Tennessee GOP strips Democrats of committee assignments for protesting school shootings
Democracy totters in the US
Last Thursday, a group of demonstrators congregated at the Tennessee capitol to protest the massacre of six — including three nine-year-old children — at the Covenant School in Nashville. They were trying, as so many other anguished Americans have before, to get a state legislature to do something to stop the killing of school kids and their teachers.
The demonstration involved speeches, shouting, and signs, but nothing else. No one was arrested or injured.
Some protestors voiced their pleas for action in the legislature's public gallery. Three Democratic lawmakers — Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson, and Justin Jones — chanted along with them. As Pearson explained,
“We listened to them and helped to elevate the issue that they are demanding justice for.”
I am all for decorum in legislative matters. And I think most people would agree that the three Reps should get a warning, like a yellow card, or two minutes in the penalty box. I suspect the Representatives themselves would accept some form of censure.
However, the Republican House Speaker, Cameron Sexton, viewed the offense in a far harsher light. He said,
“Two of the members, Representative Jones and Representative Johnson, have been very vocal about Jan. 6 and Washington, D.C., about what that was. What they did today was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, to doing an insurrection in the State Capitol.”
Worse than Jan. 6? How? The protestors did not hurt anyone, smear shit on walls, throw barriers, stab cops with flag poles, dispense bear spray, break into offices, or steal anything. Which way do you have to “look at it” to think it is more egregious? By what metric is it “doing an insurrection in the State Capitol?” A rational person, using sober judgment and calmly considering the facts, would have to conclude that Sexton is a fecking eejit.
Sexton then outlined what he thought would happen to the three protesting Democrats,
“It could be removal of committees; it could be censorship; it could be expulsion from the General Assembly. Anywhere in between.”
Rep. John Ray Clemons (D-Nashville) thought the Speaker was exaggerating. He said,
“You show me the broken windows, you show me anyone who went into the speaker’s office and put their chair up on his desk and trashed his office, you show me where a noose was hanging anywhere on the legislative plaza.”
Sexton was not exaggerating. On Monday, this anti-democracy zealot confirmed, after a Nashville news conference with Gov. Bill Lee and other lawmakers, that he had stripped Gloria Johnson and Rep. Justin Jones of their committee assignments. Justin Pearson did not serve on any committees — so he probably got double-secret probation.
Sexton added that further measures, including expulsion, were possible.
Republican apologists will point to the committee-stripping of ex-US Representative Steve King and current embarrassment Majorie Greene to say that Sexton was following precedent. Those two cases could not be more different. King had a lifelong habit of racist excess, so virulent his own party booted him.
And Greene earned her removal with a history of trafficking in racism, anti-Semitism, and baseless conspiracy theories, along with her support for online comments encouraging violence against Democratic officials before taking office. Her reinstatement further argues against using her demotion as an example.
The GOP is a thugocracy with the same devotion to democracy as Pol Pot. So far, they have expressed their fascist instincts by judicial and legislative fiat. And luckily, their brown shirts proved inadequate on Jan. 6. However, they will keep trying.
Democratic legislators are in danger in every Republican-held State House in the nation. And their constituents are at risk of having no say in their own governance.