"Mr. Brightside"
You'd think I'd feel gutted after my Tennessee House representative, Justin Jones, was removed from office by the state's Republican supermajority, leaving my district without representation, but...
Last November, 27-year-old Justin Jones ran unopposed to represent District 52 in the Tennessee House of Representatives. District 52 includes East Nashville, where I live.
I voted for Jones in the Democratic primary, too, although I’d met his opponent, Delishia Porterfield, at an Our Revolution event back in 2020 and knew she was also great (and, like Jones, young and Black. Porterfield remains a member of the Nashville Metro Council).
[About 5% of the district’s 70-some thousand residents voted in that primary, by the way; Jones bested Porterfield by just 241 votes.]
I remember liking Porterfield’s arguments just as much, if not more, than Jones’s. The difference, for me, ended up being star power.
Porterfield is straightforward, sensible, professional, and passionate, but not outwardly so. Jones’s style, in contrast, just felt more inspiring and revelatory. He never seemed anything less than substantive, serious, fully informed, and qualified to lead, but above all else he was—as many nationally renowned journalists and fellow politicians have acknowledged over the past 36 hours or so—a monumentally gifted orator. The kid was going places, and I wanted to go along for the ride…to maybe even be a part of something transcendent.
One of the places Jones had already gone was jail. 14 times, in fact, after peaceful protests. He always wears a “Good Trouble” lapel pin, which references a favorite saying of one of his heroes (and a fellow Fisk University graduate), the late Congressman and legendary civil rights activist John Lewis.
Indeed, when he was still a 20-year-old junior at Fisk, Jones was already proving he had no problem with bold and resolute action. Fisk’s website explains why he won the Tennessee Alliance for Progress’s Young Leader Award in 2015:
When Insure Tennessee failed during the special session, Justin stepped up to make things happen. He started a "#fast4fairness" campaign where he asked people to fast on Wednesdays during Lent to show solidarity for those in the gap. He traveled to rural, southeast Tennessee to join advocates for a five-day march across Senator Bell's district to bring attention to the importance of the plan. He marched from North Carolina to DC bringing attention to the dangers of rural hospital closures.
He created a "Moral Monday" rally in the Capitol building the week that the legislature voted down Insure Tennessee for the second time. He was one of the organizers for the "March Against Fear," in response to the violence in Charleston, South Carolina. Over 100 people attended the events. Justin is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit for voter’s rights in Tennessee—in this state, students can't use their student IDs to vote. Beyond all of his successes, Justin is an inspiration to so many people. Across Tennessee, his ability to energize and mobilize—but also to listen and love—has kept people moving forward in the fight for Insure Tennessee and other vital issues.
When I was a junior at Indiana, I was boldly and resolutely getting shellacked at the Video Saloon a good couple years before I was 21. (Other than that—and his being a young, Black, hero activist with a searingly bright future ahead of him—Jones and I are pretty much exactly alike.)
So I already knew a little bit about Justin Jones when I went to the Tennessee Capitol this last Monday, April 3, to join activists in pleading with our local government to do something—anything—to keep our kids safe in school. This was after the previous Monday’s mass shooting at a private Christian school that killed six innocent Nashvillians, including three 9-year-olds.
The rally that day was to begin about 30 minutes after high school and college students planned to walk out of class, at 10:13 a.m., exactly one week after the first 911 call came through from the Covenant School. Organizers had asked my longtime friend, Boys Club for Girls singer-songwriter Amie Miriello, to help lead rally-goers in singing inspirational protest songs like Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” and John Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Power to the People.” I offered to tag along, and maybe even sing a little myself. (Oh who was I kidding, I was totally gonna sing…)
Boys Club for Girls is partnering with Nashville’s Fund Recovery and CaringWays on a number of upcoming projects; please click here to donate to their fundraiser to help those affected by the Covenant School shooting who cannot afford professional mental health services. Thanks for considering!
We had to get to Legislative Plaza across from the Capitol steps well before 10:13. Eventually March for Our Lives lead organizer (and Vanderbilt freshman!) Ezri Tyler would recruit us to help set up the sound system. I’d see Tyler front and center on that night’s local news leading chants and introducing speakers; and a couple days later I’d see her in the mix on every national news broadcast I watched covering the events that would unfold the following Thursday.
But before setup, as non-school-aged constituents slowly filed into the plaza, I noticed Justin Jones, also there early, standing a few feet away. He was chatting with a few nice retired ladies I’d said hello to a few minutes earlier.
My intention was to go up to him and say hello myself. Maybe tell him I voted for him, and was excited to see what he would do as a brand new member of the House (and beyond!). But cold feet delayed me just long enough that a few other people vaguely recognized him and started a conversation. And then the setup process called us away. I figured I’d probably get another chance to say hello a little later.
But it didn’t take long for kids from Vanderbilt University, Belmont University, and many area high schools to converge on the plaza. Soon my view from the stage looked like this:
Once the singing commenced (I probably took on a fuller-throated role than a plus-one should have, but hey, I was riled up!), I looked to my right and saw Jones, still there, standing in the middle of the crowd, dutifully singing along with us. I looked over a couple other times and never really saw anyone else engage him in conversation. Which I guess made sense, since by that time the crowd of a couple thousand was mostly made up of students. They’d probably have little reason to recognize a brand new House rep from a district across the Cumberland River from the city.
Jones was gone the next time I looked in his direction. And a good chunk of the rest of the crowd was looking to go elsewhere as well—toward the stage, then past it, then across the street, up the steps, and (for as many as could fit) into the Capitol building.
A few hours later, after the singing portion of the rally was over and Amie and I left, word got out that the Republicans in the Tennessee House had moved to expel three members of the body for “breaking decorum.” Votes were scheduled for Thursday the 6th to decide the fates of Memphis’s Justin Pearson, Knoxville’s Gloria Johnson, and Nashville’s Justin Jones.
This breaking of decorum took place the Thursday before—three days after the Nashville school shooting occurred—when another protest attracted tons of people to the statehouse to admonish members for their inaction on gun reform.
I say “inaction,” but that’s not entirely accurate.
Republicans hold a supermajority in the House thanks to some of the most obscenely gerrymandered districts in the country. They not only have zero interest in what most Americans consider “commonsense” gun laws like universal background checks, red flag laws that would keep guns out of unstable citizens’ hands, and the banning of assault rifles like the AR-15 (which is almost every mass shooter’s weapon of choice); but they’ve recently moved to loosen Tennessee’s already lax gun restrictions even more.
Their solutions include asking teachers to double as armed security guards, and encouraging college kids to bring guns to class.
On the day of the Covenant shooting, a Tennessee judge lowered the permitless carry age from 21 to 18.
And our state is far from an outlier. Did you know that half the country allows permitless carry of handguns, i.e. 25 states? And, not to be outdone, Tennessee now wants permitless carry of any and all weapons, not just handguns.
One bill of the 30 introduced this session that would mostly relax gun restrictions in Tennessee would:
Amend the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act (TFFA) to allow for people to carry “a firearm that cannot be carried and used by one person,” a firearm that has “a bore diameter greater than [1.5″] and that uses smokeless power … as a propellant,” a firearm that “discharges two or more projectiles” with one pull of the trigger and “ammunition with a projectile that explodes using an explosion of chemical energy after the projectile leaves the firearm.”
So Volunteer State Republicans have “acted” when it comes to gun reform. They’ve made it far easier to carry guns. Any guns. Anywhere in Tennessee.
So it’s under these extreme circumstances that, on March 30, with citizen chants pleading for gun reform coming from both outside the Capitol and up in the gallery above the House floor, “the Tennessee Three,” as they would later come to be known, pulled something of a stunt. They stood at the well, where lawmakers are supposed to be officially recognized before speaking, and led the chants themselves. Pearson and Jones shared the use of a bullhorn to do so. The body’s official business was upended for about 45 minutes. Apparently the sergeant-at-arms kindly tried to move them away from the well and was ignored. And fellow Democrats told Republicans they were either unwilling or unable to step in.
So, yup: they were out of line. They were causing trouble, albeit “good trouble.” The Three insisted they took such extreme measures only after they’d been consistently ignored and their mics shut off by House leadership. But they were being willfully disruptive, and they admitted so. They admittedly broke House rules.
Hell, Pearson even apologized!
But no apology would keep Republicans from handily trumping the Tennessee Three when it came to extreme action. No public reprimand, or even a formal censure, would do. Despite taking such action only twice before since the Civil War—and these were cases of members taking bribes and being accused of rampant sexual misconduct—the House decided to move to expel the rabble-rousers.
And Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the two young Black men, were indeed expelled, while Gloria Johnson, the older white woman, was not. A few of the members said they voted against her expulsion because she never used the bullhorn. Or perhaps some were swayed by her having endured a school shooting herself, when she was a teacher back in Knoxville.
But I have to believe that some of these Republican House members actually did vote “the Justins” out simply because of racial hatred. I don’t see how anyone can suggest otherwise. It does get that bad in this part of the country.
I also believe that others of these overwhelmingly white male Republicans are not lying when they so vehemently deny that race, or even breaking the rules, per se, had anything to do with their decision. Or at least they weren’t knowingly lying.
They kept saying it was really about lack of decorum. Disrespect of the institution. And blocking the voices of the other millions of Tennesseans who the Tennessee Three did not represent (for a whole 45 minutes, mind you, whereas who knows how long it will take for my district to get representation again).
I think they may very well have done a fine job of convincing themselves that it’s really about decorum. But man oh man. Decorum-less exchanges like this did not help their argument:
You can see how mad Rep. Andrew Farmer is. He’s positively seething. And I’m sure he’d fight and scratch and claw to the death before he’d admit race has anything to do with his sneering, righteous anger.
But while it’s near-impossible for me to buy, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say it isn’t about race for him or his GOP colleagues.
But it is about being scared. It is about recognizing that, unless some extreme measures are put into practice, young people from different cultures who have far different ideologies are going to gain more and more power. And people like Rep. Farmer will be replaced in their positions of power by people like former Rep. Pearson.
Whether it’s the “replacement theory” that full-on white supremacists rant and rave about, or just being rejected by the public in favor of people who don’t look, act, or live like them, that’s what they’re afraid of.
And look, it is scary when something you don’t understand or are familiar with intrudes upon your comfort zone. Change is tough. These conservative white men who make up the vast majority of the Tennessee state government, though, are not going to be pleased with the outcome of their undemocratic, fascism-adjacent actions this week.
Here’s why I’m able to look on the bright side about all this (when usually I would be driven to extreme life distraction and roiling despair by now).
First, in practical terms, the city councils of both Nashville and Memphis can now appoint whoever they want as interim representatives until special elections take place. Indeed, they are free to appoint Jones and Pearson themselves! And Jones and Pearson are also free to run in said coming special elections. Pearson won in a landslide earlier this year in another special election, and Jones ran unopposed back in November.
So, in due time, they are going back to the House.
And second, when you expel duly elected officials in a grossly unfair, undemocratic, near-authoritarian manner such as this, so that you enrage not only disenfranchised constituents like me, but lovers of justice all around the world; and you confound many Americans, of all political stripes, by doing something this drastic, this un-American; and in doing so you make this one of the biggest American news stories of the week, propelling the Justins from merely locally admired up-and-comers to internationally famous crusaders for all that is just and right? Well…
Yeah, you make these dudes more powerful than you ever could have imagined, YOU DOLTS!!!
And these aren’t just ballsy kids who know how to hustle to get votes and make headlines with naive idealism. These guys are, in my view, transcendent and potentially historic speakers and leaders.
For my personal tastes, I wish they would tamp down on the more heavy-handed preacher-like cadences they use when they are making their prepared speeches. It appears they are both men of great faith, so I do understand where it comes from. But for me it obscures the substance of their arguments—which is hard to do, because they know their shit from back to front and inside-out!
But if you have a chance to check out some or all of their time at the podium fielding attacks from the right on expulsion day, I recommend it. Because, holy smokes, do they ever school these arrogant putzes who are throwing their weight around, belittling them (to put it kindly), and generally spewing venomous resentment in their direction, for hours.
The young men’s delivery as they nullify pretty much every criticism slung at them is, to me, more Obama than MLK…which I think comes across as more genuine and effective.
Here’s some C-SPAN footage for you to cut-n-paste into your browser:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?527219-1/tennessee-general-assembly-votes-expel-democrats
They let you jump around between points of interest, too, so you can watch as much or as little as you would like.
So, I dunno…maybe there’s some inherent blind spot, courtesy of my straight white American male (SWAM™) bias, that’s making me uncomfortable with the preacher vibes?
Regardless…I otherwise give the Justins’ representation of their once and future constituents a 9.75 out of 10. And I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. I would totally understand if any of my paid subscribers would like some or all of their money back, or at least whatever percentage of their money went toward the month of March. ‘Cuz my last post was almost a month ago. My apologies.
This month I’ll be sending CeeGees’ second quarterly donation to the American Red Cross. If you would like a full or partial refund, just email me at dean@syeti.com and I’ll send it to you without taking away the portion that would have gone to charity.
And I will attempt to get back to a weekly writing schedule in the meantime…