Protests took place in Nashville: Democratic deputies were expelled from the legislature
After a mass shooting in one of the schools in the capital of Tennessee, Nashville, in which three children and three adults became victims, protests took place in the city demanding the adoption of laws to tighten the circulation of firearms. One of the centers of protest was the square in front of the state legislative building. Several dozen protesters, including teachers, schoolchildren, students and priests, entered the legislative building, where they were joined by three Democratic lawmakers: African-Americans Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, as well as their white colleague Gloria Johnson. After protesters began chanting slogans and Jones and Pearson shouted them through a megaphone, local police forced them out of the building. Jones and Pearson also tried to raise the issue of gun legislation during the hearing until their microphones were cut off. Local Republicans considered that all three had violated the rules of the legislative assembly and, without any preliminary investigation by the ethics committee (as is usually done), they passed a resolution to expel them from the ranks of deputies. In just a few hours, Jones and Pearson were expelled from the legislature, and Johnson was one vote short of the required 2/3 votes to expel Johnson. In the lower house, Republicans have 75 seats, while Democrats have 23 (now 21). Protesters gathered in the legislative gallery chanted “fascists” and “shame on you.” Over the past 157 years, members of the Tennessee Legislature have been expelled from the lower house of the Legislature only twice: once in 1980 after being convicted of accepting a bribe, and again in 2016 after 22 charges of sexual harassment. Answering questions from legislators before his expulsion, Justin Jones said the Legislature did not want to expel a pedophile, a convicted domestic abuser, someone under federal investigation, or even, God forgive me, a colleague who urinated on his chair.
“Since you are trying to put us on trial, I will say that you are actually putting the state of Tennessee on trial,” Jones said. "What you're really showing the world is you're holding up a mirror to a state that's going back to its dark, dark roots."
The seats held by Jones and Pearson are now vacant, and their photos and biographies have been removed from the Legislature's website. State law allows counties to appoint interim replacements until new elections are held, and it is possible that both will be appointed by their respective districts as "temporaries" or return to the Legislature after winning re-election, where they can run again.
Author: Yan Veselov
