Tennessee lawmaker and Oakland native Justin Jones spoke to hundreds at UC Berkeley’s Hertz Concert hall Friday night.
He was there to speak on-stage with Berkeley Professor Angela Glover Blackwell for a conversation that touched on activism, gun violence, race and democracy.
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Rep. Jones and fellow Democrat Justin Pearson gained national attention in April when they were both expelled from Tennessee’s state house after loudly protesting against gun violence. Both lawmakers were later reinstated.
NBC Bay Area first talked to Jones 10 years ago in Oakland, when he was just 17, where he was protesting the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Since then, he’s led several demonstrations on addressing gun violence and racial violence and has become one of the most recognizable faces of the movement.
“We’re using this platform to continue to amplify the issues that led us into the well to protest in the first place, which is to end this crisis of mass shootings in our nation,” he told NBC Bay Area ahead of the event.
The representative credits his mom, an Oakland nurse, and his grandmothers for teaching him about love, equality and justice.
Now he’s connecting with as many young Americans as possible to show them they can also make a difference on pressing issues.
“We are in a moment of reckoning in this nation,” Jones said, “and we see what this generation has done in states like Georgia and states like Nevada - and I think it’s going to be a really important force in this nation.”
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SIGN UP Jones will also speak at the commencement for UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy on Sunday.
