Beckwith Pushes for Bridge Honoring Charlie Kirk
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith says he wants to see a pedestrian bridge named for the late political activist Charlie Kirk—either by renaming an existing bridge or building a new one.
“Charlie was just a great builder. He was a coalition builder,” Beckwith said in a recent interview. “A bridge would be a great symbolic honor to memorialize who he was.”
Kirk, who spent much of his time traveling to colleges and speaking with young people, was shot and killed in Utah on September 10. Beckwith says plenty of people who disagreed with him at first often walked away seeing him differently after meeting him.
“There are many stories I’ve heard personally where people said, ‘I wasn’t a fan of Charlie, but then I got to chat with him or talk with him at a campus tour, and it really helped me to see a different perspective,’” he said. “That kind of dialogue moves people in a different direction.”
Beckwith says the idea is still in the early stages, with no specific location yet. He’s floated northwest Indiana as a possibility, given Kirk’s ties to Chicago and Crown Point.
“I think we should start having a conversation—where would it be, what would it look like?” Beckwith said. “It doesn’t have to be one we build from scratch. It could be an existing bridge that doesn’t have a name.”
As he put it: “He loved building bridges—figuratively and, hopefully, now literally. Disagree with me? Step up to the microphone. Let’s talk it out. We solve problems by talking, not by avoiding each other.”
