The special session on public safety ended much as it has proceeded over the last week, with chaos.After the session wrapped up in the House, Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, and Representative Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, collided with each other as Sexton was making his way out of the chamber and Pearson and fellow Representative Justin Jones, D-Nashville, were holding signs close to the speaker’s face.

Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell and former Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development Assistant Commissioner Alice Rolli beat out a crowded field of candidates to advance to the runoff in the Nashville mayor’s race Thursday evening.

Activism has been part of Safiyah Suara’s young life since her politician mother hauled her along to demonstrations in a baby carrier. That’s why she’ll be spending this week protesting guns and the expulsion from the Tennessee House of two Democratic lawmakers by their Republican colleagues.

Without objection, the council suspended its rules to immediately nominate and approve Jones to fill the District 52 seat as Jones sat in the gallery.

Before Justin Pearson was elected to the Tennessee House, before he gained acclaim for stopping an oil pipeline project planned for his neighborhood, he was a student in Memphis schools who wanted a textbook.Pearson, then 15, brought the issue to the Memphis City Schools board. The next day, the books were found sitting in storage. His principal was reprimanded, and district officials demanded that school leaders across the city prove that they had handed out textbooks.