Black man booted out of county meeting for protesting speaker's use of N-word

A Black man was booted out of a Shasta County, California government meeting after he objected to a speaker's repeated use of a racial slur, reported the Redding Record Searchlight this week.

"Nathan Pinkney was escorted from the chamber by a Securitas security guard after board chair Patrick Jones got upset with him for speaking out from his seat in the audience," reported David Benda. "The man who used the slur, frequent board attendee Alex Bielecki, was not chastised. Jeff Gorder, who retired as Shasta County public defender in 2018, scolded Jones for not stopping Bielecki from talking."

According to the Record Searchlight, Pinkney got angry after Bielecki used the N-word protesting against the construction of tiny homes in the community.

"I yelled at him, I told him to 'get the f--- out,' and then I ended up leaving to get some air, get some space and calm down and went back in," Pinkney said, according to the newspaper. "And then Patrick Jones goes and defends his First Amendment right, basically says that there’s nothing wrong with him saying the N-word and using that type of hate speech, that type of rhetoric."

READ MORE: Jack Smith zeroes in on Trump's firing of his own 'disloyal' cybersecurity official: NYT

Other attendees were angry at the way the situation was handled.

"You don’t tolerate that kind of language here," said retired public defender Jeff Gorder, rejecting the right of Bielecki to use racial slurs in the county meeting. "You should gavel that down and shut it down."

This is not the only recent case of alleged retaliation against people pushing back on racism.

Earlier this month, civil rights officials at the Department of Education opened a probe into an Atlanta school district after a parent complained she was retaliated against for calling out an alleged pattern of segregating Black students.