As the co-founder and executive director of The Equity Alliance, I am a proud democracy defender. I have marched, protested, knocked on doors, registered voters in rural communities and big cities in Tennessee, and met with Republican and Democratic leaders to work toward solutions. Despite all the work I’ve done, I must acknowledge and mourn the fact that democracy in Tennessee has died.
The Tennessee Three, as they have come to be called, were interrupting those proceedings for a good reason.
The most glaring example came Thursday when the Tennessee House voted along party lines to expel Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis for interrupting House proceedings on March 30. The House also fell one vote short of expelling Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville. All three are Democrats.
The Tennessee Three, as they have come to be called, were interrupting legislative proceedings for a good reason. On March 27, a mass shooter carried two semi-automatic rifles and a 9 mm handgun into The Covenant School in Nashville and slaughtered three 9-year-olds and three adults. Republican lawmakers had offered nothing more than empty thoughts and ineffective prayers; they had continued to idolize guns and resist common-sense legislation such as red flag laws, permitting requirements and stricter background checks.
Fed-up Tenneseeans had descended on the Tennessee Capitol to peacefully object to lawmakers’ refusal to act, and Johnson, Jones and Pearson disrupted the proceedings in the House on March 30 to highlight the discontent of voters who had elected them to speak for them.
But not only did their Republican colleagues not listen to the Tennessee Three, or any of the protesters gathered outside the legislative chambers, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, in a radio interview, brought up the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He said, "What they did today was at least equivalent, maybe worse, depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the Capitol.”
And as the whole world saw Thursday, in what was a shameful act of disenfranchisement, the House members kicked out two Black male colleagues who had demanded that they put the lives of Tennessee’s children ahead of the interests of the NRA. Johnson, a white woman, survived the vote.
“What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict,” Jones said Thursday. “A lynch mob assembled to not lynch me but our democratic process.” Before he was expelled, Pearson told MSNBC: “We are losing our democracy. This is not normal. This is not OK.”
Take it from somebody who has been fighting for democracy in Tennessee: Thursday’s expulsion votes are part of a trend of disenfranchisement. Our legislative districts are gerrymandered to make it hard to vote out the people who are in power. Last year, the Legislature split up the Democratic stronghold that was Davidson County, where Nashville is, into three parts, which one Democratic representative called a "vicious map."
Take it from somebody who has been fighting for democracy in Tennessee: Thursday’s expulsion votes are part of a trend of disenfranchisement.
State lawmakers are trying to take over the infrastructure and control the commerce of local jurisdictions such as Nashville.
In this legislative session alone, bills have aimed to slash the Metropolitan Nashville—Davidson County Council from 40 members to 20, take over the international airport and sports authority, and reduce funding for the city’s convention center, which contributes to education and road repairs. If what is happening is permissible, then we must declare democracy dead.
But Tennessee isn’t alone. In Mississippi, lawmakers have worked to strip autonomy from the city of Jackson. In Missouri, they’ve done the same to St. Louis. Georgia’s Legislature passed a bill creating a new disciplinary board that could lead to the removal of locally elected prosecutors.
In Tennessee, the Legislature’s disturbing moves are being attributed to partisan politics, but it’s deeper than that. Their actions can be attributed to a blatant disregard for democracy and for the idea that people who don’t vote for those moves should have a say in anything.
Tennessee needs a lot. We need gun control. We need high-quality public education. We need affordable and accessible health care, including safe and legal abortion. We need college students in Tennessee to be eligible to vote using a valid school ID. We need schools, churches, grocery stores and neighborhoods that are safe from gun violence. We need to be safe from lawmakers abusing their power and overriding local government bodies and disbanding community oversight boards.
“To expel voices of opposition and dissent is a signal of authoritarianism,” Jones said after he was expelled. He said that what his colleagues did to him and Pearson should “sound the alarm across the nation that we are entering into very dangerous territory.”
Tennessee isn’t just entering that territory. It’s there.