(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Justin Pearson, a recently-expelled Democrat member of the Tennessee state legislature, has a history of running centrist campaigns, in which he has tried to appeal to all parties.
But in recent months, he has launched into full-fledged radicalism, culminating in his leading of an insurrection at the Tennessee legislature, RedState reported.
Specifically, Pearson ran for class president of Bowdoin College in 2016, making a campaign video soaked with moderate language wherein he presented himself as a standard middle-class aspiring politician.
“How can we represent all voices in a conversation?” he said, suggesting that he would partner with Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, in pursuit of the “radical middle,” wherein “all voices” would partake in common dialogue.
In this way, he would ease tension that can “only be resolved by standing with one another” and “listening and engaging with the student body.”
Since that time, Pearson has adopted a new persona, a new style and a new way of speaking, reinventing himself the manner of 1960s revolutionaries like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.
This speech by the wrongfully-expelled Rep. Justin Pearson will go down in history as one of the greatest. I’m FIRED UP!pic.twitter.com/ZP9Foeb76U
— Dash Dobrofsky (@DashDobrofsky) April 7, 2023
“Yes I tell you, it was a sad day on Saturday,” he said dramatically, alluding to his expulsion from the House.
“All hope seemed to be lost,” Pearson continued, mimicking the intonation of MLK. “Representatives were thrown out of the state house. Democracy seemed to be at its end.”
Pearson concluded his speech to hoots and hollers, which were ruled out of order immediately. The vote was taken soon thereafter, and Pearson was expelled from the House.
Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white state congresswoman who had joined the Pearson and his ally, Justin Jones, but reportedly didn’t use disrupt order as much as the others, suggested that she got off the hook because of her race.
She told reporters that she “couldn’t feel good about her survival” while her two black colleagues were expelled while she was permitted to continue. Johnson survived the expulsion resolution by one vote.
Former President Barack Obama chimed in on the Tennessee state house drama, lamenting the erosion of “civility and democratic norms” which are so necessary to “progress.”
