Tennessee Represents a Generational Conflict of Interests & Tactics

On Monday, April 3, approximately one thousand Nashville-area students conducted a strike by walking out of their schools to protest the lack of movement on gun safety laws in front of the Tennessee State House. Thousands more students marched throughout the state.

Tennessee state Representatives Justin Pearson (a young black man), Gloria Johnson (a middle age white woman), and Justin Jones (a young black man) were held in contempt by the chamber for interfering with so-called “decorum” by talking out of turn and for walking into the middle of the room into the well in support of the protestors outside. When the Speaker of the House cut off the microphones, some of those who gathered in the well used a bullhorn.

Their demonstration was an act of speaking out against the murder of three eight-year-olds and three adults at the Covenant Elementary School in Memphis and calling out the legislature’s inaction in passing firearms safety laws such as banning assault weapons, instituting red flag laws, and initiating universal background checks. Tennessee has the 12^th highest firearms deaths and injuries rate in the nation.

Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were expelled by the legislature with a super majority of over 2/3 of the members of the House, the lower chamber of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Gloria Johnson, when asked why she survived by one vote to remain in the House of Representatives, her answer clearly emphasized the racial tensions for the disparities: “It could have been the color of our skin.”

“You ban books, you ban drag, kids are still in body bags,” chanted the protestors in front of the Tennessee State House during the debate on expelling what has come to be called “The Tennessee Three.”

Rather than passing firearms safety measures, the Tennessee legislature passed a law to criminalize some drag performances, though a federal judge in that state temporarily stopped the law from going into effect.

In May 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory, which would withhold all funding to public schools that teach about white privilege.

“Come gather ‘round people

Whenever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth saving

Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’”

What we are witnessing in the Tennessee House of Representatives signals a generational conflict of interests and tactics in which the youngest representatives are standing up against “decorum” in the interests of saving the lives of their constituents.

The student walk out was organized by the Tennessee chapter of “March for Our Lives,” which young people founded in March 2018.

A new generation of young social and political activists poured out of their schools around the country on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, to mourn and to protest the senseless loss of 17 innocent beautiful souls cut down by a shooter exactly one month earlier at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School.

Like those of us chronicled by then 23-year-old poet laureate Bob Dylan of an earlier generation during another defining historical moment, these new social warriors too gathered ‘round people to give testimony on the tragedy of firearms violence by demanding that legislators and others in positions of power start swimmin’ or they’ll sink like a stone.

At 10:00 in the morning, the call was given for 17-minutes of silent meditation in remembrance of the 17 murdered comrades. Speakers then contributed their voices in demanding the right to safe school and safe streets free from the plague of violence long overtaking our nation.

Following some rallies, students and their supporters marched to local parks to join with community members, or to government houses to meet with legislators. Demonstrators in Washington, DC sat with turned backs on the White House in silence, before marching in solidarity to the U.S. Capitol to lobby lawmakers.

“Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

The battle outside ragin’

Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’”

Many school administrators viewed these rallies as fantastic opportunities for students actively to engage in the civil project of our democracy by adding their voices and their talents for constructive social change. Others, however, did not heed the call by figuratively standing in the doorway and blocking the hall.

Administrators at Saint Pius X Catholic High School in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, launched email messages and warned students over the intercom system that any student who engaged in the walk-out faced severe disciplinary action, including school suspension as ordered by the Catholic ArchDiocese.

Three female students from Saint Pius X High School spoke on camera with a reporter for MSNBC during the rally at a local Atlanta public school giving the reasons why they defied their administrators and placed themselves at risk to add their voices of support in demanding their rights to safe schools.

The young women had attempted to organize a similar rally at their Catholic school. When the administration rejected their request, they all agreed that they had to stand up and speak out with their voices and their bodies. Stated one: “This is a day I will remember for the rest of my life.” All three acknowledged that they were taking risks by showing up, but these were risks they were certainly willing to take.

As an undergraduate student, I attended San José State University from 1966-1969, and 1970 as a graduate student. San José State at that time had a relatively progressive administration. We had freedom of political speech, we organized and staffed informational tables throughout the campus, we had access to university facilities to hold our meetings and rallies.

In fact, I was a chief organizer of a rally in support of our university president against criticism coming from some of the more conservative members of the state university board who considered our president too “tolerant” of campus anti-war and anti-racism protests and protesters.

Nonetheless, during the fall of 1967 and then again in 1968, we called for a student strike of classes. The purpose of the boycott was not to demonstrate against or criticize our professors, or even our university. It was, rather, to send a message to our leaders in government — state and national — that the war we were waging in Vietnam was wrong, that it was misguided, that it was illegal according to international law.

I will never forget sitting in Botany class the week prior to the planned strike, when Professor Thaw forthrightly threatened to give an in-class quiz on the day of the strike, and anyone absent that day would receive an automatic “F” on the quiz with no possibility of a make-up.

To this day, I do not know where my courage came from as I raised my hand and stated that “This is one ‘F’ I would be proud to ‘earn.” To my utter amazement, other students cheered, and eventually Professor Thaw rescinded his threat.

By boycotting classes, students take a risk — however small at the time — but a risk nonetheless.

When legislators take a risk by disrupting “decorum,” they take a risk of possibly losing their positions as legislators.

And this is one of the, if not the, major points in the philosophy of civil disobedience. For it to be truly meaningful, for it to be a truly beneficial and life changing experience for the individual, there must be some aspect of risk and sacrifice; one must give something, pay something, in order to keep and to strengthen one’s principles and one’s sense of personal integrity.

My questions are thus: Will a person gain more, learn more, commit more to an idea or a cause if it is given to them for the mere asking or, rather, if they must risk something for it?

Will the experience be more meaningful if one attends a rally between classes or if one puts one’s principles on the line — and be willing to accept the consequences — to walk out or strike classes?

Schools are microcosms of the larger society. By students saying that “we will collectively take a stand,” they are, at least symbolically, lodging their vote against what they believe to be an unjustifiable stand on the part of their government. They are declaring their opposition to politics as usual.

Let us remember that three young people helped to set the stage for the relative political freedoms youth enjoy today.

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a landmark freedom of speech case for students on February 24, 1969. It involved two Des Moines, Iowa high school students, John Tinker, 15, and Christopher Eckhardt, 16, and John’s 13-year-old sister, Mary Beth Tinker, a Des Moines junior high school student.

In December 1965, John, Christopher, and Mary Beth attended a meeting with a group of adults and other students in Des Moines at the Eckhardt’s home. The purpose of the meeting was to come up with strategies whereby they could publicize their objections to the U.S. invasion in Vietnam. They came up with an idea to express their support for a truce between the warring parties by wearing black armbands during the holiday season and by fasting on December 16 and New Year’s Eve.

Meeting participants had previously engaged in non-violent activities to work toward ending the war, and they decided to join the program. When Des Moines school district officials learned of the proposed activity, on December 14 they adopted and distributed a policy stating that any student found wearing a black armband, and failing to remove it on request, would be suspended from school and allowed to return only without the armband.

John, Christopher, and Mary Beth wore black armbands to school in violation of the stated policy, and school officials sent them home. Parents of the students petitioned the United States District Court to issue an injunction to school officials from disciplining the students, though the court dismissed the complaint on grounds that the school district had the right to take its actions to prevent breaches of school discipline (a.k.a., “decorum”).

On appeal to the United States Supreme Court, the justices ruled in favor of the students and against the school district by stating that the wearing of armbands for the purpose of expressing views is considered as a symbolic action, according to the court, “closely akin to ‘pure speech’,” and well within the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 14^th Amendment. In addition, the Court found school officials failed to prove that the wearing of the armbands would substantially disrupt school discipline.

Speaking for the 7 to 2 majority in the case, Justice Abe Fortas wrote:

. . . In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.

This case would have implications for numerous cases that followed.

Our society is constructed in such a way as to deny voice to young people in the decision-making process in the affairs of state. Young people do not hold powerful positions in the executive suites in business and industry, in the media outlets, in the halls of Congress. Their strength, however, exists when they take collective action. Government leaders then begin to listen.

In their collective strength, they can and have changed the world for the betterment of all.

“The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fading

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin.”

***

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