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The Tennessee Three Fight On [1]

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Date: 2023-04-10  

The Tennessee Three will not go gently into the night. Having been expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives by the Republican majority, they have continued to fight against the expulsion and to highlight the racism that triggered their expulsion. Ousted after protesting against gun violence, Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville), a member of the Tennessee Three, has accused the state’s Republican House Speaker, Rep. Cameron Sexton (R-Cumberland) of leading a “white supremacist system.” It is not coincidental that the resolution to expel a white woman, Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), fell shy of the two-thirds majority required to pass. The other member of the Tennessee Three, Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), an African American man, was, like fellow African American Jones, expelled from the House. The expulsion shines a light on the vast, right)-wing conspiracy to roll back minority rights and send American back to the Jim Crow era.

A Case That is Emblematic of the State of the Country

The racial nature of the expulsion was obvious to Johnson, who had also spearheaded protests against a mass shooting that took the lives of six people at Nashville elementary school. According to Johnson , “I’m a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young Black men”. That racist attack on Jones and Pearson is in stark contrast to the multicultural movement that the Tennessee Three are leading. Indeed, Jones told the Rev. Al Sharpton MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” that,

“We are building a multiracial fusion movement. We’re in the midst of a third Reconstruction here in Tennessee that hopefully will have national implications. But what it means is that this white supremacist system being led by Speaker Cameron Sexton is an attempt to divide and conquer us. But in reality, you see we, the Tennessee Three, we continue to stand together. Because though their vote was racist, though their vote was to expel the two youngest Black lawmakers, their attack on democracy hurts all of us, whether you’re Black, brown, or white. It is an assault on all of us”.

In many ways, this case is emblematic of contemporary politics, with a multiracial Democratic Party seeking to advance the rights of minorities and recognise historical justices and present grievances, and a Republican Party whose barely disguised racism is aimed at rolling back the rights, not just of minorities, but of women as well. The Tennessee Three understand that the politics of division is an assault on all, that to attack one race, is to attack all races, that we are Americans only when all Americans have their rights recognised.

Conclusion

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/10/2163252/-The-Tennessee-Three-Fight-On

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