Vice President Kamala Harris described State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) as a prominent leader for young people during an interview with progressive social media publisher NowThis Impact released on Tuesday.
In the interview, the liberal news organization asked Harris to name five “ideal dinner guests,” and the vice president said Jones would have the fifth seat at a table almost exclusively occupied by political and civil rights icons.
“You know who I saw recently, who I just love, but he’s one of two, the Justins from Tennessee,” said Harris. “They refused to be silenced, and they were both in the state capitol, and they were speaking up about gun violence. And then the other legislators tried to shut them down.”
The Tennessee House of Representatives expelled Jones and Representative Justin Pearson (R-Memphis) last year over their participation in a pro-gun control riot held after the attack on the Covenant School. Jones was quickly returned to the General Assembly by the Metro Nashville Council and later by voters in a special election.
Harris then revealed she shares more than a political party in common with Jones.
“Justin Jones is actually from Oakland, and was born where I was born at Kaiser Hospital up in California,” said Harris.
Jones explains on his website he was born in Oakland and grew up in the East Bay. Harris was similarly born in Oakland but moved often during her formative years, spending five years being educated in Montreal after moving with her mother and sister.
With Jones’s addition to the vice president’s dream dinner, four of the members would be political figures or activists. The only exceptions are the seats Harris said she would give to Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and her mother, whom she explained were unable to meet while her mother was living.
The vice president said she would offer Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president, another seat and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall an additional seat.
“I would so love to sit with her. I would so love to sit with her. I mean, I feel that I know her because I have studied her life,” said Harris of Chisholm.
She similarly called Marshall one of her heroes and said, “You talk about, like, him being active in the streets, and what he did in terms of representation, and then went to the court, and carried that over.”
Harris, appearing to confirm she views Jones as of similar stature to Chisholm and Marshall, told NowThis Impact of her “ideal” guest list: “That would be kind of a good mix, because then that’s kind of different generations of leaders.”
Jones was recently featured at a “Critical Race Theory Summer School” event at Vanderbilt University.
Watch the video released by NowThis Impact:
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kamala Harris and Justin Jones” by Kamala Harris.
