if there is anything tha recent events in tennessee and other states have taught us, i should be that state legislatures are critical fo our democracy. i mean, it is where america policy is made and if we don t know who you re stat representatives are, you shoul get to know them because the are determining the future state houses create policies whose impact can reach beyond state lines and influenc entire regions, affectin peoples pocketbooks, education s abilities to make decisions about their own bodies and virtually every facet of lif you can think of beyond laws alone, how you state legislature s run has direct impact on you as well i mean, look at tennessee. more than 136,000 tennesseeans woke up on friday morning with a no representation in their own state house. that s because the republica majority expelled of the two youngest black male legislators, representatives justin pearson and justin jones, saying the violated house decorum rules all for demanding tha
democratic minority leader o the salmon can, see the chairman o the tennessee black s of state legislatures, senator ramesh akbari, the minority leader of the tennessee state senate, an the assistant minority leade of the tennessee state house we started by talking about th growing anti-democratic action of southern state legislatures as i talk to experts across th country, civil rights lawyers, constitutional lawyers, they say this assault, what they ar calling in assault, on black people, black peoples abilit to participate in th democratic process is happenin all over the south and tennessee is just the latest i agree if you look at voting rights and the push towards using - restricting being able to vote on sundays, penalizing peopl for offering refreshments, extreme partisan gerrymandering, we are already behind th finish line before we ge
they couldn t do busines without us we have disobeyed civilly, right? we ve done it in a manner that stopped business i ve got my ear to th streets all across the country and as a young person who ha regularly had to pull my chair as a senator, at every table i have sat at, i understand, sometimes, what happens when you ve got young people pullin the chairs up and saying, we v got to do it like this you ve got people who ve bee here a minute saying, hold o now, we ve been here before. and that could create some friction i m hearing that there was friction, somebody tell me if am wrong i always say, you know, i said it yesterday on the house floor in the washington chambe it s not the water that gets the clothes clean, it s th agitation. agitation is a good thing. technically speaking for lik five seconds they technicall broke a house rule and that is disobedience did it arise, rise up to