Bob Dylan is currently in Japan with his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, and he surprised fans at his recent show at the Tokyo Garden Theater with a Grateful Dead cover.
Rolling Stonereports that while Dylan doesn’t usually stray too far from the same set list each night on this tour, for his show Wednesday he added the Dead classic “Truckin’,” the first time he’s ever covered the song.
“Truckin’,” written by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter, appeared on the Grateful Dead’s 1970 album, American Beauty. It was one of the 66 songs Dylan wrote about in his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, which came out last year.
Dylan’s tour of Japan still has three more shows at the Tokyo Garden Theater, April 14-16. He then wraps the tour with three shows in Nagoya, April 18-20. Dylan returns to the road in June for a European tour that kicks off June 2 in Lisbon, Portugal. A complete list of dates can be found at bobdylan.com.
(TITUSVILLE, Fla.) — When Crosley Green was released from a Florida prison in 2021 after serving 33 years for a murder he said he did not commit, he and family members who met him outside the penitentiary walls believed his long nightmare was over. As loved ones hugged Green and cried tears of joy, his lawyers said they were confident evidence discovered after his conviction would exonerate him.
Green, however, has been ordered back to prison next week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected his claim that his guilty verdict was obtained in violation of his constitutional rights. The appellate court described the evidence uncovered post-trial as “strictly circumscribed” and concluded it would not have changed the outcome of his 1990 conviction by an all-white Brevard County, Florida, jury.
“The most important thing is an innocent man has served 33 years in prison and is going back in for a crime he didn’t commit,” one of Green’s attorneys, Jeane Thomas, told ABC News.
Thomas said three key prosecution witnesses, including Green’s sister, recanted testimony that Green, who is Black, confessed to fatally shooting Charles “Chip” Flynn, a 21-year-old white man during a 1989 carjacking, alleging they were all coerced by prosecutors and investigators into lying on the witness stand.
Additionally, Green’s legal team said the prosecution never turned over to the defense evidence that the two sheriff’s deputies who initially responded to the shooting did not believe the sole eyewitness, Flynn’s ex-girlfriend, a white teenager, who claimed a “Black guy” committed the slaying.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided in late February not to review Green’s case, exhausting his final appeal.
Green, 65, is scheduled to report to the Florida Department of Corrections by Monday to resume his life sentence. But, he said he has not given up and hopes he will walk free again.
“It’s bad, but it ain’t enough to affect me any kind of way. It can’t make me feel down, out and stuff like that because I came too far,” Green said in a video statement released to ABC News by his lawyers. “There could be a lot more I’d like to do. But in reality, one day I’m going to get to do it. Right now, I’m going to abide by the rules about what was set forth and be returned back to prison.”
‘He did not kill that boy’
The 11th Circuit decision overturned a ruling made in 2018 by U.S. District Court Judge Roy B. Dalton Jr. of the Middle District of Florida. Dalton set aside Green’s conviction, granted him a conditional release citing concerns over the COVID pandemic and sent the case back to the state to free Green or hold a new trial.
Dalton, according to his ruling, found that now retired Assistant State Attorney Chris White violated the so-called Brady rule constitutionally requiring prosecutors to disclose material evidence favorable to a defendant. He concluded White should have turned over to the defense notes of conversations with the first two sheriff’s deputies who responded to the Flynn shooting and told him they suspected Flynn might have been shot by his ex-girlfriend — the star prosecution witness.
“It is difficult to conceive of information more material to the defense… than the fact that the initial responding officers evaluated the totality of evidence as suggesting that the investigation should be directed toward someone other than (Green),” Dalton’s ruling reads.
Diane Clark, a retired Brevard County Sheriff’s Office major, was one of the two deputies who responded to the Flynn shooting. Clark told ABC News in a telephone interview this week she was “devastated” when she heard Green was ordered back to prison.
“He doesn’t belong there. He spent too many years there to start with. And to this day, I’ll say he did not kill that boy,” Clark said. “When I got the news that he was going back to prison, I just felt terrible about it.”
Regardless of the new evidence, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody appealed Dalton’s ruling, leading to the 11th Circuit decision.
“The Florida Attorney General’s Office is charged by statute to represent the State of Florida in upholding judgments and sentences sought by the State Attorney in each circuit and imposed by trial courts when they are appealed,” a spokesperson for Moody said in a statement to ABC News.
In the two years Green, the father of three sons, has been out of prison, he has lived a model life, said Thomas, who has worked on Green’s case for the past 15 years. As part of his conditional release, Green is required to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet and report regularly to a probation officer.
He’s allowed to leave his house only to go to his job as a skilled machinist at a manufacturing company and services at his church on Sundays.
Thomas, a partner in the Washington D.C. law firm Crowell & Moring, said Green has also gotten the chance to know his many grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
“They’re all going through this with him, sort of grieving him going back into prison. But he’s strong for all of them and he’s an example to all of them,” Thomas said.
April 4, 1989 homicide
Flynn’s slaying unfolded in the early morning hours of April 4, 1989. His ex-girlfriend, identified in court documents as Kim Hallock, claimed Flynn came to her house to discuss their relationship and they ended up going to a Little League baseball park in Titusville, Florida, where they smoked marijuana and talked. The then 19-year-old Hallock claimed a “Black guy” approached the pickup truck they were in and carjacked them at gunpoint, the court records state.
Hallock, who testified at Green’s trial, claimed the assailant tied Flynn’s hands behind his back with a shoestring, got into the driver’s seat of the pickup and drove them to a remote orange grove, according to the court documents. She claimed that while driving the vehicle, the assailant shifted the gear shift while pointing the gun at her, according to the court records.
While at the orange grove, Hallock alleged the armed perpetrator forced her from the vehicle, according to the court records. While they were outside the truck, Flynn managed to retrieve his handgun Hallock had surreptitiously placed on the seat under a pair of jeans and despite his hands still tied behind his back, managed to fire a shot at the assailant that missed, according to court documents.
Hallock maintained that after Flynn fired the gun, she broke free from the assailant, jumped in the pickup and fled, according to court documents. She claimed she heard several shots as she drove away. She told investigators she went to Flynn’s best friend’s house and called 911, according to court records.
Clark, who was a sheriff’s sergeant at the time, said that when she and another deputy, Mark Rixey, found Flynn, he was covered in blood, but was conscious. Flynn’s .22-caliber handgun was found about four or five feet away from him.
“When we found him and I asked him his name, he didn’t tell me. I asked who did this and all he would say is, ‘I’m hurt. Take me home,'” said Clark, adding she and Rixey performed CPR on Flynn.
Flynn was taken to a hospital by ambulance and pronounced dead upon arrival, according to court records.
Clark said a big red flag was the story Hallock told sheriff’s investigators about what she did after fleeing the orange grove.
“This is something that has always kind of stuck in my throat for years: She went past houses, she went past a convenience store that’s open 24 hours a day. She passed another pay phone. She went past Parrish Medical Center, which is a hospital in that area, and went to his (Flynn’s) friend’s house to call 911,” Clark said. “My own belief is he might have survived had he had medical care sooner.”
In her initial tape-recorded interview with homicide detectives, Hallock could not describe the assailant, telling detectives, “I really didn’t get a good look at him. I was really scared,” according to the recording.
Hallock described the assailant in a subsequent meeting with a police sketch. Thomas said Hallock described the assailant as big and bulky, sporting a long jerry curl hairstyle.
“Crosley did not resemble that description in any way, shape or form,” Thomas told ABC News. “He’s slight of build, he’s always had a very close-cropped hairstyle.”
But at least two community residents, including an auxiliary police officer, told investigators the sketch resembled Green, who was seen at the park hours before the carjacking, according to court documents.
A photo of Green, who had just gotten out of prison after serving time for a drug conviction, was placed in a photo lineup detectives showed Hallock, who was told by the head of the sheriff’s homicide unit that one of the photos “may or may not (be) of the individual who had done these things,” according to the court documents.
“They put six photos for her to take a look at. They put Crosley in what we call the ‘bull’s eye position,’ which is the center of the top row. And his photo is much darker than the other individuals in this particular lineup,” Thomas said.
Hallock picked out Green’s photos and detectives told her she selected the right person, Thomas said.
About two months after Flynn’s slaying, Green was arrested and charged with murder.
Thomas said no physical evidence connected Green to the Flynn shooting, including any fingerprints found at the crime scene or inside Flynn’s pickup truck. No gunshot residue was found on Flynn’s hands to support his ex-girlfriend’s claim he fired his gun at the assailant, Thomas said. And, according to Thomas, investigators never examined Hallock’s hands for gunshot residue, nor considered her a suspect.
During the trial, Green’s defense attorney, John Parker, raised the possibility that Hallock killed Flynn, noting that at the time of the homicide Flynn was dating another woman.
The jury convicted Green of murder, kidnapping and armed robbery in 1990, deliberating three hours before reaching a verdict. Green was initially given a death sentence, but he was removed from death row in 2009 because a prior conviction in New York for armed robbery when he was 18 could not be used as an aggravating circumstance because he was sentenced as a youthful offender.
“With no physical evidence tying Green to the crime, before an all-white jury with the sole eyewitness claiming a ‘Black guy’ did it, [the girlfriend’s] credibility as well as the credibility of the police investigation was critical to the outcome of the trial. But the first two police officers on the scene knew the teenager’s claim that a ‘Black guy did it’ was nothing more than a hoax,” Green’s lawyers wrote in their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Efforts by ABC News to reach Hallock were unsuccessful.
In a statement to CBS’ “48 Hours” in 1999, Hallock said, “The fact is that there are only two surviving witnesses from that evening, myself and Crosley, and I’m sure deep down inside Crosley knows that he is right where he deserves to be.”
White, the prosecutor in the case, told ABC News in a statement that the 11th Circuit decision affirmed state court rulings that he did not violate Green’s right to a fair trial by failing to disclose notes he took of his conversations with the two deputies, Clark and Rixey, adding, “Those opinions would not have been admissible in evidence.”
“Crosley Green was not denied justice on procedural grounds but on the facts of law. Nor was he wrongfully accused and prosecuted because he was Black,” White said. “He was found guilty of the armed kidnapping of Kim and Chip, the armed robberies of them both, and the murder of Chip Flynn, and is now denied relief based on the facts of law.”
‘We’re not giving up’
Thomas told ABC News she and her defense team, “are out of legal options in court at this point.”
“We’re not giving up and we will never give up,” Thomas said.
She said the two possible avenues they are still exploring is getting the state of Florida to grant Green parole or to petition Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to grant clemency.
Green said he is putting his faith in God, saying, going back to prison “is just another part of what I’m going through now to get my freedom.”
“If it wasn’t for the Lord, I’d be down and out right now,” Green said in his video statement. “I’ve got God on my side. That’s what brought me through these 33 years, plus these two years I’ve been at home.”
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump sought Wednesday to delay a writer’s defamation and battery case that is scheduled to go on trial this month, arguing the “deluge” of media coverage of his recent indictment on 34 criminal charges makes fairness impossible.
The writer, E. Jean Carroll, sued Trump in November alleging he defamed her by calling her a liar when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room. She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations.
Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s allegations.
The trial is scheduled to begin April 25 in Manhattan federal court but Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, asked the judge for a “cooling off” period in an overnight filing.
“President Trump can only receive a fair trial in a calmer media environment than the one created by the New York County District Attorney,” Tacopina wrote in a letter to the judge asking for a four-week delay.
If the trial goes forward as scheduled, “prospective jurors will have the criminal allegations top of mind,” Tacopina said.
Carroll opposed Trump’s attempt to delay her upcoming defamation and battery case, calling it “obviously meritless.”
Her attorneys took issue with Trump’s assertion the publicity associated with his indictment makes it impossible for the court to seat a fair jury.
“Trump is exceptionally ill-suited to complain about fairness when he has instigated (and sought to benefit from) so much of the very coverage about which he now complains,” Carroll’s attorneys said in a letter to the judge.
Trump is not required to attend the trial. The judge has given Trump’s attorneys until next week to inform the court whether he will attend.
(WASHINGTON) — With Americans’ access to the abortion pill mifepristone still in limbo, Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday convened a meeting of a White House task force on reproductive health care during which Cabinet officials expanded on a new way they intend to protect a person’s privacy when it comes to abortion access.
The meeting fell just hours after the Department of Health and Human Services announced it had drafted a new federal rule intended to make clear to doctors and other medical professionals that divulging details of a person getting an abortion violates the privacy law HIPAA.
Harris explained that an exception written into the 1996 HIPAA law provides that if law enforcement officials needed information in pursuit of a criminal matter, they could access a person’s medical records after getting a court order.
The new rule is in response to several red states passing laws, in the wake of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade, which abortion rights advocates warn are intended to criminalize health care providers and women who seek abortions, even in states where the procedure is legal.
This proposed change, then, is aimed at blunting state-run investigations into women traveling for abortions, so it would essentially provide cover for doctors where abortion is legal to not provide records in investigations stemming from states where the procedure is not.
“I have met with and talked with doctors who are in fear of losing their license or being prosecuted, and of this situation actually having an impact on the relationships of trust that they have with their patients. This indeed is a health care crisis in America,” Harris said.
“Since the Dobbs’ decision, in particular, many states have proposed and passed laws that are now going to criminalize health care providers for providing reproductive health care,” she continued. “It’s going to be a crime, which means that it is very likely if law enforcement requests your personal and private medical records, they may be entitled to receive them.”
Medical providers and doctors would not be forced to comply with those investigations if the proposed rule is finalized, officials said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland flanked Harris for the discussion, to expand on what the change means.
Becerra, like Harris, said his office has already heard “first-hand” from women that their health care providers are being targeted by hostile actors trying to weaponize private information surrounding abortion care.
“And so we want to make sure we do everything we can to ensure patient privacy, bolster trust between individuals and their health care providers and enable individuals to obtain high-quality appropriate health care,” he said.
Garland also made his first public comments about the mifepristone ruling by the federal judge in Texas, since the Justice Department appealed it, saying the nation’s top law enforcement agency “strongly disagrees with the court’s unprecedented decision.”
An example of the rule’s application might be Idaho prosecutors investigating whether an adult helped drive a minor out of state for an abortion, which would violate the state’s “abortion trafficking” law. Doctors who assisted the patient out-of-state would not be required to comply with Idaho’s investigation.
“I have met with doctors across the country who have shared their stories,” said Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the civil rights office within Health and Human Services, which drafted the rule. “These providers have expressed fear, anger, and sadness that they or their patients may end up in jail for providing or obtaining evidence-based and medically appropriate care.”
According to a senior administration official, the concern is that some doctors — particularly with smaller practices — might be fearful when faced with subpoenas. This rule reminds them that the federal law prohibiting them from sharing sensitive medical information includes reproductive health care.
Following a 60-day public comment period, the rule will need to be finalized before taking effect.
ABC News Anne Flaherty and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York City now has a “rat czar.”
Kathleen Corradi has been named the city’s director of rodent mitigation.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats,” Corradi said Wednesday after she was introduced by Mayor Eric Adams.
Added Adams: “Kathy has the knowledge, drive, experience, and energy to send rats packing and create a cleaner more welcoming city for all New Yorkers.”
The mayor also announced $3.5 million for rat mitigation in Harlem. The money will fund new techniques and new staff members to inspect, exterminate and clean public spaces.
“He hates rats. I hate rats. Every New Yorker hates rats,” Corradi said. “Rats are tough but New Yorkers are tougher.”
Corradi, a former elementary school teacher and land use expert who specializes in urban sustainability, was chosen out of 900 applicants.
“Destiny was calling. You see, I have a long history with rats,” she said.
As a child, Corradi said she used to campaign for anti-rat measures in her neighborhood and she previously served as a garden coordinator at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
She promised to immediately take on litter, garbage and food waste where rats thrive. She will also decide what new products the city should use to get rid of rats.
“Rat mitigation is more than a quality-of-life issue for New Yorkers,” she said. “Rats are a symptom of systemic issues, including sanitation, health, housing, and economic justice. New York may be famous for the Pizza Rat, but rats, and the conditions that help them thrive will no longer be tolerated — no more dirty curbs, unmanaged spaces, or brazen burrowing.”
The city’s sanitation department previously announced an anti-rat measure to limit the amount of time trash bags sit on curbs.
On Wednesday, James Gunnrevealed the lineup for Creature Commandos, the first animated series for his and Peter Safran‘s new DC Studios timeline.
Based on the comic series of the same name about a WWII-era super team, the show will star the voices of Stranger Things‘ David Harbour, Lamborghini‘s Frank Grillo, The Suicide Squad‘s Sean Gunn and Steve Agee, Rogue One‘s Alan Tudyk, Indira Varma, Zoe Chao and Maria Bakalova.
Interestingly, Harbour will be bouncing from Marvel’s MCU to the DC Universe: He played The Red Guardian in Black Widow, which he will be reprising in Thunderbolts. Similarly, Grillo has starred in several Marvel movies as the villain Brock Rumlow/Crossbones; James’ brother Sean played Kraglin and performed Rocket Raccoon on set in James’ Guardians of the Galaxy movies and in Thor: Love and Thunder; and Bakalova’s voice will be heard as Cosmo the Spacedog in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Agee will be reprising as his Suicide Squad/Peacemaker character John Economos; Harbour will play Frankenstein; Varma will play The Bride; Sean will voice GI Robot and his The Suicide Squad character The Weasel; Tudyk will voice Dr. Phosphorus; Chao will voice Nina Mazursky; and Bakalova will voice Princess Ilana.
Grillo, Gunn noted, will be playing Rick Flagg Sr. “across all media,” meaning he could play the role in live-action, as well. Canonically, he’s the dad of Joel Kinnaman‘s Suicide Squad character Rick Flagg.
(NEW YORK) — NPR will stop sharing content on Twitter, the company announced Wednesday — a rebuke of certain labels the social media platform attached to the news outlet.
The international media non-profit said the categorization — first as “US state-affiliated media” and later “government-funded media” — prompted the outlet to stop posting “fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds,” according to a Wednesday statement.
“It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards,” NPR CEO John Lansing said in an email to staff explaining the decision.
Owned by Elon Musk, Twitter is working to undermine NPR’s credibility, the outlet said.
”NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent,” NPR said in a statement Wednesday.
Twitter labeled NPR’s main account as “US state-affiliated media” last week. The “state-affiliated media” stamp is also used to identify media outlets run or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, like in Russia or China.
Twitter policy defines its labeling of state-affiliated media accounts as outlets where “the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”
The company later changed NPR’s label to “government-funded media,” a stamp that has since remained. At least one other public news organization, the BBC, has the same label.
Twitter defines “government-funded media” accounts as “outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.”
On Wednesday, after NPR’s announcement, the GOP’s House Judiciary Twitter account appeared to weigh in on the incident, saying “Defund NPR” in a Tweet.
NPR does not receive direct federal funds, but it receives some government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments. The company said those funds account for less than 1% of their annual operating budget.
In a farewell tweet, NPR suggested people subscribe to its “Up First” newsletter, download the NPR app and enable mobile push alerts.
(TAYLOR FALLS, Minn.) — A search is underway for a teen who fell off a cliff and into the St. Croix River, which runs through Wisconsin and Minnesota, Tuesday night.
Police identified the missing teen as 18-year-old D’Andrea Sanvig of Luck, Wisconsin.
Sanvig was at Interstate State Park in Taylors Falls, Minnesota, near a rock ledge when he lost his footing and fell off a cliff, authorities said. He eventually landed in the water.
“An extensive rescue effort was launched consisting of multiple area agencies. Search efforts were unsuccessful and paused at nightfall. The search will resume in the morning,” Chisago County Sheriff Capt. Derek Anklan said in a statement Wednesday.
Chicago County Emergency Communications Center began receiving 911 calls at around 6 p.m., according to police.
According to police, teams are actively searching for Sanvig by land, water and air.
Officials asked the general public not to search on or near the water at this time. The park issued a warning saying trails “still have significant snow and ice-coverage with bare and muddy areas in between.”
“The flow rate of the river, along with debris typically seen in the spring, has made for dangerous search conditions,” Anklan said.
(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday they will not bring charges in the murder of Shanquella Robinson, a Charlotte, North Carolina, resident who was killed in October while vacationing in Mexico.
U.S. Attorneys Sandra J. Hairston and Dena J. King — who represent the Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina — wrote in a statement that in every case under consideration for federal prosecution, the government must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt, that a federal crime was committed.”
“Based on the results of the autopsy and after a careful deliberation and review of the investigative materials by both U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, federal prosecutors informed Ms. Robinson’s family today that the available evidence does not support a federal prosecution,” they wrote.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Less than a week after being ousted by the Tennessee House of Representatives by the Republican supermajority, District 86 representative Justin J. Pearson has just been reinstated by a unanimous vote by Shelby County Commission.
Pearson’s reinstatement comes just two days after Nashville’s Metropolitan Council unanimously voted to reinstate Rep. Justin Jones, the other representative who was expelled last week for his involvement in a gun control rally. Jones will serve as an interim legislator until a special election is called.
“Nashville thought they could silence democracy,” Pearson said after the commission’s vote. “The message for all the people in Nashville who decided to expel us: You can’t expel hope. You can’t expel justice. You can’t expel our voice. And you ‘shol can’t expel our fight. We look forward to continuing to fight. Continuing to advocate until justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Let’s get back to work.”
Mickell Lowery, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, announced the special meeting Sunday evening.
Lowery shared he believed the Thursday expulsion of Pearson “was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods,” after Pearson, Jones and Rep. Gloria Johnson violated the chamber’s rules of decorum by participating in last month’s protest.
Johnson evaded expulsion by one vote.
“I am amongst the over 68,000 citizens who were stripped of having a representative at the State due to the unfortunate outcome of the State Assembly’s vote,” he said in the statement. “I am certain that the leaders in the State Capitol understand the importance of this action on behalf of the affected citizens here in Shelby County, Tennessee and that we stand ready to work in concert with them to assist with only positive outcomes going forward.”
At the March 30 protest at the Capitol prompted by the Nashville Covenant School shooting three days prior, Jones and Pearson participated and were seen using a bullhorn leading to chants on the House floor, causing a brief interruption in legislative business. Johnson participated also, but was not seen using the bullhorn.
A group of Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Raphael Warnock, wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, urging the Department of Justice to investigate last week’s expulsion of Tennessee Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson.
The Senators want the Department to determine “whether any violations of the United States Constitution or federal civil rights laws have occurred, and to take all steps necessary to uphold the democratic integrity of our nation’s legislative bodies.”
“This was a tragedy that happened at the Covenant School in Nashville. But instead of addressing the tragedy, the Republican super-majority in Tennessee decided that using our First Amendment right to listen to the thousands of protesters deserved expulsion,” Pearson said during an ABC News group sit down interview with Jones and Johnson on Monday.
The Shelby County Board of Commissioners decision comes after an over one mile community march on Monday from The National Civil Rights Museum to the County Commission in support of gun violence prevention and support for the reinstatement of Pearson.
“We need to lift up these amazing voices of these young people,” Johnson said prior to the march. “We need a multiracial, multi-generational organization in the Tennessee legislature. And these voices are critical. We need to welcome these young voices and not keep them down. These young people are passionate, they’re smart, they understand the issues and how they affect every single person in their district. And I am so honored. The teacher has become the student and I’m learning from these young men, and I look forward to learning for a long long time.”
“None of this is easy, especially in a state so heavily gerrymandered and so anti-democratic as Tennessee, but our ancestors faced worse and they prevailed. So will we, as long as we stay in the streets, in the halls of power and in the front of the chamber together. Our values of democracy, freedom, equality, safety from gun violence and well-being for all are the majority values in our district, our state and our nation. We are the majority,” Pearson said in a press release Wednesday after being reinstated. “Thank you for bringing me back to the People’s House where we can accomplish great things together. We are the new Tennessee.”
