Residents of the greater Ithaca area held a vigil in remembrance of Charlie Kirk on the evening of Oct. 14 at the Bernie Milton Pavilion on The Commons. About 15 people attended the vigil that took place on what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. Cars drove by throughout the evening, showing a variety of support and opposition.
Kirk was a prominent Christian right-wing media figure, political organizer and conservative activist. Kirk was fatally shot Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Donald Trump Oct. 14, which is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Kirk was the founder and CEO of nonprofit organization Turning Point USA. According to the organization’s website, its mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” During Kirk’s funeral Sept. 21, Trump said Kirk played an integral role in helping him win the young male vote in the 2024 presidential election.
The vigil was organized by Rocco Lucente, a Tioga County resident and the former chair of the Town of Ulysses Republican Party, to honor Kirk’s life. He said he considers Kirk to be a martyr because he was killed while spreading Christianity.
“I believe that the man who did that was certainly demonically inspired to do it,” Lucente said. “I think that Satan saw what good Charlie was doing in the world and wanted to stop his ministry. And this reflects Satan’s patterns throughout history, most notably with the murder of Jesus Christ on the cross.”
Ithaca is known for its progressive politics with local groups like Indivisible Tompkins organizing protests with thousands of attendees in the past year. Lucente said he feels like conservative voices have been silenced, threatened and attacked in Ithaca since Trump was elected in 2016.
“I look at the political culture of this area as being one that people like me feel like they can’t say what they think,” Lucente said. “I’m going to do whatever I can to push back against that and to stand against that and to try to help people believe that they can have a voice in Ithaca again, even if they don’t agree with the majority.”
Bill Ward, a community member at the vigil, said he has noticed a common use of violent rhetoric that Democrats and liberal activists have been using against conservatives.
“Honestly, the Republicans and the right, we don’t want violence,” Ward said. “If we wanted to, we would have stomped them. We are the party that probably has most of the guns and everything else, but we don’t want to.”
Ward said he has been interested in politics since he was in college in the early 2010s. Since then, he said he has engaged in political activism, including attending the “No Kings” rally in June, where he claims he was harassed for outwardly supporting Trump. He said he plans to attend the Oct. 18 “No Kings II” rally as well. Ward said that when he found out about Kirk’s assassination, he was heartbroken.
“He’s got two young kids that’ll never know him,” Ward said. “I have young kids. … Thank God he’s got so many hours of footage that they can see, but then there’s the one that he got shot on. Imagine seeing your dad [like that]?”
Lenny Sacco, a security guard at the vigil, said he thinks one of Kirk’s famous quotes, “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence,” is a timely warning.
“Every time I go on YouTube, there’s another conspiracy theory about who killed Charlie Kirk or how it happened,” Sacco said. ”I’m like, the guy is freaking dead. That’s all that matters.”
Instead of mourning in private, Ward said he was in support of a public vigil on The Commons because it brings attention to the cause, even if it is not a popular viewpoint in Ithaca.
“We may have been getting flipped off … but the people that were all beeping and giving me a thumbs-up, they’ve shown that there’s still a lot of people in this town that do believe in the same cause,” Ward said.
In addition to the supportive beeps Ward observed, some cars blared their horns in opposition. One truck with large flags out the back, including a Palestinian flag, Black Lives Matter flag and transgender pride flag, drove in circles to continue to past the rally.
Vivian King, a community member at the vigil, said she also knows that Ithaca is generally liberal leaning, but that God called her to live in this area. She said she believes there was a spiritual warfare at play in the cause of Kirk’s death.
“You can definitely feel the spirit sometimes,” King said. “There’s a weight and a heaviness in Ithaca. … I believe there was some spiritual attack on his life.”
King said her religious views caused her to feel the pain of Kirk’s assassination because he was also an advocate for the Holy Bible, Jesus and the things that Jesus believed in.
“He was a conservative and he had a lot of views that were similar to me in the church as a Christian faith,” King said. “He was pro-life. He loved everyone, no matter what they believed in.”
