By Chuck Idelson and Tara Kramer – People’s Daily World, July 21, 1990
California’s “timber war” heated up this week. In San Francisco, 50 environmental, civil liberties, women’s, labor, and anti-intervention activists Monday called for state and federal investigations of the May car bombing that may have left Earth First leader Judi Bari permanently disabled.
Oakland police had been planning to seek an indictment charging that Bari and fellow activist Darryl Cherney planted the bomb themselves. But on Tuesday the Alameda County District Attorney’s office finally conceded its weak case, announcing it will not file charges against them. Bari said she was “ecstatic” about that decision but “outraged at what the FBI and the Oakland Police Department have been doing to me.” Attorneys for the two may sue the two agencies.
Some 175 miles northwest, in the coastal area that is near the heart of the battle, activists were preparing for the second major Redwood Summer protest, set for Saturday, July 21, at Georgia Pacific’s Fort Bragg headquarters. Some 2,000 protesters were expected for the rally, march and civil disobedience.
After a hostile takeover of a competitor in February, GP became the biggest wood products company in the world. Saddled with an $8 billion debt, it is using “liquidation logging” to try to pay it off, said Anna Marie Stenberg of Earth First. She told the PDW that GP is also getting ready to close its Fort Bragg mill, threatening a town dependent on logging.
Not far from the site of the protest and around the corner from the local office of the Mendocino Environmental Center, a large storefront on the city’s main street is housing the office where a “Solidarity” counter-protest is planned for the same day. Local support is evident in yellow ribbons throughout the town and on posters in seemingly every store window.
While using the media crush around Redwood Summer, the target of the Solidarity rally is the far reaching Forests Forever initiative on the November ballot, says Don Nelson, representative of the International Woodworkers of America.
Forests Forever, the Ancient Forest and Wildlife Protection and Bond Act, would sharply limit the loss of old growth timber that is at the heart of the timber wars. It bans large area clearcutting, provides bond money to purchase the largest unprotected old growth redwoods, limits log exports by requiring the state to buy only California lumber processed in the United States, mandates sustained timber yield so that no more is cut than is grown, and would authorize up to $32 million for a compensation and retraining fund for workers who may be displaced by acquisition of ancient forests. Not long ago Nelson and Gail Lucas, who chairs the Sierra Club’s forest practices task force, lobbied jointly in Sacramento for sustainable yield legislation. Slow government response, say the environmentalists, prompted the initiative. But Nelson says that “sensible regulation from the Board of Forestry” could achieve workable results. He calls the initiative a “clear cut of our jobs. Without defeating it, we will not have a future working in the woods or the mills.”
Lucas maintains that the present heavy logging, which has intensified to record levels as November nears, “is a losing situation for the workers.” She says, “Companies are going to run out of trees in the near future and then the jobs will be gone. Forests Forever means jobs forever. It will rebuild the forest resource to its former healthy state and, in so doing, provide more lumber, more jobs, a better wildlife habitat and a better counter to the greenhouse effect.”
Meanwhile, the bombing was back in the news. “The media, FBI and Oakland police are looking upon the two victims as suspects,” said Ying Lee Kelley, aide to Rep. Ron Dellums, at Monday’s press conference. As Dellums presses for a congressional investigation, aides to State Rep. Tom Bates and Mendocino County Supervisor Norm de Vall said the two officials are seeking intervention by the state attorney general.
“The violation of Cherney and Bari’s rights gives fair warning to lumber employees that their rights, too, can be denied,” said state Democratic Party Executive Board member Agar Jaicks. “History is full of violence against nonviolent activists,” said Chet Tchozewski, Greenpeace regional director. “Earth First! was beginning to have an effect on the status quo.”