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Because the co-founder and government director of The Fairness Alliance, I'm a proud democracy defender. I've marched, protested, knocked on doorways, registered voters in rural communities and large cities in Tennessee, and met with Republican and Democratic leaders to work towards options. Regardless of all of the work I’ve carried out, I need to acknowledge and mourn the truth that democracy in Tennessee has died.
The Tennessee Three, as they've come to be referred to as, have been interrupting these proceedings for an excellent cause.
Probably the most evident instance got here Thursday when the Tennessee Home voted alongside occasion strains to expel Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis for interrupting Home proceedings on March 30. The Home additionally fell one vote in need of expelling Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville. All three are Democrats.
The Tennessee Three, as they've come to be referred to as, have been interrupting legislative proceedings for an excellent cause. On March 27, a mass shooter carried two semi-automatic rifles and a 9 mm handgun into The Covenant Faculty in Nashville and slaughtered three 9-year-olds and three adults. Republican lawmakers had supplied nothing greater than empty ideas and ineffective prayers; that they had continued to idolize weapons and resist commonsense laws similar to crimson flag legal guidelines, allowing necessities and stricter background checks.
Fed-up Tenneseeans had descended on the Tennessee Capitol to peacefully object to lawmakers’ refusal to behave, and Johnson, Jones and Pearson disrupted the proceedings within the Home on March 30 to focus on the discontent of voters who had elected them to talk for them.
However not solely did their Republican colleagues not hearken to the Tennessee Three, or any of the protesters gathered exterior the legislative chambers, Home Speaker Cameron Sexton, in a radio interview, introduced up the lethal assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He stated, "What they did right this moment was not less than equal, perhaps worse, relying on the way you take a look at it, of doing an rebellion within the Capitol.”
And because the complete world noticed Thursday, in what was a shameful act of disenfranchisement, the Home members kicked out two Black male colleagues who had demanded that they put the lives of Tennessee’s youngsters forward of the pursuits of the NRA. Johnson, a white girl, survived the vote.
“What is occurring right here right this moment is a state of affairs wherein the jury has already publicly introduced the decision,” Jones stated Thursday. “A lynch mob assembled to not lynch me however our democratic course of.” Earlier than he was expelled, Pearson informed MSNBC: “We're dropping our democracy. This isn't regular. This isn't OK.”
Take it from anyone who has been combating for democracy in Tennessee: Thursday’s expulsion votes are a part of a pattern of disenfranchisement. Our legislative districts are gerrymandered to make it laborious to vote out the people who find themselves in energy. Final 12 months, the Legislature break up up the Democratic stronghold that was Davidson County, the place Nashville is, into three components, which one Democratic consultant referred to as a "vicious map."
Take it from anyone who has been combating for democracy in Tennessee: Thursday’s expulsion votes are a part of a pattern of disenfranchisement.
State lawmakers are making an attempt to take over the infrastructure and management the commerce of native jurisdictions similar to Nashville.
On this legislative session alone, payments have aimed to slash the Metropolitan Nashville—Davidson County Council from 40 members to twenty, take over the worldwide airport and sports activities authority, and scale back funding for the town’s conference heart, which contributes to schooling and street repairs. If what is occurring is permissible, then we should declare democracy useless.
However Tennessee isn’t alone. In Mississippi, lawmakers have labored to strip autonomy from the town of Jackson. In Missouri, they’ve carried out the identical to St. Louis. Georgia’s Legislature handed a invoice creating a brand new disciplinary board that might result in the removing of regionally elected prosecutors.
In Tennessee, the Legislature’s disturbing strikes are being attributed to partisan politics, however it’s deeper than that. Their actions will be attributed to a blatant disregard for democracy and for the concept individuals who don’t vote for these strikes ought to have a say in something.
Tennessee wants rather a lot. We want gun management. We want high-quality public schooling. We want reasonably priced and accessible well being care, together with protected and authorized abortion. We want school college students in Tennessee to be eligible to vote utilizing a legitimate faculty ID. We want colleges, church buildings, grocery shops and neighborhoods which can be protected from gun violence. We have to be protected from lawmakers abusing their energy and overriding native authorities our bodies and disbanding neighborhood oversight boards.
“To expel voices of opposition and dissent is a sign of authoritarianism,” Jones stated after he was expelled. He stated that what his colleagues did to him and Pearson ought to “sound the alarm throughout the nation that we're coming into into very harmful territory.”
Tennessee isn’t simply coming into that territory. It’s there.
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