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Audre Lorde’s admonition that the tools used to build structural inequity will never dismantle it feels more apt than ever today.
But Black and other oppressed people in this country have proved time and again that a tool of oppression in one hand can be a tool of transformation in another. Last week, we witnessed two Black men get expelled from the Tennessee Legislature in a targeted campaign to disempower and disfranchise them and their communities. And they used democratic processes to be reinstated in a body that, at its inception, never envisioned their presence in politics in the first place.
The Tennessee Three show the reach and resonance of Black political power in coalition with allies on issues of justice.
When the city of Memphis moved to reinstate 27-year-old Reps. Justin Jones and 29-year-old Justin Pearson, it did so in defiance of the history and heritage of a city that is the site of one of the worst racial massacres on American soil, in which 46 Black people were killed and many more injured in 1866. It’s the same city that witnessed the recent killing of Tyre Nichols, one of the most brutal police slayings of a Black person in this country to date.
Indeed, Nichols’ death at the hands of mostly Black law enforcement officers underscores the depths to which anti-Black racism has permeated all of society. It is also why the image of two strong, unyielding, self-possessed young Black men in power is so threatening to the status quo.
The Tennessee Three — as both representatives, along with their colleague Rep. Gloria Johnson, have come to be known — show the reach and resonance of Black political power in coalition with allies on issues of justice. And these alliances will only increase as more cross-sections of the population — those who support gun control; reproductive rights; diversity, equity and inclusion; and democracy— are further marginalized by a minority of extremist…
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