Justin Pearson And The Future

In the United States, Justin Pearson has become a national figure. He writes in this morning's New York Times:

Last week, the people of Tennessee and the nation witnessed an assault against democracy when my colleague Justin Jones and I, both young Black Democratic men, were expelled from office for allegedly breaching decorum on the House floor. My former colleague, a 60-year-old white female Democratic representative, Gloria Johnson, had also joined our peaceful protest against gun violence but narrowly survived expulsion. Mr. Jones has since returned to the House after a vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council. I’m hoping the Shelby County Board of Commissioners similarly puts me back in the House on Wednesday.

There is something amiss in the decorum of the State House when G.O.P. leaders like Representative Paul Sherrell, who proposed death from “hanging by a tree” as an acceptable form of state execution (Mr. Sherrell later apologized for his comment) feel comfortable berating Mr. Jones and me for our peaceful act of civil disobedience. This, in Tennessee, the birthplace of the Klan, a land stained with the blood of lynchings of my people.

I wasn’t elected to be pushed to the back of the room and silenced. We who were elected to represent all Tennesseans — Black, white, brown, immigrant, female, male, poor, young, transgender and queer — are routinely silenced when we try to speak on their behalf. Last week, the world was allowed to see it in broad daylight.

In such a hostile environment for democracy, I’m inspired by the late civil rights fighter and congressman John Lewis, who in 1965, when demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Ala., endured a police beating that almost took his life. In 2016, after the tragic Pulse Nightclub massacre that killed 49 people, he led a sit-in on the U.S. House floor for 25 hours to protest the inaction of lawmakers in the pockets of the National Rifle Association.

My mother, a schoolteacher, and my father, a pastor, instilled in me the hope that justice is possible for all. When I was 15, I attended a Memphis City School Board meeting with my parents to give a speech demanding access to quality textbooks and classes that white peers in their school districts had. These were resources that increased their opportunities for a good college education — chances that Black students, too, deserved.

A few years ago, I helped lead a coalition of community activists in the fight against the construction of the Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline project in my late grandmothers’ community in southwest Memphis, where, according to a 2013 study, the risk of cancer is four times higher than the national average. Both of my grandmothers died from cancer. Our coalition killed the project before it killed more of us. We fought and we won.

This is a man who believes, like John Lewis, that sometimes you have to get into "good trouble." A lot of Americans won't like it. But Mr. Pearson -- and his generation -- are the future.

Image: The New York Times