Who are the three Democratic Tennessee state reps targeted for expulsion for protesting gun violence?

Students in Nashville, Tennessee abandoned their classrooms on Tuesday to protest for gun reform after a deadly shooting the week before. The 27 March attack on the Covenant School left six people dead, three of them nine-year-olds. As part of the demonstration hundreds of the protestors made up of students, parents and teachers descended on the State Capitol to take their case directly to lawmakers.

Chantting their demands for actions to toughen gun laws from the balconies overlooking the House floor, the students were joined by three Democratic lawmakers on the floor. The state representatives were Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson.

Republicans in the State House, who hold a super majority, voted on Thursday to expel two of those three Democratic state representatives, Jones and Pearson. The resolutions against the three stated as the reasoning for the expulsion was that they “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor” and “engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct.”

The vote against Rep. Jones was along party lines with all 75 GOP Reps voting to expel the representative for Tennessee District 52, which includes parts of Nashville. Pearson, who represented Tennessee District 86 was expelled with a 69-26 vote. While Johnson was spared expulsion when advocates of booting her failed to sway a two-thirds majority of the House needed.

Justin Jones

According to his campaign website, Jones was born in Oakland, California where his mother raised him and his sister while putting herself through nursing school. He’s been active in organizing and politics since high school serving as his city’s Youth Commissioner.

Jones moved to Nashville in 2013 to attend Fisk University, where he received the John R. Lewis Scholarship for Social Activism. The focus of his activism is expanding healthcare access in Tennessee, repealing restrictive state voter ID laws and bringing accountability for cases of police brutality. He was a freshman representative.

Justin Pearson

Pearson, a representative for the Memphis area, was also a freshman. Before being elected he was a community organizer in the city where he was born and raised starting in high school where he graduated as Valedictorian.

He is the President and founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP) as well as co-founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline. The latter is a Black-led environmental justice organization which successfully stopped a multi-billion dollar oil pipeline from being put through his community states his campaign website.

Besides environmental activism he also and advocate for social change. He worked with Year Up, a nonprofit job training organization that focused on social, racial and economic justice.

Gloria Johnson

Johnson spent 27 years as a special education teacher before getting involved in politics herself. She was inspired to do so when she organized for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign according to her biography.

Although she was born in Colorado and moved around as a child because of her father’s job as an FBI agent, she has generational roots in East Tennessee where her family is from. She successfully ran for the State House in 2012, but in 2015 left government to organize for Medicaid expansion in Tennessee. She returned again to the State House in 2018 and even after redistricting managed to remain a member of the legislature after the 2022 election.