This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at the Democratic primary win of state Representative Justin Pearson, who’s running to represent part of Memphis in the recently redrawn 9th Congressional District of Tennessee. Pearson won the Democratic House primary after running a campaign focused in part on opposing the unchecked growth of AI infrastructure, particularly Elon Musk’s massive supercomputer data centers known as Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, in the Memphis area.
Justin Pearson is known for his work as an environmental justice organizer and advocate. He gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting Republicans’ inaction on gun control. He was then voted back in.
For decades, Memphis, the most populous city in Shelby County, formed the base of its own congressional district. Now the county is split among three districts that extend outward from the city. The majority-Black city was so-called cracked by Republican officials following a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. Pearson’s victory happened to fall on the 61st anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.
Justin Pearson’s district is currently represented by a Democrat, Steve Cohen, who’s retiring, but the district now leans Republican. Pearson’s opponent in November is Republican state Senator Brent Taylor, who’s endorsed by President Trump.
Justin Pearson will join us in a minute, but first let’s turn to his recent remarks at the Democratic Convention in Texas.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: So, if the Republican Party is going to be the party licking the boot of the billionaires, who are taking our land, polluting our water and taking our jobs, then let us be the party of the working class, in rural, suburban and urban America alike.
If the Republican Party is going to be the party of AI taking away our jobs, the party of corporate handouts and blank checks for foreign wars, let us be the party to deliver an increase to the minimum wage. Let us be the party to deliver universal healthcare. Let us be the party to deliver a federal jobs guarantee, so Americans can put food on their table and a roof over their head. And let us be the party that demands a moratorium on data centers be passed by the United States Congress.
If Republicans are going to be the party of Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, giving tax breaks to the billionaires, let us be the party of the farmer and the factory worker, the nurse and the nail tech, the innovator and the immigrant. Let us be the party of the people, the people who still believe, the people who still hope, the people who still seek to make the American dream real in our lifetime.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Tennessee state rep and Democratic congressional candidate now, Justin Pearson, joining us today from Raleigh, North Carolina.
Justin, welcome back to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on your victory. But this district is clearly changed. You won in a historically Black-majority district and the only Democratic district in Tennessee, until it was redrawn in May. Can you talk about how you believe you won, and this struggle across the country, across the political spectrum, against data centers?
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Yes. I believe that we won the Democratic nomination, and the reason we’re going to win the general election is because we’re focusing on the issues that people care about here in the state of Tennessee and, honestly, all across the country. Costs are too high. Gas is too expensive. Groceries are too high. People need access to healthcare. And people don’t want toxic data centers polluting the air that they breathe. And so, those are the issues that we’re focusing on: pass Medicare for All, increase the minimum wage, tax the billionaires and make sure that we stop toxic data centers from popping up in our communities, whether they be in Memphis, Tennessee, or in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. And we’re finding Democrats, Republicans and independents are all supporting that message, because we believe that the best days for Tennessee are still ahead of us.
AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us about Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, owned by Elon Musk. Explain how they were established there and what you’re trying to do.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Yeah, Elon Musk and his company’s pollution are killing our community. These data centers are intended to replace our jobs. There’s no benefit to everyday working-class people. It’s only to the benefit of the billionaire class.
Three miles away from my wife and I’s home is his first data center. He has built two more data centers in Memphis, in Shelby County. And one, he just announced that he built, without even telling the public that he was doing so. So, our community was again taken advantage of. And currently he’s operating 59 gas turbines out of North Mississippi that are illegally polluting our air in violation of the Clean Air Act. And the Department of Justice recently has enjoined into a lawsuit asking that they be allowed to continue to violate the Clean Air Act, pollute our air, because Grok and xAI, Elon Musk’s company, is being used as a part of the Iran war, a war which they said they had already won a year ago.
And so, this company and this man don’t care about our people, don’t care about Tennesseans. And across the country, what we are seeing is folks rising up against the billionaire class. And these are Republicans, Democrats and independents, all a part of our coalition, who are saying, “I understand now. It’s not a fight of right versus left; it’s a fight of those who are at the top and the rest of us.”
AMY GOODMAN: How did these Colossus 1 and 2 data centers — how did they get approved?
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Yeah. The first thing, the Shelby County Health Department refused to follow their mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency to protect our air quality, and they allowed them to illegally pollute for an entire year without a permit. And then the Environmental Protection Agency went back and said, “You know what? They should have gotten a permit for that.” Despite that being the case, they went to Mississippi, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality again has allowed them to violate the Clean Air Act and not follow the EPA’s own rulings. We also had local folks, the mayor of Memphis, the mayor of South Haven, Mississippi — both have capitulated to Elon Musk and these companies, allowing them to really kill and to hurt our communities. We have research from Harvard professors that dozens of people are going to prematurely die.
But it’s the failure of democratic institutions — lowercase d — of elected officials, of regulatory agencies, allowing these billionaires and these billion-dollar corporations to exploit us, the more vulnerable communities, because historically Valero Energy Corporation, Nucor Steel Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority have been able to do that in these communities, which are working-class Black communities in Memphis, working-class white communities in South Haven. But that’s what I think people are responding to: a need for our democratic institutions to actually stand up and to fight for our people. And before it was popular two years ago, that’s what I was fortunate to be able to do in Westwood in Boxtown. And that’s what I’m going to do in the United States Congress to protect all of our communities, to fight for all of us to have the human right to clean air and clean water.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in a moment, we’re going to speak with Donavan McKinney, a DSA candidate who won in Michigan. One of his issues was gun control, as you are well known for as a state representative. You were expelled from the state House of Representatives for leading a fight against the gun lobby and raising questions about gun violence, though you were — Memphis voted you back in. Can you talk about what you’re calling for now in that area?
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Absolutely. We need to mandate that everyone who has a firearm actually has a permit. In the state of Tennessee, it’s a permitless carry state, and there are several states that are like that. And most reasonable gun owners believe that you need to have a permit to carry a firearm. And in our state, 70% of people agree with that.
The reality is, the number one cause of death for a child under the age of 18 in the United States of America, whether they’re in Detroit, with Congressman McKinney, or they’re in Memphis, in Shelby County, is that gun injuries are the most significant cause of death. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
And I’m willing to stand up to the National Rifle Association. I’ve done it once. I’ll do it in the United States Congress, because all of our communities deserve to be safe. All of our schools and our teachers deserve to be safe. And reasonable people want commonsense laws that are going to protect and save our lives. And that’s what we need in Tennessee, and that’s what we need across this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Justin Pearson, you previously helped lead a fight against two billion-dollar oil companies that wanted to build a pipeline through southwest Memphis that threatened groundwater and would seize land owned by some residents since the abolition of slavery in 1865. A film about the fight was called This Is Not a Drill. This is the trailer. You’re in it.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Pipeline companies usually win.
SHARON WILSON: I was threatened. People ran me off the road.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: They think they’re going to be able to come here and do whatever it is they wish without us fighting back.
These companies, they’ve got their narrative.
We’ve got a different narrative.
A narrative powered by the voices of ancestors.
AL GORE: We have to stop the continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: We learned the risk. Cancer was 4.1 times greater in southwest Memphis.
ROISHETTA OZANE: We have to save Louisiana in order to save this planet.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: We find them guilty of environmental racism.
UNIDENTIFIED: She is never going to stop.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Shackles can be broken, together.
This has been the fight of my life.
ROISHETTA OZANE: So, you feel like the safety of the world is in my hands?
KAMEA OZANE: Kind of.
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: We will fight! We will win!
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for This Is Not a Drill, that focuses on three activists — one of them, Justin Pearson. Now he has just won the Democratic primary for Congress. You won that, Justin Pearson, on August 6th, on the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, at a time when your district was redistricted, condemned by the NAACP and other groups around the country. We played that clip because we wanted to talk about this history you have of activism and now how you plan, in this what’s believed now to be a red district, though it was a majority-Black district before redistricting — what’s your strategy going into the general election against a Trump-supported Republican candidate?
REP. JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Yeah, our strategy is the same as it was when we were fighting those two billion-dollar corporations: people power. It’s believing that people who volunteer, people who donate, those who have given $31, those 55,000 people who are individual contributors, those who are knocking doors and making phone calls, is more powerful than the president of the United States and an entrenched status quo that is bent on making sure that our life is harder.
Things don’t have to be this way. And what I have seen over the last six years, since that pipeline fight happened in the first place to now, is that when we organize, we can win. And by building solidarity across race, across class, across rural and urban areas, is how we see transformation. Because I’ve been to Giles County, Pulaski, where the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and 150 people met us there, saying, “How can we knock doors? How can we make phone calls?” That’s the type of change and transformation that’s possible in this country if we continue to believe in it and tap into the spirit that I know we all have of building a more perfect union. And our campaign is just one of the modes that’s doing that in the South.
But we need everybody’s help, because it is a historic time, a historic moment. And if we’re going to live up to the values and the ideals of those who made the Voting Rights Act a possibility, this is the time to fight for the country that we deserve.
AMY GOODMAN: Tennessee state Representative Justin J. Pearson from Memphis in Shelby County. He just won the Democratic primary for Congress in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, certainly a race we will continue to follow.
Coming up, we go to Detroit to speak with Michigan state Rep. Donavan McKinney. He won the Democratic primary for Congress on a campaign to get money out of politics and for Medicare for All. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Cryin’ in the Streets,” rendition of Zeshan B in our Democracy Now! studio.
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