Pearson Speaks Out on Lee's Racial Oppression
Lee, Blackburn collude to erase Congressional representation in Memphis
Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn - the leading GOP candidate for Tennessee Governor, called on current Gov. Bill Lee to call a special legislative session to eliminate the state’s lone Democratic and majority-Black congressional district.
Lee, never one to miss out on oppressing marginalized groups, happily obliged. Now, on May 5th, Tennessee lawmakers will convene in a special legislative session to decide whether all voters matter.
State Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis, who is currently a candidate for the 9th Congressional District seat, spoke to the New York Times about the Court’s decision:
State Representative Justin J. Pearson, a Democrat running in the primary for Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, said Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling was “a devastating decision, but is also unsurprising.”
The justices in the court’s conservative majority, he said, “are trying to invalidate the blood that was spilled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the deaths of folks like Medgar Evers and many others who suffered and died in order for us to get to the place that we are now, where things are still woefully unequal.”