Jan­u­ary 22nd From June 20^th to July 1^st, local­ly well-known jour­nal­ist and activist Will Par­rish lived 50 feet above ground in a wick drain “stitch­er” in the north­ern Lit­tle Lake Val­ley (ie, Willits Val­ley) wet­lands, where the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (Cal­Trans) is build­ing an unnec­es­sary and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive free­way bypass.

By putting his body inside the frame­work of this destruc­tive equip­ment, which is in the process of installing rough­ly 55,000 80-foot drainage tubes into the Lit­tle Lake wet­lands, Will blocked it from oper­at­ing and brought nation­wide atten­tion to the harm Cal­Trans is caus­ing the Lit­tle Lake Val­ley water­shed.  This harm includes destroy­ing the largest North­ern Cal­i­for­nia wet­lands area of any project in over 50 years.

As pun­ish­ment for Will’s more than 11 day stand on behalf of the Valley’s land and peo­ple, Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney David Eyster is charg­ing him with 16 mis­de­meanors (14 counts of “unlaw­ful entry” and two of “resist­ing arrest”), with a max­i­mum eight-year jail sen­tence.  He also wants Will to pay Cal­trans a mind-bog­gling $490,002 in resti­tu­tion. This is an unheard of move by a dis­trict attor­ney in Men­do­ci­no and Hum­boldt Coun­ties, which each have a rich tra­di­tion of strug­gle for social jus­tice and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment.  If the DA and Cal­trans have their way, Will would spend the rest of his life pay­ing off these absurd penal­ties.

About The Case

When Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty DA David Eyster first filed a com­plaint against Will on July 2^nd, the charges con­sist­ed of three infrac­tions cor­re­spond­ing to each of Will’s three non-vio­lent arrests protest­ing the Bypass.  This com­plaint includ­ed a require­ment to pay undis­closed resti­tu­tion fees.

Under an infrac­tion, the defendant’s case is presided over by a judge rather than a jury.  Will was unwill­ing to accept the uncapped resti­tu­tion stip­u­la­tion and was also adamant about his right to receive a jury tri­al, so his attor­ney (Omar Figueroa of Sebastopol) asked that Eyster re-file the charges as mis­de­meanors.  Will under­stood and accept­ed that the infrac­tions would become mis­de­meanors, and would include the pos­si­bil­i­ty of jail time, but was not pre­pared for Eyster’s arbi­trary deci­sion to add thir­teen addi­tion­al counts for mis­de­meanor vio­la­tions.

Notably, Will already endured a form of house arrest in the wick drain stitch­er and was deprived of food, water and med­ical atten­tion by the CHP (at the behest of Cal­Trans). The CHP even arrest­ed six peo­ple who attempt­ed to bring him sup­plies.  Will went for almost six days with no food, sur­vived par­tial­ly on rain water, and was bit­ter­ly cold after being drenched by more than two days of unsea­son­al rain.

Why Will Is Pur­su­ing a Jury Tri­al

This part of the case bears repeat­ing. There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that Will is seek­ing a jury tri­al because he wants to lever­age his case for max­i­mum pub­lic­i­ty.  This claim has been repeat­ed in numer­ous media accounts of the case.  But it is large­ly untrue.  While Will is indeed inter­est­ed in max­i­mum pub­lic­i­ty for his case, he is exer­cis­ing his Con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a jury tri­al pri­mar­i­ly because of DA Eyster’s dra­con­ian insis­tence that he pay crim­i­nal resti­tu­tion to Cal­trans.

Will believes a jury tri­al pro­vides the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for him to oppose the crim­i­nal resti­tu­tion stip­u­la­tion.

Will adamant­ly oppos­es this harsh crim­i­nal­iza­tion of envi­ron­men­tal activism on prin­ci­pal, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the real crim­i­nals in this case are those who pre­side over Cal­trans’ Willits Bypass con­struc­tion.  Crim­i­nal resti­tu­tion has not been pur­sued against direct action pro­test­ers in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in recent mem­o­ry.  Thus, the impo­si­tion of resti­tu­tion would also have a chill­ing effect against future activism.  Besides not want­i­ng to be in a posi­tion of pay­ing off Cal­trans for the rest of his life, Will is dead set against see­ing peo­ple who stand on their rights to defend the earth from ille­gal plun­der be per­se­cut­ed for it. He is will­ing to risk a jail sen­tence to oppose this dan­ger­ous prece­dent.