Following the March 27 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School that killed six, including three nine-year-old children, long-simmering tensions in the Tennessee State House have boiled over. On April 6, the state legislature will be voting on whether to expel three House Democrats who participated in a gun violence protest: Reps. Justin Jones, 27, of Nashville; Justin Pearson, 28, of Memphis; and Gloria Johnson, 60, of Knoxville.
In a fall 2022 Top 10 interview with Teen Vogue, Jones said, “As one of the few young people running for the Tennessee legislature, my campaign is about bringing people power to the people’s house.” True to his word, during a March 30 protest at the Capitol, Jones, Johnson, and Pearson “approached the podium between bills without being recognized to speak, a breach of chamber rules,” to lead protest chants from the floor.
On April 3, as thousands of students walked out over gun violence, House Republicans introduced resolutions to expel the trio – who are being called the Tennessee Three – for “disorderly behavior.” According to the New York Times, the three were also stripped of their committee memberships and had their ID badges deactivated. Republicans are calling the protest an attempted “insurrection,” though they were by all accounts peaceful.
Commentators and reporters have also highlighted how rare it is to face expulsion from the Tennessee House (which Rep. Johnson also noted will result in losing health insurance benefits). For example, when Republican Rep. David Byrd was accused of sexual assault stemming from his time as a high school basketball coach before he ran for office (which he did not deny while saying he “didn’t do anything wrong” since getting elected), Republicans overruled the attempt to expel Byrd. And he ran for reelection. “We had a child molester on the floor for years, they helped him get reelected, and did nothing to expel him," Johnson told The Tennessean, referring to various allegations involving Republican lawmakers in the state. "We've had members pee in each other's chairs. We've had members illegally prescribe drugs to their cousin-mistress and nothing happened. But talk on the floor without permission and you'll get expelled."
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In the last 24 hours, US legislators including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Maxwell Frost (D-FL) have spoken out publicly against the expulsion. As reported this morning by NBC News, more than 250 progressive legislators across the country signed a letter “blasting” the process. “The attempts to expel Reps. Jones, Johnson, and Pearson show a dark truth in the light of day: "There’s a robust and racist connection between fighting against gun safety and dismantling our democracy,” it reads, in part.
Teen Vogue spoke to the Tennessee Three’s Rep. Gloria Johnson, a retired teacher and state representative, the day before the hearing.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Tell us how you’re feeling, a day before your possible expulsion from the Tennessee House.
Rep. Gloria Johnson: Today, honestly, I'm feeling pretty good. There's the public sentiment out there that is with us. They believe that we stood up to speak for them and that's exactly what we did.
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I taught for 27 years. I was at Central High School in Knoxville in 2008 when we had a school shooting and we lost a student. I remember that morning, all the kids were in the cafeteria having breakfast before the bell. I remember looking out the window and seeing hundreds of kids running down the hill toward my classroom and another classroom down there and they were screaming and crying. They ran into my room. It took them a minute to be able to even articulate what had just happened.
I have seen the terror on kids’ faces. I have seen them afraid. I have seen them dealing with watching one of their classmates get shot down in the school cafeteria at breakfast. It's not something that you ever forget.
I feel very passionately that we have to speak up. Even in my district – I live in East Tennessee, in very red Knox County – and [there was] polling in my district when I ran this last year, overwhelmingly on both sides of the aisle a majority of Republicans in my district want to see red-flag legislation. They want to see safe storage. They believe in the Second Amendment, but they also believe in a regulated Second Amendment, and they want to protect kids. We want to protect those kids. We want to protect the staff. We want to protect our churches and our restaurants and our grocery stores.
We are the only nation with this type of gun violence. Why are we doing nothing? It doesn't have to be like this. We see from every other country in the world, it doesn't have to be like this. There are common sense things that we can do.
They want to harden our schools. One of our members even said, “I'll put a tank at every school if that's what we need.” We don't need to go to school with tanks, surrounded by armed guards everywhere. Why don't we work to make sure that guns don't get to the schoolhouse door? Why do we want the shootout at the schoolhouse door?
That's where the work should be. We need to make sure that our schools are secure, but these shootings are happening with security there. We gotta prevent the guns from ever getting to the schoolhouse, from getting to the church doors, from getting to the Waffle House doors.
And to my colleagues and my governor, who actually said, “You can't pass laws against guns because criminals don't follow the laws,” What am I doing up here at the legislature if we're passing laws that nobody's going to follow? I mean, we pass laws against burglary and against murder so that there are consequences when you break those laws. How ridiculous to think if we don't have restrictions and protections on guns, we can provide consequences for those who break the law.
TV: I mean, if passing laws doesn’t matter, then why does it matter enough to expel you?
GJ: Here’s the big picture, the way I look at it: This thing happened a week ago. And we have not been discussing gun legislation, well, Democrats have been trying to discuss gun legislation. Republicans are refusing. They kind of dropped all the gun bills off the calendar.
But the first action after a school shooting was to expel the members who tried to raise the conversation of a school shooting. It wasn't to talk about what we can do to keep our children from dying in Tennessee. It was to expel the people who wanted to have a conversation about gun-sense legislation.
TV: What has it been like, partnering with two of the youngest representatives in Tennessee’s state legislature?
GJ: It was funny, some reporter last night, who really had no idea, asked me, “How old are you?” I said, “I'm 60.” I'm more than twice [their age]. I can be these guys' grandmother. But I've worked with kids my whole life, mostly teens, and young people. After I retired from teaching, I got into organizing and teaching young kids how to organize, so I just naturally gravitate to [them]. There's a lot to learn from this generation. They're hard workers, they're focused, they care so much about the issues.
These other folks are just fighting against the change that we're gonna see with this new generation. I welcome it. I am so happy that they are here. I embrace them. I stand with them. They are incredibly thoughtful young men, incredibly bright young men, incredibly great orators. And they think so quickly on their feet. I just love the way that they are standing up for their constituents, standing up for their generation. It might look different than the way I do it, but I embrace it.
TV: Do you see parallels between what’s been happening here in Tennessee and what’s happening elsewhere in the country?
GJ: We're seeing a lot of this around the country. It's scary to me. We're diluting our democracy. We're marching toward fascism. The idea that they want to quell every opposition voice and they're shutting us down on the House floor, allowing precious-little debate on huge pieces of legislation, and not allowing the opposition voice to speak is remarkably dangerous. I think it's gonna have a chilling effect in this state, on my colleagues, if we're removed, not just in Tennessee, but across this nation — especially in states where [Republicans] have a majority [or] supermajority rule.
We are losing our democracy, and it's so authoritarian, the way that some of these folks are leading. I feel like there's more democracy in North Korea right now than in Tennessee.
TV: How does this square with what you think Tennesseans actually want?
GJ: They talk a lot about the Second Amendment here, but they're not listening to the First Amendment. The majority of the people in this area don't care and are not concerned with drag queens. Eighty percent of Tennesseans want some form of abortion care. More than 50 percent want some gun-sense legislation. They're not even having those conversations.
Why? Because of the Right to Life organization, because of the [Alliance Defending Freedom], because of the NRA and the Tennessee Firearms Association. Tennessee families are on the losing end of this because of the billion-dollar special interests that are up here every single day and in their offices every single day, writing the bills for them, and telling them how to vote or else they won't have their support.
I just love that so many people are paying attention now and holding their representatives accountable. It's more than I've ever seen. In knocking on doors this last election, normally you go knock on somebody's door on a Saturday, and they're kind of going, um, well… You ask them what issues are important to them and they sort of look like deer in headlights. They're watching a football game or cleaning the house or whatever they're doing.
This year? None of that. You knock on their door and ask what they care about: “I can't believe we're banning books in Tennessee.” “I can't believe we made it a felony to be poor and homeless.” I can tell you this, of thousands of doors and hours on the phone with constituents, both me and my colleagues, no one ever asked for legislation against drag queens. No one. No one asked for legislation against transgender people. That never happened.
These people wanted gun-sense laws. They asked to support our public schools. They are asking for Medicaid expansion. That's what they asked me for. Yet, this is the stuff we're doing up here. We're proliferating guns, and bills everywhere to do that. That's what [the electeds] are asking for. That's not what the people were asking for, but that's what the folks up here are doing to please their donors.
TV: Any messages you’d like to share with people across America?
GJ: Tell everybody out there to make their voices heard, call their senators, call their representatives, and local folks because what affects you most is the local government. You've got to talk to [and] know your local reps, your state reps, all of that.
We just really felt passionately about making sure we recognized the protesters who were here. We saw them, we heard them, and we care about their issue, and we are committed to working on the issue. This is really all about protecting children and protecting our communities from gun violence. We should be addressing that and not trying to expel members because they spoke up against gun violence.
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