Conservative youth across Alaska are bolder and more inspired than ever to launch or join Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapters at their college campus or local high school.
Ever since TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during a Sept. 10 campus speaking event in Utah, Turning Point chapters have surged across the united states, with hundreds of thousands of additional young people expressing interest in starting or joining local chapters.
Alaska is no different, according to Rachel Anderson, who serves as the TPUSA college field representative for Western Washington and all of Alaska.
Before Kirk was murdered, there were only two, largely inactive chapters on University of Alaska campuses – one in Fairbanks and the other in Anchorage.
Before Kirk’s death, Anderson said Kirk was actively planning to visit Alaska this fall.
“A lot of students were very shy about expressing their faith,” Anderson observed. “Since this has happened, I’ve noticed that all of them are unapologetically sharing their faith and their beliefs. It was already a movement that was starting to appear on campuses prior, but it has exploded since Charlie’s passing.”
In the last three weeks, the number of Alaska Turning Point university-based chapters has jumped to five, with new groups at Mat-Su College, Alaska Bible College and another in the works in Western Alaska. In addition to these college chapters, four new high school groups have launched in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Mat-Su and Sitka.
“Obviously there is now a different view on campus,” Anderson noted. “That switch was pretty significant.”
She said the Alaska surge is on par for the nation as a whole.
“It has been an explosion of support and student involvement everywhere,” she said.
KIRK HAD PLANNED TO VISIT ALASKA
Before Kirk’s death, Anderson said Kirk was actively planning to visit Alaska.
“Charlie actually was really wanting to come to Alaska, and we were planning on having him come to the Anchorage campus,” she said. “We were going to book the Alaska Airlines Arena. There was a plan to do it in the fall, but Charlie went to Korea and Japan, and it was just too close for him to go to Alaska and then home. He prioritized going with his family, so he wasn’t able to do it, but I will say Alaska was very much at the forefront of Charlie’s mind and he was really looking forward to coming to Alaska to do a tour stop.”
Despite the devastating loss of their founder, Turning Point has plans to hold a major Alaska event in 2026.
“It sounds like something may happen in the spring,” Anderson said, adding that she couldn’t say much more than that, at this point.
RISING TO THE OCCASION
Jack Thompson is the Turning Point chapter president at UAA, where the group recently held a vigil for Charlie Kirk that drew 700 people to the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.
Thompson said the last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Two weeks before Kirk was killed, he agreed to serve as president of the small, mostly inactive UAA Turning Point. He never imagined the chapter’s first public event would be a packed auditorium to honor their slain founder.
“That was essentially the start of the chapter,” he said.
At the beginning of the current school year, the UAA group was leaderless with no active plans.
When asked to take a leadership role Thompson agreed.
“I was trying to pick up the scraps,” he said. “We had some plans in motion, but after Charlie’s passing we had to shift gears to honor his memory with the vigil.”
Thompson said Kirk’s death shocked him to the core.
“It was a monumental shift in the history of our nation,” he said. “I knew I had to rise to the occasion since I was effectively the head of this organization here in Anchorage.”
With help from Anderson, the wider conservative community, fellow students and Alaska Republican Party Chairman Carmela, Thompson scrambled to host one of the largest college events of the year.
Since the vigil, Thompson said he’s received nothing but positive comments from fellow students, many of whom are now official Turning Point members.
At the group’s Oct. 2 meeting, 40 people turned up to talk about local politics and how young people can help transform Alaska for the better.
“We want to politically mobilize this generation and educate them about assembly races and school boards because that’s where our votes matter the most,” Thompson said.
He admitted, however, that most people his age are woefully uniformed about local politics.
“No one in there, although they were interested in politics, could name who their assemblyman was,” Thompson said. “They left – every single one of them – to research who represented them and who was making decisions for them. We talked a great deal about what we want Anchorage to look like, and it’s nothing like what it is now.”
After the meeting, the chapter grew to 25 official members with another 20 applications being processed.
“Our main goal is to fundamentally change the political landscape in Alaska,” Thompson said. “It’s time for youth aligned with Turing Point to really start writing our chapter in history.”
CONSERVATIVES COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK
Fourty miles north, a trio of Palmer siblings are in the final stages of launching a Turning Point chapter at Mat-Su College.
Hudson and Wilson Ladd are students there. Their sister, Ainsley, is a recent graduate.
Starting a new chapter, however, hasn’t been without difficulties. Initially, the Ladds had a tough time finding even a single Mat-Su professor who would sign on as their faculty sponsor.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
“One of the professors we talked to, when he heard the name Charlie Kirk, told us, ‘You’re going to have a really hard time finding someone who will sign on for this because the assessment of Charlie Kirk is negative around here,’” Ainsley recalled on Oct. 9. “They all said no, but we found somebody today who will be our faculty advisory. So hopefully we will be up and running in the next couple of days.”
The Ladds were spurred on after Kirk’s death.
“I know I speak for our whole family when I say we were devastated by what happened on September 10. You could just feel the heaviness of this evil and grief in the air. It really changed all of us in a way,” Ainsley recalled. “There was this sense of loss that this great voice who was doing all this great work was just gone all of the sudden. We all realize we won’t be Charlie Kirk exactly, but we can all take a sliver of what he did and continue his work.”
Despite the Mat-Su being one of the most conservative areas of the state, Ainsley believes a Turning Point chapter on campus is critically important.
“You certainly can find a lot of people in this area who align with your beliefs, but those people sort of lie dormant,” she said. “The loudest voices are not usually the conservative ones.”
The Ladds are hoping to make the Mat-Su chapter as big as possible.
“I’m so excited to see what sort of support we will get, because sometimes you don’t know if people will support you until something like this brings them out of the woodwork,” Ainsley said.
Hudson Ladd hopes the new chapter will motivate conservatives to follow Kirk’s lead and boldly engage those on the other side of hot-button cultural issues.
“People need to talk about this stuff, because, as Chalie said, if you don’t, you end up demonizing the other side and dehumanizing them,” he said. “The two most important things that Charlie did so effectively is reaching over to the other side and showing people on his side, that our views are not weird or abnormal – and giving us courage to speak out.”
Like other chapters around the state, the Mat-Su group is open to students and non-students alike – young and old. The weekly on-campus meetings will include discussions and presentations on political and theological themes, information about local politics, voter registration efforts and larger events for the wider community.
“The main focus, though, is to get young people involved,” Hudson said.
Up north, the Turning Point chapter in Fairbanks has become much more active since Kirk’s death. Over the past few weeks, the group has held discussions on illegal immigration and gun rights, with future topics in the works.
Overall, regional director Anderson said she’s been impressed with the momentum in Alaska over the past few weeks.
“The support coming out of Alaska has been awesome,” she said. “The governor – his proclamation saying Oct. 14 is going to be Charlie Kirk Day was awesome. He sent it to Erika [Charlie’s widow].”
She added: “Turning Point totally understands and sees all of the support coming out of Alaska and they absolutely love you guys.”
GETTING INVOLVED
— Click here for updates from the Anchorage (UAA) Turning Point chapter.
— Click here for updates from the Fairbanks (UAF) Turning Point chapter.
— Click here for updates from the Mat-Su College Turning Point chapter.
— Click here for updates from the high school Turning Point chapter in the Mat-Su.
— To inquire about starting a Turning Point Chapter at your high school or college, click here.
16 Comments
It’s a spiritual awakening a revival. Amen
Yes, there are a lot of people who never paid much attention to Charlie Kirk who are now jumping on the bandwagone because it’s trendy.
So glad all ages and non students are open to participate and support the students. A very special avenue to move Alaska forward in so many ways.
The Ladds certainly come across as entitled snowflakes. They present their difficulty in finding an advisor as some kind of plot against them. In my experience as a high school teacher, there are a lot of reasons somebody might decline advising a club. First, not everyone has the time. Second, some people would prefer that they find an advisor that shares their (far right political) values. The reality is that few educators are “anti-Charlie Kirk” or even “anti-conservative.” They’re just not conservatives themselves.
C.K. had no DEBATE tactics, he interrupted the person across from him, his “tactics” were to distract and redirect ….period. YOU CANNOT PROVE SOMEONE WRONG when they are ALREADY set in their beliefs. He pushed the false narratives he heard from MAGA and white nationalists and he arguments were solely based on debunked DEI claims.
Yes, and there lies the problem. There is no diversity of thought on most campuses. Everything is pretty one sided and if you have a difference of opinion you are afraid to voice it out of fear of it hurting your grades. You sound much like most educators I know. I have been one for almost 50 years! You most certainly would never mention God, let alone Jesus!
Judy, why would Theodore mention God or Jesus? Just to randomy drop their names? What are you on about? Glad your absurd views and destructive behavior are not influencing Anchorage libraries anymore! Even this forum is too much for you.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say there is no diversity of thought on campus because, well, that’s an absurd way to think of a student body at any college even if it leaned one way or the other politically. I don’t think anyone is afraid of voicing anything or turning in theories or ideas, maybe the Hitler youth academy down the street, but last I checked, we’re not living in 1940s Germany and “grades” shouldn’t be held over anyone’s head for speaking out or having opinions. Sounds like an Academic Affairs dispute to me. My point from my initial comments is that what C.K. stood for was not diversity of opinion but more like diversity of his ignorance and his “Prove me wrong” tactics were bully tactics.
Run out of libraries to try to ruin?
CK promoted ideas that undermine our communities and threaten our democracy, but I admired the way he presented his views. His format appeared to be open and free from insults and demeaning insults that every other MAGA lost soul uses as a fig leaf to hide their ethical flaccidity. Like mean girl Pam Bondi or Voldemort or talk show host Pete Hegseth.
thanks for info.
The young men with the posters are on the right track they don’t need TPUSA.TPUSA is on its way out scene with the Glen Beck fiasco.No one is going to take Charlie Kirk’s place .Its fizzing out.
Toy’ningPoint has already made a sour mark on the community College at Matsu.. encroaching on the GSA enclosed bulletin board with their turning point flyer!!
Wat a disrespectful group, already. You have already shown that you have no boundaries.
Respect boundaries, simple.
Day one: the turning point chapter at Matsu College brazenly posts their flyer in the display case for the GSA club. This is a purposeful attack and apparently the way Turning Point operates.
Turning Point USA has a long-standing well documented record of criticizing and opposing LGBTQ+ rights. The organization’s events and media often feature anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
The group often use rhetoric that portrays the LGBTQ+ community as a threat to a Christian social order and traditional family values. In a 2022 speech, Kirk claimed that LGBTQ+ rights advocates are not content with recognition and now “want you to participate” and will “destroy your life” if you don’t.
So why would any of them think it were a wise decision to post inside the enclosed locked case of the GSA club? Where is their leadership advisor, control your people.
You are already not making smart choices, turning point!
Not only did they post a flyer inside GSA’s designated display case…. They also chose this particular flyer’s position to post in their Instagram photos for the Matsu College.
TPUSA has always had issues when they would hold meetings in our commons. Many of them dint shower and seem to have no real idea of what 2 say when asked about viewson things. there always seem to just nod and saying yes to the proctor’s talking points. after meeting sometimes you would see literal poop stains on the seats. I think their next meeting should be about hygiene and grooming.
RaHoWa!