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The two Justins, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones is a pairing that is taking the social justice and national communities by storm. Pearson and Jones both Democratic members of the Tennessee legislature, garnered headlines after protesting the lack of action on the part of the Tennessee legislature in response to a Nashville school shooting, which took place on March 27th. Calls for common sense gun control measures are nothing new. Yet in our contemporary moment characterized by mass shootings, this issue has taken on a fierce urgency. Compounding this issue is the fierce backlash against Black Lives Matter ( BLM) spawned by protests that erupted nationwide in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, the Supreme Court’s severe curtailment of abortion rights and opposition to transgender rights.
Crucial to understanding the actions of Representatives Pearson and Jones and Gloria Johnson, a third representative, are the attempts by Republican legislators nationwide to curtail participatory democracy. Often in the majority, these Republican legislatures have tirelessly championed restrictive policies on abortion, African American and women’s history, transgender rights and protest. Challenges to these measures have been heated. Democratic lawmakers are hopelessly outnumbered in their efforts to challenge what seems to be an autocratic majority devoted to a nationwide agenda of restrictive legislation aimed at minority groups.
This restrictive atmosphere and backlash politics played into the reluctance to allow and attempts to silence the voice of protestors played in the Tennessee legislature. Following a mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee where six people including one adult and three children we’re killed by an armed gunmen, protestors gathered in the well of the Tennessee legislature to protest the inaction of Tennessee Republican legislators on gun safety. Pearson, Jones and Johnson joined the protest. The protest lasted a total of seven minutes, six of which occurred while the house was in recess.
Seizing on the opportunity to silence these representatives, Republican legislators immediately introduced legislation to ban these members from the chamber. Arguing their behavior, participation in a protest in the well of the chamber, violated decorum and violated legislature rules. While Person and Jones were expelled from the legislature, Johnson narrowly avoided a similar fate.
The expulsion of Pearson and Jones rather than sidelining them has caused both men to gain increased visibility. Both men were reinstated because they districts sent them back to the Statehouse. They have become representative of a newly invigorated political and social movement to protest the machinations of Republican legislators not only in Tennessee but throughout the nation.
Pearson represents Memphis and Jones represents Nashville. Both men are in their twenties and arrived at the statehouse this year. Pearson is a graduate of Bowdoin College, an elite liberal arts school in Maine and Jones is a native of Oakland California, and a graduate of Fisk University. Both men were deeply influenced by the Trayvon Martin killing and the subsequent growth of the Black Lives Movement. Both men are conversant in the politics of mass mobilization. Using scripture, the imagery of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and the indignation inspired by our current atmosphere, they have become the new prophets of nonviolent confrontation and the point of the spear in the effort to challenge the problematic behavior of Republican legislatures.
The two men have men with the President, been widely featured on news outlets nationwide and are widely viewed as the new face of the Democratic Party. While some more conservative Democrats have been less than impressed with their approach, it is clear that bringing the tactics of mass protest and mobilization to bear on politics in this movement is proving transformative. It is reshaping the political landscape, galvanizing groups and constituencies to fight the power.
Ironically, the Republican legislator who led the charge against the Justin’s, Scotty Campbell recently resigned from the legislature. He is facing an ethics violation, which accuses him of violating the legislature’s workplace discrimination and harassment policy.
The two Justin’s have reinvigorated the fight for social justice within the political system. Their ability to harness the righteous indignation of countless protestors on gun rights, anti-abortion legislation, gender and LGBTA rights is providing a new playbook for elected officials. Speaking truth to power is no longer a slogan or the sole purview of protestors in the streets or in the well of statehouses across the country, it can, if harnessed effectively, become a powerful tool wielded by legislators in their ongoing fight to defeat repressive forces in the statehouses across the country.