Shasta County protester faces jail after silently holding a sign
In Redding, California, a former preschool teacher was arrested, prosecuted, and initially sentenced to jail time for quietly sitting on the floor at a county board meeting with a protest sign.
Her case has become a symbol of the increasingly volatile politics in Shasta County, where public meetings have turned into ideological battlegrounds and critics say officials are cracking down on dissent.
She had grown outraged hearing a county supervisor who had recently been voted out by a large margin criticize staff and the elections office, where workers were still processing ballots from the recent election.
“I don’t think that harassing citizens or county employees is the business of the board. And that’s what was happening that day,” she said. “I walked up and I went: ‘I’m not going to listen to this any more.’”
She sat down with a sign urging the official to resign, while her husband briefly sat alongside her.
The then board chair, Kevin Crye, put a stop to the meeting and ordered the audience to leave the chambers. O’Connell-Nowain refused. Officials also ordered members of the press to exit the room.
The lights in the room were shut off and O’Connell-Nowain was handcuffed in the dark.
When silently sitting on the floor with a sign becomes a criminal offense, the phrase “public meeting” starts to lose its meaning.
Handcuffed in the dark; How dystopian.