'We will win': Tennessee State Rep. Pearson on map fight

0:01 What, what, what is it you're, you're trying to drive to?

0:06 Because I think a lot of people think this is kind of like, oh, done.

0:09 Well, it has been a perilous week in American democracy,

0:15 right, as we witness the fallout of the Supreme Court's decision.

0:19 Lawmakers across the South are moving

0:21 at lightning speed and intentionally targeting black voters,

0:26 dismantling majority black districts, seeking to silence black voters,

0:31 seeking to strip power away from black elected officials.

0:36 I'm somebody who has been a lifelong civil rights

0:39 lawyers and I have fought many of voting rights battles,

0:42 but this moment is like none other.

0:45 What we saw yesterday in Tennessee is

0:47 something I think we'll talk about for generations,

0:54 but for now the NAACP is doubling down on the fight that lies ahead.

0:59 We will use every tool available to beat back

1:03 the discrimination that we are witnessing in this moment,

1:07 and we filed suit in Tennessee State Court challenging

1:11 the proclamation issued by the governor that called this special session.

1:16 The law requires that those proclamations be very exact and precise

1:20 in terms of the purpose for bringing the legislature back.

1:23 He said the purpose was to redraw maps, but he didn't just do that.

1:27 He repealed a law that has been on the books

1:31 for five decades that actually prohibits

1:34 Tennessee from engaging in mid-decade redistricting.

1:37 He also wiped away a residency requirement for lawmakers

1:42 as they move forward with these new maps

1:46 and wiped away a requirement that local election

1:49 officials actually tell voters what precinct they're assigned to.

1:53 So we're arguing that the proclamation was

1:57 illegitimate and that this session should be wiped

2:00 off the books and that the existing maps should be used for elections this year.

2:08 Representative Pearson, you are a plaintiff in this lawsuit that was filed

2:12 Thursday in the district court for the middle district of Tennessee.

2:15 I just this is an assault on black people in this country.

2:23 And frankly, it's been happening for a while now.

2:25 When I first met you, it was because you and two other state elected officials

2:31 were kicked out of the chamber during a session because,

2:36 well, we don't even need to go through it.

2:38 They kicked y'all out and not anybody else.

2:40 And so you had some very impassioned words

2:44 on the floor from the state house yesterday.

2:47 I know you were barred from, they attempted to bar you from reentering.

2:51 What is your message to not just other

2:54 elected officials and state legislatures across the country,

2:58 but black and brown voters in some of these states across the South,

3:01 across the country about what it's going to take because we are,

3:05 I believe in a post reconstruction period, another one right now.

3:15 Oh, there you go.

3:16 Thank you.

3:17 What we experienced and what we saw yesterday

3:19 in the state of Tennessee was a political lynching.

3:20 It is very much an era of retribution that we

3:24 are entering into in the United States of America across

3:27 the South where 12 to 20 United States House seats

3:29 that are black majority are at risk of being taken away.

3:32 And nearly 200 seats for state House members and state

3:35 Senate members are likely to be taken away by the rise

3:39 of white supremacy and its attempt to solidify its power on behalf

3:43 of the biggest white supremacist in the United States of America,

3:45 which is the president of the United States.

3:47 I was expelled and my other black colleague was expelled

3:49 from the Tennessee General Assembly standing up against gun violence,

3:52 while our white colleague was not.

3:54 That's not accidental or coincidental.

3:56 This is a part of who the Tennessee General Assembly is.

3:59 But in this particular moment, we all have to stand up,

4:02 speak up and fight back from whatever positions

4:03 we have in every part of this country.

4:07 At the state house, in the governor's mansions,

4:10 we need to be advocating and fighting and resisting

4:12 because what just happened in Tennessee was the largest

4:15 and the most swift disenfranchisement of black people

4:17 that we have seen in at least a century.

4:19 Kristen Clark, your sense of where this fight goes next?

4:23 So a few things I think that we're going to see a lot of battles

4:28 in the courts as civil rights lawyers

4:31 and organizations like the NAACP fight back.

4:34 I think that we're going to see a groundswell of support inside

4:38 of our capital houses as lawmakers put targets on majority black districts.

4:46 People are going to show up and use their voices to speak out,

4:50 as we saw yesterday in Tennessee, as we saw today in Louisiana and Alabama.

4:55 But most importantly, I think we're going to see people on the streets in every

5:00 corner of this country resisting this return to Jim Crow 2 point oh.

5:05 So it we are in a battle to save democracy.

5:10 Justice Roberts was wrong when he put

5:13 the first death knell in the Voting Rights Act and claimed that it was a new day

5:18 and that voting discrimination was a thing of the past.

5:21 We have seen racism unleashed in our political process, and in this moment,

5:27 every American needs to use their voice to speak out.

5:31 You know, I just kind of look at all of this representative and I

5:37 alluded to it coming in about where the trend line of the country is going.

5:44 And what a lot of this, for me,

5:48 signals is fear that thus the replacement theory BS

5:52 that you hear a lot of folks out there,

5:55 you know, sort of sound like little crows out there mimicking.

6:00 You also recognize how much the country foundationally could change.

6:05 When you look at your own legislature,

6:07 when you look at the men and women in that chamber,

6:10 and you look at how they're treating you, their fear is one day,

6:13 sir, you're going to be sitting there as the speaker of that chamber.

6:17 You're going to be sitting there as the majority leader in that Senate.

6:20 You may be standing there as the governor of that state one day

6:24 with the power to do to them what they're doing to us, to you right now.

6:30 How do you see that future?

6:32 And what are you saying to particularly constituents your HER AGE,

6:36 WHO ARE FOR THE FIRST TIME HAVING TO CONFRONT SOMETHING

6:40 THAT I WENT THROUGH WITH MY PARENTS BACK IN THE 1960s.

6:46 AND NOW HERE YOU ARE AS A YOUNG LEGISLATOR ALREADY HAVING EXPERIENCE,

6:51 AS SIMONE POINTED OUT AT THE BEGINNING,

6:54 WHAT JIM CROWE FEELS LIKE AND SOUNDS LIKE AND LOOKS LIKE.

6:58 HOW DO YOU HELP YOUNG PEOPLE APPRECIATE

7:01 WHAT THIS MOMENT requires of them going forward?

7:05 I think the main thing that people have to realize and what young

7:10 people realize in particular is that we did not get this far by ourselves.

7:14 The work of our ancestors, the blood,

7:16 the sweat and the tears that they shed for 400 years in this country

7:20 is how we've gotten to the point in the places that we are.

7:22 I'm running for the United States Congress after the same women who watched me

7:26 give Easter speeches now want to see

7:28 me give speeches in the United States Congress.

7:30 That is the arc that we understand as a people,

7:32 that we have persevered through everything that has

7:35 been thrown at us from enslavement to lynching,

7:38 from the burning of Tulsa to the Memphis massacre,

7:40 from mass incarceration to now the removal

7:43 in mass of black political power through congressional seats.

7:47 We have persevered, and that perseverance does scare them.

7:51 It worries a lot of people.

7:52 It worries, the biggest worry of white

7:53 supremacy because they've tried everything to destroy us.

7:57 They've tried everything to break us, and it does not work.

8:00 We continue to persist.

8:02 We continue to fight back.

8:03 We can continue to build power.

8:04 And in this moment in time, that is what we are seeing,

8:07 a mass mobilization of people,

8:09 unlike anything that we've seen recently, at least in Tennessee history,

8:12 but likely across the South to organize, to mobilize, to activate,

8:16 to register more voters, but then to make sure they get to the polls.

8:19 They've broken up all these districts thinking

8:20 that we're not going to be able to compete

8:22 in them but we are uh and we're going to win and so what the devil means

8:26 for bad god's going to turn into good but i do know that the the history

8:30 of our ancestors is our encouragement for why

8:33 we have to fight and why we will win.