BOSTON (SHNS) – Climate activists staged a sit-in in the lobby of Gov. Maura Healey’s office as they attempted to “disrupt business as usual in the Massachusetts State House” as a way to pressure Healey to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Extinction Rebellion Boston, a group that has previously held demonstrations around the State House and outside of former Gov. Charlie Baker’s Swampscott home, said that its members were engaging in “nonviolent mass civil disobedience” Thursday.

More than a dozen activists with signs were seated on the floor of the lobby to Room 360 (the governor’s suite) around 3:30 p.m. Thursday while State Police blocked the entrance to any additional protestors. Roughly two dozen people were gathered outside the executive suite with signs in hand, chanting phrases such as “No Springfield pipeline” and “No new gas hookups.”

The governor is in Washington, D.C. until Sunday participating National Governors Association and White House events. On Twitter, the group said its members “have blocked the @MassGovernor office and refuse to leave.”

In similar situations in past years, State Police have allowed protestors to stay until the State House closes to the public, and then have arrested those who refuse to leave on their own. “Despite decades of scientists’ warnings about the impending climate breakdown and exhausting all the conventional methods of changemaking, nothing has worked to bring down greenhouse gas emissions to levels in accordance with keeping global heating under tipping-point thresholds,” the group said in a press release. “Extinction Rebellion is engaging in civil disobedience to demand that Governor Healey and Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer take action to stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure, including halting projects currently in development.”

Healey’s campaign last year said that her goals include achieving 100 percent clean electricity supply by 2030 and electrifying public transportation with clean power by 2040. Her campaign website said that Healey “will work to get rid of the unnecessary fossil fuel infrastructure that plagues so many overburdened communities,” and that she “will build upon Massachusetts’ award-winning energy efficiency programs by ending fossil fuel incentives.”

The governor has appointed the state’s first climate chief and just two weeks ago stood outside her office in solidarity with supportive climate activists and Mothers Out Front volunteers.