Virginia Reacts on #TN3 👊🏽 Next Gen Electeds Arrive
VA on TN. 🚩 The events in Tennessee yesterday are part of a generational shift in many legislatures across the U.S. as a new generation of younger lawmakers are winning elected office. The new generation of leaders reflects the changing demographic tends in the United States.
An Unprecedented Moment on MLK Avenue. "It is no coincidence that the two youngest Black lawmakers in the state of Tennessee and one of two women are on trial today," said Tennessee House of Representatives member Justin Pearson hours before being expelled from, Pearson, who was sworn-in to his first term this year, made the news in Feb. 2023 for wearing dashiki on the floor of the Tennessee General Assembly.
He would later be expelled from the Tennessee General Assembly along with freshman Justin Jones. In a telling act for the state that founded the Ku Klux Klan via Nathan Bedford Forrest, Republicans in Tennessee decided not to remove Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white female lawmaker who stood alongside Pearson and Jones.
A New Generation of Elected Officials if Here. On July 30, 2019, Virginia House of Delegates member Ibrahim Samirah, then 27, protested President Trump in Jamestown with a sign that read "Deport Hate” among other things related to immigration. On January 22, 2018 in Richmond, Va., Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, then 38, walked off the dais and sat down in protest on the tradition of celebrating the birthdays of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
In March 26, 2021, Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon, then 29, was arrested by Georgia State Troopers after knocking on a door and attempting to watch Governor Brian Kemp sign a restrictive voting rights bill.
"To the critics of incivility... I say it's time to think critically about whom such decorum has traditionally served: the white, wealthy, and comfortable,” said Rep. Justin Pearson yesterday.
“Young leaders were key to civil rights movement 60 years ago. Do not miss this moment and these words when two young Black TN legislators @brotherjones_ (age 27) and @Justinjpearson (age 29) speak truth to power & risk it all on behalf of their constituents,” wrote civil rights attorney Leslie Proll on social media.
“What Tennessee did yesterday isn't just reprehensible. It also violates well-established law. In December of 1966, the United States Court unanimously decided a case called Bond v. Floyd. Julian Bond was a Black man, elected to the Georgia legislature,” former Alabama prosecutor Joyce Vance pointed out.
We’re likely to see more as a nation demographically changes into something and a new generation of leaders takes the stage.
Some Virginia reaction to the events yesterday in Tennessee:
🚩 Flashback to what happened to the late Georgia State Representative. Julian Bond in 1966. who was a Georgia State legislature who became President of the NAACP. wiki:
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