The Tennessee House of Representatives Standing in the Light of the Nashville School Shooting: Acrimonious Critique of the Black-Night Shooting, and Gun Control Protest
Jeremy Faison, Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair, said his members always wanted the Democrats expelled and did not want an alternative route through the ethics committee. He said the majority of the caucus did not agree with the way the house was being run. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”
The GOP action after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to the Nashville school shooting created a snapshot of how two halves of a diverse nation are being pulled apart.
A day of rising tensions in the state House of Representatives left the Volunteer State in a national spotlight, and a mass shooting left six people dead.
Democrats considered the treatment of Pearson and Jones particularly harsh, since they already had their committee assignments taken away.
Republicans failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority to expel one of the Democrats, Gloria Johnson, a White woman who joined the gun control protest. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.
Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. The Democrats have been accusing Republicans of violating their rights to freedom of expression and dissent, since the GOP has a supermajority.
Jones spoke to the House in his defense, saying that Republican legislators retaliated with an assault on democracy after he called for a ban on assault weapons.
The clash showed the huge chasm between Republicans and Democrats about what to do when mass shootings happen, 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. This is not a surprise in a state like Tennessee. 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.
He called on the Tennessee legislators to do something to stop the school shootings. There is absolutely no reason for citizens in the public to have assault rifles. Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young that it brings death and destruction to children.
The Trump-Peterson era and the Black-American racial background of Thursday’s opportunistic congressional mutiny
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.
The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.
A Republican legislator said that Jones had made a case for his being ejected because he accused the House of acting disrespectfully.
“He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. The mob attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, was compared to the gun control protest by the Speaker.
But this appeared an absurd analogy. The protest in the Tennessee chamber was not anti-democratic, nor was it meant to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next. The behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was nothing new in this political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. This week, Trump attacked a New York judge for being biased and for being the first former 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’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.
“I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.
Steve Cohen said that there is the possibility of discrimination behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.
The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.
Jones said that when he came to the well he wasn’t standing for himself. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. All of us are terrified by the increase in mass shooting happening here in the state and across the nation.
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 atmosphere of the civil rights movement and mayugur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens such as the 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.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/political-showdown-tennessee/index.html
The End of Reconstruction: From a Black Campus to the Edge of a Big Crunch: How Many Black Live in a Large, Black Country?
“It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s 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. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.
The GOP used a nuclear option in the Tennessee state house to prevent minority democrats from speaking.
“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “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.”
He said that we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is detrimental to the rest of us and unborn people.
The expulsions were described by Biden as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent.” Biden lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.
Jemar Tisby is a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky and is the author of two books. He writes frequently at JemarTisby.Substack.com. His own views are expressed here. Read more opinion on CNN.
I teach at Simmons College of Kentucky, which is a historically Black college. We have been studying the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow during this week.
The so-called Redeemers took over state legislatures with the primary goals of disenfranchising Black voters, barring Black people from holding political office, and establishing a politics that would render the White power structure impervious to disruption.
Georgia politicians expelled one of the men who was well-known in the emigre denominations from his position.
He states that white legislators question his right to a seat in this body to represent the people whose legal votes elected him. This objection, sir, is an unheard of monopoly of power. No analogy can be found for a man who should enter my home and take my family with him, and then tell me to leave.
Even though the Black lawmakers were soon reinstated, the actions of the White lawmakers in Georgia were just a foretaste of the political machinations to come.
In the newer version of the constitution, White Mississippi lawmakers wanted to prevent Black people from voting. The amendment to the US Constitution that guaranteed Equal Protection under the law and the right of Black men to vote made it difficult to suppress Black people without making laws about race.
So they used policies such as the poll tax, which most Black people could not afford to pay. They instituted the understanding clause which said that potential voters had to agree with the views of White registrars in order to cast a valid vote.
The grandfather clause required that descendants of the person who won the election have the right to cast a ballot. Of course, this excluded most Black people whose grandparents had been enslaved and thus, ineligible to vote.
What the new Redeemers can teach us about the state of Florida and how they are destroying the political process: Tennessee three-expulsion-redeemers-tisby
In class, my students listened with stunned incredulity as they learned about the cruel and ruthless politics of the Redeemers. Unfortunately, the historical parallels to present-day events are too obvious to ignore.
These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?
Expulsion is the most severe consequence the legislature can enact against another member of that body. Three of the state legislature’s members have been kicked out for serious offenses since the Civil War.
Attempts to strip local officials in the city of Jackson — where more than 80% of the population is Black — of their authority to monitor the city’s water system, police force and courts are underway in Mississippi.
The “Stop WOKE Act” is a law in Florida that was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and was meant to prohibit teachings or mandatory workplace activities that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed based on their race, color, sex or national origin. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” DeSantis said.
The most egregious example of how far right-wing groups are willing to subvert the political process is the January 6, 2021, attempted insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/08/opinions/tennessee-three-expulsion-redeemers-tisby/index.html
The Time of Jim Crow and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The Crucifixion of the Restoration of the Faith in the Early Church
Jim Crow segregation lasted as long as the era of Redemption. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,000 lynchings in that period.
The Civil Rights movement gave rise to substantial change. Years of nonviolent direct action protest, constant lobbying in state and political governments and the martyrdom of many activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., finally interrupted traditions of segregation and White supremacy.
When all the standard means of change — namely the democratic process itself — have been co-opted and subverted by authoritarians, then the people are only left with protest.
If the goal of the Tennessee GOP was to intimidate people into acquiescence with their expulsion of Pearson and Jones, their tactic backfired in a spectacular way.
Although there were constant attempts throughout the years, it took decades for people to mount the resistance necessary to topple Jim Crow. In today’s environment, action might occur more swiftly.
This is Holy Week in the Christian religion. Events such as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday culminate in the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. Jesus paying the price for sin is commemorated in these liturgies.
Redemption is a principle that underpins the hope of salvation in many Christian traditions. It is likely that many of the lawmakers will attend church this Sunday to celebrate the redemption that Easter heralds.