State Representative Aftyn Behn made a national splash when she ran as a Democrat in the 2025 special election for Congressional District 7, and drew attention to Tennessee for being a viable candidate in a deeply red state.
Behn was first elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2023, representing TN District 51, which she describes as “a very privileged white district.” It is somewhat surprising that a community organizer, activist and social worker turned to politics as the next phase of her career.
Behn grew up in East Tennessee, worked as a consultant with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee in Switzerland, and moved back to Tennessee in 2017 as a community health organizer with the Tennessee Justice Center.
Since then, she held community organizing positions with a national organization called Indivisible, where she campaigned for progressive candidates and policies. In 2021, she took a position as the campaign director for RuralOrganizing.org, a national organization with the mission to “rebuild a rural America that is empowered, thriving, and equitable.”
Tell us about your journey of holding people in power accountable and what made you decide to run for office?
It started in Appalachia, and so I quickly understood that there were power players that exploited our community, extracted as much wealth as possible, and left, leaving poverty in their wake. Early on, I had an understanding that those in power are often corrupted, and how they leverage that power to weaponize it against the masses.
I’ve worked at organizations that have been grassroots but also grasstops, trying to restructure power, not only in Tennessee, but this country — whether that’s wealth inequity and redistributing wealth and the way we pay taxes — and holding corporations and the wealthy accountable.
What made me decide to run for office [is] oftentimes I get really pissed off to be quite frank. I participated and helped organize The Tennessee Three protest in April of 2023. Knowing that I’m part of this long political trajectory of the state of Tennessee, I felt the state legislature would be an excellent place for me to organize. So I ended up running for office in 2023 and decided to run for Congress in 2025 because of the passage of the “Big Ugly Bill.”
Oftentimes it’s either legislation or those in power that upset me, and I decided to run for office to hold them accountable.
Talk about what you’ve learned through canvassing, which I believe is a big part of how you like to campaign. What is meaningful about that kind of one-on-one engagement?
Well, for me, the granular, the small is indicative of the large. And so the granular interaction with voters and those most impacted by the issues of which I’m legislating and or running on provides insight as to how people are thinking about really complex issues. You also learn a lot from folks as to the plurality of their experiences and the complex feelings and thoughts they have about combative issues, especially in Tennessee. It’s also a tactic when it comes to fighting misinformation and disinformation. You can have a conversation about what is real, what is not real at the door.
But for me, I love learning, and I love being out with people. That’s where I pull a lot of experiences that inform my legislation and the way I organize.
The Contributor is essentially focused on giving people we serve a voice. When it comes to big policy decisions, who do you see is rarely invited to the table? What can we do about it?
I’m guilty of this too. I mean, I try to do my best. With my legislative portfolio and as a social worker, my values [are] to [be responsive to] some of the most impacted. But does that mean that I have a focus group with unhoused people? I’m deeply connected to my community and my constituents, but I also represent a very privileged white district. And so for me, my legislation is about using the positionality of my privileged district to fight for and organize around legislation that would ensure that those that are most impacted feel the benefits first.
However, I do think that more elected officials need to either meet with groups like the unhoused throughout their tenure as they’re crafting or passing legislation to ensure that this is truly what the community wants. That was a lesson learned for me. During social work graduate school, my first practicum was at a transitional housing center for homeless youth. I remember I was very flustered because a lot of the youth in the facility would fight me on things that I thought they wanted. I felt like they needed X, Y, and Z when really, they didn’t need that at all. For me, that was an enlightening experience as to, “Is this truly what the community needs? Is this what they want? Is this in their best interest?” As a social worker you have to honor the self-determination of these populations before inserting your own bias.
You’ve done social work, been in activism, served in politics and been involved across many parts of the community. When it comes to housing, what do you think is missing from the conversation across the board?
I wrote a Substack about this with the title, The World Isn’t Ending … Our Old Systems Are. I see that every day with the homelessness crisis in our city and state, and the response to providing care or the bastardized version of providing care is criminalization.
It’s a deeply diseased society that decides to criminalize just existing over providing care to people who have had the most adverse experiences in their lives that have led them to be unhoused. I think we’re seeing just the utter rupture of a system in real time that is not functional and not working for most people.
The scam in this country is that you think that you’re closer to being a billionaire than you are being unhoused. I think that is just egregious on all fronts. I’m on the steering committee for Shelter Court, which seeks to reroute those that are unhoused out of the criminal justice system when they are cited for being unhoused downtown. I’ve learned a lot as to how dysfunctional the current systems are and where there needs to be more intervention to make things better.
What can be done to get more people into affordable housing from the seats you’ve been in? Who would you like to see doing more?
Housing advocates have taught me a lot about the crisis we’re experiencing, and I have understood it as there’s three S’s: supply, subsidize and stabilize.
We need more stabilization when it comes to the market. I filed a bill with Senator Charlane Oliver, it’s actually her bill, to ban private equity from buying single-family homes. So how do we stabilize the market and ensure that these corporations aren’t buying up apartments that could be released for affordable housing.
The supply: obviously we need more units. There’s not enough Section 8 or place-based vouchers in the city of Nashville. And especially with federal funding cuts, is there more money going to the Barnes Fund? Where is that money coming from? Especially in a state that has eroded our corporate tax base and [where] they’re saying that there’s not enough money to provide housing to folks. So that’s a problem.
The unhoused ecosystem that provides not only direct service to those that are unhoused, but also advocates for them … especially in downtown Nashville, there should be more collaboration. I’ve identified a lot of gaps in which there’s just not enough resources. Like, are there enough outreach coordinators? Who’s doing that outreach? I think we’re at an impasse right now where the conditions are going to continue to deteriorate. And so, how do we come together, fix the issues, and then move forward with a better agenda?
You’ve been focused on rural policy issues. When it comes to housing, do you hear from rural policy makers about the lack of affordable housing or the increase in families that can no longer pay for their basic needs, or is it still an issue more discussed in urban areas like Nashville?
This is an issue that is expansive across the state and touches every county in the state of Tennessee. Rural communities are dealing with that compounded housing crisis as well. The general consensus I have heard from lawmakers and local officials in these rural communities is that they’re seeing unparalleled homelessness in their own counties, and that they are fighting the same issues that their urban counterparts are.
A lot of that has to do with state preemption. The state of Tennessee often neuters a lot of policies that cities might want to put forward to ensure affordable and attainable housing for its residents. But I am seeing more [calls for solutions]. For example, the libertarian think tank the Beacon Center has found itself in the middle of the attainable housing crisis and coming up with proactive solutions that often – some of them – are good ideas. And so, I think we’re seeing a broadened coalition because the calls are coming from both rural and urban communities.
Will affordable housing and other issues like that, especially when they affect rural counties, lend themselves to more bipartisanship to address them?
We saw that embodied in the bipartisan support for Senator Charlane Oliver’s hedge fund bills. Multiple Republicans signed on to it. Unfortunately, the sentiment at the Tennessee Legislature is that if we don’t acknowledge it’s a problem, then it doesn’t exist. That can be extrapolated to a lot of different agencies and issues we’re facing in the state. If they acknowledge that there was a problem, they would have to address it.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any kind of transformative legislation that would either increase the supply or support the stabilization and/or subsidization of housing in the state of Tennessee. And it’s just sad.
Following up on the Charlane Oliver’s bill, which was not taken up in the House. We consequently saw infighting within the Democratic Party over this bill, even though it passed with bipartisan support in the Senate. Is there a problem in the Democratic Party? Is this an example of how Democrats operate?
I think it’s less interpersonal and more an indictment on the role of corporate money in democratic politics. At this juncture in Tennessee history, I’m one of the first kind of realm of Democratic legislators that have said no to corporate PAC money, and that’s a very new phenomenon as of the last 10 years. So those that are fighting against the issues and fighting with either big insurance or big equity … they are compromised by taking corporate PAC money. That has always been a core tenet of my organizing ethos and holding those accountable [includes] the acknowledgement of the role corporate money plays in democratic politics and how to extract that so that our politicians are not compromised.
You are speaking at The Contributor’s annual fundraising event on Thursday, April 30. Is there a preliminary message you would like to share with our Contributor readers?
I quote Rebecca Solnit a lot, and she says that this is an era of great nightmares and transformation. And for our unhoused community, they are on the receiving end of the most punitive and reprehensible policy decisions from a body that thinks that homelessness can be solved by jails.
I think your greatest revenge on the system is surviving. And I do believe that the pendulum will swing in the next few years. I hope that we will look back at this moment and understand that it could have been prevented and also that we legislate so it doesn’t happen again.