Kamala Harris Brings Down the House While Defending Expelled Lawmakers: ‘You Don’t Silence the People!’
Vice President Kamala Harris delivered what was perhaps the most impassioned speech of her veep-ship so far on Friday night.
Harris was in Tennessee where she met with former state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who were expelled on Thursday by the Republican-dominated House. Jones, Pearson, and Rep. Gloria Johnson all faced expulsion votes after they participated in a protest on the House floor last week. The trio was demonstrating in favor of gun control after three children and three adults were shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville.
Jones and Pearson, who are Black, were ousted. Johnson, a White woman, kept her seat by one vote. The results prompted many – including Johnson – to allege race was a factor in Republican lawmakers’ decisions.
Speaking at Fisk University in Nashville on Friday night, Harris ripped the expulsions:
It wasn’t about the three of these leaders. It was about who they were representing. It’s about whose voices they were channeling. Understand that. And is that not what a democracy allows? Democracy says, “You don’t silence the people! You do not stifle the people! You don’t turn off their microphones when they are speaking about the importance of life and liberty!”
Harris’s words prompted raucous applause from the crowd at the historically Black liberal arts college
Shortly before being expelled on Thursday, Pearson delivered a fiery speech of his own defending the protest on the House floor.
“Dr. King taught us that sometimes there’s a consciousness above rule, above what you might say is law – and that the true forms of protest is nonviolent disobedience,” he said, addressing his colleagues. “For less than a few minutes, we and you are seeking to expel District 86’s representation from this House in a country that was built on a protest – in a country that was built on a protest!”
