Their crime: taking part in a protest demanding better gun control after a school shooting. Two elected Democrats from Tennessee were excluded Thursday, April 6 from the House of Representatives of this American state, with a Republican majority.
Lawmakers voted to exclude Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who joined hundreds of protesters inside parliament on March 30 calling for stricter gun control, days after a killings in the city. a Christian school in Nashville, the capital of this southern state, during which six people lost their lives, including three children.
A third elected Democrat, Gloria Johnson, also threatened with exclusion for the same reasons, managed to keep her seat. Gloria Johnson is white while the other two elected officials in question are black.
The protesters had entered the Capitol of Tennessee to challenge the local elected officials gathered in session. “What do we want? Gun regulations! When do we want it? NOW ! “, they had chanted in the corridors.
MM. Jones and Pearson had notably used a megaphone to invite protesters to shout slogans such as “Power to the people” and “No action, no peace”, according to several American media.
“We don’t have a democracy in Tennessee”
“An elected official who has expressed opposition can be expelled, this is unheard of in Tennessee. This has never happened in our history,” Justin Jones reacted on American television. “What the country sees is that we don’t have a democracy in Tennessee,” he continued. “I will continue to hold them accountable for their actions (…) This is not just about me, but also about trying to silence and exclude the movement that we are trying to carry. »
Such a measure is extremely rare in the United States. The Tennessee parliament had so far excluded only two elected officials in its modern history, in 1980 and 2016.
On March 28, 28-year-old Audrey Hale broke into a Christian elementary school, the Covenant School, with two assault rifles and a pistol, causing death before the police killed her.
The tragedy, whose motive remains unknown, has aroused great excitement and revived the debate on the circulation of firearms in the United States, where they represent the first cause of death for minors.
An “unprecedented exclusion”, according to Biden
“Today’s exclusion of elected officials who participated in a peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic and unprecedented,” U.S. President Joe Biden slammed in a statement late Thursday. “Instead of debating the merits of the issue, these elected Republicans have chosen to punish, silence and exclude representatives elected by the people of Tennessee,” he added, calling again on the United States Congress to ban the assault rifles.
However, the president’s appeal is highly unlikely to be heard: conservatives, staunch defenders of the constitutional right to have guns, oppose any significant legislative tightening at the federal level.