Tag: Covenant School shooting

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Governor Promises to Make Special Session Call, Sponsor Bills Amid GOP Opposition

“I will not be the sponsor,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of any measures proposed by Gov. Bill Lee to pass an extreme order of protection. (Photo: John Partipilo)

Still facing challenges from Republican leaders, Gov. Bill Lee confirmed he will make an official call for a special session and sponsor several bills, including one he floated this spring dealing with extreme risk orders of protection (ERPO).

Yet just four months after a mass shooting at The Covenant School in Green Hills [in Nashville], Lee is hitting roadblocks set up by his own party and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who continues to say he will not support the governor’s order of protection bill.

Lee said recently he also plans to push legislation on juvenile justice, mental health, and violent crime and noted that lawmakers will back dozens of bills during the special session. He declined to give more details.

“Tennessee will be a safer state as a result of the efforts of the legislation and the legislators who are engaged in the process of this special session on public safety,” Lee said.

Johnson, who typically sponsors the governor’s bills as a result of his leadership position, reiterated his stance this week against Lee’s proposed extreme order of protection plan, even though it contains a provision for due process before an unstable person’s guns can be taken. Johnson said in a statement he does not support “red flag laws” and never has. The governor has shied away from the term “red flag law.”

“Should the governor choose to introduce an ERPO during special session, I will not be the sponsor,” Johnson said, responding to questions from the Tennessee Lookout. “Because the special session, itself, is controversial and lacks support in the Senate, this is a unique circumstance. Once the governor’s other proposals are finalized, I will review each one and consult with my Senate colleagues prior to agreeing to sponsor any administration bills.”

“I will not be the sponsor,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of any measures proposed by Gov. Bill Lee to pass an extreme order of protection. (Photo: John Partipilo)

Similarly, House Speaker Cameron Sexton told the Tennessee Firearms Association last week he doesn’t think the governor’s extreme risk protection orders will make it out of committee system, though he believes bills could pass dealing with emergency commitals and “mass threats” directed at groups and locations, in addition to improving the state’s background check system for gun purchases.

Even though key Republican lawmakers have said they won’t back most gun control measures, Lee said he’s met dozens of times with more than a hundred Republican and Democratic lawmakers, in addition to pastors, students, parents, and business leaders in advance of the special session. 

The governor reportedly created a bipartisan working group that includes Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari and Democratic Reps. Bob Freeman and Antonio Parkinson.

Lee also said he’s confident “substantive” legislation will pass, despite statements by legislative leaders that gun-related bills will not be approved.

The Governor’s Office will keep a public comment portal open until the start of the planned August 21st special session. Thousands of responses the office has received are considered public records.

Sen. Ferrell Haile also confirmed Tuesday he plans to sponsor a bill during the special session dealing with mental health and violence. The bill’s language is not complete, but he said it is critical to note that not all mentally ill people are violent and not all violent people are mentally ill. 

“They’re just evil, full of hate,” he said of the latter group.

Meanwhile, Democrats started a series of town hall meetings Tuesday they plan to hold across the state to increase support for tighter gun laws leading up to the special session. The first was in Memphis.

Tennessee will be a safer state as a result of the efforts of the legislation and the legislators who are engaged in the process of this special session on public safety.

– Gov. Bill Lee

“Gun violence is a personal issue to the families who are impacted by this,” state Rep. John Ray Clemmons said Monday. “We want and we need to have personal conversations in their own communities.”

State Sen. Charlane Oliver, who prayed with a group of Covenant School families Monday, noted that guns are the leading cause of child deaths in Tennessee, which has some of the worst gun violence ratings in the nation. She pointed out the statistics show nothing new.

“What is new is the opportunity to turn tragedy into policy action,” Oliver said.

She urged fellow lawmakers to “have the courage not to cower” to the Tennessee Firearms Association and National Rifle Association and pointed out that Gov. Lee could sign “landmark” legislation as a result of the special session.

State Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican, recently said he felt a group of Covenant School parents who formed nonprofit entities to work toward stricter gun laws were hypocritical and questioned why they didn’t take action when Black children in Chattanooga and Memphis were “slaughtered.”

Asked about that statement Monday, Oliver said, “Where was he? That’s the question. Where was he when little Black kids were getting slaughtered in Memphis, in Nashville, in Chattanooga?”

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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At Large Opinion

Targeted

Pride Flag Photo: Cecilie Johnsen | Unsplash

To stimulate sales for Pride Month (June), Target stores around the country put up displays of LGBTQ-centric clothing. Customers in some stores were offended and showed their displeasure by knocking down the Pride merchandise, angrily confronting sales clerks, and posting threatening videos on social media. Target’s response to the vandalism and intimidation was to remove entirely some of its Pride merchandise, and move other items from displays at the front of the store to less-prominent areas.

“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement last week. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” In other words, Target gave in to the wishes of a loud minority of bigots and bullies who created those “volatile circumstances.”

And we let them.

There were no major counter-protests of Target’s actions from LGBTQ activists. There were no cries of outrage from those of us with LGBTQ friends, co-workers, and family members (which is all of us). We just let it happen. Oh well, who needs a rainbow T-shirt, anyway, right?

This is how fascists take over a country: one small victory at a time. They are the would-be thought police, the Christian Nationalist Taliban, afraid of anything that challenges their tiny-minded view of the world. They are easily manipulated by leaders who stoke their fears and bigotry.

Sadly, there are now plenty of would-be autocrats in this country eager to lead the charge — one small victory at a time: They ban books about Black history, even about heroes like Rosa Parks. They prohibit the viewing of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. They try to fire a teacher who shows a fifth-grade class a Disney movie suitable for 8-year-olds. They want to force every pregnant woman to give birth. They shoot cases of beer. They make white-supremacist noises on social media and cable news. Their game plan is to intimidate a pliant majority and fire up their own ignorant base in the process.

It’s time to say enough, time to stop conceding ground that was hard-won over decades to racists, bigots, misogynists, and other assorted morons seeking to force their prejudices upon us and our children. It’s time to emulate a group in Florida that fought back when the Escambia School Board banned a book called And Tango Makes Three, a true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in New York’s Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. The book was banned at the insistence of one parent who said she was concerned “a second-grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind … that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.”

A group of parents, book publishers, authors, and PEN America stood up and said, “Enough.” They filed suit against the school board, alleging that the ban restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed, an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. … State censors are spiriting books off shelves in a deliberate attempt to suppress diverse voices. In a nation built on free speech, this cannot stand.” Hopefully, a judge will agree.

But lawsuits are just one tool in the toolbox. Confrontation at every turn is how this hateful stuff gets stifled. Bullies understand the power of numbers and volume. Progressives need to show out in numbers and stand up to these repressive tactics at every opportunity.

The only reason Governor Bill Lee called for an August special session to deal with gun reform (of the mildest possible sort) is because thousands of outraged citizens filled the streets of Nashville for days at a time after the Covenant School shooting. Now, the Tennessee legislature, which has essentially gerrymandered true democracy out of existence, is trying to cancel the special session, saying it’s a “publicity stunt” that will incite “the national woke mob.”

As a member in good standing of the National Woke Mob™, I say it’s well past time for us to get “incited.” And stay woke. We’re all Targets now.

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News News Blog News Feature

Reactions Megathread: Black Tennessee Lawmakers Expelled for Protests

Source: Tennessee General Assembly

The white-majority, GOP-dominated Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Black lawmakers Thursday (but kept one white lawmaker on the same offenses) as the country looked on.

The Memphis Flyer will capture as many reactions to the news here as we can. This thread will be updated as reactions come in throughout the day.

Reverend Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network:

“The Tennessee House’s decision to remove two Black legislators who exercised their right to free speech was a plain and simple attack on our democracy. How can you remove these lawmakers, who spoke for thousands of Black Tennesseans living under the threat of gun violence every day, but stop short of removing their white colleague and deny this is a racist action? The National Action Network stands with our Nashville Chapter in supporting their fundamental right to protest, especially against the gun violence that consistently and persistently impacts Black communities.”

JB Smiley, Memphis City Council member

“The Shelby County Commission must immediately return Representative Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee General Assembly. This is a sad day for Tennessee. The Republican super majority in the Tennessee General Assembly has put its knee on the neck of democracy in this state and in this country. I hope people will hold the dishonorable representatives who voted to expel Representative Pearson accountable for their actions and recognize that they have a total disregard for the thousands of constituents affected by such actions.”

Joint statement by Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Votes; Tequila Johnson, executive director, Equity Alliance Action Fund; and Tikeila Rucker, political organizer, MemphisForAll:

“The power of our democracy is that the people choose our leaders to represent us, not the other way around. Our communities came together to elect Representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin J. Pearson because they are bold, progressive champions and we knew they would fight to make sure our families have opportunities to thrive. We knocked on thousands of doors, called voters across the state, and elected leaders that listened to our voices and represented our communities.

“But in the face of the growing political power of Black and brown communities, the power-hungry supermajority is doing everything they can to silence our voices and disenfranchise our communities, including ousting two young black men who were duly elected. Expelling Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson is an unprecedented power grab that directly undermines our democracy, but it isn’t their first attack. They redrew congressional maps to break up Nashville to dilute the growing power of black and brown communities. They shrunk the size of the Nashville metro council from 40 to 20 members, forcing the city to redraw districts, eliminating leaders that represent our communities and throwing the city into political chaos. They’re coming after local authority in every city that dares challenge them. All of these attacks are tied together. They saw our power, and they’re doing everything they can to stop it.

“And let us not forget what started all of this: the House GOP’s refusal to take action to protect our children from gun violence in the wake of the terrible tragedy at the Covenant School last week. They want to distract and divide us with political stunts instead of focusing on making our schools safe.

“But we aren’t backing down. We are registering voters and organizing our communities to turn out for every election and elect leaders that will build a state that works for all of us. Just like we came together to elect Representatives Jones and Pearson the first time, we will keep showing up to elect champions, hold our government accountable, and pass policies that help our families thrive and keep our children safe. Tennessee is on the front lines of defending our democracy in this country. For years our movements have been fighting to defend and build a truly multiracial and pluralistic democracy in our state — and we won’t give up now.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen:

“As a longtime state Senator and current member of Congress, I appreciate that certain rules of decorum are necessary for conducting the people’s business in our state legislature. But I view the expulsion votes today as a provocative and disproportionate response to the breach of House rules prompted by the emotions triggered by last week’s Covenant School shooting.

“I was pleased to see the effort to expel Representative Johnson fail. I wish cooler heads would have prevailed and prevented the disenfranchisement of the citizens of Memphis and Nashville the expulsions create, in addition to the special expense state taxpayers will now have in scheduling primary and general elections. Debate on the proper response to gun violence is an essential part of the democratic process. Today’s votes were an embarrassing stain on an important democratic institution.”

The Black Southern Women Collaborative:

“The expulsion of Black legislators is an unacceptable travesty that should not be tolerated in a democracy. Black people from Memphis and Nashville now have no representative in the House of Representatives. This comes at a time when one in five Black people in Tennessee cannot vote due to felony disenfranchisement. Most of the folks are in Memphis. Additionally, Tennessee voters are being purged from the voting rolls and most of the impacted people are in Memphis and most are Black.

“Jones and Pearson were willing to enact the will of the communities that elected them, and now they have been removed. There can be no confusion; this is not only an attack on democracy, but also an attack on Black people.

“Justin Pearson is an activist and organizer who worked to oppose an oil pipeline in his community. He is concerned not only about the environment, but gun violence; issues of concern to his constituents.

“The other irony in all of this is that three legislators protested the death of innocent babies who were killed at the mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, yet only the Black legislators were removed. The racial inequity in this process is brazen.”

Amber Sherman and the Black Caucus of the Tennessee young Democrats have issued a petition to send Pearson back to the House:

“Justin J. Pearson was unjustly expelled from the TN State House on April 6th. His constituents deserve representation, send him back to the state House!”

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Politics Politics Feature

Turmoil at Capitol

Democrats in jeopardy: (from left) Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)

Not since the income tax riots of 2001 has the Tennessee state capitol building in Nashville seen such intensity. Monday’s session of the General Assembly, which included the introduction of resolutions in the House threatening the expulsion of three Democratic state representatives, concluded with the crowded galleries shouting epithets — including “fascists” — at members of the Republican supermajority.

Outside the capitol, worse things were being chanted by massive crowds at the expense of GOP Governor Bill Lee, who, like the Republican lawmakers, was faulted for inaction on gun safety following last week’s gun massacre at a Nashville Christian school.

“Eff Bill Lee!” the demonstrators chanted.

The three Democrats in jeopardy — representatives Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Jones of Nashville, along with Memphis first-termer Justin Pearson — had gone to the well of the House last Thursday, and, with the aid of bullhorns, encouraged protesters in the galleries to keep demanding action on guns.

A vote on expulsion of the three will probably take place Thursday, along with, equally probably, energetic new protests on their behalf and for gun-safety legislation.

• On Thursday this week, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins will hold a status conference on suits by mayoral candidates Floyd Bonner and Van Turner against an apparent edict by the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) requiring five years of prior residence in Memphis for candidates.

Neither candidate could clear a strict interpretation of the SCEC’s edict, which is included on the Commission’s website via a link to an opinion from former Commission chair Robert Meyers.

Jenkins gave a preliminary ruling last Friday against the SCEC’s effort to include the city of Memphis as a co-respondent against the suits.

• There was some unprecedented attention given to the matter of county contracts at Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and it all started while the body was considering the meeting’s “consent agenda,” ordinarily regarded as routine and largely consisting of pre-screened items.

With Democratic member Britney Thornton in the lead and with fellow Democrats Erika Sugarmon and Henri Brooks, among others, taking part, members kept county financial officers and economic opportunity administrator Shep Wilbun in the well for more than an hour answering detailed questions about each and every contract up for a vote, including many that appeared to be essentially maintenance matters.

The two basic questions were: How many bids were there for the contract? And how many bidders were minority? In most cases there was an obvious and even enormous disparity in the two numbers, which was, of course, the point of the questioners.