community, and country and to have their impact.
And so it's one of just having conversations with young people.
It's amazing.
I mean, you'll meet folks, just young people, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old out on the floor, and they have pretty good policy ideas.
And this is our next generation of leaders, of moms, of dads.
And so it's just playing the humble, small role that I can in this very big movement.
A final thought as we finish up?
Erica Kirk said yesterday on stage: Never let anybody tell you you're too young to start.
And I have met so many people here who have done tremendous things in their short time on Earth thus far.
Charlie Kirk had a shorter time on this earth than I think most people thought he would have had.
And there's a lot that we're called to do and that we have to do, and we need to be pursuing it with zeal and with enthusiasm.
And so I guess the word is we need to do everything we can to encourage our next generation because the future is certainly bright.