From June 12, 2020, until the passage of the state law making the
occupation a felony two months later, peaceful protesters set up camp
at Nashville's Legislative Plaza and renamed it for Ida B. Wells.
Central to the occupation was Justin Jones, a student of Fisk
University and Vanderbilt Divinity School whose place at the
forefront of the protests brought him and the occupation to the
attention of the Tennessee state troopers, state and US senators, and
Governor Bill Lee. The result was two months of solidarity in the
face of rampant abuse, community in the face of state-sponsored
terror, and standoff after standoff at the doorsteps of the people's
house with those who claimed to represent them. In this, his first
book, Jones describes those two revolutionary months of nonviolent
resistance against a police state that sought to dehumanize its
citizens.
The People's Plaza is a rumination on the abuse of power, and
a vision of a more just, equitable, anti-racist Nashville—a vision
that kept Jones and those with him posted on the plaza through
intense heat, unprovoked arrests, vandalism, theft, and violent
suppression. It is a first-person account of hope, a statement of
intent, and a blueprint for nonviolent resistance in the American
South and elsewhere.