Threats, videos and a recall: A California militia fuels civic revolt in a red county

REDDING, Calif. — It was a slow night in the trendy Market Street Blade and Barrel restaurant when line cook Nathan Pinkney, a budding comic and Black Lives Matter activist, spotted Carlos Zapata at the bar. He knew it meant trouble.

For weeks, he had been making political parody videos of Zapata, 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.

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. Known as the “second sunniest city in the U.S.,” Redding now feels to some like a tinderbox, with Shasta County residents 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