Activists and legislators have different functions, but what happens when an activist becomes a legislator and continues functioning as an activist?
Headlines like this appear: Tennessee GOP expels Democratic lawmakers for anti-gun protest.
On March 27, a mass shooting at a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, shocked the nation. Three children and three adults were killed. Days later, over a thousand demonstrators gathered at the state capitol to demand that the Republican-controlled legislature make stricter gun laws.
No rules were broken until two Black activists and first-term Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, along with Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson, entered the legislative chamber, took over the podium, and led protesters in chants calling for gun reform.
The Democratic state Reps. breached chamber rules of procedure by interrupting a house session. Democratic state Rep. Jones led the gun reform chants from the podium with a bullhorn. Obviously, he was playing the role of an activist, but why breach chamber rules when the gun reform demonstration had a good turnout and achieved the goal of a lawful protest?
Because activists like Jones and Pearson use tactics from Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution. This book states that a well-designed creative disruption will put the targets in a dilemma with no good options, and the objective of the activist is to provoke a reaction from the target. Once the target reacts, the activists use the target’s reaction against them to gain the moral high ground.
Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton called a recess and ordered security to clear the protesters, which halted legislative business for an hour.
In the aftermath, the Republicans voted to expel Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, but the third Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson didn’t get expelled because Johnson pleaded that she merely played a supportive role.
The problem was that Jones and Pearson are Black, but Johnson is White.
The Republican leaders could have censured Jones and Pearson or removed them from committees, but since the Republicans compared the chaos in their capitol to the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Republican leaders wanted to send a message that halting legislative business in order to grandstand will not be tolerated.
In an ungallant effort to flex their supermajority, the Republican leaders walked into a trap designed by the Beautiful Trouble toolbox.
By expelling the two Black state Reps. but not the White state Rep. the Republicans made themselves look like White supremacists. The activist-minded expelled Reps. continued to paint a racist picture of their expulsion, but Jones also framed it as authoritarian, while Pearson changed the target.
Jones likened the Republican leadership to a lynch mob. Except, the Republicans weren’t lynching him; they were lynching democracy. While Pearson stated that they were going to continue to fight for saving lives just like the Republicans continue to fight for the National Rifle Association.
National Democratic leaders accused Tennessee’s Republican leaders of returning the state to its “dark days” of White supremacy. The national media coverage was so intense that Tennessean Oscar Brock of the Republican National Committee stated that the expulsion hurt the Republican brand and would energize young voters against them. To stop the onslaught of negative coverage, Tennessee’s Republican governor signed an executive order strengthening background checks for gun purchases.
To make matters even worse for the Republican leaders, an expulsion is handled like a typical vacant seat in Tennessee. The local district appoints an interim representative until a special election, and the local districts simply reinstated Jones and Pearson as their interim representatives, making the Republican supermajority look impotent. Since activists prepare for the worst-case scenario, Jones and Pearson knew in advance that if they were expelled, they would immediately be reinstated.
Jones and Pearson succeeded in making beautiful trouble and are now calling for the resignation of the Republican House Speaker.
Since the book Beautiful Trouble is the 21st century version of Saul Alinksy’s 1971 Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, one has to ask if Jones and Pearson forgot the most important rule for radicals. Alinksy called it “policy after power.” Alinksy said that when people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they don’t even think about it. Activists are powerless and try to force others to do what they can’t do themselves, but legislators are in positions of power and have to compromise to pass legislation. Activists are noncompromising; legislators don’t have that luxury.
The expulsion and reinstatement may have catapulted Jones and Pearson into the national spotlight, but they’re shining as activists, not as legislators.
About Post Author
