Chanting protesters arrested at General Assembly

The North Carolina Poor People's Campaign, part of a national movement and in some ways a continuation of the "Moral Monday" movement in North Carolina, held a chanting, singing sit-in outside the the office suites of Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore. This was week two of a planned six-week campaign in the state.

Last week, protesters closed Jones Street outside the statehouse, and nearly 50 were cited.

Today most, if not all, of those arrested wore yellow armbands, signaling their willingness to be arrested. Others dispersed as police ordered, then stood aside and cheered those led out in plastic zip-ties, again much like the Moral Monday protests.

Group leader Ana Ilarraza Blackburn said the campaign wanted meetings with Moore, Berger and House Rules Chairman David Lewis, and that it had sent a letter of demands weeks ago. Some sat in the doorways outside of Moore's and Berger's offices Monday as General Assembly Police, Raleigh police and legislative sergeants-at-arms looked on. Other stood, sang, chanted and clapped.

Among other things, they chanted a page worth of demands, including: guaranteed annual incomes, full employment, fully funded welfare programs for the poor, free tuition to all public colleges and universities and Medicaid expansion as a bridge to taxpayer-funded universal health care.

"It's about priorities," Blackburn said. "We're the richest country in this world."

The group also wants last year's federal income tax reforms overturned, saying they're unfair to poor people, primarily benefiting the super-rich.

Rev. William Barber, the former head of the state NAACP and an organizer behind Moral Monday, is the national co-chair of this Poor People's Campaign, which is active in a number of states. Two of his sons attended Monday's protests at the statehouse.

The campaign takes its name from a movement begun in the late 1960s by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others.

General Assembly Chief of Police Martin Brock said the people arrested Monday were charged with second-degree trespassing after a noise complaint. Before the arrests, an officer on a bullhorn asked people to quiet down.

He was partly drowned out by the chants.

Those arrested were processed at the Wake County jail, Brock said.