A Mt. Shasta Mall security guard asks Jenny O’Connell-Nowain not to write on the sidewalk with chalk in front of Kevin Crye’s business, Ninja Coalition, on May 12, 2025. Demonstrators were there to protest Crye’s role in appointing Clint Curtis as the next Shasta County clerk and registrar of voters. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
A Redding peace-loving protester has been ordered to appear before a judge in Shasta County Superior Court.
Seven months after Jenny O’Connell-Nowain interrupted a Board of Supervisors meeting with a peaceful sit-down protest, the District Attorney’s Office has charged her with two criminal counts.
O’Connell-Nowain is being accused in the disturbance of a public meeting and resisting, delaying or obstructing a peace officer, both misdemeanors, according to spokeswoman Briona Sisneros of the DA’s office.
“We mailed her a letter on June 9, 2025, advising her of the charges that have been filed and that she has 15 days to contact the court to schedule an arraignment date,” Sisneros said in an email to A News Cafe.
A longtime critic of the Board of Supervisors’ far-right majority, the 41-year-old woman spoke in an interview this week about her pacifist beliefs and took a defiant stand about her upcoming court proceedings. She also described a previously undisclosed injury she suffered during her first sit-in last summer.
O’Connell-Nowain said she has contacted the court after receiving the letter and her arraignment has been set for 8:30 a.m. July 11 before Judge Jody Burgess.
“If you wish to support me, then come,” O’Connell-Nowain said in a public Facebook post. “Send your kindness, your well wishes. Whatever you do, know it will work out.”
In the interview this week, O’Connell-Nowain said she’s not looking to cause any court intimidation with her post. Instead she seeks to have sympathizers present at her arraignment as opposed to detractors that she always sees in the board chambers.
“I just need some friendly faces,” she said.
What led to the filing
The charges stem from the Nov. 7, 2024, nighttime board meeting when the Redding woman stepped to the front of the supervisors’ chambers, holding a sign that read, “Patrick Jones resign.”
After Board Chairman Kevin Crye told O’Connell-Nowain to sit down, which she did, he stated: “Here’s what we’re going to do. People didn’t get enough attention as kids so we’re going to recess for five minutes.”
She sat on the floor to show support for since-fired Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut while holding another sign that read, “Joanna is the true patriot.”
The public was told to clear the room and, initially, O’Connell-Nowain’s husband, Benjamin, sat next to her before he left to check on their son.
Refusing to budge, O’Connell-Nowain was handcuffed behind her back and slowly escorted away from the now-darkened room by two sheriff’s deputies.
“O’Connell-Nowain was given numerous orders to exit the chambers but would not comply,” the sheriff’s office stated at the time. “(She) was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail on charges of 403 PC Disturbing a Public Meeting.”
This was also the meeting when Supervisor Patrick Jones – a short-timer with two months left in office – renewed his complaint over a controversial $1.5 million grant the Shasta County Elections Office previously received from the nonpartisan Center for Tech and Civic Life organization backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
During earlier public comments, O’Connell-Nowain had displayed a third sign that said, “Patrick Jones sits on a throne of lies.”
(On a side note, O’Connell-Nowain wasn’t the only one forcibly removed from the board chambers that night. Members of the media were ordered out and an Ardent security guard also demanded that A News Cafe publisher Doni Chamberlain leave. He body-blocked Chamberlain to stop her from taking a Facebook Live video of the disturbance. After physically being forced back, a sheriff’s deputy grabbed her arms and pushed her into the foyer, quickly shutting the door behind her.)
In another aside, the tense meeting saw the appearance of nine men from a local militia who stood at the back wall in a menacing tone.
A variety of male militia members showed up and lined the back wall during Thursday’s Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting. Photo source: Facebook.
Not her first rodeo
Jenny O’Connell-Nowain raises her fist for spectators watching from the lobby behind locked doors, waiting for the July 23, 2024 Board of Supervisors meeting to resume.
This wasn’t the first time O’Connell-Nowain staged a board sit-in. Her first act of civil disobedience occurred July 23, 2024, when she only received a written citation.
“The first one I wasn’t arrested for. The second one I was,” O’Connell-Nowain explained.
She said the citation for her first demonstration eventually was dropped.
Back in July, she sat with a pink cane in her lap after Jones berated her husband as Benjamin Nowain was being considered for a post on the Shasta County Elections Commission.
District 2 Supervisor Tim Garman and his Elections Commission nominee Benjamin Nowain pose for a photo before Garman’s endorsement of Nowain was rejected by the board majority.
In response, O’Connell-Nowain refused Jones’ orders to leave the aisle and deputies carried her limp body out of the room.
Looking back this week, the 5-foot-3, 125-pound protester joked that those “guys need more exercise. I’m not that heavy. It took three guys to carry me and a guy to carry my shoe.”
“The very first (protest) was Patrick Jones stating the reason he wouldn’t pick my husband was because he was saying that Benj was simply there to destroy the commission, which would be impossible anyway because he’s (one vote),” she said.
O’Connell-Nowain said she would’ve left that time without further incident had Jones apologized. She said Jones made untrue statements to justify rejecting her husband’s appointment.
A News Cafe reported at the time that O’Connell-Nowain said she also stayed to expose “the constant lies and corruption coming from the board majority, meeting after meeting, without any corrections or consequences.”
In the end, Nowain didn’t receive a majority board vote and didn’t get the seat on the elections panel.
In a new revelation, O’Connell-Nowain said that at the time she was picked up and removed from the board chambers, she was recovering from being hit by a car on July 5. She said that after the board incident, she required emergency surgery immediately afterward for something else.
“They carried out an extraordinarily disabled human being. Not only do I have epilepsy but I was very injured when they carried me out. Something that people don’t know is that’s how I discovered that I had a cervical cyst. They burst it when they picked me up,” she said. “I have medical records to prove it so that’s no fun.”
Double standard
O’Connell-Nowain’s arrest in November and subsequent charges contrast with the nonchalant board treatment that another sit-down protester received two months later.
Dawn Ashmun walked from the audience to the floor in front of the five supervisors and sat cross-legged because she disagreed with the vote reappointing Crye as board chairman.
Dawn Ashmun sits in front of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors on Jan. 7, 2025, to protest Kevin Crye’s reappointment as board chairman. Ashmun was allowed to sit and wasn’t arrested, unlike Jenny O’Connell-Nowain who was arrested for her sit-in protest two months earlier. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
This time, on Jan. 7, County Counsel Joseph Larmour told the board Ashmun wasn’t upsetting the meeting and allowed her to stay. A short time later, she got up and moved at Crye’s request because the board wanted to take a group photo in front of the dais.
The difference? Apparently, Ashmun didn’t hold a sign.
“This is why I decided Shasta County doesn’t like signs because if you sit there without a sign, you’re not arrested. But if you have a sign, you’re done, like, that’s it,” O’Connell-Nowain said this week.
“I think that’s the difference and I joke about it … the only difference is, is that I had a sign and she didn’t,” O’Connell-Nowain said.
Looking back, she reasons that she wasn’t the one who broke up the November meeting in the first place.
“The meeting was disturbed, but it wasn’t by me. It was by them stopping it,” she said.
“They asked me to leave and I didn’t. But it was at recess, not adjourned. And when their meeting is at recess, it is perfectly legal to stay there,” she added.
Jenny O’Connell-Nowain, far left, holds a sign that says, “Please Mr. Ninja have fair treatment for public servants.” Demonstrators protested outside Kevin Crye’s business, Ninja Coalition, in May over the Board of Supervisor chairman’s role in appointing Clint Curtis as the next Shasta County clerk and registrar of voters. At far right is her husband, Benjamin Nowain. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
Gandhi role model
The Redding woman told A News Cafe in a July 24, 2024, article that since the age of 13, she’s considered Mahatma Gandhi a role model for his non-violent protests against British rule in India. She continues to look up to Gandhi for his stands on civil rights and justice.
Like Gandhi, O’Connell-Nowain remains rebellious in the face of the county’s prosecution. She vows not to pay a fine as part of any punishment she might receive.
“They will not make money off me. I will refuse to pay a fine,” she said. “Gandhi was asked to pay a fine and he was like, ‘Respectfully, I refuse to pay the fine.’”
“If they wish to punish me, they can punish me by sending me to jail,” she said.
As to any speculation about community service, O’Connell-Nowain referred to seizures she occasionally suffers.
“I’m a very uncontrolled epileptic. I mean, would you really want me on the side of the road in like 100-something-degree heat picking up trash? That’s not a good idea. It’s just not. That’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth for everyone involved,” she said.
O’Connell-Nowain is hoping to have a public defender appointed when her case is called. She vows not to take a plea bargain for a lesser sentence.
“I’m not going to plea out because that is an admission of guilt. And what am I guilty of? I’m not guilty of anything. I didn’t break a law,” she told A News Cafe.
She recently posted a video on her Facebook page of her documenting the massive June 14 “No Kings” rally in Redding.
She wore a Pikachu costume, telling fellow protesters that the character is a symbol of anti-fascism in Turkey. In that country, she explained demonstrators will dress as a fluffy Pikachu to absorb rubber bullets instead of protesters being struck by police.
In the video, she reiterated her innocence and refusal to pay a penalty, opting to suffer the consequences.
“I will not give the county money for falsely arresting me,” she said. “They think they can make money off me. I will go to jail.”
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