Tennessee Republicans are set to redraw and eliminate the only majority-Black congressional district in the state today.
State Rep. Justin Pearson – a member of the infamous “Tennessee Three” representatives who demonstrated in the state capitol after the 2023 Covenant School shooting – joined Zeteo on Wednesday night to explain exactly what is going on.
After the far-right Supreme Court issued a regressive ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act, Republican Governor Bill Lee quickly arranged a special legislative session to set about redistricting the state, to take the already 8-1 balance in favor of Republicans to 9-0.
Pearson himself is a congressional candidate for the Democratic district that Republicans are seeking to eliminate.
Speaking with Prem, State Rep. Pearson details the historical legacy of racist voter suppression in the South, lays out the dire stakes at hand for both Tennessee and the nation, and reflects on how Democrats failed to prevent this moment and what needs to be done now to stop it.
“…if we don’t get power and use it for the benefit of liberation for everybody, we don’t deserve it. And I think in this moment, it is forcing us to ask ourselves tough questions,” Pearson says. “What have we done with the power that we have? And what more can we do while we still got it?”
He also looks back to heroic figures of history, who help guide him in this moment.
“Those folks, when they did that, they never knew my name, but they did it anyway. And what they carried in their mind and what they carried in their heart was that this country could be different and that it would require some sacrifice. It would require some suffering,” Pearson says. “And here I am an inheritor of that legacy. And I have a responsibility to use the position that I’m in, the platform that I have, to fight for the kids whose names I will never know.”
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Watch the video above to hear from Pearson directly from the thick of the legislative session Republicans expeditiously threw together to dilute Black political power in the South.
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