BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) — In the wake of conservative commentator and social media star Charlie Kirk’s assassination, students at UC Berkeley held a vigil in his memory Wednesday night.
Turning Point USA, Kirk’s organization, now has hundreds of chapters at universities across the country, including at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.
For Ava Hempfling, the death of Charlie Kirk is a shock that’s been difficult to process.
“I was in class, and I honestly started crying immediately,” she said.
Hempfling, along with dozens of other students, gathered Wednesday night at the UC Berkeley campus for a vigil in Kirk’s honor.
“I looked up to him a lot and I know a lot of people that really looked at all of his speeches,” Hempfling said. “I really wish that he was able to come to UC Berkeley and talk but sadly that never happened.”
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Besides his popularity on social media, Kirk was perhaps best known for coming to college campuses and hosting live question-and-answer events with students.
Titled “Change My Mind,” Kirk’s supporters say they were designed to create open dialogue about the young conservative movement.
“The whole point of this was to prevent tragedies like this,” Brilyn Hollyhand said. “To leave political assassinations back in the 60s and 70s and to champion 2025 and Gen Z as a generation that talk to each other.”
Hollyhand is an author and another young conservative activist. He says Kirk’s ability to connect with young people at his events was one reason for the surge in youth votes for President Trump last year.
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Kirk held one of those events at San Francisco State in May.
That’s where he met Takumi Sugawara, the president of SFSU’s Turning Point USA chapter.
Sugawara says Kirk used his Bay Area visit to talk about issues young people are most concerned about.
“Something like the economy, and also foreign policy. I think a lot of the relevance of what he was talking about, I think that’s something that resonated with a lot of the Gen Z’ers,” said Sugawara.
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The students ABC7 News spoke with said Kirk’s death is a loss for their movement, but despite the grief, all of them say the setback won’t last forever.
“He built this machine. He built this operation of Republicans being able to reach out to Gen Z, which had never happened before in the history of our party,” Hollyhand said. “And we’re not going to just let that machine sit.”
As a part of his college campus tour, Kirk was also set to announce he would be coming to the UC Berkeley campus in the coming months.
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