Ousted Democrat Returns to Tennessee House

By Staff, Agencies

Hundreds of supporters marched Justin Pearson through Memphis to the Shelby county board of commissioners meeting on Wednesday, chanting and cheering before entering the commission chambers, where officials quickly voted 7-0 to restore him to his position.

“The message for all the people in Nashville who decided to expel us: You can’t expel hope. You can’t expel justice,” Pearson said at the meeting, his voice rising as he spoke. “You can’t expel our voice. And you sure can’t expel our fight.”

Pearson is the second of two Democratic state lawmakers to return to the statehouse after being expelled last week by Republicans over a gun safety protest following another school shooting. Justin Jones was returned to his seat on Monday in a unanimous vote by the Nashville council.

After the reinstatement vote, a throng of jubilant supporters greeted Pearson outside in a churchlike celebration. Pearson adopted the cadence of a preacher as he delivered a rousing speech with call-and-response crowd interaction. Accompanied by his fiancée, mother and four brothers, Pearson pumped his fist, jumped up and down, and hugged relatives.

“They’ve awakened a sleeping giant,” he said, as a drumbeat and roaring cheers echoed his voice.

Pearson is expected to return to the capitol in Nashville on Thursday, when the house holds its next floor session, and plans to be sworn in there.

Pearson, 29, and fellow Democrat Justin Jones, 27, will serve as interim state representatives to fill the vacancies created when they were ousted for taking part in a gun reform protest in the chamber following the murders of six people last month at a Nashville school. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special elections for the seats which will take place in the coming months.

The two Black men had recently joined the legislature and condemned their expulsion as a racist action. Joe Biden had criticized the expulsion as unprecedented and Kamala Harris railed against the action on a hastily arranged trip to Nashville last Friday less than 24 hours after the two lawmakers were ousted.

The commission meeting was preceded by a protest rally at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis in support of Pearson, who said in a powerful New York Times opinion essay on Wednesday that he “wasn’t elected to be pushed to the back of the room and silenced.”