The Sacramento Bee reported under the headline, "A militia-backed recall ousted a California Republican. Will it embolden other extremists?"
The KQED (San Francisco, public radio) headline was "A Militia-Led Recall Is Targeting a Shasta County Supervisor – Who's a Republican."
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The Guardian headline was "California county on track to be run by militia-aligned group."
Then just today, the Washington Post weighed in with "How far-right militia groups found a foothold in deep-blue California."
The momentous word, of course, is "militia." We see "militia-aligned," "militia-backed," "militia-led" and "far-right militia groups." But these stories generally do little to dig down on the nature of the militia. What exactly is this militia? How big it? What has it done? How big a physical threat is it? I thought the best job in that regard is from this Los Angeles Times story from last summer, when the recall effort was initiated. That story's headline was "Threats, videos and a recall: A California militia fuels civic revolt in a red county"--so again the word militia was used.
I blogged about that story at the time, but now I want to highlight what the story told us about the militia in an effort to get a sense of how seriously it should be taken. LA Times journalists Hailey Branson-Potts and Anita Chabria describe Carlos Zapata, of the so-called Cottonwood militia (Cottonwood being the town where he lives, south of Redding, the seat of Shasta County) as a "high-profile militia member and a leader in a movement to recall a trio of Republican Shasta County supervisors who supported Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pandemic health orders."
The story describes how Zapata threw a drink at a man named Pinkey, a Black Lives Matter supporter, who had been "making political parody videos of Zapata."
Soon after the two saw each other, Zapata threw a drink at Pinkney, according to police. It escalated from there. That night, the BLM activist ended up with a black eye after two associates of Zapata allegedly assaulted him at the rear entrance of the restaurant while Zapata was present, according to police and interviews with people involved.
While the events of May 4 are disputed, the altercation involving Pinkney and Zapata has intensified tensions in this Northern California town. ... Shasta County residents [are] divided over the health risks posed by the pandemic, government’s power and the degree that armed citizenry should take matters into their own hands.
* * *
Speakers at supervisors’ meetings have repeatedly threatened violence, militia members have attended racial justice rallies carrying concealed weapons and opponents of the far right say they are increasingly afraid to speak out, fearing retribution.
Zapata has been at the center of this fray, becoming a literal “poster boy” for a media campaign that hopes to redirect the energies of Trump supporters into local politics, and spread civic revolt nationwide.
Zapata, a 42-year-old Marine Corps combat veteran, made his viral debut in August. At a Shasta County supervisors meeting, he warned of potential violence if elected officials did not drop pandemic health restrictions. “It’s not going to be peaceful much longer. ... Good citizens are going to turn into real concerned and revolutionary citizens real soon,” he warned.
Pinkney and his supporters say they’ve long cautioned that militia members could turn their threats into action, and are watching to see how authorities will now respond.
And here's more on the nature of the "militia."
South of Redding, residents formed the Cottonwood militia more than a decade ago when five local businesses in the town were robbed on five subsequent nights, according to one of the group’s founders and leaders, Woody Clendenen. It has since grown from 11 members to a sizeable political force, including Zapata, with an increasingly savvy media reach across Northern California and beyond.
Its members are well-known in the community, offering a scholarship each year, hosting a boys’ camp, and sometimes being called in lieu of the police, said Clendenen.
“It grew into almost kind of a political action committee,” said Clendenen, a Cottonwood barber and bit actor in Hollywood B-movies. Candidates for office would call and court militia members for support, he said. Before the pandemic, he said, “our fundraiser dinners, the sheriff and the supervisors come.”
* * *
During the pandemic, Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini made clear he would not enforce restrictions on businesses. Even so, the mandates became a rallying cry in Shasta and other counties statewide as “patriot” groups claimed their liberties were being trampled. Driven by that outrage, the Cottonwood militia has also backed efforts by an unaffiliated group to recall three conservative supervisors and replace them with like-minded “constitutionalists,” using videos to target elected leaders and “snitches” suspected of reporting businesses defying coronavirus restrictions.
In a video last year, Clendenen and Zapata issued a warning to those who informed on businesses defying health orders.
“Don’t think we are going to forget who you are because we are not going to. We know who you are,” Clendenen says in it, while he is seen sitting next to Zapata.
Zapata continues, saying his group is also collecting “intelligence.”
“We also have people on the streets. We know where you live. We know who your family is. We know your dog’s name,” Zapata says. “So if you think for one second that we are going to let you spy on us without us doing our due diligence and spying on you, you are absolutely wrong.”
* * *
“We’ve been accused of being insurrectionists and domestic terrorists, and calling for violence. No. All we’ve ever done is talk about the reality of, violence can happen if we fail,” Zapata said.
Critics say they are trying to have it both ways, claiming they are nonviolent even as they blast out incendiary messages around the recall and the pandemic.
Today's Washington Post story by Scott Wilson tells us this about the militia:
The far right is rising in the ranchland of Northern California, using special elections and veiled intimidation to spread political influence across a historically conservative region of this deeply liberal state.
The movement is rooted here in Shasta County and includes the support of a roughly decade-old militia.
* * *
What the movement will do with its increasing power remains unclear. But, just as it has across the country, its leaders have pushed against public health mandates and brought a sharp edge to once-civil local politics. Members, backed by the militia, have paid particular attention to Black activism, gun rights and rules preventing businesses from operating as they have wished. Homeless programs are also on the block.
The architect is Carlos Zapata, a retired Marine, militia member and restaurateur who raises bucking bulls on his ranch just outside this city, a hub of what locals refer to as “the north state.” Zapata filmed and podcast much of the recall campaign. He called his project “Red White and Blueprint,” a pointed invitation to neighboring conservative counties and others across the west to follow suit.
“This is a weird pie we’ve baked and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the flavor is,” Zapata said during a recent interview in his light-filled living room on his ranch about 10 miles east of this city. “But we’re going to keep documenting this and look to help others because all government for us right now is local.”
* * *
A frontier ethic prevails among many here, and that explains in part why the region is out of sync with the state’s prevailing strictness on gun control.Then there is this interesting factoid:
More than 12,000 residents of Shasta County, population 182,000, have conceal-carry permits. Local officials say that is among the highest proportions of any county in the state.
As for whether Zapata is peace-loving or not, journalist Wilson notes mixed signals:
“Right now we’re being peaceful,” Zapata told the board in August 2020, his first appearance in the chambers. “But it’s not going to be peaceful much longer.”
The comments made him the face of the movement, even though “Recall Shasta” emphasizes that the grass-roots work was done primarily by “moms and grandmoms.”
* * *
Last August, as an increasing number of Shasta residents were reporting businesses breaking state pandemic rules, Zapata appeared next to Woody Clendenen, who heads the local militia and who referred to those notifying authorities as “ratting” out their neighbors.
“Go move off down to San Francisco,” Clendenen said. “Or somewhere where your kind live because I don’t want you here.”
The story then repeats the language quoted in the Los Angeles Times story from the Zapata/Clendenen video--the one that warns they know where informants live, they know the names of informants' dogs. Wilson concludes:
The remarks, coming amid the recall effort, were chilling.
So, you be the judge: is the focus on "militia" in these stories' headlines sensationalizing? Or is this so-called militia in Shasta County--with perhaps 10 members--actually a threat? Are they all hat and no cattle, to use an old expression? or at least more hat than cattle?
And how should we think about what happened in Shasta County--metropolitan, though the surrounding area is often thought of as "rural"--in relation to the recall of three school board members in San Francisco a few weeks later? Is one more shocking than the other? Both arose in relation to pandemic restrictions and conditions, but are the underlying motivations of one recall more rational than the other? Is the underlying behavior of some of the recalled officials more problematic than others?
Two enlightening 2018 Los Angeles Times stories about Shasta County's politics are here and here.
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