As expected, Steven Showers was arrested last Friday morning after once again turning on his giant neon anti-Romney sign against court orders. Showers spent five days in jail, and while he was there, the authorities came with a crane and took away his sign, his emergency lights — everything electrified. Showers arrived back home on Wednesday morning to an empty, unilluminated yard. Well, not completely empty.
“They left the California Constitution shields and posts standing, almost as a sick joke,” Showers e-mailed Daily Intelligencer today. “The placards on these shields somberly declared that no law could be used to infringe upon anyone’s right to free speech and a free press. But there was this big, empty space, and a hole in the ground, where my printing press had stood for the last ten months. It was gone. The state had confiscated my printing press.”
The seizures were not confined to Showers’s front yard.
“They had forced open the front door, went inside, and confiscated the smaller neon sign that was mounted INSIDE in the window,” Showers says. “This neon sign was NEVER a target of any of the charges litigated in this case, yet they had come into my house, and they had confiscated it too!”
The main anti-Romney sign, Showers says, is probably “in storage somewhere,” and he’s confident he’ll get it back someday. Until then, he has replaced it with a lighthouse. It’s no enormous anti-Romney sign, but it does light up. “The symbolism is strong,” Showers says.
