news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Five people who were arrested while protesting at a City Council meeting in May pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree trespassing in Guilford County District Court.

The defendants were Cherell Brown, Wesley Morris, Clarence Bradley Hunt II, Carlyle Phillips and Jonathan Johnson.

District Court Judge Wendy Enochs entered a prayer for judgment continued, which means there is no conviction on record.

The five were represented by Becky Jaffe, a staff attorney for the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The protesters, from a group called the Spirit of the Sit-In Movement Initiative, took over the council dais during a break in the May 4 council meeting. The group was protesting what they called a “subculture of corruption” in the police department.

The protesters did not disperse as requested and were arrested. They were each charged with one count of trespassing.

More than 30 community leaders and friends attended the trial, wrote the Rev. Nelson Johnson in a statement Monday.

The presence of the supporters was "both encouraging and reaffirming," said Brown, one of the five protesters, in the statement.

"The consequences we face in response to our act of civil disobedience pales in comparison to the injustices that our community, our family, is facing everyday due to a fragmented and corrupt system,” she said.