NAACP stages sit-in at Jeff Sessions’ office to protest of his nomination as Attorney General

Jan 3, 2017

Luther Vandross was outed as gay after his death.

Donald Trump wants Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, and the NAACP isn’t having it.

Tuesday, national NAACP President Cornell Brooks and Alabama NAACP President Bernard Simelton led a sit in at the Alabama senator’s Mobile office. Participants refused to leave until Sessions withdraws from consideration as Trump’s attorney general or the group gets arrested.

“This is not some kind of civic game,” Brooks insisted in an interview. He also encouraged their supporters to “also engage in thoughtful civil disobedience.”

The building manager has requested that we leave. And the police have just arrived. We are about to be arrested. @NAACP

— Rev. & Prof. Cornell William Brooks (@CornellWBrooks) January 4, 2017

The @NAACP & @AlabamaNAACP are occupying the Mobile office of @jeffsessions–untill he withdraws as a AG nominee or we're arrested.@tvonetv pic.twitter.com/7uceDDpz1Y

— Rev. & Prof. Cornell William Brooks (@CornellWBrooks) January 3, 2017

“As a matter of conscience, the NAACP has chosen not to remain silent on this critical matter,” Birmingham NAACP head Hezekiah Johnson said outside Sessions’ Senate office in Birmingham.

“Our main concern is centered around the reality of voter suppression. We have found no evidence of his ability, past or present, to be impartial and unbiased as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, especially in the areas of civil rights, voting rights and equal protection under the law.”

However, Sessions’ supporters insist he was the victim of a smear campaign in the 1980s whose sole purpose was to derail his nomination. They also point out that Sessions successfully sought the death penalty against KKK member Henry Francis Hays in the murder of a black Alabama man.

In a statement to CNN, Sessions spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said he “has dedicated his career to upholding the rule of law, ensuring public safety and prosecuting government corruption.”

“Many African-American leaders who’ve known him for decades attest to this and have welcomed his nomination to be the next Attorney General. These false portrayals of Senator Sessions will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited,” she said.

As the debate about the senator’s impartiality rages on, demonstrations were also staged in Montgomery, Dothan, and Huntsville.

“Despite 30 years of our nation moving forward on inclusion and against hate, Jeff Sessions has failed to change his ways,” said Simelton. “He’s been a threat to desegregation and the Voting Rights Act and remains a threat to all of our civil rights, including the right to live without the fear of police brutality.”

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