you have both Justins, the youngest Black lawmakers in the Tennessee House of Representatives, being reinstated to the Tennessee Legislature, after leading, with Gloria Johnson, a protest against guns on the floor of the House after the Nashville school massacre. Talk about the significance of what’s taken place over the last week with the overwhelmingly white Legislature expelling these two legislators.
CAROL ANDERSON: You are seeing a convergence of so many of the multiple streams in American society right there. So, on one hand, what you’re seeing is the power of gerrymandering to create a legislature that is not representative of the people, that is not one person/one vote, but instead is that extreme partisan gerrymandering, so that you have the needs of the people not being able to be addressed by that legislature. What you’re also seeing is the power of the youth, who are pushing forward for a different vision of America. It is a vision that is multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural, multireligious.
And that vision scares those who are in those gerrymandered districts, scares the bejeebers — and that’s the scholarly term — out of them, because it is a way of being, a way of thinking, a way of recognizing people’s humanity, a way of knowing that there are
— source democracynow.org | Apr 13, 2023