RALEIGH — Days after persuading a Superior Court judge to suspend some new rules for the N.C. Legislative Building, protesters were back on Monday, being cited by police and having their hands bound with plastic ties for raising their voices against a budget and Republican-controlled agenda they describe as extremist.
Late Monday afternoon the Moral Monday protesters were back at the building, where they clapped, sang, chanted and jumped up and down to bring attention for their cause. General Assembly police asked their leader, the Rev. William Barber J. Barber Jr., to leave the second floor minutes after the protesters gathered outside the doors to the legislative chambers after 5 p.m.
By 7:20 p.m. General Assembly police had removed everyone from the second floor rotunda. They used plastic cuffs on the 19 demonstrators who stayed despite orders.
Earlier, officers told state NAACP leader Barber that a judges order prohibited him from being on the second floor, though he and his lawyers disagreed.
Barber left, but other protesters stayed and continued singing.
They think this is me, but but theyre going to find out its the people, he said.
Lt. Marvin Brock walked around the rotunda with a bullhorn at about 6:50 p.m., telling anyone who was in violation of a lawful court order that they had to leave the building.
Some of the demonstrators were confused by the command. They asked bystanders what the lieutenant meant.
Brock was referring to protesters arrested last year who were told they could not return to the second floor. The crowd thinned some, but dozens remained, singing, chanting and speaking out about their varied concerns.
Brock said he had received multiple complaints about the noise, but did not know specifically who had lodged them.
Those arrested were ushered away as the State Senate in their chambers discussed SB 793, which makes changes to charter school law including making their meetings subject to open meetings and public records law.
The demonstration was part of the Moral Monday movement that resulted in 945 arrests last year and the arrest last month of 15 protesters who staged a sit-in inside the offices of N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis.
This week, the demonstrators continued their push for repeal of laws and policies passed in 2013 that scaled back unemployment benefits, rejected federal Medicaid expansion, directed more public school money to private school vouchers and phased out teacher tenure and shifted pay toward performance-based policies.
Though the Moral Monday demonstrations last year used a similar process each week to protest a different issue, the rallies this year have been different each week.
On the first Monday after the General Assembly opened for its short session to deal with budget issues, reacted to new building rules.
In early May, the legislators amended rules for the Legislative complex so that anybody making a noise loud enough to impair others ability to conduct a conversation in a normal tone of voice while in the general vicinity could be creating a disturbance.
Singing, clapping, shouting, playing instruments or using equipment to amplify sound also were listed as examples of disturbing behavior that could lead to arrest.
Fox temporarily suspended that rule on Friday, describing it as overly broad.
Fox also temporarily suspended a rule allowing the confiscation and punishment of somebody with a sign that is used to disturb or used in a manner that will imminently disturb.
And Fox criticized and temporarily suspended a rule that allows for the arrest of anybody creating any impediment to others free movement around the grounds. The judge noted that people sometimes walk three abreast on a sidewalk, blocking others, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Republican leaders had expressed broad support for the rules before the court hearing on Friday.
The core legal issue, whether they pass constitutional muster, has not been fully heard in the courts. But because the new rules posed the possibility of arrest for protesters, Fox temporarily suspended them until June 23.
Seeking conversations with leaders
The NAACP and five plaintiffs have challenged the measures as vague, too broad and unconstitutional attempts to quiet the protesters who rallied most Mondays last year while the General Assembly was in session.
This year, the protesters have tried different tactics.
During the first big rally in May, the demonstrators put tape across their mouths and walked quietly through the Legislative Building to draw attention to the new rules.
On three occasions since then, the demonstrators have tried to meet with Republican leaders.
They sat in protest in the offices of Tillis, the House speaker whos making a run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Kay Hagan, a Democrat seeking a second term in national office.
Other protesters held a sit-in at the Capitol after failing to win a meeting with Gov. Pat McCrory, who was not in his office that day.
Last week, a group of teachers were considering a sit-in at the offices of N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, but the 61-year-old lawyer from Eden met with the protesters a couple of hours after they knocked on his closed doors.
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