Politics

NAACP Occupies Sessions Office Demanding Withdrawal From AG Nomination

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
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The NAACP’s Alabama chapter stormed the Mobile office of Republican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions Tuesday demanding he withdraw as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.

NAACP President Cornell Brooks stated the organization has no plans to leave the senator’s office until Sessions “withdraws as AG nominee or we’re arrested.”

Brooks released a statement following the tweet of their sit-in protest at Sessions’ office saying in part: “Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is among the worst people who could serve as our nation’s Attorney General.”

“His records on voting rights, criminal justice reform, and the civil rights we’ve fought for over the last century are unreliable at best,” he said. “He is actively hostile to protecting our voting rights, and has a record of racially offensive remarks so bad that he was denied a federal judgeship because of them.”

According to Brooks, the NAACP organized other demonstrations against Sessions in Birmingham, Montgomery, Dothan, and Huntsville to “protest his nomination and demand he withdraw from the confirmation process.”

Brooks went on to say:

“The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. That means they have the last word on police brutality and voter suppression — two issues Senator Sessions has refused to admit exist. Our lives truly hang in the balance.”

Sessions spokesperson Sarah Flores responded to the NAACP’s charges stating last week, “Jeff Sessions 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.”

Donald Watkins, an African-American civil rights attorney in Alabama and Sessions’ classmate at University of Alabama Law School, has defending the senator’s character. Watkins told The Washington Times in November, “Jeff was a conservative then, as he is now, but he was NOT a racist. … At the end of our conversation, I told Jeff that I had failed him and myself. I should have volunteered to stand by his side and tell the story of his true character at his confirmation hearing.”

Watkins added, “The fact that I did not rise on my own to defend Jeff’s good name and character haunted me for years. I promised Jeff that I would never stand idly by and allow another good and decent person endure a similar character assassination if it was within my power to stop it.”

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