Memphis officials voted to reinstate Justin Pearson, the second of two lawmakers expelled from legislature by Republicans
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 fiancee, mother and four brothers, Pearson pumped his fist, jumped up and down, and hugged relatives.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.
Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson and Justin Jones attend a rally in support of the reinstatement of Pearson to the the Tennessee house of representatives.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 thelast month at a Nashville school.
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 powerfulA community organizer before entering politics, Pearson condemned what he saw as hypocrisy from Republican lawmakers. “There is something amiss in the decorum of the state house when GOP leaders like Representative Paul Sherrell, who proposed death from ‘hanging by a tree’ as an acceptable form of state execution , feel comfortable berating Mr Jones and me for our peaceful act of civil disobedience.
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