Florida U.S. Representative Maxwell Frost and formerly-expelled Tennessee Representative Justin Jones rallied out on the Capitol Hill steps this past Wednesday, calling for gun control and an end to “attacks on democracy.” 

“We’re here today, to put it quite simply, because we’re young and fed up,” Frost said to supporters and press on Wednesday. “Earlier this month, this nation watched in horror as innocent school children in Nashville were murdered in their classrooms.”

“We’re demanding a brighter future, we’re in this fight together, and we’re not backing down,” Frost wrote on Instagram.

Frost went on to add that he and the others remain focused on Tennessee where a “far-right fascist movement” expelled the Black Tennessee Representative and his fellow colleague Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) for protesting gun violence.

Jones, Pearson and fellow Tennessee Rep. Gloria Johnson visited the White House this past Monday to discuss gun control with President Joe Biden. 

“We come with a message from the Tennessee capitol to the U.S. Capitol: that we are fed up with the attacks on our democracy and we are fed up with the endless cycle of mass shootings,” said Jones. “We are fed up with legislators and politicians who are trapped in the politics of racism. We are fed up, and when you are fed up, you got to rise up.” 

Both Jones and Pearson were expelled by the Republican-controlled state legislature for joining the protest on the House floor. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, joined the two Southern Black lawmakers, and was able to hold on to her seat.

The three lawmakers who have become known as the ‘Tennessee Three,’ cited the racial undertones of their expulsions and in the time since, have earned the praise of President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris when they traveled to Tennessee in the aftermath of their expulsion that caused national outrage. 

“They tried to expel us, and in doing so they thought they could expel our movement,” said Jones. “But what they did was put energy and show the nation so overtly and blatantly what we’re up against.” 

Frost told The Hill that when he heard of Jones’ visit to Washington D.C., he knew he wanted to get together with him. 

“I asked him and we said do we want to mobilize on gun violence, Black solidarity or youth and he said, ‘All of them,’” Frost said. “So we decided to go through that lens of being a person of color, being a young person and fearing gun violence in this country and the climate crisis and how all of this is all combined.” 

“I always joke around that the age of the single issue voter is quickly dying because young people in this country don’t see one issue, they see everything combined and I think that’s really important and the representative shows that in what he does,” Frost added.

Alongside Jones and Pearson were other activists and political leaders, including Wisdom Cole, National Director of the NAACP Youth and College Division, and Democratic Reps. Summer Lee (PA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Steven Horsford (NV). 

Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress and Congress’s first Afro-Cuban member, has been an unapologetic supporter of gun control and has even gone as far to call his generation “the mass shooting generation,” and expressed in the past the he feels like he has “been through more mass shooting drills than fire drills.”

“What it means to be young in this country right now is to understand what gun violence means, it’s to understand the climate crisis, it’s to understand these issues of our time,” Frost said Wednesday. 

As for the Tennessee lawmaker, Jones called on the White House and the Biden Administration to do more and even called on Biden to “do something out of the ordinary.”

“We need our White House to use the power of executive orders to declare gun violence a public health emergency,” Jones said.