Rev. Rob Stephens of the Poor People’s Campaign on SB 382, the new GOP power grab bill

NC Newsline

The weeks following last month’s election have been anything but quiet in the state legislature. As has become a kind of perverse post-election tradition when Democrats manage to win a few statewide offices or narrow the margin in the state House and Senate, Republican legislative leaders are using a lame duck session to ram through legislation designed to seize more power and effect a significant reorganization of state government.

The power grab, which features a 131-page bill with dozens of law changes that was unveiled and passed in just a few hours, was so extreme that it attracted scores of protesters to the Legislative Building to bear witness and voice their outrage, and earlier, NC Newsline caught up with one of the protest leaders, a chief organizer for the Poor People’s Campaign of North Carolina and its sibling organization, Repairers of the Breach, the Rev. Rob Stephens.