Editor's note: Teen Vogue spoke with Justin Jones on Saturday April 8, two days after he was expelled from the Tennessee State Legislature. On Monday April 10, the Nashville City Council unanimously voted Jones back into office. According to the Tennessean, he will serve as an interim representative for his District 52 seat until a special election is held to permanently fill the role; Jones is eligible to run for reelection. In his first speech from the Capitol floor after resuming office, the young lawmaker said, “I want to welcome the people back to the people's house. I want to welcome democracy back to the people's house.”
Over the last few weeks, Tennessee has emerged again on the center stage of American politics. “Tennessee is the most undemocratic state in the nation, I think we can say that with no hesitation,” former State Representative Justin Jones of Nashville – expelled from his role this past Thursday, as a member of the Tennessee Three – tells Teen Vogue.
Since January 2023, Tennesseans have been slammed with crises over and over. Starting with the police death of Tyre Nichols and the ensuing protests, followed by the state's anti-queer legislation pushing families with trans youth to consider fleeing, the most recent was a familiar American tragedy. A March 27th school shooting at a private Christian school resulted in the death of six, including three 9 year old students. And now, two of the Tennessee Three – Jones and former representative Justin Pearson of Memphis – were expelled; Rep. Gloria Johnson, who spoke to Teen Vogue earlier this week, was spared by one vote.
All three have been clear they believe the decision was racially motivated. Politico's Natalie Allison, a former Tennessee State House beat reporter, recently observed that this is only one political-racial tension of the many building up in the State House over the last few years. Now, special elections will be held for Jones's and Pearson's seats. Jones has relaunched his campaign site, in part to stay in touch with his constituents after his office's websites were shut down.
Less than 48 hours after his expulsion, Teen Vogue speaks to Justin Jones about what's next and the youth movement that he's advocating for.
This interview has been lighted edited and condensed for clarity.
Teen Vogue: You're a longtime organizer, and you've been lobbying on behalf of your community for years prior to taking office. After this expulsion, how are you feeling at this moment?
Justin Jones: The past two weeks have been very traumatizing for the community that I'm a part of here in Nashville. We started with the murder of six people, including three nine year olds, and all we were trying to do is to stand in solidarity with the thousands of young people who took to the streets and came to the Capitol, filled up the Capitol and the streets outside, young people who are literally in fear for their lives. Many of these young people can't even vote, so they don't have the option to hold these lawmakers, who are passing these laws that are allowing young children to be murdered through these mass shootings in their schools, [accountable]. There's no measure of redress but to come to the Capitol and to speak up and disrupt, and try and force a conversation.
Rather than listen to these young people, my colleagues chose to try and silence the voices of the people. They began by not letting us representatives even acknowledge the protests or talk about what were they asking for, which was common sense gun laws. It escalated with us saying that if we can't even talk about the issue, if you cut off our microphone, if you don't allow us to speak in committee, if you won't even call on us, then we have no choice but to get into good trouble. That's why we went to the well on the House floor. I brought a megaphone because they always cut off the microphone, and that's what the Speaker of the House did – not just on us, but on the people of our state, particularly young people.
TV: It's interesting, you just brought up John Lewis, who got into “good trouble” with a sit-in over gun inaction following the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting – on my mind recently following the fall 2022 Club Q shooting. Tennesseans are seeing this on all sides: anti-queer legislation, pain after police violence in Memphis, and now this shooting.
JJ: There is exhaustion here, looking at what has transpired this year. As a lawmaker, some of the first bills – and in fact, the largest portion of bills – I filed were around police accountability, in light of the Tyre Nichols case: To demilitarize the police, to stop unmarked police cars from making traffic stops, to stop law enforcement from being able to arrest protesters for protesting activity; trying to rein in that terror of policing. Then we saw terror against our LGBTQ community.
I gave a house floor speech three weeks before this mass shooting, in which I said the greatest danger to our state is not drag shows, which my Republican colleagues chose to ban, but mass shootings that are a threat to our youth. Three weeks later, we had a mass shooting. That same night they passed laws that would try and make it easier to get a gun, that would proliferate guns, at the same time they're waging a war against the LGBTQ community. Then we had this this refusal to act, this attack on these young people.
But in the south, there's a fusion movement amongst these issues. We know that our opponents are these forces of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of Christian nationalism that have hijacked religion: These are all connected, and that is what we saw on display on Thursday. These systems are so dangerous, and represent not our future, but this very desperate attempt to hold on to our past. That's what we're challenging here.
I live in a state, and I was a representative in a state, where the Ku Klux Klan was founded, in Pulaski, Tennessee. This is also the state that gave birth to a student movement that gave the world leaders like John Lewis. We've always had that tension here, and I think Nashville so perfectly represents that tension.
Those lawmakers, the reason they expelled myself and [former] Representative Pearson: I'm 27, he's 28, we're the youngest lawmakers in Tennessee. They were trying to expel this energy from the youth movement. They know that by seeing those thousands of young people gathered there – again, many of whom can't even vote yet – they know that that is putting them on notice, that their time is coming to an end. In the south, we have a saying that a dying mule kicks the hardest. What we're seeing is is this desperate drumbeat of consistent divide-and-conquer tactics, because they're trying anything they can to hold on to power.
Speaker Cameron Sexton is the leader of this extremism, in many ways, in Tennessee. He's the one who's pushed a lot of this in the House. He is the extremist House Speaker, and the world saw who he is on Thursday when we were expelled. They saw a house that is not in order; a house that is really not about democracy, but is just about giving legitimacy to systems of institutional violence.
TV: What comes next, over the coming weeks and months?
JJ: There are 70,000 people in district 52, one of the most diverse districts in Tennessee, that don't have a voice right now. They don't have someone to work on constituent relations. We're trying to serve as this government in exile, because my constituents, there's no one to handle their issues on Capitol Hill right now. We're staying involved in the district, making sure that the needs of our people are taken care of. Going forward, we're continuing to build on this youth-led movement in Tennessee that's calling attention to the need to take these weapons of war off our street.
In addition, it's about trying to start leveraging the power of Gen Z and younger millennials in transforming the south. What they did by expelling us is show what their greatest weakness is, which is young people. I really believe that that is their greatest threat. They don't want any voices that represent the future, because they're so beholden to the forces that want to bring us backward, and that are trying to uphold the system that has been Tennessee for over 20 years, where these predominately white wealthy men rule. We're challenging that, and that's what scares them.
I think the biggest thing that we have to do is to hold Speaker Cameron Sexton accountable, because he set a very dangerous, dangerous precedent for the nation, that if they can do this in Tennessee, they can do it anywhere.
But what has been inspiring to see is that the nation and the world are pushing back and saying, This is authoritarianism, and we will not allow this to happen unchallenged. I don't think they expected that. My colleagues – I can tell you from experience – are so used to operating without any checks and balances. That's why they thought they could expel us and go back to normal. But they didn't realize that this moment that we're in is not the same tendency that they want to bring us back to.
There's a new generation rising up that says, We will walk out of school and we will do whatever we have to to disrupt business as usual, because business as usual means our lives at risk when we go to school. Business as usual means that our communities are under attack because of their race, because of their gender identity, because they're women. In Tennessee, we have [one of] the most restrictive anti abortion laws[s].
That's what we need to push, that this is a very unprecedented move and that we need to make Tennessee an example: That the people will rise up when when when these lawmakers try and tear down this vision of multiracial democracy.
TV: I know you often organize with religious communities. Where do you derive your faith and hope from? How do you keep going?
JJ: Faith in in the beloved community, faith in this vision of a future that we want future generations to grow up in, faith in something that is more powerful than than a political authority. An example is that this [Republican] supermajority thought that they were the most powerful thing, that they had ultimate authority. When I went up to that well, I was able to speak with conviction, knowing that they are not my God, they're not all powerful, they are not beyond the accountability of history.
No matter what happens in this time, I think what gives me faith is hope in Gen Z, in this movement of young people who are saying that we're going to do something that has never been done in America, which is a multiracial democracy; which is protecting our community without the need to militarize our police departments, without the need to criminalize and target people; which is putting the lives of youth over the profit of interests like the NRA. That's faith to me, when you can say we know not through memory but through hope that there's another way to live. There's something so powerful in the conviction of these young people who are saying, We are not waiting anymore.
Maybe there is a lack of fear because of that faith, in terms of political consequences. All those young people walked out of school in Nashville on Thursday, and on Monday were threatened with expulsion and suspension. But these young people said no, there's something worth risking in this moment, because what we're facing is so dire it requires us to act with boldness despite all the voices of opposition, and people like Cameron Sexton. Despite all that, we know that those thousands of young people are so much more powerful than anybody with a title or position or control of state troopers or control of a budget, because if they weren't, my former colleagues wouldn't be trying so hard to silence and shut them down.
TV: What would you say to those watching across the nation?
JJ: We are still grieving, in mourning, and this is the state's response to our community. We said we want to ban assault weapons; they said we're gonna dissolve democracy.
There's so much trauma in our community, because every time there's been a tragedy, the grief of our people, of these young people, has just been brushed to the side. I just hope people realize that this is the space we're organizing in. But amidst that grief, amidst all evidence that these these extremists who have hijacked our government want to portray, people are still getting into good trouble. I hope people realize that if we can do this in a state like Tennessee, the most undemocratic state in the nation, where the Klan was founded, this is the ripe soil for this work, and will have national implications. If we want to change this nation, we have to support, and keep a lens on, and invest in, the south. Throughout our history, that's been a key point, and I think that's happening again.
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