Judi Bari
We moved to the Mendocino coast of California when I was 15. I graduated from Fort Bragg High School in 1987. Not Fort Bragg in the state of North Carolina. This is a remote coastal town of about 10,000 people in Northern California. Redwood country. My senior year I was surfing as much as possible when I wasn’t at school, had a part-time job, and a busy social life.
Without the slightest interest in politics, I heard the name “Judi Bari” many times, on the radio, in the paper, and from people in the community. She was a very vocal and personable leader in the “Earth First!” movement at that time. She was a very active organizer of various grassroots campaigns to stop the logging of old-growth redwoods, and to slow the clear-cutting of the remaining redwood forests.
There was a large lumber mill in Fort Bragg at that time.
The people who worked at the mill, and many of their family members were not fond of the environmentalists.
I was sympathetic to the cause of saving old trees, preserving the tiny percentage that remained, but was a self-absorbed adolescent. I wasn’t involved in her cause in any way.
I left our small coastal town after graduating high school but remember hearing that there was going to be a large demonstration in our hometown of Fort Bragg for “Redwood Summer”; a publicity campaign/tour organized by Judi Bari and her partner Daryl Cherney in 1990. There were various other dates/locations for these demonstrations to promote awareness of these issues.
One of the big issues of debate, at that time - one that everyone in our high school was aware of - was the Spotted Owl. The environmentalists said that we needed to preserve the forest for the Spotted Owl - that the logging was destroying their habitat. This was certainly true, but I think it was also an effective way to use legal measures to slow the clear-cutting and destructive practices of the timber companies at that time. Many of my fellow students were from families whose parents or other family members worked at the mill. The had their own views of the spotted owl, which was often something like, “We eat spotted owl for breakfast”.
The timber companies were not known for their wise decisions as stewards of the forests. Charles Hurwitz, the president of Pacific Lumber, one of the main logging corporations in the area, said that he intended to “clear-cut to infinity.”
I remember hearing on the news that a bomb had gone off in Judi Bari’s car. An internet search is telling me that it was in May of 1990 - which sounds right.
At first there were conflicting stories. I didn’t know if it was from a bomb she was transporting or if it was an attack. The news said that she had been transporting her own bomb, but I doubted it. The story felt fishy, but it was more of a shrug - I didn’t know. I was curious about it, but at that time it was an issue far removed from my personal life.
Many years later, there was a court case. Although Judi wasn’t killed in the bombing, she passed away several years later, before the case could be heard in court. The results of the court case were enlightening. Several of the F.B.I. agents who responded to her bombing near Oakland, CA were present at a “bomb school” on timber company land before she was blown up. At this “bomb school” they were using pipe bomps - very similar to the one that exploded under her seat while she was driving her Subaru from San Francisco to Oakland.
Instead of reporting the facts of the bombing, the Oakland Police along with the F.B.I. released false information to the media.
Daryl Cherney and the estate of Judi Bari incurred massive legal costs and spent over a decade fighting a legal battle on Judi’s behalf. In the end, although there were no convictions against the F.B.I. or the Oakland Police Department, they were required to pay a settlement of 4 million dollars. Oakland also established a “Judi Bari Day” in May.
"It took 11 years to bring this David v. Goliath case to trial," said vetran civil rights attorney Dennis Cunningham, "but when a jury of regular people finally saw the evidence, and saw the lies, the FBI was finally busted."
So, after all these years - some very telling truths had come out and a settlement was paid to Judi’s estate. It felt like a small victory for truth and justice. After the settlement, I happened to be visiting my parents on the Mendocino coast. I had moved hours away, but was visiting. I walked upstairs into their kitchen and they were listening to a broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR).
The news program was talking about the settlement that had been paid out to Judi’s estate and they were playing some audio recordings of Judi speaking describing the bombing.
It was a different world then.
The internet was up and running, but people like me didn’t have email or computers in 2004.
If something noteworthy happened, either you were there,
or someone you trusted told you about it,
or you heard it on the news.
It wasn’t easy to simply pull up various sources of information on a given subject.
As the program played the audio recordings of Judi, it may have been the first time I had ever heard her speak.
With a bright tone, with humor and warmth, she talked about the bomb ripping through her pelvis. She talked about the FBI agents who, “responded in a thrice…. almost as if they had been waiting around the corner with their hands cupped to their ears.”
I sat at the kitchen table, silently noting the cheerfulness in her voice. I was still too young to allow tears to flow if my heart was touched. It was very rare that something actually pierced the ice around my heart after years of trying to be tough, or be cool, or fit in. So instead of leaning forward with tear-stained cheeks, I sat straight up, with dry eyes, and a tightly clenched throat and belly.
Sitting there at the kitchen table, listening to her voice. It just felt so personal. So close. This wasn’t like the assassination of Ghandi on a different continent; or Martin Luther King Jr, or JFK being struck down for standing up for truth decades ago in some other era.
It felt like organized evil had come right into our town - even into our home, and destroyed a loved one. It felt that close.
It wasn’t just that it was an organized malevolence. What was even more disturbing was the fact that the FBI, one of our most powerful federal agencies, was the perpetrator.
I thought that the FBI existed to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. After the court proceedings there was a suprising amound of evidence to support the case that some of them were actually criminals for hire.
Seeing something like this up close leads to other questions. How many other agents of the FBI are compromised? How far up does this corruption actually go?
At that time, I believed the TV news version of our political system. I suspected that there might be a little bit of shadiness in our government, but I did not believe in any systemic corruption in the American political system.
This event, so close to home, caused me to question that belief.
Looking back on it now, nearly 20 years later, I can see how much of an impression Judi and this entire event made on me. It caused me to be more skeptical, to ask more questions. It made me more curious, and willing to hear both sides of an issue before rushing to conclusions.
I thought about Judi and the bombing many times in the years that followed. Eventually, I tried to put some of those thoughts down in a song.