APRIL 12, 2023 – Today the Shelby County (think Memphis, TN) Commission unanimously reappointed Justin Pearson to the state house of representatives. Few people outside Shelby County had heard of Mr. Pearson before the 28-year-old Black man, along with another young Black man and fellow representative, Justin Jones, had been expelled from the legislative body. The two achieved their proverbial (or Warholian*) 15 minutes of fame when together with a third representative, Gloria Johnson, an older white woman, they staged on the House floor a protest against gun violence.
They weren’t recognized by the chair and used a bull-horn—a novel idea; or not, depending on your perspective—to get their point across. Tsk, tsk—if, for example, their cause had been state funding of bowling lanes in the basement of the state capitol building. But no, the three protesters were calling attention to the nation’s baffling gun fetish and the unspeakable sorrow it causes daily across the land; then most recently in Nashville.
The vastly white Republican majority, being far more offended by young articulate Black men armed with bullhorns than by predominantly unhinged white men armed with AR-15s, over-reacted, thus catapulting Messrs. Jones and Pearson into the international spotlight. Moreover, their fame will be for a much longer duration than a fleeting quarter hour. By pulling back the club of expulsion to land a knock-out blow, silencing the protesters and muffling their message, the Republicans whacked themselves a good one right smack dab across their own faces and party prospects in the next election.
As an American unabashed in my disdain for our cultural obsession with guns, I’ve experience a near allergic reaction to timeworn rationalizations and contorted arguments opposing even the mildest proposals for gun control. I know that countless fellow Americans share my sentiments along with my perpetual frustration with the lack of progress in legislative and cultural control of the proliferation, access and abuse of guns.
Ironically, however, the Republican tactics in Tennessee give unexpected hope that reaches well beyond meaningful gun control. Last week I heard extensive snippets of speeches by Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson. This morning, the first item of news and opinion I read was Mr. Pearson’s guest essay published in The New York Times. Ahead of the latter, I’d learned that Mr. Pearson is a Class of ’17 alumnus of my alma mater. The son of a teacher and a pastor, he became a scholar, then an activist, now a leader. He’s a bright light about whom I’d known nothing before the Republican ploy flipped the switch.
This exemplary young man is not some myopic, ill-educated, single-issue, misguided rabble rouser spewing shallow and unoriginal platitudes. He understands better than most of us the ideals at the core of our national operating principles as codified in the Constitution. Moreover, he’s motivated to lead based on those principles, and exudes the ability and determination to “Make America Greater.”
If he—and Representative Jones, who demonstrates similar positive traits—were already future candidates for a bigger stage such as the U.S. House; someday Senate, the Republican attempt to silence them accelerated the timeline and enhanced the prospects for the Justins and for . . . justice.
I for one, will be watching their promising careers unfold and in that process, drawing hope for the future of our country.
*The famous quotation attributable to Andy Warhol didn’t originate with him, though it was because of him. One version has it that in preparation for an exhibition of Warhol’s work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1968, the director of the museum instructed the producer of an exhibition program to draw from manuscripts provided by Warhol. The director later told the producer to include the famous line. When the producer said that no such line had appeared in Warhol’s manuscripts, the director replied, “If he didn’t say it, he could very well have said it. Let’s put in it.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
