A Community Advocate Takes a Stand for Justice in Tennessee

If you follow the national headlines, you’ve heard about the “Tennessee Three” and their dramatic stand for common-sense gun safety action in their state legislature. What you may not know is that one of the two “Justice Justins” who were booted out of that legislature by partisan votes—and then promptly returned to those seats by their communities—got his start in politics as a community advocate for environmental justice in Memphis.

Tennessee State Representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson last month responded to the gun slaughter of six elementary school children and staff on school grounds in Nashville with a loud but peaceful protest calling for gun safety legislation. Their protest took place on the floor of the Tennessee House chamber. Not content with having security escort the protesting legislators out of the chamber, the House majority party took the unprecedented step of voting to expel two of the three legislators involved. It did not escape notice that the two expelled (Jones and Pearson) were both young Black men. (The third legislator involved in the protest, Rep. Johnson, an older white woman, narrowly prevailed in the vote on whether to expel her from the House.)

Under Tennessee state law, the local governing body of the jurisdiction from which an expelled legislator was elected is charged with naming an interim replacement to serve until the next election. The elected local governing bodies in both Nashville and Memphis voted to send their expelled legislators right back to their previous seats. 

The Memphis council voted without dissent to return Rep. Justin Pearson to his seat even though he had only narrowly won a special election to that seat in the first place. They were plainly sending a message in the face of manifest injustice that only the voters of Memphis were entitled to choose their representative, not the Tennessee House Republican Caucus.

Of special note to conservation voters and environmental justice advocates is the issue that first propelled Rep. Pearson to local attention. He made his community reputation as a leader in the successful grassroots campaign to block a proposed oil pipeline through low-income Black neighborhoods in south Memphis. 

This was in 2020, when he led the group Memphis Community Against Pollution (originally Memphis Community Against the Pipeline), one of two groups which joined in the successful effort to block construction of the proposed Byhalia Pipeline. The proposed pipeline was finally canceled in July 2021. 

We say ‘hats off’ for Representative Justin Pearson, a community leader for environmental justice and more, who with his colleagues does not hesitate to speak truth in the halls of power.