Judi Bari Dies

On 2nd March Judi Bari, a prominent Earth First! organiser in the US, died peacefully of cancer. She came to widespread attention in the summer of 1990 when the car that her and another EF!er, Daryl Cherney, were in was blown up by a bomb which left her crippled. They had been in the middle of organising Redwood Summer, a mass of actions surrounding the issue of logging of the old growth Redwoods in the Headwaters Forest, Northern California.

Initially the pair were accused of carrying the bomb to a target and accidentally blowing themselves up although in reality a lawsuit against the FBI, accusing it of attempting to frame her as a terrorist in order to discredit her and the radical ecology movement in the public’s mind, is still going through the courts. "The suit will go forward", Cherney vowed. When he spoke with Bari recently, she told him, “Take Richard Held to trial. Take this case to trial. Don’t let them off the hook.” And as Daryl said: “That’s what we’re going to do”.

Richard Held was the FBI Special Agent in charge of the San Francisco office at the time of the bombing. He was central in the FBI infamous Counter Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO) that was central in trying to discredit and destroy the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Black Panthers. He resigned from the FBI shortly after Judi, through the lawsuit, forced the disclosure of police photos of Judi’s bombed car clearly showing that the bomb had been hidden directly under her driver’s seat, rather than on the back seat floorboard, as police and the FBI had claimed to the press.

For more details contact: Earth First! Journal, POB 1415, Eugene, Oregon, USA. Telephone: 00 1541 741 9191 or E-mail: earthfirst@ign.apc.org.