On March 30, more than 1,000 students, parents and families peacefully protested at the Tennessee capitol building to call for more restrictive gun laws. A follow up school walk-out occurred on April 3 where thousands more people came back to protest the expulsion of three members of the state congress due to their involvement in the first protest.
While this happened over a week ago by the time of this publication, the first I and many others heard of it was five days after it happened. And I saw it on TikTok, not on any major news organization.
In the words of V Spehar, a TikTok creator under the tag @UnderTheDeskNews, “Stop covering Trump’s f****** plane.”
As a future journalist, I am baffled by the lack of coverage of this event. I think I pay more attention to the news than the average college student, especially when it comes to topics that directly relate to people my age.
When there is a mass shooting, I usually see news alerts pop up, my friends text about it in group chats as soon as it happens. But when hundreds and thousands of people protest to stop these horrific events, nothing.
An article published in The Tennessean about the first protest stated: “protests were peaceful, that no protestors were arrested and no injuries or property damage were reported as a result.”
If this was the case, it becomes even more unreasonable that this protest was compared to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. No matter what side of the political line you are on, it is clear that these two events are very different. No one was fearing for their life at the Tennessee capitol protests, maybe that is why it was not heavily reported about.
The expulsion of the three lawmakers will be voted on on April 6, as of April 4 when I am writing this, and were already stripped of their committee assignments. The expellment is based on resolutions filed that alleged the three lawmakers interrupted legislative business, according to The Tennessean.
While the reasons for the potential expulsion are almost reasonable, it is completely absurd that the lawmakers in Tennessee are ignoring the protesters’ requests. As elected officials, it is their job to listen to the people they represent. The only lawmakers who openly supported the protesters are the three that are now facing expulsion.
The second protest, a school walkout that started exactly at 10:13 a.m., the time the school shooting began the week before, involved thousands more students than the first. The walkout was organized by March For Our Lives, an organization that was founded after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. According to an article from The Hill, around 7,000 people were at the capitol.
But even with that many protesters, the three legislative members, Justin Jones, Justin J. Pearson and Gloria Johnson, may still lose their seat in Tennessee’s House of Representatives.
I do not know how else to convince representatives to pass more restrictive laws in regards to guns in this country. Thousands of students told their lawmakers that they are afraid to die in their schools and there is no change on the horizon. No one, no matter age, race, education level, should be scared to go to school. Something needs to be done.
Photo by: Katie Godowski via Pexels
