The #WalkAway Foundation, an organization encouraging individuals to leave the Democratic Party, held a panel discussion and Q&A in Social Science Lab Room 206 on April 22 following their public debate event on Ring Road earlier that day.
The 7:30 p.m. event was part of their American Restoration Tour and featured the individual stories of four #WalkAway members, including campaign founder Brandon Straka, social media personality Natalie Beisner and YouTubers Vanessa “Gothix” Rosa and Mike Harlow. The event was filmed by a personal camera team.
After introducing themselves, each speaker gave individual testimonies describing why they joined the Republican Party. Mistrust in the media was the common denominator in each speaker’s testimony, with disbelief in the concept of white-privilege — specifically in relation to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests — being discussed as well. Each speaker’s video testimony can be found on their respective social media accounts.
During the Q&A portion of the event, an attendee prompted the panel to explain why their signs included the rhetoric it did, specifically in reference to a sign that said, “Do Black lives really matter?”
“There’s a difference between asking that question and a sign that might say ‘Black lives don’t matter,’ which is not how any of us feel,” Straka said. “I would rather somebody stop and say ‘wait, what does this sign mean?’ and engage in that conversation, which I think did happen.”
Straka then explained that the real intention behind the signs was to grab student’s attention in order to discuss the issues in more depth.
“The Black Lives Matter movement didn’t do anything to expose or address or deal with the actual greatest threats to Black lives,” Straka said. “Instead what they did is created a boogeyman — White America, police officers — that aren’t, in fact, endangering Black people nearly as much as any of the other things like abortion [and] Black-on-Black crime. So, I guess the question is, if you’re going to tell me that Black lives matter and you’re going to tell me that I’m the problem, I have to ask, do they really matter?”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified five abortion-related deaths for all legal abortions reported in 2021 — the most recent year in which data was reviewed for abortion-related deaths. The races of these women were not provided.
According to Mapping Police Violence, a research campaign that compiles police violence data from federal, media and independent reports, 309 Black individuals were killed by police in 2021.
Black-on-Black crime is a term sometimes used to describe crimes where the perpetrator and victim are both Black individuals. The term is often employed as a retort against the BLM movement to argue that the movement does not vocalize enough support for Black victims when the offender is of the same race. Many who oppose the term’s use believe it is used as a way to vilify Black individuals, arguing that external factors such as class conflicts due to systemic inequities are to blame. Additionally, some argue that any race is likely to harm their own simply due to proximity. Previous data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that the 2018 rates of White-on-White crime were similar to that of Black-on-Black crime. While the numbers vary from year to year, they tend to remain within 10 percentage points of each other.
At the Ring Road event held hours before the panel, one of the signs at the table read, “January 6 was a Democrat Party inside job.” While sitting at the table, Straka shared that he was arrested and “wrongfully convicted” for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
On Jan. 25, 2021, Straka was arrested on a federal warrant and faced three charges: “impeding a law enforcement officer during civil disorder; knowingly entering and remaining on restricted grounds without lawful authority and/or engaging in disorderly conduct within proximity to a restricted building to impede official functions; [and] engaging in disorderly conduct with intent to disturb a hearing before Congress.” Straka pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct at the Capitol on Sep. 14, 2021.
During the Q&A portion of the panel event, a student questioned Straka on his Ring Road statement, arguing that one cannot plead guilty and be wrongfully convicted at the same time.
“This is not a hill I want to die on,” Straka said. “I would rather die on the hill that I didn’t do the things that I signed that I did in my plea deal. If you want to say that I was ‘rightfully convicted,’ it’s not that important to me, you can have it.”
Another student asked the panelists where they see the conservative movement headed over the next 10 or 20 years.
Gothix answered that the Republican party would “obliterate” if something larger than political ideology doesn’t hold it together.
“The big-tent party doesn’t work, you have to have standards, you have to have something that glues everything together, otherwise it’s going to eventually turn into the left,” Gothix said. “[That glue is] God. And the question is which God? The only God there is: Jesus Christ.”
When another student shared their belief that progressivism has become more apparent on campus and asked what effect those trends may have on Republican politics, Beisner replied that the focus on culture-war politics is what’s keeping the Democrats behind.
“I think if they were to leave the culture war stuff behind and learn to say what a woman is, I think that [if] they were to focus on economic policy, I think that they could very well — maybe I shouldn’t say this — but I think that they could actually be successful,” Beisner said. “At the end of the day, all of us benefit from having two sane parties. Especially here in California, which is Democrat, we would all be better off if the Democrat Party were a little more sane.”
At this point in the event, one attendee carrying a large yellow poster left the room. It was unclear whether the attendee handed the poster to Harlow, or if Harlow took hold of it as they left. Harlow then held up the poster and read it aloud.
“I haven’t had somebody pass me a note in so long — ‘Protect trans kids, not your ignorance’ — so that means allow children to be chemically castrated,” Harlow said.
Harlow flipped the poster and read the other side aloud.
“Oh, oh! ‘Racism is loud, we’ll be louder,’” Harlow said.
The panelists and some audience members laughed as Harlow put the poster aside.
After the last few questions were answered, the panelists thanked the audience for attending and gave a special thank you to any student Democrats who attended the event or participated in the Ring Road debates.
“The College Republicans at the University of California, Irvine were not associated with the event tonight,” College Republicans at UCI (CRUCI) wrote in an email to New University. CRUCI holds their weekly meetings in the Social Science Lab Room 206 on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm.
Annia Pallares zur Nieden is a Features Apprentice for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at anniap@uci.edu.
Edited by Kaelyn Kwon