Tennessee House subcommittee members had state troopers physically remove gun safety activists who quietly held signs from a hearing.
Officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol approached her seat in the room and two officers lifted Polidor out of the chair she was sitting in.
According to a new set of Tennessee House rules, signs are no longer permitted into House galleries and committee meetings.
Today troopers escorted multiple women out of a subcommittee special session hearing on public safety and gun violence.
This comes after the recent Covenant School shooting took place in Nashville. They were escorted out because they were holding small signs — approximately 8x10 inches in size — that read, “1 Kid > All The Guns.”
A dramatic confrontation in a Tennessee House subcommittee — between state troopers and a group of mothers wanting to keep their children safe from gun violence — highlighted how the Republican supermajority is using its power to clamp down on dissent during a special session on public safety.
Members of the Tennessee Highway Patrol were called upon Tuesday to remove the women from the subcommittee's meeting room as lawmakers began consideration of legislation filed in response to Nashville's Covenant School shooting.
"It's an attack on First Amendment rights," she said. "I mean, I am here for my kids — everyone's kids. They are making these laws, or lack of laws. I am here representing everyone's kids. No one should worry if their kids are going to come home from school or not. I feel like you can't sit by. When we've come to the point you can't hold up a sign, it's not OK."
Their crime: quietly holding up small signs that voiced the opinion that one child's life is more important "than all the guns."
"What about our First Amendment rights? We have rights to hold a sign," Nashville mother Alison Polidor called out as civil justice subcommittee chair Lowell Russell ordered the offenders ejected from the meeting.
The women were quickly surrounded by state troopers and forcibly escorted out of the room.
"This isn't what democracy looks like," she said, as she was being removed from the legislature.
After she was removed, she told Scripps News Nashville why she chose to bring a sign and speak out during the committee.
In video shared byChief Investigative Reporter Phil Williams, the room was almost completely silent as a security team member approached a group of people wearing pink and holding up the yellow signs, without speaking or audibly interrupting the proceedings.
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