A political skirmish in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics
Reply to the Jones, Pearson, and Johnson Resolutions: Bringing Disorder and Dishonor to the Capitol and Protecting Our Children
The president said that Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence and expel duly-elected representatives, rather than debating the merits of the issue.
Three resolutions were filed on Monday in order to get the expulsions of Jones, Pearson and Johnson. The committee assignments of the members had been removed following the protest.
“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.
He said that the people of the three representatives were being taken and silenced by a party that was acting like an authoritarian.
Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones used a bullhorn to lead protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.
Sexton said peaceful protestors have always been welcomed to the capitol to have their voices heard on any issue, but that the actions of the Democratic lawmakers had detracted from that process.
“In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones,” Sexton said in a series of tweets Monday.
The actions of the three members cannot distract us from protecting our children. We will get through this, but we will need to discuss all solutions.
The resolutions, filed by Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso and Andrew Farmer, said that the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor” to the House.
The way I walk to the House floor was peaceful and civil. Pearson wrote a letter saying he wanted to listen and respond to voices that weren’t given the chance to speak.
Pearson said that if the House decided to expel him for exercising his first amendment right, then he would do what he had to to prevent gun violence.
Kathy Sinback, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, was upset about the expulsion of two Black legislators.
The move to expel the lawmakers also drew condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, whose executive director, Kathy Sinback, called expulsion “an extreme measure” infrequently used, “because its strips voters of representation by the people they elected.”
House leadership should focus on the issues facing our state instead of expelling members for expressing their ethical convictions.
Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.
The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.
A day of rising tension inside the state House chamber put the Volunteer State in the national spotlight, as well as a shooting in which five people, including three children, were killed.
The Case for Racial Discrimination: What Should We Do to Stop School Shootings? (The Case for the Gun Control Protest) in Tennessee
The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.
But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.
Democrats interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy could not work if they refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.
At its most basic level, the clash made plain the deep differences that exist between the Republicans and Democrats about what to do about mass shootings which often pass with little or no action to prevent them.
Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.
And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/political-showdown-tennessee/index.html
What the Pearson and Jones-Jones Infractions Mean for the Democrat-President Relationship and the State of the Union (Declaration of the Reionization of the President in the United States)
The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.
Pearson said that the GOP acted like it did not want to listen to or answer questions because it didn’t agree with everything it said.
He accused the House of acting disrespectfully, so Jones made a case to be ejected, according to one Republican.
He and two other representatives staged a revolt on March 30, 2023, in this very chamber. The gun control protest was compared by the Speaker to a mob attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
This appeared to be an illogical analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. During the State of the Union address this year, for instance, Republicans heckled President Joe Biden, for example, as evidenced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.
The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN that she thought race helped explain the different outcomes.
I think it’s clear. “I am a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young Black men.” She said that she felt the Republicans questioned them in a degrading way.
Jeremy Faison told CNN that the caucus believed the issue did not need to be considered by the ethics committee because Jones and Pearson had disrupted floor proceedings before.
Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices would be silenced by a White Republican majority in the state because of the diversity of their cities.
More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.
At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.
The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.
A New Look at Jones’s and Johnson’s Disturbations of the Shooting of a Nashville School and the Real Problem of Gun Violence
It is very frightening for the nation to see what is happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Republicans see similar trends in California.
The GOP in the Tennessee House used a nuclear option to deny minority Democrats the ability to speak.
Towns said that he never used a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”
“We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.
Thursday’s expulsions have been criticized by Democratic politicians and civil liberties groups who say voters in Jones’s and Pearson’s districts have been disenfranchised. Others, including Jones, have said the move distracts from the real problem of gun violence.
Protesters protested in the state Capitol on Thursday to argue for gun reform after a mass shooting at a Nashville school.
After a shooter killed three 9-year-old students and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville last week, Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.
According to CNN, Jones said his microphones were cut off whenever he raised the topic of gun violence on the House floor.
Faison said that the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor was not doable for them. “There needs to be a bit of peace.”
The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance Against an Anti-Democractic State Legislature: Revisiting the Status of Black Representatives in Tennessee
The Tennessee General Assembly removed pictures and profiles of Pearson and Jones after they were removed from the website.
The congressman had an issue with the oil line being built in south Memphis and had successfully blocked it. Gloria Johnson:District: 90Age: 60In office: 2013-2015, 2019-Issues: Education, jobs, health careOf note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansionRecent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:District: 52Age: 27In office: 2023-Issues: Health care, environmental justiceOf note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-inRecent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)
Tennessee law allows interim House members to fill in for their expelled colleagues until a special election is held. According to Johnson, it’s possible for Jones and Pearson to get back in their seats.
Pearson said he hopes to “get re-appointed to serve in the state legislature by the Shelby County Commissioners, and a lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”
After being expelled, Pearson and Jones encouraged protesters to continue showing up to the Capitol, while speaking to a crowd following their expulsion.
Two state representatives have been kicked out of the House in the last 157 years. The first, in 1980, was a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent was in 2016 when another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.
She continued, that it raises a host of questions about the treatment of Black legislators while doing nothing to address the problems of marginalized communities.
