Nashville, step up to stop Tennessee’s legislative hate | Opinion

Nashvillians do our best work when faced with tragedies, tornadoes, floods and terrible conditions. We need to stop a flood of bills, laws and resolutions by Tennessee’s legislative majority that include expelling two Democratic legislators for a breach of House rules triggered by a gun-control protest, voting for lax gun laws, attacking the LGBTQ+ community by making it a crime for people to dress and perform in drag, banning gender-affirming care for minors, depriving women and girls of bodily autonomy, and threatening Nashville’s destiny.

Nashville is in mourning after a mass shooting, but bills for the next session would allow adults to carry any firearm, including AR-15s, openly, without a permit, background check or safety training; and reduce the age to carry handguns without a permit from 21 to 18.

Pregnant women will die because of Tennessee’s strict abortion ban that disproportionately affects women of color and rural women and allows no exceptions for rape or incest. The Hippocratic Oath demands that doctors “first, do no harm,” but this law requires them to violate it. Doctors, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and others risk prosecution by caring for those in grave danger of death from pregnancy.

Tennessee is rich. The coffers are full from Nashville’s tax dollars. But it’s not just the money – Nashville’s music and rich history set us apart. Nashville women played a pivotal role in the fight toward women’s suffrage, and African American leaders, such as John Lewis and Diane Nash, led sit-Ins – the first and most successful campaign targeting racial segregation – in the 1960s.

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However, even today institutional racism in the legislature silences legislators of color and threatens funding for Tennessee State University, one of the state's historically Black colleges and universities. After the state approved $544 million owed TSU for four to five decades, the Tennessee’s Comptroller's Office publicly disparaged TSU President Glenda Glover and legislators threatened a takeover of the school. Even now TSU’s housing crisis continues.

Meanwhile, abused and neglected children sleep on floors in Tennessee Department of Children’s Services facilities because of inadequate funding.

Tennessee’s legislative majority is acting on a hostile takeover of the Nashville International Airport, Bridgestone Arena and Nissan Stadium. Gov. Bill Lee supports redirecting public money to open more private schools in Tennessee. The legislative majority threatens to reject federal funding for public schools and passed legislation that risks federal funding for Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.

Meanwhile, in Nashville and other cities across the country, books are being banned from school libraries, librarians are being fired, and teaching the true histories of Black and Indigenous people and people of color is being banned.

Nashville is a success story. People love to visit. But at the expense of the people of our city, the Tennessee legislative majority gerrymandered maps so Nashvillians lost congressional representation. They passed a law that slashed Nashville’s Metro Council from 40 to 20, reversing a 1963 charter that ensured Black residents were represented across the city under the historical change to a metro government. (After a legal challenge of the law’s constitutionality brought by Metro Government, a panel of judges temporarily halted the law’s rollout, delaying its effect until at least 2027.)

All of this is happening against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism, global climate change and voter suppression. Tennessee is one of the lowest-ranking states for voter turnout, with only 38.57 % of registered voters casting ballots for the 2022 midterm elections.

Nashville, we must vote, write letters to our legislators, show up at Metro Council meetings, push back on hateful and dangerous laws, take risks for social justice and work to draw our circle wide to include people the majority of Tennessee legislators push to the margins.

D. Elizabeth Jesse, Ph.D., CNM, is a retired nurse-midwife and professor emeritus who practiced midwifery for over 45 years and in the 1970s founded Nashville’s first free clinic and the Waverly-Belmont Clinic that grew into United Neighborhood Health Services, which still exist in Nashville today.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opinion: Nashville, step up to stop Tennessee’s legislative hate