Nashville mother arrested, removed from Tennessee House gallery as tensions rise on Capitol Hill

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A mother spurred to action by Nashville's Covenant School shooting was hauled out of the gallery of the Tennessee House Thursday, placed into custody and eventually loaded into a Tennessee Highway Patrol squad car and driven away.

Allison Polidor — who was holding a small sign protesting a GOP plans for school vouchers and guns — refused to leave when House Speaker Cameron Sexton ordered troopers to clear the chamber's west gallery. Sexton issued that order after a group of protesters shouted "shame" and "Ku Klux Kameron" following a vote on the state budget for next year.

Several protesters voluntarily left, but the mother of two repeatedly pleaded with troopers not to eject her, telling them: "I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything."

"I didn't feel like I should have to leave, that it's my right to sit there and view what laws our lawmakers are passing," she later told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

"The troopers just kept talking to me saying, 'You have to leave, you have to leave. You know what's going to happen if you don't leave.' I said, 'No, I don't know what's going to happen.' They said, 'We'll have to arrest you.' I said, 'What are you going to arrest me for? I'm just sitting here quietly.'

Phil Williams/WTVF

Phil Williams/WTVF

Phil Williams/WTVF

After 10 minutes, two members of the Tennessee Highway Patrol physically removed Polidor and escorted her from the gallery. Democratic lawmakers Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson entered an elevator with Polidor, who appeared to be crying.

Other protesters rushed down to the ground floor of the state Capitol where Polidor was taken into a conference room as Jones and Pearson argued for her to be released. There, the protesters refused orders to leave, staging a sit-in and singing "This Little Light of Mine."

Eventually, troopers escorted Polidor out a back door and loaded her into a THP vehicle.

"They put handcuffs on me, and they put me in the back of the Tennessee Highway Patrol car," Polidor recalled.

Bryan Staples/WTVF

NewsChannel 5 followed up, "So you were in handcuffs?"

"I was in handcuffed. They cuffed me in the front."

Troopers later issued the Nashville woman a citation for disrupting official proceedings and released her.

Polidor — who has written about being spurred into activism by the slaughter of three students and three staff members inside Covenant School — was ejected from a House committee room last August after she refused to put down a small sign.

A Davidson County chancellor later blocked enforcement of the House rules against such signs.

Polidor's takeaway from this latest incident?

"We're dealing with a really unjust system, that everybody needs to be paying attention."

SPECIAL SECTION: Revealed

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