Judi Bari was an Earth First! and IWW organizer, a feminist and a folk musician, among many other things. The back of Judi's book "Timber Wars" states: "Judi Bari was born in Baltimore, MD and attended the University of Maryland College Park where she majored in anti Vietnam War rioting". After dropping out of college in her fifth year, she entered the workforce and quickly got involved in union organizing. In the early 70s she became a union steward at a grocery store. She then moved on to a job at the U.S. Washington Bulk Mail Center near Washington D.C., where she continued her union organizing, publishing a workers' newsletter and organizing a successful wildcat strike for better working conditions.

Moving to Sonomoa County, CA in 1979, Judi worked with Pledge of Resistance against U.S. repression in Central America. Several years later she moved to Mendocino County and took a job as a carpenter, building luxury country homes. It was at work that she became active in the fight to save the last remaining old-growth Redwood forests of Northern California. Her involvement in Earth First! started in the early 80s, becoming a contact person in Ukiah helping organize a blockade of logging on public land near Cahto Peak that succeeded in saving several thousand acres of forest. She was also a main force behind the efforts to preserve the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County.

Judi is largely credited for the feminization of Earth First!: "It had been incredibly male-dominated prior to Judi's entrance. There were women involved but none were as successful as Judi in putting the feminine spin into it, and getting rid of some of the macho chest-beating that had been prevalent in Earth First! prior to that. Judi's influence then allowed many more women to get involved, in more influential ways than had been possible previously. Judi also innately understood the importance of community-based organizing, as opposed to the nomadic style that Earth First! had before that." said Judi's friend Betty Ball. Judi was also involved in abortion clinic defense at Ukiah Planned Parenthood Clinic.

Frontline Folk

Accompanying Judy at most locations was Darryl Cherney, a close friend, lover and fellow folk musician. The two created radical environmental and labor folk songs to be used on the front lines and for organizing drives. Songs like "L-P", written and sung by Judi, educated folks about the lumber company's practices. Songs like "He Looked A Whole Lot Like Jesus", by Darryl and Mike Roselle raised the issues of FBI infiltration in the eco-defense movement. Songs like "Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees Are Gone?" by Darryl combined the poor logger's perspective with the environmental activist’s.

Darryl and Judi's song "MAXXAM's on the Horizon" gives a history of the dirty money-schemes of Charles Hurwitz, head of logging giant MAXXAM. Hurwitz became the arch-rival of Earth First!, and his own workers, for his corruption. Hurwitz, who had previously looted the Simplicity Pattern worker pension fund in 1982, reducing worker benefits by nearly $4000 per year, took over the Pacific Lumber Company and tripled the rate of logging of the world's largest stands of privately held ancient redwood forests. He then looted Pacific Lumber's worker pension fund, removing $55 million from the retired loggers and millworkers' and selling off much of it's other liquitable assets to make junk bond payments.

IWW Local 1

Judi's philosophy within Earth First! won her both support and condescension. Some of the more militant -or macho- members did not agree with her stance against tree spiking, when metal is inserted into a tree to break the chainsaw. Judi met with loggers and the families of loggers who were injured by tree spiking incidents, including a man who was half-decapitated by one. Judi was a firm believer in loggers as well, helping organize IWW Local #1 to defend their rights on the job.

"I was attracted to Earth First! because they were the only ones willing to put their bodies in front of the bulldozers and the chainsaws to save the trees. They were also funny, irreverent, and they played music. But it was the philosophy of Earth First! that ultimately won me over. This philosophy, known as biocentrism or deep ecology, states that the Earth is not just here for human consumption. All species have a right to exist for their own sake, and humans must learn to live in balance with the needs of nature, instead of trying to mold nature to fit the wants of humans."             -Judi Bari

In 1989, Judi joined an effort to support workers doused with toxic PCBs in a Georgia-Pacific sawmill accident in Fort Bragg, California. The company told the workers and the press the spill was just mineral oil, but testing showed it was laden with PCBs. Bari helped others organize the injured workers into Local #1 and gave technical support for their successful case in U.S. Labor Court. In October 1989, Bari wrote an article for the "Industrial Worker" newspaper in which she argued that the time was ripe for the Wobblies to organize among timber workers. In April 1990, after Louisiana Pacific (L-P) closed a sawmill with 195 layoffs, Judi attended a Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting along with some Louisiana-Pacific workers. They demanded that the county use its eminent domain powers to seize L-P's 300,000 acres of forestlands in the county and operate them in the public interest, with operations under control of a worker cooperative.

Seeing, as many Wobblies had in the past, the bosses as the main enemies of the forests and the workers, Judi tried to team these forces up. After all, clear-cutting doesn't just destroy forests; it quickly destroys the jobs of the clear-cutters. So it is really in the interest of loggers to control their cuts and switch to a sustainable method of logging.

The Timber Wars

In the late 80s, the term "Timber Wars" emerged to describe the situation in the forests on Northern California and Eastern Oregon. Activists with Earth First! organized several large campaigns to save tracts of old-growth forests from the jaws of big corporations like Maxxam, L-P and Georgia Pacific.

The Timber Wars leading up to the 1990 "Redwood Summer", a large campaign that saw Judi as a main organizer, were full of fear and sometimes violence. Loggers sent death threats to Judi and others, and assaulted them on the front lines. EF! remained non-violent, doing lock-downs, tree-sits and others blockades in attempt to prevent loggers' access to logging roads. More often than not, officials refused to arrest or prosecute anyone but EF!ers. As Redwood Summer approached, tensions boiled on both sides, as Earth First! invited students and other people from all over the country to come spend the hotter months bringing the logging industry to a halt.

The Bombing On May 24th, 1990, Judi and Darryl were driving to a meeting in Oakland, CA when a bomb exploded underneath Judi's seat, shattering her pelvis, fracturing her tailbone and leaving her near paralysis. On the way to the hospital, Judi was arrested by the FBI and charged with transporting the bomb that almost killed her! The FBI's original case tried to argue that the bomb had been in the back seat, but photo evidence clearly showed it under her seat. The FBI agent in charge of the case, Richard Held, is a notorious COINTELPRO operative, having been involved in the 25-year imprisonment of L.A. Black Panther leader Jeronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) on trumped up murder charges (he was released in 1997 after a judge overturned his conviction) and the Pine Ridge Reservation shootout with the American Indian Movement that resulted in the death of AIM activist Joe Stuntz and 2 FBI agents, as well the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, who remains in prison today. From 1979 until 1985, Held was Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Juan, Puerto Rico office. There he presided over a politically oriented paramilitary campaign against the Puerto Rican Independence movement, creating files on 74,000 individuals. In his last operation in Puerto Rico, Held led 300 FBI agents and U.S. marshals in raids all over the island, trashing office and homes and arresting dozens of activists. Held left Puerto Rico in 1985 to head the FBI's San Francisco, California field office.

The case against Judi Bari is considered a COINTELPRO operation, teaming the FBI with logging interests in an attempt to silence environmental and union organizers. Historically, IWW attempts to unionize loggers in the Pacific Northwest ended tragically, with the bodies of Wobbly organizers strung up from bridges and burned, offices torn-up and arsoned, and organizers beaten in the streets and run out of town. Judi attempted to carry on this legacy and suffered some of its consequences.

In June, 2002, a federal jury in Oakland awarded $4.4 million in damages to Judi's estate and to Darryl, admitting they're innocence and dropping all charges related to the bombing. No one else has ever been arrested or charged in connection with the bombing. The accusations rest on the FBI, logging company goons, and angry loggers themselves. The lack-of-investigation leads many to believe it goes further towards the top than the average logger, perhaps involving officials in powerful places.

Judi died of breast cancer at her home in northern California in March 1999. She is remembered as a hero of the Earth First! movement and a cornerstone of the "Deep Ecology" movement. We believe Judi embodied a true activist spirit and that her music is a perfect example of revolutionary art being used in defense of life and freedom.                                        -R