The third annual "HK on J" rally will be held Saturday.

The rally, officially called Historic Thousands on Jones Street, will kick off with a march from Chavis Park in Raleigh to the legislature.

The state chapter of the NAACP and 86 other liberal advocacy groups sponsor the rally, which attracted 7,000 people last year.

The coalition has a 14-point agenda which includes more funding for historically black colleges, increased access to health care, public campaign financing and collective bargaining for state and local government workers.

The rally begins at 9:30 a.m.

Did the candidates dodge a question on collective bargaining?

Certainly, three of the four gubernatorial candidates at the NAACP debate Saturday managed to avoid saying whether they would repeal the ban on collective bargaining by state government workers, a key plank of the group's HK on J agenda.

But the question confused the issue from the start by mentioning both collective bargaining and the ongoing troubles at the Smithfield hog-processing plant in Tar Heel. That opened the door for the candidates.

Bob Orr said that he would improve working conditions so that people do not need to unionize. Beverly Perdue said she would establish a grievance commission for workers. And Richard Moore said he would only give incentives to companies with ironclad promises of jobs.

Only longshot candidate Dennis Nielsen answered the question, but his answer was even more confusing. He started and ended by saying workers should have collective bargaining rights, but in between he made a curious statement.

"I do not believe public employees should be able to strike or negotiate wages," he said.

So, state workers can form a union, but it can't do anything unionlike.

After the jump, the wording of the question.

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The questions at tomorrow's debate will come from the NAACP's goals.

The 14-point HK on J agenda—which stands for Historic Thousands on Jones Street—calls for good schools, better health care, collective bargaining for public employees, reform of mandatory sentencing laws and an end to the Iraq war, among other things. 

The forum will be moderated by Gerald Owens from WRAL. It will be televised on stations in the Triangle and in Charlotte and Wilmington. Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, state Treasurer Richard Moore, former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr and retired Air Force colonel Dennis Nielsen will participate.

The candidates will answer as many as seven questions each. 

The forum will be held at 3 p.m. at the Historic Union Baptist Church in Durham at the winter session of the NAACP. It is the first time the group has sponsored a debate. 

Rev. Dr. William Barber II knows how to take inconvenience in stride.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of the legislative building, the head of the state chapter of the NAACP was speaking about its 14-point legislative agenda and recent hate crimes.

Just as he was winding up, a Raleigh fire truck and an ambulance came screaming up.

The blaring sirens all but ruined most of the audio and videotape that was being recorded and might have thrown some hardened public speakers for a loop. Instead, Barber made it his closer:

"Just like that fire truck is sounding an alarm, we too today are sounding an alarm that North Carolina cannot be quiet," he said.

A paramedic said someone at the General Assembly had fainted.