NASHVILLE – Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday praised three Tennessee Democratic lawmakers who staged a protest in favor of gun control on the statehouse floor – an act that led angry Republicans to expel two of them from the General Assembly.
In a surprise trip to Nashville, Harris said the three Democrats – Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville, Justin Pearson of Memphis and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville – showed courage in pushing for gun reform following a mass shooting at a Nashville private Christian school that killed six people.
“It wasn’t about these three leaders – it was about what they were representing,” she said during an event at Fisk University. “It’s about whose voices they were channeling. Is that not what a democracy allows?”
House Republicans voted Thursday to expel Jones and Pearson, both of whom are Black, for their role in the protest. Johnson, who is white, dodged an expulsion by one vote.
Stay in the conversation on politics: Sign up for the OnPolitics newsletter
“That is not a democracy,” Harris said of the expulsions. In a democracy, she said, “you don’t silence the people, you do not stifle the people, you do not turn off their microphones when they are speaking about the importance of life and liberty.”
President Joe Biden also spoke to the three Democrats, who have become known as the “Tennessee Three,” during a conference call Friday ahead of Harris’ visit. He thanked them for their leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons and standing up for democratic values, the White House said. He also invited them to the White House in the near future.
Harris’ hastily arranged trip to Nashville came after Tennessee House Republicans voted overwhelmingly Thursday to expel Jones and Pearson. Jones was expelled on 72-25 vote. The vote to remove Pearce was 69-26. The expulsions have become a national flashpoint on the issues of gun control and race.
Upon arriving in Nashville, Harris met privately with the three Democrats at Fisk, which hosted a gathering of community leaders to support the expelled lawmakers. Afterward, she met with other Tennessee Democratic lawmakers and Nashville Mayor John Cooper.
Pearson was met with raucous applause and cheers as he arrived for the event. “They thought could expel democracy,” he said, addressing the crowd from a stone platform. “But we’re still here!”
In her remarks, Harris also praised students and other young leaders who converged upon the state Capitol en masse to push for gun control after the school shooting but haven’t swayed the state’s Republican majority. She encouraged them to continue the fight.
“I do believe that every generation has its calling, that there are moments in time that find you and require and depend on your leadership,” she said. “And so, in particular to all the young people, this issue is going to require your leadership.”
Harris renewed Biden’s call for Congress to pass a nationwide ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Assault weapons “were designed to kill a lot of people quickly” and have “no place on the streets of the civil society,” she said.
.
Among those waiting outside Fisk ahead of the event was Nicholas Umontuen, who teaches business administration for at the university. Umontuen said he was “shocked” and “demoralized” by the decision to expel the lawmakers. But he said the national attention gives him hope to elevate the voices of young people fighting for change.
The trio of lawmakers were accused by Republican leadership of breaching decorum and floor rules for speaking at the House podium on March 30 without recognition.
More:‘Congress has to act’: Biden says there’s nothing more he can do on his own to address guns
But by moving ahead with the expulsions, the state’s Republican House speaker, Cameron Sexton, turned two Democrats who held no legislative power in a Republican supermajority into national heroes on the political left.
Biden, in a statement, called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and unprecedented.” He said that “rather than debating the merits” of gun control, “these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”
Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison and Michael Collins @mcollinsNEWS.