Judi Bari: a fallen giant of the forest
by Ron Hoffman and Tom Condit
May 15, 1997
Judith Beatrice Bari — November 7, 1949 - March 2, 1997
Twelve hundred people came to Willits on March 9 to honor Judi Bari's life. It was the largest of dozens of memorial meetings for Bari, who died on March 2 of breast cancer which had metastasized to her liver. Bari had asked that her friends get together for "a party" after her death.Judi's friends, family members and comrades from Earth First! and the environmental movement shared remembrances, poetry, food and music in the afternoon. The evening was highlighted by a slide show of Bari's life featuring family photos. Musicians from all over northern California came to play. A vegetarian dinner was provided by Food Not Bombs and a host of volunteers.
Darryl Cherney commented that Judi Bari brought three unique contributions to Earth First!: an uncanny ability to organize which brought the local membership in EF! from dozens to hundreds, an ability to build bridges with the timber workers using skills that she brought from labor organizing on the East coast, and the skill at sifting and analyzing facts which made her invaluable both to the movement and to organizing the "Redwood Summer" lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland police.
"She did the majority of legal research work on our case. She organized events to expose the FBI's lies. She connected the case with COINTELPRO operations against the Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Independentistas and the American Indian Movement.
"She brought to the environmental movement an acute awareness of our place in history -- that the environmental movement did not spring from a void, but is part of a continuum of labor, civil rights and social justice movements. Redwood Summer '90 was modeled after Freedom Summer of 1964."
Bari first became involved in politics as a student anti-war activist at the University of Maryland and later was active in the postal workers' union movement. After moving to California she became a carpenter and was brought into the movement to defend the old growth forest by her respect for the wood she worked with. That understanding of the wood as well as the forest helped her reach out to timber and mill workers threatened by both environmental restrictions and the corporate destruction of the forests on which they worked.
As an organizer for "Redwood Summer" in 1990, she was travelling through Oakland when a bomb destroyed her car, nearly killing her and seriously injuring fellow organizer Darryl Cherney. The Oakland police promptly arrested Bari and Cherney themselves, prodded by the FBI, which had labelled them terrorists. Despite the fact that the bombing was an obvious attack on the organizers, the authorities refused to consider any other suspects or make any serious investigation of the case. (See Partisan nos. 1 and 5.)
Bari and Cherney sued the FBI and the Oakland Police for falsely arresting them and covering up the facts in the bombing. The suit brought out overwhelming evidence of deliberate FBI and police lying, as well as a pattern of surveillance and harassment of the environmental movement.
In the week of Bari's death, she was working on new developments in the case. With additional FBI misdeeds revealed through the discovery process, the government is once more trying to get the suit dismissed. (Two previous attempts have failed.)
The loss of Bari's energy and intelligence is a serious blow, but Cherney and her attorneys are carrying on the suit. They hope to gain a settlement which will help support Bari's two children, as well as expose the government's crimes in this matter.
For information on the case or to contribute much-needed funds, write to:
Redwood Justice Fund
PO Box 3064
Santa Rosa CA 95402