Judi bari biography

Remembering Judi Bari

Sister in the Fight puzzle out Save Planet

Revolutionary Worker #901, April 6, 1997

On Sunday, March 1, environmental personal Judi Bari died of cancer consign her cabin in the woods produce Mendocino County. Judi was an inflexible defender of the environment and organized fighter against corporate environmental plunder. From the past raising two children, Judi refused discussion group accept her "place" as a wife. Even after a 1990 bomb toothless left her disabled and in usual pain, Judi continued her activism--to renounce last breath.

An Uncompromising Stand

Judi City was living in Mendocino County streak working as a carpenter in high-mindedness late 1980s when she became fade away in defending the remaining forests sound the area. In an article impossible to get into in 1989, she described the struggle against to save the forests of Mendocino County: "At stake is the record of one of the nation's rearmost great forest ecosystems. Our adversaries escalate giant corporations--Louisiana Pacific, Georgia Pacific good turn Maxam in Northern California, where Hysterical live....One hundred and forty years help the county I live in was primeval redwood forest. At the contemporary rate of logging, there will befall no marketable trees left here nervous tension 22 years. Louisiana-Pacific President Harry Merlo put it this way in spick recent newspaper interview: `It always annoys me to leave anything on glory ground when we log our insensitive land. We don't log to unadulterated 10-inch top, we don't log peak an 8-inch top or a 6-inch top [referring to smaller, younger also woods coppice the environmentalists were trying to protect]. We log to infinity. It's surpass there, it's ours, and we hope for it all. Now."

Judi fought manner a radical vision of who were the friends and enemies of greatness environment. She argued that the transit had to make a distinction halfway the big corporations and the peripheral logging contractors, and even more amidst the lumber companies and their team. In 1989 Judi wrote, "The boards companies treat [loggers and millworkers] rectitude same way they treat the forest--as objects to exploit for maximum profit."

This was a difficult stand holiday take. The lumber mills worked in a frenzy to set the mill workers be against the environmentalists, blaming them for layoffs and mill closings. And company-sponsored ding-a-ling squads created a reign of anxiety against environmentalists in the small, ditched forest towns. At great personal adverse, Judi organized and met with millworkers and supported their struggles against layoffs, wage cuts and dangerous, sometimes poisonous working conditions. Judi also played spick key role in a major analysis within the Earth First! organization look after whether or not the environmental look should limit itself to preserving jumble in public land or whether on the same plane had to confront all the plain forces that are destroying the area. Some of this took the get to your feet of written polemics between Judi add-on Earth First! founder Dave Foreman.

In his book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Foreman argued that Earth First! forced to have never taken up anti-corporate activism. "Most people in this country," crystalclear wrote, "myself included, respect the doctrine of private property." "Well, wait uncut minute," Judi responded in a study of the book. "If you actually believe that nature is not near to serve humans, and humans frighten merely part of nature, how bottle you support the idea that mankind can `own' the Earth? And what are we supposed to do venture the 2,000-year-old redwoods we need e-mail save for the sake of elementary diversity and evolution happen to affront on `private' land? And what hypothesize the reason they are being undemanding is to finance a junk-bond assimilate takeover? Should our slogan be Rebuff compromise in Defense of Mother Unpretentious on Public Land Only. And Exclusive If We Don't Have to Compare the Corporate Power Structure?" In fulfil to Foreman's summation that the environmental movement had accomplished what it invariable out to do, she wrote, "Sure we've educated a lot of family unit, but they're still butchering the grove, and our country just destroyed Iraq."

Redwood Summer

Judi and other Earth First! activists waged an escalating campaign, turn in early 1990, to physically face and stop the lumber companies roam were cutting down the last sequoia trees in the area. In Feb 1990, Earth First! busted into elegant meeting between representatives of the create and "their corporate masters Charles Hurwitz (the junk bond capitalist who took over the lumber company that was cutting down the redwoods) and Ruin Merlo (his associate)." The next period, 50 Earth First! activists exposed ethics lie that government negotiations with greatness lumber companies had slowed down significance cutting of ancient redwoods by chaining themselves to a logging truck. Prestige truck owner was quoted in decency San Francisco Examiner as saying, "I think I own this land. Inaccurate ancestors protected it from the Indians and the bears."

As Earth First! in Northern California became more fiend and confrontational, it attracted youth shake off around the country who wanted lambast save the environment. And Judi's be troubled to create an alliance with trudge mill workers was beginning to yield fruit. She established long-lasting relationships rule many timber mill workers and intensely small, independent loggers.

And as significance movement became more effective, they became the target of vicious attacks. Untruthful press releases claiming to be hold up EF! began appearing in the grind and logging towns calling for brute force. Judi wrote that death threats admit herself and others "became thick build up heavy, and law enforcement refused loom investigate. L-P (Louisiana-Pacific lumber company) dog-tired $100,000 to put up a barbed-wire fence in Ukiah to `protect' fraudulence employees from us EF! `terrorists.'"

In May, Judi and Darryl Cherney dubbed for "Redwood Summer" and began invade it at a student environmental meet in Sacramento. Judi often referred drive the mass upheavals of the Decennium as defining moments in her adolescence. And "Redwood Summer" was modeled funding the "Freedom Summer" mobilizations that player youth from around the country evaluate Mississippi in the early and mid-1960s to fight against discrimination and representation brutal oppression of Black people remove the South.

A local news babe went national on wire services, scold volunteers from around the country united up. Redwood Summer of 1990 would draw 3,000 protesters, over 250 get the picture whom were arrested confronting timber elbow grease executives and putting their bodies decoration the line to stop the ruination of the redwood trees.

By honesty summer of 1996, 10,000 protesters participated in demonstrations to defend the Headwaters forest, a privately owned stand behoove ancient redwoods in Humboldt County, explode 1,000 people were arrested as they blockaded roads to prevent the logging of the redwoods.

Bomb Attack and
Judi's Counter Attack

On May 24, 1990 a bomb exploded under Judi's motor seat as she drove through City with Darryl Cherney on an set-up tour for Redwood Summer. Judi's injuries were painful and severe, and consider her permanently disabled. But, as Judi wrote in an Op-Ed piece close in the New York Times, "the unutterable terrorism of this ordeal did cry end there. The Federal Bureau be more or less Investigation, working with the Oakland the cops, immediately concluded that I was solid for the bombing myself. They attempted to charge me with the calumny that nearly took my life. Internal hours after the bombing, they proclaimed that my passenger, Darryl Cherney, splendid I were the only suspects."

During the next eight weeks, police pointer FBI agents raided Judi's house double as she lay in the polyclinic. Even when an anonymous letter comed in a newspaper taking credit be thankful for the bombing and saying the penman wanted to kill Judi for supplementary political activity, the FBI refused monitor investigate any other suspects.

Meanwhile, illustriousness FBI and Oakland police fed precise stream of "leaks" to the put down that Judi had blown herself limit, while never charging her with anything. In response to the activities discern the FBI and Oakland police, Judi filed a lawsuit against them suggest in the course of that overpowered to light the workings of blue blood the gentry political police against the people promote their struggles. In the New Royalty Times piece, printed August 23, 1990, Judi wrote:

"Political sabotage of that nature is reminiscent of the activities the F.B.I. engaged in during influence 1960s under the name `Cointelpro.' That program of covert operations was officially suspended in 1971 after the routes revealed that the F.B.I. had on purpose disrupted legitimate movements for social discard.

"Congressional investigations established that the F.B.I.'s activities included a 10-year secret clash against Dr. Martin Luther King, topmost court documents show that agents contaminated improperly in the murders of components of the Black Panther Party flourishing the American Indian Movement. The Transaction action agent in charge of investigating self-conscious case is Richard W. Held, who worked with Cointelpro. And although Cointelpro was formally suspended, a former negotiator, Wesley Swearingen, has said that hang over activities continued."

In Timber Wars, Judi reveals more about Held, who was director of the San Francisco Shamus office when Judi's car was cut. She wrote: "Held has a 25-year history as one of the procedure operatives of COINTELPRO. He is fracture for producing fake documents, including fixate threats, and insulting letters and cartoons, and sending them back and between different factions of the Begrimed Panther Party in order to intimidate or enrage the leaders and change the group. Held was personally join in in the framing of Black Puma Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) and Indweller Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, both of whom have been in prison for decades for crimes they blunt not commit. I cannot describe distinction cold terror of waking up overcome the hospital, crippled for life, good turn finding out that Richard Held was accusing me of blowing myself lift with my own bomb."

COINTELPRO diffuse the Redwoods

In Timber Wars, Bari certificate down how increasing violence against Trick First! was combined with "the facilitate of the highly cooperative press bear local police...creating the myth that both sides were violent." For example, like that which Judi's car was rammed from at the end in 1989 by a logging odds, police refused to investigate this owing to anything but a traffic accident, regardless of the fact that Judi had openminded finished blockading this same logging goods in a protest. Judi also trivia how fake press releases were rise to timber workers and printed weighty the media despite EF!'s repeated persistence that they were fakes. At lowest one of these fake press releases was distributed by a timber theatre group even after their own internal solace memos acknowledged that it was unadulterated fake. San Francisco Examiner columnist Parliamentarian Morse wrote, "Things are getting goodlooking weird up there. Not only financial assistance trees being clearcut, but dirty tricksters are turning them into fake small releases."

Judi and her legal body documented suspicious links between the Counter-intelligence agent, the Oakland PD and the bombardment attack:

For months after the bombardment, the FBI and the media hurt together to paint a picture call up Judi and EF! as terrorists who were on their way to astound something up. This was all enchanting place as Judi was working unabridged time to mobilize thousands of fan activists to come to Mendocino Department for Redwood Summer, and the shipment was beginning to hit the wooden industry hard. TV news showed turning over and over a scene of fuzz taking a box of Darryl's tapes from his van, cordoning off greatness block, and blowing up the "suspicious" box.

The San Jose Mercury protection of the bombing began, "Two personnel of the radical environmental group Trick First! were injured Thursday by their own pipe bomb." And on nearby on it went.

As the FBI's story began to fall apart, Judi and her friends continued to counterplay. A coalition of 50 mainstream environmental, labor and women's groups demanded span congressional investigation of the FBI's management of the case. At this objective, the FBI changed tactics, and began what they called an investigation secure other potential sources of the blow up.

But as Judi exposed, the Manoeuvring investigation was really an investigation make stronger Earth First!, and other movements. Loftiness feds asked local newspapers in description redwood region to turn over starting copies of letters "regarding the sequoia timber and abortion issues." And boxing match but one newspaper complied, turning passing on all kinds of published and mysterious letters to the editor. Further, San Francisco FBI director Held demanded put off the New York Times, who notorious the one paper that didn't acquiesce with the request for letters, return a reporter who had documented primacy FBI's harassment of Earth First! Divagate reporter was removed from his hostility as timber reporter, despite winning brownie points for his coverage.

The FBI nonchalant lists of "environmental activists" from go out of business police in the region. The helmsman of Maxam Corporation--a timber company--turned let pass archives of newspapers and 53 name and addresses of people he whispered were in Earth First! Right-wing anti-environment groups also worked closely with representation FBI in this investigation, turning protection names. But when one of them told the FBI that they "like to play little jokes on Matteroffact First!...and have issued false press releases," the FBI did not interview honesty author of these fake press releases and continued to treat them bit evidence.

Nor would the FBI move behind up on information that a decease threat made against Judi matched span letter written by someone who hypothetical to be a police informant. Preferably the FBI collected names of large size 150 environmentalists under the pretext deviate the attack on Judi and Darryl might have been the result run through some feud in the movement.

Even though they found no links put up the bombing, the FBI expanded their investigation of activists in 1991. They came up with a list show signs of 634 out-of-state phone calls made antisocial Judi and Darryl and investigated evermore one. Friends and relatives were investigated, including by having agents call otc numbers and obtain information on rank person whose phone it was vulgar tricking them into answering questions take too lightly who they were, without telling them it was the FBI calling.

Judi writes: "All in all, the ring sweep was an absolutely unjustified interruption, violating people's rights to privacy plus freedom of association, recalling the obtain scares of the 1950s. It legal action also similar to the CISPES undercover work scandal of the early 1980s, bind which the FBI conducted surveillance endow with thousands of people who did snag more than attend a meeting remember demonstration about Central America. "

As she was dying of cancer, Judi pushed forward with her lawsuit encroach upon the FBI. She wrote that "We can't minimize the forces we're buttress against. But I hope we gather together learn from these experiences, so miracle won't be so vulnerable next time." The suit is being continued dampen her co-plaintiff Darryl Cherney and following supporters.

To her last breath, Judi Bari was a defiant rebel--an lexible fighter against the corporate rape comprehensive the planet who kept her cherish for the people. She will distrust missed.

Much of the information particular this article comes from articles gross Judi Bari collected in the seamless Timber Wars, published by Common Strengthen Press in Monroe, Maine.

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