In a special discussion held on the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) campus in early November, Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones shared his experiences within the Tennessee legislature and the role of love and selflessness in governing.
Jones, along with two other state representatives, was expelled from the Tennessee House then later reinstated after his protests and activism around gun control legislation, which followed a mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School on March 23.
With this experience in mind, Jones used his time at HDS to reflect on what love could mean as a demonstration of risk and sacrifice.
“We used this expulsion hearing to begin another expulsion,” Jones explained. “To begin the expulsion process of those spirits that were in that building of plantation politics, of white supremacy, of transphobia, of homophobia, of patriarchy.”
Jones, who has witnessed the harms of self-preservation and inaction, called for the “transformative” to take precedence over the “transactional.” He envisions a norm where just aims become more important than status and comfortability.
During his tenure in public office, this conception of love has led to challenging the expectations placed on himself and other minority lawmakers. Motivated to wield any amount of power they have as representatives, Jones and his two fellow legislators uphold the importance of “putting yourself on the front lines” for the sake of centering voices and perspectives that exist outside of the chamber, but are not considered legitimate within it.
Rather than “speaking truth to power,” Jones reframes it as “in power we will speak truth.”
Jones explained that he sees faith as synonymous with justice, and he uses his ties to the local community—through his time as a minister and activist—to “show up where traditional electives typically do not show up.”
This also means that Jones hopes to hold members of the state legislature—and other positions of authority in Tennessee—accountable, by using the law to combat breaches of power. He holds that representatives in the opposition party are “here to bear witness and raise moral dissent.”
“Every time I dissent, I make sure to write out my dissent and submit it to the journal,” Jones explained. “Because that dissent is a love letter to future generations to let them know that amidst the madness, there were people who were willing to stand up when they said sit down, people willing to speak up when they said your voice does not matter.”
Tennessee is home for Jones, and that comes with a complicated relationship that is motivated mostly by love and an “agapic energy” that looks to a history of resistance and struggle within the state.
“There would be no American Civil Rights movement without Nashville, without the students who became leaders nationally,” Jones said. “People like Diane Nash, and John Lewis, and Bernard Lafayette, and C.T. Vivian.”
Jones also highlighted the activism of the Freedom Riders, who in 1961 wrote out their wills on the bus en route to places of protest. As a result of witnessing that kind of sacrificial love, Jones explains his willingness to be a vocal advocate, saying that "it is unethical to be a representative and not speak.”
Yet in spite of the backlash Jones has faced and endured, he remains hopeful and energized.
“It reminds us of a saying in the South that a dying mule kicks the hardest, and this mule of white supremacy. This mule that they used to hold on to power for so long is dying. And we refuse to let them take us down with it.”
His plea to Harvard Divinity School is to love, to act, and to think beyond self-interest, saying “that is the power of community coming together collectively in resistance and defiance, coming together in the spirit of love that eliminates fear of consequences.”
—by Rachel Mallett, HDS news correspondent