Jones, who was re-elected to the legislature, says he will continue to push for gun reform

Tennessee Democrat Justin Jones is not a Black Man, but a Demonstration that Gun Reform Will Not Imply Democracy in the Light of Nashville

The lawmaker was expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives just a few days ago over a demonstration on the floor in support of gun reform.

After being restored to his seat, Democrat Justin Jones stood on the steps of the Capitol and continued his call for common sense gun legislation.

Jones and another black Democrats were forced out of the Republican-controlled legislature last week because of their protest on the chamber floor over the school shooting in Nashville.

The Nashville Metropolitan Council voted unanimously Monday to re-elect Jones to the house, but he will still represent House District 52 for the time being. State law allows local legislative bodies to appoint interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held.

Jones said to the crowd that democracy would not be killed in the comfort of silence after marching back to Capitol.

Jones told CNN that all of the bills would have to do with that.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/us/tennessee-democrat-representatives-expelled-tuesday/index.html

The Tennessee House of Representatives has a Step Back from Expulsion. (Fractional Report: Tennessee House Democrats) Expelled from the House on Monday

The Tennessee House Republicans released a statement on Monday, saying, “Tennessee’s constitution provides a pathway back from expulsion. We will welcome members who have been expelled if they are reappointed. They are expected to follow the rules of the House as well as state law.

Pearson’s seat in District 86 is currently vacant and will be addressed by the board during a meeting in Memphis on Wednesday, says Commission Chairman Mickell Lowery.

Anyone who has doubted the power of the South to advocate for an end to gun violence, anybody who has doubted the movement to end assault weapons, anyone who has doubted that the movement still lives, here’s your answer: The movement still lives.

Pearson said that Monday was the celebration of Jones’ reinstatement, but that it was also another tragic day, as was the case after the school shooting in Tennessee.

“It’s also a painful moment of recognition that our legislators and people like (Speaker of the House) Pearson said that the Republican party was not doing enough in Tennessee and the rest of the South to prevent guns from getting into the hands of people.

The seats will be up for election in less than one year and a special election will be held to fill them.

The Speaker of the House said on Monday he wouldn’t stand in the way of appointments if the local governing bodies send Jones and Pearson back to the chamber.

“The two governing bodies will make the decision as to who they want to appoint to these seats,” a spokesperson for the speaker’s office told CNN Monday. “Those two individuals will be seated as representatives as the constitution requires.”

The state constitution says that disorderly behavior can result in an expulsion, however, they cannot be expelled again for the same offense.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/us/tennessee-democrat-representatives-expelled-tuesday/index.html

The Times of the South: The Political Unrest in the Light of the U.S. President Donald J. Holder’s Legacy Revisited

The attorneys for the ousted representatives sent a letter Monday to Sexton, saying that their removal was unconstitutional.

Holder and attorney Scott J. Crosby – who are representing Jones and Pearson, respectively – urged the House to not “compound its errors by taking any further retributive actions.”

Any of the partisan retributive action, such as the treatment of elected officials, would constitute further unconstitutional action that would need to be paid for by the people.

While the world was watching the former president surrender to authorities in a New York City courthouse last week, I was watching Nashville and Raleigh. I live in North Carolina, which has two capital cities that have been overrun with political unrest in the shadow of Donald Trump.

We prefer to look to the horizon because we don’t care about people in the South. There have been migrants and poor people put there. It is where we put the social problems we are willing to accept in exchange for the promise of individual opportunity in places that sound more sophisticated. In both Wisconsin and Florida the political unrest works just as well as it does in the South. Americans are never as far from the graves we dig for other people as we hope.

Nashville’s 130th Mass Shooting: Two Days of Civic Action in a Deeply Conservative State, Two Years After the Shooting and Two Years Later

First, in Nashville on March 27, people mourned six dead from the nation’s 130th mass shooting this year. Three of the murdered were children, each 9 years old. The shooting occurred at a private Christian academy and it was supposed to matter to the people who were angry. It should not. America is the reason I mention it.

Nashville is a politically centrist, demographically and economically diverse city that self-consciously manufactures conservative culture exports in a deeply conservative state. There was a protest around the ban on drag shows. The two events seem unconnected but they are not. The shooting two weeks ago created a sense of civic action in the state. When people lined up outside the G.O.P.-dominated House demanding sensible gun reforms, civic action was what we saw. Three democratic lawmakers — Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — joined the protesters, many of them children not that much older than the victims in last month’s massacre.