By Daphne Wysham – Labor Notes, August 1990; Reprinted in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, December 12, 1990
In Oakland, California on May 24, a bomb exploded in the car of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, members of the environmental group, Earth First! Bari and Cherney—part of a coalition composed of Earth First!, the Industrial Workers of the World or the Wobblies, and a Berkeley peace collective called Seeds of Peace—are trying to save the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest by building ties between labor and environmental activists.
At the current rate of clearcutting, northwest coast old growth forests will be gone by the year 2005. And with the loss of the forests will come the loss of jobs.
Bari had succeeded in getting the mill workers and environmentalists, traditional enemies, as well as local politicians and business people to sit down and talk to one another in mediated sessions about their common concerns, including both the environment and jobs.
Potential Threat
Some labor organizers suspect the potentially enormous threat such as an alliance poses to the timber industry at large may be at the heart of the bombing. But the police investigation ignored this reality. Although the district attorney decided on July 17 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, the police regarded Bari and Cherney as the only suspects, accusing the victims of manufacturing an “eco terrorist” bomb that accidentally exploded in their car.
On July 16, a coalition of environmental, labor, peace, civil liberties, and women’s organizations called for a Congressional investigation into the case.
Judi Bari, a carpenter, a labor organizer for 14 years, and, more recently, an organizer with the Wobblies in the mills along the northern coast of California, worked for years to build a connection between the exploitation of the workers and the exploitation of the forests. As an outspoken member of Earth First!, she brought a labor consciousness to the otherwise uncompromising group of environmental radicals.
It was Bari who was instrumental in convincing Earth First! members to renounce their practice of “tree spiking,” where metal spikes are wedged into a stand of old growth trees in an effort to save the trees from the loggers’ chainsaw.
Bari argued that though spiking may save trees, it threatens the mill workers with personal injury. In carrying out such a practice, she said, Earth First! was alienating its natural allies.
Instead, Bari encouraged Earth First! to focus its energies on the anti worker timber corporations themselves and on building alliances with the workers.
Redwood Summer
Largely because of Bari’s efforts, Earth First! organizers have planned a summer long series of demonstrations known as “Mississippi Summer in the Redwoods,” or Redwood Summer, modeled after the civil rights organizing in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. These environmental protests have been strategically planned around sites where the anti worker tactics of the mills are most apparent.
Louisiana Pacific’s mill in the northern California coastal town of Samoa was the site of the June 20 kick off of Redwood Summer. Samoa is the port for export of old growth harvested lumber as raw, uncut logs to mills in Mexico. There workers mill the logs at a fraction of the $10 an hour the California mill workers earn.
Approximately 80% of the mills in northern California, such as the one in Samoa, are non union. Only 20% are organized by the International Woodworkers of America, whose membership is steadily shrinking.
By kicking off the campaign in Samoa, Earth First!ers hoped to emphasize the fact that it was not the environmentalists but the timber industry, with its priority on profits not jobs, that was responsible for the rise in unemployment in the mills through automation and export of uncut logs.
Since that demonstration, organizers have tried to build links between the longshore union in Mexico where the Louisiana Pacific timber from Samoa is unloaded by non union workers, and the ILWU in the United Stales.
PCB Spill
Another demonstration was scheduled for July 21 at Georgia Pacific’s mill in Fort Bragg. It was at the G-P mill in February, 1989 that Head Millwright Frank Murray ingested PCB laden oil when a capacitor burst in his face. Three shifts of workers were endangered before management admitted that the oil did in fact contain PCBs.
OSHA has since ruled that G P willfully exposed workers to PCBs and fined the company $14,000. Six months after the spill, Murray had a body PCB level of 386 parts per million; the EPA standard is .26 parts per billion.
Environmentalists and labor activists in the Fort Bragg community are now working toward a labor community buyout of the mill. This plan would incorporate “sustained yield” logging practices, where only as much lumber is harvested as can be replaced in an ecologically sound manner.
“Environmental and timber worker interests can be one and the same: a sustained forest for the survival of the planer, and a sustained forest for future jobs,” said Roanne Withers, a Wobbly organizer in Fort Bragg.
Meanwhile, San Francisco Wobbly Jim Squatter is making plans to hold free screenings for the mill workers of the film “Roger and Me,” which was never shown in any northern California communities. “We need lo show them that the same thing that happened lo workers in the G M plant in Flint is happening lo them,” said Squatter. “They’re victims of the same sort of corporate practices.”