#justin Pearson

[liberalsarecool]

Three Democrats stood up for students. Two black Reps were expelled, white Rep was not.

Never forget.

[kaleidoscope-vol2]

Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson speaks after vote to expel him from the House over participating in gun protests: “Our lives are at stake. And we're going to fight for our lives, just like they're fighting for the NRA."

[odinsblog]

HOW IT STARTED

HOW IT’S GOING

Tennessee Republicans are the latest losers on this episode of “Fucked around and found out”

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Today the far-right dominated Montana legislature, after first silencing her, plans to censure and expel its first elected trans woman member, Zooey Zephyr, just as the Tennessee legislature did to two young Black men. 

All because she dared to condemn legislation that will kill and torture trans children -- something that Democratic Party leaders and Joe Biden have refused to condemn, much less take action against.

These attacks go far beyond the scope of electoral politics. They are attacks on the right of oppressed people to be represented or even speak on matters that directly affect them. Fortunately, there is a growing fight-back movement to #LetHerSpeak. I have no doubt that there will be a fierce struggle to restore her seat if she is expelled, as there was for Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in Tennessee.

"Blue check" fans of Elon Musk are now openly calling for the public executions of trans people, their families and their health care providers. This is a fight for the whole working class and progressive movement. 

If you haven't spoken up, if you haven't joined a protest, if you haven't paid attention -- the time is now. 

- redguard

Artwork by Lee Leslie

[booasaur]

April 6, 2023 - Representative Justin Pearson speaking before he and another Black Democrat are expelled from the Tennessee State House for joining a protest against gun violence, days after six people were killed at a Tennessee school

[ineffableazfellco]

Yess

[padawan-historian]

when zora told us that if we are silent about our pain they will say that we'd enjoyed it . . . when lewis told us to press on and make good trouble . . . this is what they meant . . .

[southernsolarpunk]

Okay I have not seen much here about the Tennessee protests?

Source

Source

Source

Watch crowd chant “fascist” at GOP lawmakers

Source

This is fascism, this is racism, this is, ultimately, authoritarianism. I suggest you look into this if you haven’t yet. Hundreds of thousands have had their voices silenced because these three lawmakers chose to stand with their citizens.

[gwydionmisha]

Yes, most of these are two young for this election cycle.

Poll suggested by a friend.

[liberalsarecool]

#JustinPearson #GoodNews

Another Republican scandal ended by The People.

[odinsblog]

Republicans threaten to withdraw funding for an entire district if Memphis council reinstates Justin Pearson

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A Shelby County commissioner told FOX13 on Friday that state leaders in Nashville are threatening to take away funding from Memphis and other Shelby County projects if the county commission decides to reinstate expelled state Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

Pearson (D-Memphis) and Justin Jones (D-Nashville) both were voted out of the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday.

The decision came a week after hundreds of protestors gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol to speak out against what they viewed as lax gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville that left three 9-year-olds and three adults dead.

As protestors gathered outside of the House walls, Pearson and Jones took part in a demonstration of their own on the House floor, using a bullhorn and political signs to speak out against lax gun laws. That demonstration prompted the votes which resulted in the two Democrats being expelled from the House.

(continue reading)

[frostbeees]

Behind the Battle Cleveland Monsters: Eastern Conference Finals, Game 4, Monsters WIN 3-2! 😤

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Melinda Butterfield 

The attacks on Zooey Zephyr in Montana, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in Tennessee, and Mauree Turner in Oklahoma go far beyond the scope of electoral politics. They are attacks on the right of oppressed people to be represented or even speak on matters that directly affect their lives.

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans, at least the ones who matter, are at war with democracy. Under Trump, they have taken off the masks.

Defeating Republicans by voting Democratic or for Democratic-leaning candidates is the only way to preserve democracy in the US. Last week the decisive defeat of a Trumpist Big Lie election denier was made possible, in part, by a high turnout of younger voters in Wisconsin.

[S]cores of down vest-wearing, smartphone-gazing students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in a line that snaked around every corner of a campus building as they waited to cast a ballot for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

When the votes were tallied at the end of the night, some 883 people had cast ballots at the campus polling place — more than any other precinct in Eau Claire, and nearly six times as many as voted there in a similar election four years earlier. And 87% of the students had voted for Democrat Janet Protasiewicz — perhaps a rejection of her Republican opponent Dan Kelly’s lifelong opposition to abortion and his work trying to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

The surge in young-voter turnout was a key reason why Protasiewicz won a landslide, 11-point victory in a key swing state that Biden had only won by just over 20,000 votes three years earlier. 

The lesson is simple: if you don’t want authoritarian fundamentalist fanatics running your city/county/school district/state/country then vote in every election in high numbers to defeat them.

Of course the challenge is greater in places where the GOP has gerrymandered itself into a supermajority.

[T]ake a look around to Nashville, Tenn., where white GOP lawmakers stunned the nation by expelling two Black colleagues and disenfranchising their roughly 140,000 predominantly African American constituents because the men had, from the floor of the Capitol, joined a thousand or so young people protesting gun violence. (A white female Democrat who also protested kept her seat by one vote.)

The Tennessee expulsions, tinged with a racism that echoed from 1960s civil rights protests with deep roots in Nashville’s once-segregated lunch counters, showed America just how far Republicans are willing to go to hold power — by nullifying the votes of Black and brown voters and drowning out the voices of young people who thoroughly reject Republican dogma around AR-15 assault rifles, transgender athletes, or banning abortion.

Previous lack of sufficient interest by moderate to progressive voters had permitted democracy-hating Republicans to become entrenched in many places. Removing such people from power is going to be prolonged electoral trench warfare.

What’s more, this political counterrevolution in legislative corridors is taking place right as the conservative movement’s grand project of the last half-century — a ruthless, multimillion-dollar crusade to install unaccountable, lifetime right-wing judges across the federal bench — is coming to full fruition. Good Friday’s decision by Amarillo, Texas-based federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee rooted in ultraconservative networks, seeking to undo approval of the abortion drug mifepristone after 23 years on the market is a huge end run around democracy in a nation where a majority of voters support abortion rights. Conservatives routinely file lawsuits in Amarillo because Kacsmaryk is that district’s lone judge.

The next time somebody you know voices support for some ineffectual third-party presidential candidate, remind them of Donald Trump’s lifetime appointment of anti-abortion fanatic Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas.

Continuing with the metaphor of anti-democracy warfare...

Republicans are responding with an asymmetrical civil war against democracy, constantly looking for the weak points to deploy their IEDs of autocracy, determined to blow up the American Experiment if that’s what it takes to retain power by any means necessary. Their tactics are working well, unfortunately. Darth Vader’s Death Star had just one opening to exploit, but U.S. democracy has many — gerrymandering, the filibuster, the Electoral College, the undemocratic makeup of the U.S. Senate, statehouse power plays against home rule for Black or brown or progressive-minded communities, a take-no-prisoners hijacking of the judiciary. The only shock of Thursday’s next-level expulsion of two duly elected Black lawmakers in Nashville was the proof that — as Republican ideas become more unpopular — there is no bottom to how low this movement will go.

And the targeting of these two young Black activists — Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis — should have removed any lingering doubts around what the GOP’s war on democracy is ultimately all about: white power. 

The anti-democracy Republicans are well armed, that’s why we have to fight smart. They got Roe v. Wade overturned because they were persistent and patient. We need to steal patience and persistence from them.

And yet there is also reason for great hope. America’s young people — the ones who left their classrooms last week and overran the state capitol in Nashville to plead for real action against gun violence, the ones fighting book bans in their schools and speaking out for radical action on climate — are the bravest and boldest generation this nation has seen in some time. Their moral authority, and their rising power at the ballot box from Eau Claire to Memphis, is why a decrepit GOP is lashing out. History will surely remember what happened in Tennessee as an affront to democracy — and the last throes of a dying movement.

The GOP is very much like Putin and his clique of sycophants. They like to talk tough, but when seriously challenged in conflict they show themselves to be weaker than the image they like to project.