NAACP President Williams Brooks Among 30 People Arrested For Sit-In Against Sessions

NAACP President and CEO Cornell Williams Brooks and 10 other protestors were arrested following a staged sit-in outside of the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, who is Donald Trump's choice for attorney general.

The sit-in occurred at Sessions' office in Mobile, Alabama, this past Monday. In a report from Local 15 the demonstration also included a march and rally, in which protestors were planned to ask Sessions to withdraw his name from consideration for the position.

A statement from the organizers was released prior to the demonstration:

"This Monday, Jan. 30, the NAACP will march in Mobile, Ala., to the office of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and ask him to withdraw his name from nomination for the U.S. attorney general.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Sessions claimed that he’ll protect all Americans' rights. But his assurances couldn't erase the decades of his actions.

As attorney general, Sessions could undo years of progress. He could crack down on immigration, stop investigating police brutality, revoke the current DOJ policy letting states legalize marijuana, roll back the DOJ's enforcement of civil rights—and actively punish the people that civil rights laws and the DOJ are meant to protect: women, people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims and immigrants."

Following the arrests the NAACP tweeted that 30 people, which not only included Brooks but Bernard Simelton, president of the Alabama state chapter of the NAACP, had been charged with trespassing.

Brooks and other NAACP officials had staged a similar sit-in about four week ago at Sessions' office. The group's protests have been against Sessions, a conservative Republican who has opposed the Voting Rights Act, and also maintains other stances that people across the country consider problematic.

A prosecutor had just dropped all the trespassing charges against Brooks and other supporters that were arrested in the previous sit-in, prior to the follow-up sit-in done yesterday.