Today in Labor History March 2, 1997: Earth First! Activist, feminist and IWW labor organizer Judi Bari died. Bari, and her comrade, Darryl Cherney, survived a terrorist bomb attack in Oakland, CA in 1990, when they were organizing Redwood Summer, a 3-month campaign of nonviolent direct actions, during the summer of 1990, to end the clear-cutting of northern California redwood forests. The police and FBI immediately blamed her for the bombing, claiming that she was the terrorist and that the bomb was intended for logging companies. They arrested her and handcuffed her to her hospital bed, as she lay there with a shattered pelvis. Bari and Cherney were eventually exonerated and won a settlement for the FBI’s role in violating their civil liberties. The bomber was never caught. In addition to their organizing and activism, Bari and Cherney were also musical composers and performers. Their song, “Will the Fetus Be Aborted,” (to the tune of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,”) was performed by Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon on their Prairie Home Invasion album.
Bari was instrumental in organizing Local 1 of the IWW, an effort to unite timber workers and environmentalists around the same goal of ending the clear-cutting of the forests. Some of the actions during Redwood Summer included preparing breakfast at base camp and getting it to the timber workers at 5 am, before they began work, in an effort to talk with them and organize them. Redwood Summer, as a whole, was well-organized. Veteran Direct-Action activists hosted numerous organizing events in the months that preceded the actions, to train activists in their legal rights, direct action tactics, security, jail solidarity, etc. However, there was little to no training in labor organizing or class solidarity. Consequently, at least for the actions in which I participated, the conversations with timber workers tended to be privileged activists talking down to the workers, telling them how they should be thinking and acting, and the timber workers yelling at them and threatening them. One environmentalist was clobbered with an axe handle. Others were attacked with rocks. And on at least one occasion, assailants fired guns at base camp. Overall, the actions did not stop the clear cutting of the forests, but they did slow things down for a while, and they did reduce Louisiana Pacific’s profits.
