Mobilizing in a City Under Siege

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE – In a small office inside Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson’s congressional campaign headquarters, I’m preparing for our interview. It’s a humble space. The walls are paper-thin: I could hear the flurry of activity, from volunteers preparing to head out and canvass and grabbing breakfast sandwiches, to staff greeting each other and chatting over their laptops. But I was focused on the decorations inside the room.

One wall is covered with a blue tarp dotted with messages reading, “Justin J. Pearson for U.S. Congress,” the kind of thing used as a backdrop for a television interview. But next to an American flag in one corner, there’s a small black-and-white photo hanging on the wall of Black men involved in Memphis’s 1968 sanitation workers strike.

Less than 24 hours before, I had been inside the National Civil Rights Museum, which is built into the Lorraine Motel, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He had come to Memphis to support the sanitation workers, who were striving to receive higher wages and better workplace safety measures. Local government officials refused to recognize the strike, a decision based in anti-Black racist sentiment.

King’s last address was called “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” in which he reflected on a bomb threat against the plane he took to Memphis. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he professed.

“And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land,” said King. “So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.”

The next day, King was fatally shot while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Toward the end of the museum tour, visitors are able to walk into the very room that King spent his last moments in. It felt unmistakably heavy to me. That impression didn’t leave when I left the museum and began to explore the city; that’s just how Memphis feels right now.

Pearson is sitting across from me. He looks noticeably tired, and he sips from a cup of tea as we speak, telling me that he’s losing his voice.

He’s running for a House of Representatives seat in Tennessee’s Ninth District, parts of which have been a site of subjugation and resistance for decades. Particularly during Donald Trump’s second presidency, the majority-Black city of Memphis has been under siege. There, the promised land has never felt so remote. Several factors compound the everyday trials of Memphians: rapid data center expansion in the area, the Memphis Safe Task Force of federal law enforcement and federalized National Guard troops creating a constant police-state presence, violent immigration actions on a chronic basis, and the effects of recent redistricting by Tennessee’s Republican-controlled state legislature.

Out of the state’s nine districts, this one was formerly the sole Democratic stronghold. It covered the majority of Memphis and its inner suburbs until this spring, when the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais, a landmark case that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states to maintain political districts that maximized the ability for voters of color to gain representation. A key component of the most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation, Section 2 prohibited voting practices and procedures that discriminated on the basis of race.

With no obligation to abide by Section 2 anymore, Republican-led states immediately moved to redraw their congressional maps, encouraged by Trump’s calls to bolster the chances of Republican candidates in an election year marred by political strife.

That included Tennessee, where the state legislature pushed through a new congressional map that “cracked” Memphis in thirds, transforming the Ninth District to favor a Republican candidate’s chances of winning. This district, which Democrat Steve Cohen won in 2024 by a gap of 71-25, was transformed into one that Trump won by over 20 points the same year.

Despite this, Pearson is still running for Congress. And he’s doing surprisingly well. Current polling shows that Brent Taylor, the scandal-plagued Republican nominee, is only up by four points.

I START THE INTERVIEW BY ASKING PEARSON about his campaign priorities, and why he entered this race to begin with.

I’d already heard him answer this. Earlier that morning, I watched him address volunteers headed out to canvass. Two chants have become hallmarks of his campaign: “Who fired up? We fired up!” and “We, the people!” Pearson’s main concerns are fairly straightforward, and have been echoed by many progressive candidates: an economy that everyone can thrive in, passing Medicare for All, advancing gun control reform, halting the build-out of data centers, and taking “big money out of politics.”

“The fact that Elon Musk and all these billionaires are trying to choose who gets to be in positions of power is ultimately them deciding who gets to regulate or who does not,” says Pearson. “That influence over our democracy is actually having a deleterious impact on people’s trust in democracy, and has led to so much corruption.”

In Memphis, the issues animating the midterms have been placed under a microscope. And Pearson’s natural tendencies toward joining the people in protest and activism have made his run for Congress a little different than most.

Local fights against data centers are becoming familiar throughout the U.S., but Memphis’s citizens have been engaged in one since 2024. Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus 1 hyperscale data center was built quickly that year in South Memphis, and by the next, Colossus 2 was constructed and went live in Whitehaven. Methane gas turbine plants have been used to fuel the Colossus expansion, and residents are concerned about how this will affect their health and well-being. Both data center locations are majority-Black, and South Memphis in particular has a history of health disparities brought on by polluting facilities.

For the past few months, the Memphis City Council had faced tremendous pressure from residents and activists to pass an 18-month moratorium pausing data center development. It would give city government time to create a regulatory framework that could address issues like noise pollution, water use, and worker safety concerns caused by developments such as Colossus.

During the two city council meetings where the moratorium was considered, Pearson joined hundreds of Memphians in advocating for its passage. On October 6, Pearson and a few other activists were banned from attending future meetings for protesting against the city council’s choice to delay a vote on the pause.

“They had the audacity to ban several of us from the meetings, including me, while I did nothing,” Pearson told me. “It was a shot across the bow to other people who wanted to organize their communities, who wanted to speak up for working-class people, who wanted to fight data centers.”

Pearson and five other activists sued the city council to lift the ban, and won. At the next meeting, on October 20, a 135-day moratorium was approved, instead of an 18-month one. “You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people at a public forum in Memphis around any issue,” remarked Richard Massey, the data center accountability manager for the progressive environmental organization Young, Gifted & Green. “It was standing room only. People took the time [off] from work and school to be in attendance and voice their concerns about the expansion of AI data centers in Memphis.”

At a meet-and-greet hosted by Pearson, I spoke to voters about their concerns. Nearly all of them labeled data center expansion as the issue motivating them as they head to the polls.

Amari Jamison, a student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told me that experiencing the pollution caused by living by the Memphis airport in Whitehaven has already had an impact on her family’s health. “Now it’s like the data center too, all these other things going on that are polluting our community. My mom has breast cancer and a bunch of other chronic illnesses, and it’s like, where did they come from?”

LAYERED ONTO THESE CONCERNS IS THE OMNIPRESENCE of the Memphis Safe Task Force. Created by President Trump in September of last year, the task force was established to “restore law and order in Memphis.” It includes a constellation of federal and state agencies, including the FBI, ICE, the Tennessee National Guard, and the state highway patrol.

Since its operations began, over 10,000 people have been arrested. Reporting has shown that the vast majority have been for nonviolent crimes. Often, it’s difficult to distinguish what agency an officer is affiliated with, causing confusion and fear, especially in Memphis’s immigrant communities. Hundreds have also been arrested and detained by ICE, who are often aided by other law enforcement groups. It’s hard to figure out whether the task force has an anti-crime focus or is simply part of the Trump mass deportation terror campaign.

When I asked Pearson what he thought, he simply said that the immigrants caught up in this dragnet are “in hell.”

This sentiment was echoed to me by Sandra Pita, the lead community organizer for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. I met her at the Gaisman Community Center, which is near the El Corralon nightclub. It was subject to a massive immigration raid that detained over 100 people, leaving children separated from their parents.

“The people they took from there were human beings. They were providing to the system,” said Pita. “That felt like a slap in [the face of] the whole neighborhood.”

Pita tells me that the park behind the community center used to be full of kids playing soccer and families picnicking. But ever since the task force operations started, it’s become a lot quieter. Federal and state agencies have been leaning heavily into using traffic stops to conduct arrests, which has turned driving into a risky, unpredictable action.

“Instead of feeling safer, [Memphis] feels militarized, and it feels like you’re walking on eggshells and you have to be careful because even though you’re documented you can get targeted because of the way you look,” says Pita. “First, the federal task force arrived and attacked immigrant communities, and it was like we were their pilot. They saw that they could do more.”

“More,” as in targeting Memphis’s Black citizens. Over the past year, four Black men have been shot and killed by agents partnered with the Memphis Safe Task Force. As I sit with Pearson and ask him about how it has impacted Black voters and political power, the group of volunteers outside are being led in prayer before starting their canvass.

Pearson stops speaking and bows his head, following the speaker’s words: “Father, we know that you can cover them all. All those that are walking out today, coming to the community, cover them with your blood. Cover their family, bless their children, the grandchildren, generation, and master. When you come all together, your will will be done, and you have friends. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Afterward, he returns to answering my question. “We are struggling with the fact that we are oftentimes given either a status quo where there’s crime or militarization as our options. We’re never given the option of poverty eradication, only militarization.”

This feeds the question of what purpose the task force even serves. Indeed, right before the task force was deployed, the Memphis Police Department reported that crime had hit a 25-year low.

PEARSON AND I TALKED EXTENSIVELY about the Callais decision’s influence on Black political participation in Tennessee. I’ve been reporting on redistricting in the South for a while now, and have always been curious about how candidates like Pearson are responding to the fact that gerrymandering creates a new sort of struggle: having to connect with Republican voters.

In order to flip the Ninth District red, the Tennessee state legislature gerrymandered Memphis to include white suburban and rural voters who typically vote Republican. If Pearson wants to close the gap between him and Taylor, he needs to court the votes of a group that he hasn’t had to directly represent in the past.

He’s hopeful about reaching these voters; data center mitigation, for example, is a transpartisan issue. But he is also realistic about the grip white Christian nationalism has on the U.S. “I always wondered where did the hate at the bottom of lynching trees go, and that I’ve learned it did not disappear; it dissipated into institutions of power,” he says.

“They don’t need white hoods, right? They got red hats. They don’t need ropes. They’ve got judges’ robes, and that’s the reality we are in,” Pearson concludes.

Again, I notice the photo of the sanitation workers’ strike behind him. I’m hit with the feeling of how high the stakes are, and how deserving this community is of having genuine representation in Congress. History is truly repeating itself in Memphis. Pearson’s campaign manager knocks at the door, saying we only have a few minutes left.

I end our conversation by asking why we, as Americans, should be paying attention to what’s happening in Memphis during the midterms and beyond. “People around the country should understand that the litmus test for America’s democracy is what is happening in Memphis, in Tennessee, in the South,” he replied. “Our country can only go as far as the South will let it. That really is allowing us to build power, connection, and connectivity politically that can change and transform this country.”

After I leave the campaign headquarters and wait outside for my rideshare, I watch cars whiz by on the busy road out front. The force of the wind this generates whips the “Justin J. Pearson for Congress” signs planted in the strip of grass between the parking lot and sidewalk around. It reminds me that Memphis hasn’t stopped moving, even in the face of a dark reality created by a jumble of deeply troublesome occurrences.

During my time here, I’ve heard time and time again that Memphis is a canary in a coal mine. But if the powerful organizing I’ve observed here says anything, the rest of the U.S. is ready to fight whatever comes next.