While public life in the US seemed to slowly return to normal after the pandemic and Joe Biden’s election, the political upheaval in Shasta county was only just beginning. Since an ultra-conservative majority gained power, it has battled the state over Covid and second amendment policies and attempted to do away with voting machines and replace them with a system based on hand-counting paper ballots. Officials here have promoted misinformation about vaccines and elections, hired an election skeptic to serve as the county’s top voting official and appointed a local hydroponics store owner, who was also a conservative activist, to a county board overseeing mosquito control, rather than an epidemiologist and former public health director.
As the county politicized, so did O’Connell-Nowain and her husband, Benjamin Nowain. They started attending board of supervisor meetings, regularly speaking out in an effort to fight back against what they viewed as the extremism that had taken root in politics, and joined a growing movement of residents frustrated by the direction the county was taking.
Fuck Shasta County, particularly fuck Redding.
I spent 7 years of my childhood and 5 of my adulthood living in Redding CA. It is the most backward looking place I’ve ever lived, and I’ve lived all over in Northern California in my lifetime.
The place is full of retired white people and their meth addled adult children. The police are exactly what you’d imagine the typical ICE recruit is like, and on top of that they’re so bored and jaded that they harass anyone who appears to be even thinking about wandering outside the law, and that’s a generous statement.
Being there feels like you’ve been transported to the Midwest circa 1979 and if you mention this to anyone you will have given them a compliment in their perspective. The citizens are proud of their regressive beliefs, and shun any new ideas to the point of even banning construction of any buildings over 3 stories. It’s a freeway town so unless you work for the county or forest fire fighting, the service industry or low end retail (mall jobs at best) are your only options to make a living. Most young people leave out of high school, and the ones that stay are happy to contribute to the stagnation and regression that has now apparently earned them ‘international recognition’ that the article mentions.
I’m so glad I left when I did, before Trump and his politics became as galvanized and emboldened as it is today. Reading the story of this couple doesn’t shock me at all, just makes me really sad for people like them and the few that I know that still live in the area.