'I'm One of the Tennessee Three. I Wasn't Expelled Because I'm White'

I was sitting in the government operations committee in the Tennessee State Capitol on March 27 when I received a text from a friend telling me that a mass shooting had taken place at a Nashville school.

As a former teacher, and someone who's been present during a school shooting, I could empathize with what the people involved were feeling at that moment—the concern for lives and not knowing if lives were lost. All those memories came flooding back when I heard about it.

In 2008, I was a teacher at Central High School in Knoxville. On the morning of August 21, I was in my classroom preparing for the kids when they came in from breakfast.

I looked up, out the window, and saw hundreds of kids running out of the main building and down the hill towards my classroom. They were screaming and crying. It took a while for them to be able to articulate what had happened; a student had fatally shot a boy named Ryan McDonald in the cafeteria.

I'll never forget that day. It was an incredibly traumatic period for all of those kids. You never forget about the students that are lost, hearing those sirens and seeing the terror on the children's faces.

Prior to this event, in 2000, I taught for three years in Jefferson County, Colorado, at a school in which some of the students had been present at the Columbine High School shooting a year earlier, but were not able to return.

Just hearing them talk—about their issues, concerns, fears, and why they didn't want to go back to Columbine—you don't forget that sort of trauma that kids tell you about.

When you've had experiences like that and hear about other shootings taking place, you feel deeply what is happening to the victims of those events, and what is happening in their communities.

Advocating for gun reform is not new to me, but when I heard the news of the shooting in Nashville, which took place just a couple of miles down the road from where I was sitting, I thought our members would finally be open to discussing this issue.

In the days following the shooting, hundreds of people marched to the state Capitol, begging us to do something. However, whenever I or my colleagues, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, attempted to bring up the issue of gun reform, it was shut down.

We don't believe we were given the opportunity to talk about this issue on the House floor—to recognize those parents and kids who were there that day and say: "We see you, we hear you. We care about your issue and we're going to fight for you."

We decided to go to the well and let them know that we saw them, we heard them, and that we would fight for gun legislation. And that's what we did.

On March 30, our plan was to go to the floor and speak on the microphone to let folks know that we cared about their issue. Within around 15 seconds the microphone was cut off and a recess was called. After they did so, one of my colleagues used a mini bullhorn to continue to talk to the people outside who were asking for our help.

I do not agree with the description of that day as "disorderly." In my opinion, aside from us being up front, it looked like any other recess. People were milling around and we were chanting with the folks on the balcony.

No one was out of control, the protesters were peaceful and calm. I did not see any move toward the chambers. The people in the gallery were doing the same thing. The whole thing lasted six to seven minutes.

We knew that we were breaking a rule and there might be a response, but worse rules have been broken on the floor on many occasions, and from my recollection, there have never been major consequences.

The Tennessee House chamber is Republican-controlled, so we as Democrats are in the minority and knew they were not going to like us speaking without permission.

But the idea that they would move for expulsion—particularly when the only people expelled in modern history were expelled after committing a crime—seemed almost ridiculous.

That evening, our passes were shut down. Nobody had alerted us to anything at that stage, but we presumed that was part of our punishment.

On Monday, I received notice that we had been stripped of all our committees, which I thought was the end of the punishment. But a few hours later, we found out that they had filed resolutions for our expulsion.

We were really shocked. We had broken a rule, but were following our oath of office that says we will stand up for the people in our districts, many of whom want red-flag legislation.

Once they filed the expulsion, I had no question that they intended to do what they said they were going to do.

They wrote the same resolution against all of us, despite the fact that our actions were different. In my opinion, the document for my expulsion was just fraudulent because many of the things they accused me of, I did not do.

I stood with the members who protested and absolutely supported them, but they claimed I did things I did not, for example yelling using a megaphone. To me, it was very sloppy and clear they wanted to get rid of folks who are vocal and critical of the way the supermajority is running this legislature.

Certainly, the questions directed toward me were demeaning, but the questions directed at Rep. Jones and Rep. Pearson I felt were racially tense. I believe there was serious bias in the questions that they asked.

I felt the manner in which they spoke sent the message: "You need to dress like us, speak like us and act like us." To me, the idea of cultural assimilation is apparent all the time on the House floor.

On April 6, Rep. Jones and Rep. Pearson were expelled, while I avoided expulsion by one vote.

Hearing that I had avoided expulsion while my colleagues had not really was awful. Quite frankly, I never expected that I would make it through and was getting ready to walk out and join Rep. Jones, who was expelled before my vote.

I burst into tears because of the injustice of it all. To me, this was not fair. I just thought: "How can they do this? How can this be so blatant?"

I believe the reason I was not expelled while my colleagues were is that I am white—and I think most people who heard the line of questioning directed at those two young men would agree.

I think the fact that Rep. Jones and Rep. Pearson are young, vocal, Black members is critical in this case. In my eyes, they were told that their manner of speaking was not OK and that they were not showing enough contrition.

These are young men who believed they did what was right for their constituents. And I believe the same thing. Even though we may have broken a rule, we were standing up for our constituents.

Four days after the expulsions, Rep. Jones was reappointed to the legislature, while Rep. Pearson was sworn in once again on April 13.

I feel like justice was done, but not completely. We still have a lot of work to do for justice in Tennessee, but I think that was a huge step in the right direction.

One silver lining from this incident is that it's boosted the profile of two brilliant, passionate and knowledgeable young politicians, so people can hear what they're fighting for.

They have garnered the attention of the whole nation, and I think we need to be listening to those young voices.

Recent polling has shown that while the majority of Tennesseans certainly believe in the Second Amendment, they also believe in common-sense gun legislation. I believe Republicans in this body need to listen to the voters.

We're going to keep pressing on to fight for what we believe in and hope this result will allow a little more debate on the floor.

If they allow the debates, we can bring issues to the floor without getting in trouble, but we are going to find ways to make our district's voices heard.

Gloria Johnson is a Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives currently representing District 90.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek's My Turn associate editor, Monica Greep.

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