Members of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition found out Wednesday that the state Senate is going to be tougher when it comes to dealing with protesters.
Several GSIW members, who are part of the new Public Schools First NC group, attended today's Senate Education Committee to speak out against S337, the bill that would change how charter schools were governed.
Sen. Dan Soucheck, the committee co-chairman, said they weren't going to hear from the public today because they had public comment at last week's meeting. He said he wanted to hear from the committee members today.
In protest, the GSIW members put scarves around their faces. They left the meeting room after the sergeant-at-arms, with handcuffs out, approached them.
UPDATE
Click here for the Progressive Pulse blog post from the liberal N.C. Policy Watch about what happened. Patty Williams says in the blog post that the protesters were threatened with arrest.
Jeff Weaver, chief of the N.C. General Assembly Police, said the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms asked the scarved protesters to sit down. He said that when they refused, the sergeant-at-arms asked them to leave. When they refused to leave, Weaver said his officers were called in to tell them to leave or else they would be arrested. Weaver said three adults and two kids were escorted out of the building by his officers.
The group says it did refuse the request to sit down. But it denies that it refused the initial request to leave.
The Insider is reporting that Weaver said the protesters could have been charged with violating a state law that prohibits people from wearing masks or hoods to disguise their identities on state property.