NAACP Occupies Jeff Sessions' Office In Alabama To Protest Attorney General Nomination

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WASHINGTON — The NAACP is staging a sit-in at Sen. Jeff Sessions' office in Mobile, Alabama, to protest his nomination as US attorney general, saying they will not leave until Sessions withdraws his nomination or the protesters are arrested.

NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, joined by activists from Alabama, held a press conference outside Sessions' office midday Tuesday before proceeding inside. Brooks tweeted a photo of himself and other protesters seated on the floor.

The NAACP has also been live-streaming the demonstration inside Sessions' office on Facebook. A woman who answered the phone at the Mobile office referred questions about the sit-in to Sessions' press office in Washington. A spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to a spokeswoman for the Mobile Police Department, no arrests have been made so far.

Sessions, a former federal and state prosecutor in Alabama and a US senator since 1997, is scheduled to appear for confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 10 and 11. Republicans announced on Tuesday that Sessions will no longer sit on the Judiciary Committee.

The NAACP is one of many civil rights groups that oppose Sessions as the next attorney general. Sessions' nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 failed after allegations surfaced that he made racist comments while he was a US attorney in Alabama. One of his former colleagues reported at the time that Sessions had called the NAACP “un-American.”

Sessions acknowledged making some of the comments at issue, but said he had been quoted out of context or that certain remarks — such as that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he learned its members used marijuana — were meant as a joke. He denied accusations of racism.

In a statement released in anticipation of Tuesday's protests, Brooks said that Sessions couldn't be “trusted” to enforce voting rights.

Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement that Sessions has “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.”

The NAACP held protest events on Tuesday at Sessions' fives offices in Alabama.

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