Big, beautiful, oblivious Florida blurred by outside the window. He kissed his mother goodbye at the courthouse and left Tampa in the back of a state cruiser. He had heard the Florida School for Boys had a band and a football team and maybe even Boy Scouts, and it didn't cost a penny to participate. When the judge warned the boy to behave or he'd be sent to reform school in Marianna, Willy surprised the court. Here was a boy who grew up in a little house off Columbus Avenue, in Six Mile Creek, a scrappy neighborhood on Tampa's eastern edge, where a poor kid learned early how to protect himself. Gino Bulso, who introduced one of the resolutions, said Thursday.Willy didn't know how to drive, but the judge didn't know that. “They tried to shred our constitution with a bullhorn,” Rep. House leaders at the time called their actions “an insurrection.” A bullhorn was used, in violation of rules for the House chamber, and the legislators were gathered in area on the House floor without being recognized to speak. “To expel voices of opposition and dissent is a signal of authoritarianism,” he added, suggesting that Tennessee’s action should “sound the alarm across the nation that we are entering into very dangerous territory.”ĭuring the March 30 protest, the trio led supporters in chants calling for stricter gun safety measures after a mass shooting in a Nashville school that killed six people - including three 9-year-old children.

And so we have to respond to this with mass movements, nonviolent movements,” he said. “What the nation is seeing is that we don’t have democracy in Tennessee - and that if we don’t act we have some very dark days ahead.

I attended boys state and survived