Fourteen teachers in North Carolina were arrested Wednesday night after sitting down in the middle of a street outside the State Capitol and refusing law enforcement’s calls to leave the area.
The teachers were arrested — after marching over two days to call for more education funding in the state budget — after they sat down in the middle of Morgan Street outside the Capitol, according to a report by WRAL News.
When they declined to leave the area, each was arrested and taken to the Wake County Detention Center and charged with impeding the flow of traffic and resisting, delaying or obstructing law enforcement officers. Photos and videos of the arrest were published on WRAL’s website.
The teachers’ demonstration was sparked by the decision by the House to allow charter schools to take over five failing public schools in the state.
It was dubbed the Students Deserve More March and Rally by the North Carolina Association of Educators and their Twitter feed showed pictures of their march along the way.
The NCAE called on people to contact Governor Pat McCrory and “ask him to meet our demands.” Those “demands” were to “expand Medicaid” and “use the budget surplus to fund public education.
“If the governor expands or fully funds public education and expands Medicaid, our students get what they need, their parents get what they need and it won’t be such a struggle,” said Carrol Olinger, a Cumberland County teacher.