With employees heading home after the office closed at 5 p.m., sixteen residents rallied outside the building in a show of solidarity with public sector workers in Wisconsin who are embroiled in a conflict with conservative Governor Scott Walker.
"Unions help everybody to have better working conditions," said Ruth Mary Weston, who is self-employed doing home repairs. "I think the basic problem is people have been convinced to look at the union as a bad thing."
Other demonstrators spoke about the importance of unions and negative backlash towards them as well.
"Last time there was talk of starting a union (at my job) they laid four people off," said plumber Kent Cline. "North Carolina is built on the back of taking advantage of working people."
Bill Burgess used to be a union member at Guilford Dairy in Greensboro where he said there was a successful strike in 1965 for better pay and a shorter work week. He said there is corruption in unions but similar to how there is in most social organizations including churches and politics.
"I support education. We can't' put a price on education," Burgess said when asked why he was attending. "I'll be gone before long but if we don't look out for our children and grandchildren, what can we do?"
Two of the demonstrators were Guilford College students and two were A&T students.
"If we don't have good teachers, how are we going to have leaders?" asked Kristin James, a senior speech communications major at A&T who said she hoped to be a teacher one day.
After everyone stood around for a while, Guilford student Tim Leisman, who brought the only sign to the rally, suggested they march and chant. Everyone agreed, and they walked towards the intersection of Eugene and W. Friendly and then back to the starting point. Chanting "join the team, defend the dream," and "the people united will never be defeated," they walked in groups of two and three slowly down the sidewalk with the students in the lead.
Two of the demonstrators refused to give their names because their jobs would not be happy they were there. One said she worked as a Head Start teacher, and the other was a teacher for 30 years and a member of a union.
"Teachers are being vilified for things that are totally not their fault," said the Head Start teacher, who moved to Greensboro from Wisconsin 30 years ago. "I've been keeping up with what's going on there... it's becoming like a police state."
When asked what would happen if proposed budget cuts like the ones in Wisconsin passed throughout the country, the veteran teacher said, "You know what? I think there's a possibility of a revolution if people go hungry."
Greensboro resident and mother Hazel Parrish lost her job recently and has had difficulty paying to keep her son in school. She said she was there to support teachers and stand against the inequalities in the education system.
"I have a child at Guilford College and they want you to still pay exactly the same as you used to (before losing your job)," Parrish said.
Starting Feb. 11, she has been sending a certified letter to President Obama every three days explaining how her son was forced to transfer to Guilford because it was cheaper and now may have to drop out because of her job loss and growing debt.
"He's going to be in worse debt than I am (if he stays in school)," Parrish said.
Attendees seemed to have all received an email from Moveon.org to attend the event, but nobody from the organization was present. At the end of the event, demonstrators exchanged contact information with each other and a Facebook group had been set up before the end of the day.
A police officer showed up at the end and asked them not to block the sidewalk. As most people walked to their cars to head home, a few attendees engaged the officer in a conversation about unions. After prefacing his opinion by saying he wasn't really supposed to share it, he said he supported the right of private sector workers to organize but felt public employees should not be allowed to.
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