A call from the president, a surprise visit from the vice-president: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris threw themselves into a fierce political battle on Friday shaking Tennessee, between debate on weapons and accusations of racism. Joe Biden spoke by phone on Friday with three Tennessee Democratic lawmakers, including two African Americans who were barred from the local legislature for protesting gun violence, the White House said.
The president “thanked” them for their calls to ban assault rifles and for “defending (the) democratic values”, before inviting them to come “soon” to the White House. Vice-President Kamala Harris went to meet them in Nashville, capital of this southern state.
A “racist” exclusion
Kamala Harris first went to a rally organized at a Nashville university in support of the three elected Democrats targeted Thursday by a vote of their conservative colleagues for not having respected the decorum of the assembly.
Two of them, African-Americans Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were expelled, an extremely rare measure that the state House of Representatives did not ultimately apply to a third white elected official, Gloria Johnson. . Accusations of racism multiplied after this decision.
“Silencing two black elected officials for peacefully protesting gun violence is not only racist, it is also a radical departure from the democratic rules and traditions on which our nation was founded,” said tweeted elected Democrat Yvette Clarke.
A possible return
On March 30, a few days after a massacre in a Christian school in Nashville (six dead including three children), Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson had joined hundreds of demonstrators in the precincts of parliament to demand stricter regulation of fire arms. The protesters had entered the Capitol of Tennessee to challenge the elected officials gathered in session.
The three had notably used a megaphone to invite the demonstrators to shout slogans such as “Power to the people” and “No peace without deeds”, according to several media.
Gloria Johnson, who narrowly escaped disqualification, said her motives were clear. “I’m a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young black men,” she said.
Justin Jones and Justin Pearson delivered impassioned pleas against their exclusion, which earned them praise on social media where a photo of them raising their fists went viral. It’s “a dangerous precedent for the nation,” Justin Jones told MSNBC.
Despite their excuse, they could return very quickly to Parliament: while waiting for a new election to be organised, it is up to the municipal council of the elected district to choose a temporary representative. According to NBC News, Justin Jones is expected to be reassigned to Nashville on Monday. And nothing prevents the two parliamentarians from representing themselves, with an important detail: an elected representative cannot be excluded twice for the same acts.