Justin Jones
speaker
93 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 21 Jan
Justin Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And so I say my ancestors call me back here, because even though Jim Crow is over, now we face Jim Crow's son named James Crow Esquire, which is more sophisticated and subtle, but it's just as dangerous as Jim Crow. And what I would say is that It's important. I've been traveling the country a lot. I was just in Buffalo speaking at the university for the graduation. I was just in Colorado.
And so often I hear people say, oh, just let the South secede right off the South. And I always tell them, number one, as somebody who represents a very diverse district, I know that the majority of black people in this nation live in the South. I know that if you want to change this nation, you must change the South.
If we study the abolition of slavery and reconstruction to the civil rights movement, this has been the front line of our democracy. And the reason why there is so much repression in the South is because they know that if we come together as black and white, indigenous, Latino, that we can build a new South.
And I always tell people, you hear that saying from George Wallace and all these southern governors, they say, the South's going to rise again, the South's going to rise again. I say, no, we reject that. And we say that the South's going to rise anew, a South that is multiracial, multi-faith, multi-generational, pro-justice, anti-poverty, pro-queer. That's the South that we can build. And so...
And so my message to the National Democrats as they look is come South, because if we can change the South, we can change this nation. This has been the blueprint. That's why they came up with a Southern strategy to try and divide and conquer us. But we've only been a Republican super majority since 2010 in Tennessee. This is still relatively new. We can go back. The pendulum can shift.
And let's tell one more truth is that Tennessee is not a red state, but it's a state that ranks 50 in voter turnout, where one in five black people cannot vote because of voter suppression, that has been gerrymandered to oblivion, and that's the only reason they keep power. They're not a powerful majority.
They are a very fragile party that's cheated their way into power, and I think that's a truth that needs to be said.
That's exactly it. And one of the greatest blessings that Cameron Sexton gave me was that after the expulsion, he decided to punish me and took me off Education Committee, took me off Government Operations Committee, and put me on Agriculture Committee. And the Agriculture Committee was supposed to be a punishment because I knew absolutely nothing about agriculture. I live in an urban district.
But it's been the most powerful place to organize rural and urban coalitions that can transform this state. What we as Democrats have to do is that we have to go to territory that is not always comfortable, that is not always familiar to us. When I was put on this committee, one of the first places I went was to Columbia, Tennessee.
The only member of our committee to stand with the folks in Columbia when they're trying to pollute the Duck River, the most biodiverse river in North America, and a river that they were trying to build a landfill on a former Monsanto site, met with cattle farmers. I remember walking in to homes of some cattle farmers on the Duck River where they had Fox News on.
Some folks had Confederate flags there. I said, let me get out of here before it gets dark, but I'm here now. But what I learned is that they had stereotypes about me, and I had stereotypes about them. And I went to that community as a member of the agriculture committee, and the members of the committee were terrified. They're like, you don't represent that district. Why are you going down there?
You're building a relationship. They took me in a gator across all these farms, introducing me to these cattle farmers, saying, you're the only one who showed up to fight for us. That's what we have to do. Just this year, we were able to defeat... This is some good news. This year, we were able to defeat one of the worst bills this session.
It was a bill to give immunity to Bayer, who now owns Monsanto, when our farmers get cancer and Parkinson's and sick from their pesticides. And Rusty Grill tried to push this bill through. We worked with Republicans in those communities, farmers who said, we thought you were just this extremist. They told us that you just want to burn the Capitol down. We didn't know you.
And I said, this is how we can win, is by going and lifting up these ideas of what I call agrarian populism. That's how we're going to transform this state. And I have hope, because once I got back from these counties, every time I get back from Pulaski, Columbia, we had a rally down in Bradley County, one of the reddest counties.
One of the Republicans tweeted, I didn't know there was this many Democrats in our county. You know, we have to go and play offense and show up. And I'll tell you the truth, it will terrify them once we get outside of Davidson County, once we get outside of Shelby County and go to their districts and say, did you know that Rusty Grills voted to poison farmers?
Did you know that Clay Doggett voted to privatize our education and steal from our public schools? We have to go there and let them know that we're fighting for them. And the last thing I'll say is that when I was expelled, my message, they said, what is your message to your Republican colleagues? I had just been kicked out of my job in this unprecedented expulsion.
I said, I want my Republican colleagues to know that I'm fighting for their children and grandchildren too. And each time we walk into that building, that's what makes us different from them, is that we're not, we are not this tribalist saying we want to destroy you, that we want you to be obliviated. We want your children to have quality public education.
We want them to have clean water and access to healthcare. We want your children to be free from the terror of school shootings. We're fighting for your children and grandchildren too, and that's what makes us different than them.
See, I have a different mindset. As soon as you walk into the Capitol, you'll see Minority Caucus. They call us the Minority Caucus. And I like what they say in England better. In England, they say we are the opposition party. Our role is to be a check on your power, to be a speed bump as you try and drive this train of our state over the cliff.
And so, you know, Jack Johnson, I'll never forget, my first week in the legislature, he taught me a very important lesson. He's a horrible person, but even our enemies can teach us something. I was on the elevator. I think I had my white suit on. I was going to my first committee meeting. I was excited, a little nervous, and he was on the elevator.
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