As a Tennessee legislator, I urge my colleagues to stop bullying their constituents

Many serving alongside me in the Tennessee legislature keep demonstrating how out of step with our constituents and the nation they are.

Instead of listening to Tennesseans’ demands for economic relief, gun safety reforms, and increased wages, extreme politicians are using taxpayer dollars and time to bully marginalized people and continue a long history of attacks on poor, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ people.

While states like Georgia and West Virginia pivot away from attacks on our communities, some of my colleagues are doubling down on political assaults.

As a result, Tennessee has extended its national lead in passing anti-equality bills. As a state, we have waged war on people’s freedom to be themselves.

Tennessee General Assembly has its priorities wrong

In April, constituents piled into the state house to protest the passage of a bill to arm teachers. Despite having one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the nation, we have too few common sense laws aimed at reducing gun violence.

Rather than strengthen protections after tragedies like the 2023 Covenant School shooting, leaders in the General Assembly weakened our laws, eliminated the carry permit requirement and passed Rep. Barrett’s House Bill 2035, which preempts local government's ability to create and enforce extreme risk protection orders.

My colleagues have also ignored our obligation to give students what they need to thrive, specifically those attending historically Black institutions like Tennessee State University, where the legislature is attempting to control university leadership instead of paying the $2.1 billion owed to the University. Legislators have used their time, energy, and resources to neglect poor people and continue an unrelenting attack on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.

The obsession with making Tennessee hostile to LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender people, stands apart. In the last 10 years, Tennessee lawmakers have enacted nearly twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ laws as any other state. Our state leads the nation in novel anti-equality legislation, like the business bathroom sign law and the drag ban, and has played a major role in every recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislative trend.

Tennessee has repeatedly banned transgender students from playing school sports, forbidden students from using the correct bathroom at school, restricted transgender youth from accessing age-appropriate, medically necessary health care, and attempted to undo marriage equality.

More: Tennessee legislature adjourns. Here’s what lawmakers did and did not accomplish this year

Students get an incomplete education with anti-critical race theory laws

These bills attempt to rewrite history, as well. Tennessee was one of the first states to pass legislation to censor classroom discussions about our nation's dark history of racism. These actions have emboldened the state’s education commissioner to withhold funds from schools and districts where students are taught to recognize biases and learn about the contributions that Black and Brown people have made to our country. Tennessee students are receiving an incomplete education, shortchanged in service to the political ambitions of extremists.

In addition to banning lessons about race, Republicans introduced an attempted ban on any materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues or lifestyles.” These bills label human beings as ‘other,’ making worse an already heartbreaking rise in bullying and violence against LGBTQ+ students.

Rather than giving our children the full education they deserve, our state has prioritized a diluted education for the same population we refer to as our future. Teaching a sanitized version of our shared history empowers bigotry and doesn’t help us evolve as a nation. All Tennesseans deserve representation and to lead a life unfettered by regressive, hate-filled policies.

Tennessee has a rich and storied history, full of culture, music and "good trouble," seen in how our people show up to the state house and demand better from their representatives.

We should be a model for the South in how to reimagine a more inclusive, just society. Our opponents are using the same binary playbook of division to attack defenders of democracy — white against Black, straight against gay, immigrant against those born here — in an attempt to distract us from seeing how they are restricting individual freedoms to preserve their positions of power.

As elected leaders, we have a responsibility to represent all Tennesseans. But we have failed thus far. I urge every Tennessee resident to register to vote and go to the polls this election season. The MAGA majority in the legislature is doing everything in their power to silence your voices. Now is the time to vote for your values and for our future. The power of the people cannot continue to be ignored.

State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, represents District 86 in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee lawmaker Justin J. Pearson to colleagues: Stop being bullies