Florida is the Normandy Beach of 2024

*This is an AI generated transcript, and may contain errors*

Mark Harrington (00:01):
Hey friends, as I speak, we are in Orlando, Florida with Created Equal and the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform, working to defeat Amendment four that would expand abortion. Up to the very moment of birth today, we’re going door to door, hitting all the doors that we can before election day. We’ve been conducting public outreach in downtown Orlando and at the University of Central Florida. So I wanted to give you an update. Plus last night I spoke at the Operation Save America National event, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to listen in. Here you go.
Jason Storms (00:51):
Praise God, man. Great. All those that are on the Who All Was on the campus today? Oh man, fantastic. We had quite a crew out there. Awesome. Praise God. That’s a modern day Temples, right? I mean, it’s the modern day marketplace. Paul would’ve been out there preaching, testifying to the Lordship of Christ. Amen. So praise God for being out there. Very important work. Alright, without further ado, want to have Mark Harrington come up And Mark, I believe you were commissioned into ministry with Flip and Rusty Laying Hands on you many years ago. Is that right? 1997. 1997, man. So in Ohio, man, praise God. So Mark runs a ministry, created equal one of their models. They get young people, and I’ve seen the caliber of a lot of their young people and they’re of great caliber. And some of you I don’t know yet, but I’m just going to assume you’re hanging out with this guy.
(01:38):
You’re probably trouble. But praise God for that, for reaching young people and getting young people engaged in this fight. And they take the graphic images of what abortion is, and it’s the adage that many of us heard years ago. And what changed my mind on this and change my thinking on this and motivating me to action is that America’s never going to reject abortion until America sees abortion. This is what Frank said. Frank just said that this is what’s hidden from the discussion. The media is never going to show us what an abortion is. We have to show you this is what they’re doing. This is what abortion is, this is what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about women’s rights. Nobody here wants to take a woman’s right away. I have eight daughters. Last thing I want to do is oppress women and take women’s rights away.
(02:18):
I want my daughters empowered. I want to see them flourishing. I want to see them honoring God, loving God and prospering in life and using their gifts to the full of his ability and their rights protected. I believe very much in protecting and defending women. What I don’t believe in is killing little babies. And so that’s what we need to look at. What do we mean when we say terminating a pregnancy, when we use these terms? And so Mark and created Equal do a phenomenal job of showing that and exposing that in bringing that to the forefront of the discussion. And so in there are Christ-centered ministry, praise God. And so Mark Harrington, thank you for being with us, brother. Thank you.
Mark Harrington (02:57):
Well, good evening. It is really good to be back. I was sharing with Rusty earlier, the last time I was at an OSA event was 2012. That dates me. That dates me. We were here in Florida and there were fires over the entire state. Remember that Rusty, we serve a God that brings fire, doesn’t he? I mean, and we were at the Disney proclaiming the truth because they started their gay days, if you recall, back in the days. So it’s been a while. It’s good to be back. Lots happened, right? Two years in fact. Where were you there on June 24th, 2022? Can you remember? Yes. Where were you? And you might think, well, what happened that day at the bank house, right? The famous day that Roe v. Wade at the bank house hit the ash heap of history. Amen. Now, when we think about national events like that, whether they’re tragic events, I’m old enough to remember nine 11.
(04:06):
Some of you aren’t that old, but I remember where I was. I was driving a truth truck in Miami, Florida when I got news over the radio. Big truth truck, by the way, have you seen it yet? It’s out around Orlando, big pictures of aborted babies on the sides and back. We’re in Miami, Florida and we hear the news. I remember that day, just like June 24th, 2022, we got the news. Reverend Pat Mahoney texted me, okay? He says, I’ve got some inside news. Roe is dead. Roe is dead. And we were with our day of action event that day. We had several dozen of us doing our thing going out on the streets. And I got to announce that to our group. Roe is dead rose in the grave. And unlike our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I can tell you this, Roe is not going to be resurrected from the dead. Amen. Roe is dead and it’s going to stay in the grave. And it was a great day for all of us, wasn’t it? I dunno about you. I wept. I hope you did too. For 49 years, the pro-life movement had been working for that very outcome. And it came to pass, didn’t it? Praise God.
(05:39):
And we celebrated like everybody else for one day. That was it. Why? Because in Ohio we got word that the pro-abortion people were going to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2023. So it was back to work for us. We knew it. We were going to be the only state in the union in 2023 that had a ballot measure put on the ballot that year. So we got to work, we put a coalition together a year and a half in advance of that vote. And so Roe is dead, right? But abortion unfortunately is still very much alive in America. And we’re seeing that. And I share Frank Bone’s view that there’s a lot of positive things happening. But I got news for you friends, we may have overturned Roe v Wade, but we have not overturned abortion, right? We’ve won a lot of political battles over the years.
(06:43):
We’ve put pro-life presidents into the White House. We’ve controlled much of the Congress, either one or both chambers of the Congress. We’ve controlled the majority of the state houses in America. We’ve put governors, supposedly pro-life Republican governors, the majority of them all along. We’re winning the political battles, but we’re losing the battle of public opinion. You can’t read it any other way. Friends, what’s going on right now? And we got a lot of work to do. We’ve overturned Roe, but we have not overturned abortion. And we were unprepared for the aftermath of the overturning of Roe. And for good reason because we’ve been fighting for that outcome for 49 years. You can understand it. But the day after we were unprepared for what was about to take place, we celebrated many of us way too long while Rome was burning. And that’s what’s been going on over the last two years.
(07:48):
I got bad news for you. Oh, for seven. Oh, for seven in Constitutional Amendments. Now I come from the state of Ohio. I’m an Ohio State Buckeye fan, right? I mean, you may not like him. Who cares, right? But Ryan Day is the coach. I can tell you this. If Ryan Day went, oh, for seven against Michigan, he’d be gone. Oh, for seven something’s wrong. Friends, we got to change course. We got to win the battle of public opinion. We got to have the long view that is training young people, the next generation of leaders to take on the culture of death and win. Because as our good friend Mark Crutcher, God rest his soul, he said, because winning is how the killing ends. It’s how the killing ends. So that’s what we’re doing at Created Equal. We’re raising up the next generation of leaders to take on the culture of death and win.
(08:56):
But we’re owe for seven friends and we need a win. So what I want to do here real quick, if you would put up the slide here, I’m going to talk about what happened in Ohio briefly. I’ve written a document about this. It’s going to be at our table in the back if you want to read it, feel free. I could write a book about what happened in Ohio. Obviously we don’t have time to go through everything that happened there. So I’m going to pick three particular things that happen, if you will, at kind of a lessons learned for us that we can look to in Florida and the other states and ones that will be coming online unfortunately, probably in 2026. And we can learn from those things. People might think, well, mark, why would we want to listen to you? You lost. And I’m like, we often, we learn from our failures. We learn from our failures more than we learn from our victories. We do. Sure do. And I had to endure. Think of this. Now, I just want you to understand something. I’m not a young man anymore. I was born and raised in Ohio, my beloved state, born and raised, raised with my kids there. I’ve labored in the pro-life, vineyard in that state for over 30 years to see it all gone in one day.
(10:29):
One day I was crushed, still crushed. I don’t want it to happen anywhere else. I don’t want it to happen here in Florida. I don’t want it happen in any of those other states is devastating. Friends, we went from a state, okay, you say what you want about a heartbeat law, but hey man, it saved lives to a state now is a destination. We have women crossing the borders from Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia to come to Ohio. Ohio was a sanctuary for the unborn in many respects. Now, what is it? It’s a killing zone. And that’s what will happen here in Florida if we don’t prevent this from passing. So if you would go to the next first slide real fast. I’ve already spoken to this, but that we were unprepared. Go to the second one. This is one of the 10 lessons learned, if you will.
(11:29):
And that is this. We cannot continue the same messaging and expect a different result. That’s what we call the definition of insanity. Friends, we got to learn from our mistakes. We got to be humble enough to understand that we’re getting it wrong in some of these places. Now, I’ve spent the last year on the phone doing everything I can to talk to every single leader in this country who’s leading a coalition against these initiatives to learn from Ohio, to take the lessons learned and deploy them in their own states. And some have listened and praise God for ’em, but not all of ’em. And I’m not saying I got all the answers here, but going to tell you what, I know what happened in Ohio and I want to prevent it from happening anywhere else. And the current messaging I’ll tell you is off base.
(12:22):
We got to make the main thing, the main thing friends. And the main thing is child killing, right? It’s about killing babies. It’s about abortion. Now, I know we can win at the margins when we talk about parental rights or family rights or regulations, if you will, on health restrictions for abortion. I get that. And that might move the needle. One or 2% here or there, and that’s good. We want to defeat these measures. That’s the goal. But when we avoid the question of abortion, hello? They make it all about abortion. What do we do? We say, oh, it’s not about abortion. Hello. Everybody knows it is. We better make up to it too. It’s about abortion and the messaging has to change. You mentioned that the dollars are being spent, 53.8 million in Ohio from the pro-abortion side, the pro-life side, 36.1 million’s, a big bunch of cash.
(13:24):
I’m telling you, we don’t have money problems, friends, we got messaging problems, right? I know we’ve got to close that gap, that fundraising gap we have to some way or another. But we’re never going to compete with blood money. We’re just not. So the problem is not money. When people say, oh, it’s about the money we’ve got outspent. It’s true, we did. But that’s not the reason we’re losing. We’re losing because our message is not resonating with the American people. We’re not making it about abortion. We’re not making it about the main thing. And that’s what happened in Ohio in many respects. It was all about parental rights, stuff like that. I was sounding the alarm saying, no, no, no, no, no. We got to make it about abortion. And so what we did is we put together an ad. I’m going to play this ad for you.
(14:09):
It’s running in Florida right now. And this ad, as best we could got to the issue of abortion. Now, if I had my way, I’d be putting abortion video and pictures on the TV day in, day out. But you can’t do that. They won’t let you. So what we tried to do is we tried to make it about abortion visually with a testimony from a woman. You might know her, Claire Caldwell. Claire Caldwell was an abortion survivor, late term abortion survivor. She survived an abortion and her twin sibling did not died. A victim of abortion. And her testimony we captured in a 32nd TV ad, and we ran it in Ohio. It’s running in Florida. We put $250,000 behind it here. Now that isn’t a lot in this state, I can tell you that much. I mean, you need millions and millions of dollars. But hey, I think it has impact. So what I’d like to do, if you would just go ahead and play that video, it’s the next slide. This is the Claire Caldwell ad on late term abortion. Like I say, you can’t show victims of abortion, but you can mistake, show her who was a victim. All right?
Video (15:24):
If
Mark Harrington (15:25):
You would, go ahead and start over if you would, if that’s possible.
Video (15:27):
Late term abortion is real and
Mark Harrington (15:29):
Turn it off.
Video (15:30):
My birth mom was a scared teenager when she was forced into a late term abortion because of a doctor’s mistake. I survived, but my twin did not. I was left, broken and hurt. Late term, abortion is real and so is the pain. But the pro-choice industry wants it right up to birth. Abortions that are too late, too painful and too extreme for Florida. Will you stand for victims? Please vote no on amendment four in Florida.
Mark Harrington (16:01):
Amen. Right? So this is playing in the state. Her testimony as a victim of abortion, she survived, but her twin did not. And you notice the empty chair powerful. And that’s the kind of ads we need. That’s the kind of messaging we need. Make it about abortion, especially late term abortion, which we know if you look at the polling, 75% of the American people think that should be against the law. Now, all abortion should be criminalized. We all get that. But we’re trying to defeat a constitutional amendment. Friends, that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the goal, is to defeat this thing. We got to do everything we can to do that without compromising our principles. So we got to change our messaging. We got to change public opinion. We got to look at the long view. We got to raise up the next generation of leaders.
(16:53):
And then we have a church problem. You’ve mentioned it. The numbers in Ohio are hle. They’re terrible. 25% of white evangelicals voted yes on issue one. It’s one out of four. These are people that claim Christ born again, 25%. One out of four 50% of Catholics voted yes. I mean we are bleeding our own people. We’re losing them, we’re leaking them. GOP voters, Republicans, same numbers. MAGA voters, even Trump losing them too. We got a problem and we got a church problem. And you mentioned in the pastors in Ohio, a lot of them rose up. Don’t get me wrong, we had an uprising of many passive, but a lot of them remain silent. And I thought about this today and I thought, why was that? Well, maybe it was because they were silent for 49 years. Maybe that’s why to expect ’em to wake up one day and find their voice on abortion.
(17:56):
It’s really nonsensical if you really think about it, isn’t it? Now, some of ’em saw the urgency of what was before them, understood it as they do in Florida, because friends, we don’t get a do over here. We don’t get a do over once it’s in the Constitution. It’s long gone for a while. We might be able to bring it back. What’s a pro-life? Amendment down the road when we get the numbers. But I’m telling you, once in the constant, as you said, father Frank, once it’s in the Constitution, it is very hard to reverse. So we need to understand the urgency of the hour here in Florida. And I don’t want to go there and I’m going to just gently go there a bit. But we are a movement without a party. Republican party is abandoning us.
(18:55):
Now, I know that’s hard for some of you to hear, but it’s true. I mean really, it’s true’s not hard to figure to see this, the pro-life plank to the Republican National Convention. What happened to it? Got it. Donald Trump, what did he say? He’s moving. Why? Because he wants to get elected. I get it. I understand that, right? He wants to get elected, but we are currently a movement without a party. That doesn’t mean we won’t be or couldn’t be or will be later after this election. We’re going to have to reclaim the party. But right now we’re in the political wilderness. Let’s just face the facts. That’s got to change.
(19:40):
But the truth of the matter is this. We can’t look to the Republican party to do our bidding. We can’t contract this out, right? The messaging, the proclamation of truth, we can’t farm it out to a party. We can’t have proxies like the Republicans do our work for us. We’re the ones who have been given the mantle of truth, not them. We’re the truth tellers, are we not? We’re the prophetic speakers. We’re the ones who hold up the banner of truth in the public square, not the Republican party. We need to hold them to account friends and we can’t lose our voice. Now I’m looking beyond November. Whoever wins in November, hey, I’ve been like you. I, I’ve seen come and go. I’ve lived through Obama, I’ve lived through Clinton. I’ve seen it all. I’m not going to lose hope just because we lose an election.
(20:43):
But if we’re going to reclaim the Republican party, we better make our voices known. And I’m thankful that others are doing that. They’re holding Donald Trump accountable. Now, there’ll be those who want to vote and say, we should vote for him. I understand the debate, but we need to hold that man accountable. We need to hold him accountable. Alright, let’s finish up here. The good news is this. We need a Normandy Beach event. Florida’s it. This is it, friends, this is it. This is our beachhead. We can capture the beach here in Florida. We will send a message throughout America. Don’t bring these constitutional amendments to your state. If you do, you’re going to lose. Listen, I don’t know. You’re seeing $90 million, man. Oh man, if that’s true, that’s a lot of money, friends. If we can defeat him here, we can defeat ’em anywhere. And so we need our Normandy Beach, Florida, is it? It is. And we can have our Normandy Beach, just like in World War ii, when they took the beach, what happened? They took Europe back. And this is where we can start right here in Florida. We got to do it. Now, there are other states, they’re important as well, but this is the crown jewel for them. If they win here, they think they’ve got it made. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. So let me just finish up and say this.
(22:13):
As Frank said, these constitutional amendments need to be a national refer referendum on abortion. They are. I mean, we have to treat them like they are. I mean, this is really, all the eggs are in this basket. And so Florida is it. And we are here working hard. I want to take a second just if you would, our created equal friends are here with us. If you would stand up real quick here. Now, there are people from all over North America that came here to be part of this. We’ve been hitting the doors this week. We were at the University of Central Florida today. We were out in the streets in downtown Orlando, by the way, at the city hall where we had a memorial. Remember that way back in the day? You remember? Were you with us? Oh yeah, I was right there. I was like, wow.
(23:07):
History repeats itself, doesn’t it? Just finally here for you young people and the parents of young people, you have a teenager or a college age. We have something we call the justice ride and it’s patterned after the Civil Rights Movement, freedom Rides. Basically what we do is this, we charter buses from Ohio and we load it up with young people and we take ’em on the road and we teach ’em how to argue against abortion and share the gospel. And we do that in the spring. And it’s a time of intense training classroom. And what I think is more important, boots on the ground training, the best way to train a young person is what? Give ’em a little bit of information and push ’em out in front of people that disagree with ’em and have ’em defend themselves. And that’s what we do on the justice ride.
(23:58):
So if you’re interested, we’re going to be out at the table. It’s going to be on February 28th through March 8th. I think it’s one of the premier, one of the best training programs in the country because of that reason. Classroom training, head knowledge. Also with boots on the ground, training college campuses in Florida for a full week. Your young person will never be the same. I’m going to play this video clip. This is our promo video for the Justice ride. And then I’ll hand it over to my good friend Rusty Thomas. So if you would play the next video. Amen. Alright, so Justice, right again, February 28th, March 8th. If you want to be part of it, feel free to talk to our young people that at the table out in the foyer there. And let’s get our Normandy Beach friends, let’s get our Normandy beach. Let’s take Florida. Let’s defeat this constitutional amendment and send it back to the pit of the hell where it belongs. God bless you. And thank you.
Outro (25:51):
You’ve been listening to Mark Harrington, your radio activist. For more information on how to make a difference for the cause of life, liberty and justice, go to created equal.org. Dot org. To follow mark, go to Mark Harrington show.com. Be sure to tune in next time for your marching orders in the culture war.