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Title: Judi Bari Lives!
Author: Fifth Estate Collective
Date: 1997, Summer
Language: en
Topics: Environmental activism, USA, Earth First!, political repression, biography, Judi Bari
Source: FIFTH ESTATE, number 349, Volume 32, No. 1, Summer 1997, page 4. Copied December 29, 2021 from https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/349-summer-1997/judi-bari-lives/

Fifth Estate Collective

Judi Bari Lives!

“My ideals will live long after I am dead.”

—Emma Goldman

In a moving memorial to his dear friend and comrade Judi Bari (in the

March 1997 Earth First! Journal), Darryl Cherney writes that he was

plagued by a number of unsettling signs before her death, including the

crash of an enormous old-growth redwood to the forest floor on a

windless night near the Earth First! base camp in Myers Flat,

California. That redwood turned out to be Judi Bari, whose death meant

not only a terrible loss to her children and her family, to her

community and the movement, but to the earth.Judi Bari was one of those

exceedingly rare and irreplaceable individuals who appear when social

conditions call them up. Her organizational creativity, her pragmatic

common sense, her energy, her humor, her sterling principles, her

steadfast will and her extraordinary courage were inspiring to us all.

She made every moment count—not only for the movement to save the planet

and a human community worth living in, but, as we are told as well by

those who knew her personally, for her children, friends and community.

The land-killers at Maxxam and other corporate headquarters were surely

popping the champagne corks when they heard the news of her death,

because Judi, more than any other person in recent memory, was able to

strike fear into the hearts of the people responsible for liquidating

America’s forests. Like others who have challenged their power, they saw

her as a threat and that was why they tried to kill her. Their bomb and

their other attempts (like trying to run her and her young daughters off

the road) to silence and stop Judi failed. Told she’d never walk after

being permanently disabled by the bombing, she struggled and eventually

did walk. But in the end she was felled by the chemical roulette

presently undermining life everywhere, from the maples in the eastern

forests to the seals in the NA 1990 Earth First! Redwood Summer

blockade. Judi Bari’s key role led to the attempt on her life. The

annual EF! Round River Rendezvous will be June 27-July 6 in Wisconsin’s

Nicolet National Forest. Contact the RRR committee at 731 State St.,

Madison WI 53711; (608) 250–8378 or see the next EF! Journal for

information.

We always admired Judi Bari’s accomplishments and her dedication. We

also respected her original mix of blue collar militance and deep

ecology. We especially admired her spirit. When Peter Werbe interviewed

her on his radio program here after her cancer had been disclosed, she

sounded matter-of-fact and tough when talking about recent Earth First!

actions. Friends in California have told us that she sounded perfectly

well talking on her own local radio show in the weeks before her death.

We heard she was strong and buoyant to the end. Movement friends tell us

that as death approached, she quoted after IWW martyr Joe Hill, “Don’t

mourn, organize.” But Darryl reported to a friend here in Detroit that

what Judi had actually said with a laugh to hippie Earth First! friends

was, “Don’t Om, organize.”

Emma Goldman once remarked, “Life without an ideal is spiritual death.”

Judi Bari’s body lies dead but she was not silenced. Her message and the

memory of her exemplary life will last as long as the vision of a free

society in harmony with the natural world does. Her Friends will carry

on the real work to which she gave her life. And others will appear who

are needed. But we cannot wait for them to appear. We must find ways to

carry on, for Judi, and for ourselves. We need to make every moment

count.

Our condolences go out to Judi’s family and friends. Besides staying

active, people can memorialize her by donating to the Judi Bari Trust

Fund (for her two daughters) c/o the Mendocino Environmental Center, 106

West Standley, Ukiah CA 95482 (checks earmarked to the fund), or to the

Redwood Justice Fund (to support Darryl’s and Judi’s lawsuit against the

FBI) at P.O. Box 14720; Santa Rosa CA 95402. The FE Bookstore is selling

copies of her book, Timber Wars (Common Courage Press), all proceeds go

to the Redwood Justice Fund. We hope to organize a benefit for it this

summer.

—D.W.

Judi in Her Own Words

On Redwood Summer:

“We radicalized a lot of people…As far as Earth First! goes, this was

the longest, largest, most sustained campaign that we’ve done. The Fort

Bragg demonstration [on July 21, 1990 at Georgia-Pacific’s pulp mill]

was the largest demonstration that Earth First! has ever had in this

country.

“Did we stop the logging? No, we didn’t stop the logging. They cut

twenty years worth of trees [that] summer. But we brought this issue to

national attention, to international attention on a scale that it’s

never been done before…I think the contention that ‘you didn’t stop the

logging’ is a ridiculous statement. They never went up to each anti-war

demonstration during the Vietnam era and said, ‘The movement failed

because you didn’t stop the war with this particular demonstration!’

It’s not a question of a particular demonstration… It’s more of a

cumulative effect. And I think that we’ve really raised the level of

awareness, raised the whole stakes through Redwood Summer to a level

that it never was before.”

On environmentalism and elitism:

“The [environmental movement] tended to be privileged people. Dave

Foreman’s a perfect example. They want to save wilderness so they can

enjoy it on backpacking trips, which in itself is a class privilege.

Black people in the ghetto don’t worry about wilderness because, number

one, they can’t get to it, and number two, the issues of survival are so

predominant for them…So even worrying about wilderness is a class

privilege in this society.

“When the environmental movement began it was primarily focused on

saving scenery. But the destruction of the earth has reached such

proportions that it’s threatening the very life support systems,…The

destruction of the earth is becoming a primary issue for poor and

working people, too, because they have to bear the brunt of it. Anything

that gets destroyed the rich people pass down the line…

“Our society has been built on the exploitation of both the lower

classes and the earth. I would differ from Marx there. Marx says that

all value derives from labor. I think that he’s incorrect…that value

derives from labor and the earth. And profits are gained by not paying

the workers the value of their labor, and by taking from the earth in a

manner that doesn’t replace it….”

On why she became a radical environmentalist:

“I found myself looking at truckload after truckload of Redwood trees

being hauled out of the forest. Thousand-year-old trees that take up the

whole truck, all the way-down to tiny little trees six inches across

that they are using to feed the chip mills. And it was an appalling

sight….It is really hard to sit there and witness the destruction of the

forest. You become obsessed with it.”

On Earth First! women:

“One of the things we accomplished in Redwood Summer is what I refer to

as the feminization of Earth First!… We’re not just trying to depose the

male leadership. We’re trying to change the style of leadership so that

it’s a collective style and not dependent on glorifying individual

personalities…

“The former strategies of Earth First! included a reliance on individual

acts of bravado. That was the basic strategy. We’ll get some brave guy

to climb way up in a tree and we’ll get in the newspaper for it. Or

we’ll sneak around in the night and sabotage bulldozers… And that whole

little macho scenario wasn’t designed for mass organizing… As one friend

of mine so aptly worded it, ‘The question is, is it earth first or Earth

First! first?’ These people see it as this little clique, and they want

to preserve its purity at the expense of its effectiveness. The question

to me is, ‘Do we want to save the planet, or do we want to form a little

elite corps?’ If we Want to save the planet, we need to address root

causes, including patriarchy and the destructive, exploitative society.

We can’t separate it…”

On her “woman-identified” radical feminism:

“I have the unfortunate experience of being born heterosexual, loving

women and not being able to stand men. The night before the bombing, I

told Darryl [Cherney] that he’d better change the slide show because it

was too male-identified, and that a lot of the organizers in Santa Cruz

were lesbians. And he said something like, ‘Well not all of the

organizers are lesbians.’ I replied, ‘Yes, Darryl, only the lucky

ones.’”

On the FBI:

“The FBI asked what they-could do to regain my trust. I said they could

find the bomber and fire him.”

On her music:

“One of the things that attracted me to Earth First! was its use of

music. It is a tremendously powerful thing that brings out the spirit

and joy of the movement. We are trying to create a better world where

there is more joy; there isn’t much joy in a world of clear cuts and

layoffs. Finding my body broken, my life disrupted, snatched away from

my rural environment and taken away from my family, one of the only ways

I have been able to endure is to be able to play music. I am not as bad

off as I was during the six weeks [after the bombing], but there [were]

some real times of despair for me there, and sometimes the only thing

that would pull me through was playing music.”

On efforts to build an alliance with mill workers:

“Mill workers and loggers have told me they think I was the target [of

the bombing] because I was able to draw a connection and actually work

together with them. Most of the work that I did with them was anonymous,

and it was very serious work. It was not the kind of thing that got into

the media at all—ever. I tried to find the people who were already

radical, and all that I tried to do was offer them a space in the

movement so they could organize themselves.”

On class society and the fate of the earth:

“The lower classes are getting much more poisoned than the upper

classes. But [this is] not really a class struggle in the traditional

way, although I certainly think that class society is the cause of the

problem and the upper classes, not the lower classes, are to blame.

However, we’re not trying to fight for the elevation of one particular

class of humans over another class of humans.

“We’re trying to learn to live on the earth in a way that doesn’t

destroy the earth, in a society that recognizes equal rights, not only

of all people but of all species. It’s different from other class

struggles in that the Wobblies, for example, were fighting for the

benefit of the working class. Well, if they continue the way they’re

doing, Charles Hurwitz is going to be just as dead as we are. And Harry

Merlo’s kids are going to inherit just as bad of a world. So

environmental destruction ultimately cuts across class lines. That

doesn’t mean we need to organize among the ruling class and the yuppies.

We need to organize among the people who are not benefiting from it, and

that’s the lower classes….

“One of the results of Redwood Summer is that these issues have been

raised, including the issue of who is at fault. So what followed Redwood

Summer was ‘Corporate Fall’ [which was followed by ‘Nuclear Winter’ at

the Nevada Test Site]. We held a demonstration in September after

Louisiana-Pacific went in and logged Osprey Grove by the Navarro River

[an old-growth forest which environmentalists were negotiating to buy].

We listed LP’s corporate crimes, and we said that the individuals need

to be held responsible—that this isn’t a faceless corporation. Our

slogan is: ‘[The earth’s] not dying, it’s being killed. And the people

who are killing it have names and addresses!’ That’s ‘a quote from [IWW

songwriter] Utah Phillips…

“[Workers] have good reason to be scared. But what I’m seeing among some

of the timber workers is more criticism of the corporations than before.

There’s an opportunity to rebuild the alliance that we had started to

build before, and I hope to be able to work on that. It’s not glory

work, it’s not publicized… it’s slow, and I think that’s the most

important work that I can do.”

On the bombing:

“We know that the system is enforced by violence. And if we are

effectively challenging the system then it’s not surprising that they’re

going to use violence against us. The people from the American Indian

Movement said, ‘Violence isn’t a choice for us. It’s like the weather.

It just happens.’ It’s part of the powers that be, and it’s some thing

that we’re trying to change about this society. But with that knowledge

of what this society is and how brutal they really are, if as soon as

they start doing that to us we drop out then we’re defeated.

“I don’t see how we can support the people of El Salvador and be so

easily intimidated fighting the battles here. I’m not trying to take

away from El Salvador solidarity work… I was regional coordinator for

the Pledge of Resistance. But I think we are effectively helping the

people of El Salvador by fighting the battles here. Okay, well how can

we do that if all they have to do is the slightest thing to us and we

back down?

“When I look at the courage of the comrades in El Salvador, when I look

at the people in South Africa and the things they have to put up with,

then our problems pale by comparison and we are still very privileged.

And if we are serious about it… I mean the alternative is that they are

going to kill the earth and everything on it!… Either we are going to

stand up to them or everything is going to go. We need to exhibit both

personal and collective courage because that’s the only way we are going

to survive. I think our collective safety is more important than our

personal safety. And the fate of the forest is more important than the

fate of me… And if I stop doing it then they don’t have to kill me.

They’ve succeeded.”

Web archive note: All brackets are in the original.

For Fifth Estate articles by and about Judi Bari visit

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Judi+Bari+site%3Afifthestate.org%2Farchive%2F&ia=web

See also: the Fifth Estate’s I.W.W. Resource Page.