The attempt by MAGA Fascists in the Tennessee legislature to silence the “Tennessee Three” for protesting with young protestors demanding gun reforms has backfired on them in spectacular fashion. The Resistance to GQP tyranny strikes back!
Matt Stieb reports, Tennessee’s Expelled Democrats Are Headed Back to Work:
Four days after Republicans expelled two Democrats from Tennessee’s state house for demonstrating against GOP inaction on gun violence, one of those lawmakers, Justin Jones, has been reinstated. Nashville’s Metropolitan Council voted unanimously on Monday to return the 27-year-old lawmaker to the Tennessee General Assembly, where Jones will serve as an interim representative for his district until a special election is called.
On April 6, Jones protested along with fellow Democratic lawmakers Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson by occupying the assembly floor to call for gun reform in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville the week before, which left three children and three adults dead. With a supermajority in the assembly, Republicans voted to expel Jones and Pearson, who are Black, though they failed to get the votes to kick out Johnson, who is white. Though Republicans deny that race was a factor, Johnson told CNN she thinks the reasoning is “pretty clear: I’m a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young Black men.” The expulsion became a flashpoint in the fight over democracy and attracted national attention, with Vice-President Kamala Harris visiting Jones and Pearson on Friday. Despite his removal, Jones remained confident that the city — which first elected him last year — would put him back in office through a council vote. “We’ll see you on Monday,” he said last week.
Justin Pearson is also expected to rejoin the General Assembly despite his expulsion. On Wednesday, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis will hold a special meeting to determine if the 28-year-old Democrat will be reinstated as a temporary representative in the interim before a special election.
If and when Pearson and Jones are back in the assembly, MAGA Fascist Speaker Cameron Sexton might still try to kick them out a second time. “If they reappoint, we’ll go through that process when the time comes,” he said on Saturday.
Sorry, but no you won’t. You have lost Dude. And you have given rise to a new Civil Rights Movement, and a Resistance movement to GQP tyranny.
Apparently, TN representatives who are expelled can return by running again in a special election. The state constitution also says a lawmaker can't be expelled a second time for the same offense. Expect a national campaign for re-election. @brotherjones https://t.co/cSykM8bbH6
— Errol Louis (@errollouis) April 6, 2023
UPDATE: Expelled Black lawmaker Pearson to return to Tennessee House:
One of two Black Democrats expelled from the Republican-led Tennessee House will return to the Legislature after a Memphis commission voted to reinstate him Wednesday, nearly a week after his banishment for supporting gun control protesters propelled him into the national spotlight.
The Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted 7-0 to reinstate Justin Pearson as a state representative.
“I will continue to fight with and for our people, whether in or out of office. We and the young protesters are the future of a new Tennessee. Those who seek to silence us will not have the final say,” Pearson wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times. I Want to Walk Back Into the State House Where Republicans Voted to Expel Me.
The Nashville Metropolitan Council took only a few minutes Monday to unanimously restore Jones to office. He was quickly reinstated to his House seat.
The appointments are interim and special elections for the seats will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special elections.
[T]he expulsions last Thursday made Tennessee a new front in the battle for the future of American democracy. In the span of a few days, the two had raised thousands of campaign dollars, and the Tennessee Democratic Party had received a new jolt of support from across the U.S.
[A]head of Wednesday’s vote, Pearson led hundreds of people in a march from the National Civil Rights Museum to the county commission’s office in downtown Memphis.
Pearson grew up in the same House district he was chosen to represent after longtime state Rep. Barbara Cooper, a Black Democrat, died in office. It winds along the neighborhoods, forests and wetlands of south Memphis, through the city’s downtown area and into north Shelby County.
Before he was elected, Pearson helped lead a successful campaign against a planned oil pipeline that would have run through neighborhoods and wetlands, and near wells that pump water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which provides drinking water to 1 million people.
He gained a quick reputation as a skilled community activist and gifted public speaker.
Should Pearson join Jones in returning to the Tennessee Capitol, they’ll do so when political divisions between the state’s few Democratic strongholds and the Republican supermajority were already reaching boiling point before the expulsions.
GOP members this year introduced a wave of punishing proposals to strip away Nashville’s autonomy. Others have pushed to abolish the state’s few community oversight boards that investigate police misconduct and instead replace them with advisory panels that would be blocked from investigating complaints.
Lawmakers are also nearing passage of a bill that would move control of the board that oversees Nashville’s airport from local appointments to selections by Republican state government leaders.
Particularly on addressing gun violence, Republicans have so far refused to consider placing any new restrictions on firearms in the wake of the Nashville school shooting. Instead, lawmakers have advanced legislation designed to add more armed guards in public and private schools and are considering a proposal that would allow teachers to carry guns.
“And you have given rise to a new Civil Rights Movement, and a Resistance movement to GQP tyranny.”
Well, if the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, then White Supremacy loses their fight for Tennessee. They lose everywhere, eventually.
Some days I believe it will happen.
Listening to Justin Jones and Justin Pearson these past few days probably gives many people much needed hope. I just keep thinking they’re still out there, people like them, as though it were the 1960s.
Anyhow, we’re not going back. Cameron Sexton may not understand that yet, but he will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQnlIEdeDFk