On August 21, 1990, the corporate press splashed Dave Foreman’s announcement that he was leaving Earth First! across national headlines. In Humboldt and Mendocino Counties, the news was publicized on the front pages of the Eureka Times-Standard[1] and Santa Rosa Press Democrat.[2] The press spun the announcement as a bombshell, but in fact, hints of trouble had been brewing within the radical environmental movement for some time.[3] Foreman had been angered by several incidents at the previous year’s 10th annual Earth First! Round River Rendezvous (RRR), including the burning of an American flag around the campfire one night.[4] The renunciation of tree spiking, by key northern California and southern Oregon Earth First! activists, while not meant as a movement wide statement, or even an assumption of the will of the majority was nevertheless spun as such and Dave Foreman was especially disenchanted with this decision.[5] As early as the first major rally of Redwood Summer, in Samoa, Mike Roselle, one of Foreman’s four fellow Earth First! cofounders had publicly expressed frustration over the editorial polices and directions of the Earth First! Journal and singled out Foreman in particular for some of his less than enlightened comments about immigration and starving Africans.[6] Foreman as well as his wife and fellow Earth First!er Nancy Morton had skipped the 11th RRR, held in Montana earlier that summer. In fact, they had announced that they would in advance, and the corporate press salivated over this revelation. For example, Mike Geniella had written, in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
“(Foreman) is reported to be unhappy with the emergence of increasingly radical forces within the controversial movement. Foreman’s rejection of his usual prominent role at the annual Earth First! gathering signals a leadership turmoil within a mushrooming cause that’s drawing national attention. Insiders here speculate dissension over the direction of Earth First! takes could splinter the movement by summer’s end.” [7]
Foreman had written a “no thank you” letter to principle Rendezvous organizer Jake Krelick, stating, “I just can’t bear another ruined (RRR)…my disinclination to attend is no reflection on my admiration for you. (Nancy and I) may drop by for a day to see whatever friends show up, but we aren’t planning to camp at the site…(We) have decided to enjoy ourselves in the wilderness.” Geniella hinted that most likely this meant nearby Yellowstone National Park. Montana Earth First!er Krelick commented that the movement had grown “way bigger than Dave gives it credit,” and indicated that he shared Roselle’s perspective on the increasing diversity of Earth First! being its strength. He also agreed that it was in fact Redwood Summer that was driving Earth First! at this point and that while other campaigns were certainly happening around the nation and the world for that matter, none were as big in either numbers or significance by comparison.[8]
Early in August, three days before Judi Bari made her first public appearance of the summer at the federal building in San Francisco, Foreman again publicly acknowledged that he had become disillusioned with Earth First!. The media hinted that the Earth First! cofounder had written a “Dear John letter” to the movement announcing his resignation. Foreman was quoted as saying that the promoters of Redwood Summer were “more interested in the wildness within than the wildness out in the forests,”[9] which many took to be criticism of the large subculture of hippies among the Earth First!ers in base camp, though in reality the vast majority of Earth First!ers involved in Redwood Summer, including the so-called hippies, were fairly diverse.[10] He bemoaned the evolution of Earth First! beyond its traditional niche into a “leftist” political tendency, or more specifically that the organizers of redwood Summer had transformed Earth First! from a radical environmental movement into a “class struggle” organization.[11] Foreman didn’t mention the IWW particularly, though they were the primary class struggle oriented organization involved in Redwood Summer.[12] That in order for radical environmentalism to have any lasting effectiveness required class struggle, and that the two were not mutually exclusive of the other was by now intuitive for many involved in the struggle, though a sufficiently deep understanding of this was shared by few besides Judi Bari.[13] Still, many Redwood Summer organizers agreed that the timber issue, even from a standpoint of deep ecology necessitated a replacement of the existing economic order, namely corporate capitalism, with one more sustainable and in harmony with nature.[14]
That Dave Foreman would rail against “leftism” and “social justice” based environmentalism is ironic given the fact that he would say in an interview featured in the Progressive not more than two months later:
“In the United States, blacks and Chicanos of the inner cities are the ones most affected by air and water pollution, the ones most trapped by the unnatural confines of urbanity. So we decided that not only should eco-militants be concerned with human environmental problems; we should also make common ground with other progressive elements of society whenever possible…(T)here are issues where Earth radicals can cooperate with Feminist, Indian rights, anti-nuke, peace, civil rights, and Civil liberties groups.”
“Ever since the earth goddesses of ancient Greece were supplanted by the macho Olympians, repression of women and Earth has gone hand-in-hand with imperial organization…”[15]
Such statements, in obvious contradiction to Foreman’s quips about “leftists” led northern California Earth First!ers to simply deadpan reply, “we were only following orders!”[16]
Foreman singled out Mike Roselle and Judi Bari in particular, although most of the Redwood Summer organizers and spokespeople shared similar views. Roselle accused Foreman of “red baiting,” citing the latter’s past associations with Young Americans for Freedom and Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign as political baggage[17], and declared:
“We don’t need Foreman in Earth First! if he’s going to be an unrepentant right wing thug. We’re going to keep doing what we think is best, and that’s raise these issues and confront the industries that are trying to exploit our last wild lands…(Earth First! remains a) formidable grassroots nationwide network that’s intent on saving wilderness and old-growth forests. That’s been our priority and will remain so.”[18]
Darryl Cherney echoed these sentiments and further elaborated:
“When you start out with an environmental issue of saving trees and attack the economic issue of timber on the North Coast, you wind up with a social issue. When you get death threats and car bombings, you don’t have a simple wilderness issue anymore…
“Personally I am sad because he was one of the (people) that convinced me to get involved in Earth First!, but I have to respect him for creating a non-organization that one day might outgrow any of its founders.”[19]
There was some indication that Foreman was experiencing mental and emotional fatigue from being one of the many Earth First!ers who had been specifically targeted by the FBI, and since the government’s sting operation against the movement the previous year and the endless legal battles that ensued since then, the embattled spokesman had already stepped back from being in the spotlight. Mike Roselle specifically criticized Foreman as being “a retired old man out on the lecture circuit”, though in reality, Foreman was only 42 at the time, scarcely six years older than the 36 year-old Roselle. There was no denying that the two cofounders were not on the best of terms at the time, although, according to Judi Bari, there was far more going on than just a disagreement between the two. Said Judi Bari:
“It’s no coincidence that women are the key strategists and organizers for Redwood Summer. Women are in the lead on this thing except when the boys jump in front of the microphones. The movement now is much more than individual feats of daring, such as tree-climbing and para-military type actions out in the woods. Our actions are much more grown up, much more feminine…
“Dave Foreman wants Earth First! to remain small, pure, and radical. I want it to be big, impure, and radical…
“Profound social changes don’t come about without a mass movement. I don’t think people sneaking around in the woods pouring sand in gasoline tanks on bulldozers are going to bring about the level of pressure needed. The only thing that brings about social change is the fear of the loss of social control (by the employing class).”[20]
Mike Roselle agreed that Earth First! had “outgrown its guerilla tactics” as described by Foreman in Ecodefense, though nowhere did he (or Bari) suggest that the movement should abandon those tactics entirely or even mostly.[21] This was the real issue. Foreman wanted Earth First! to remain a guerilla group with a mild survivalist ethic and a Malthusian perspective, albeit dedicated to the enlightened philosophy of deep ecology as opposed to an actual right wing political ideology. Bari, Roselle, and others were trying to argue that Earth First! could incorporate most of Foreman’s vision (minus the survivalist and Malthusian baggage) within their broader perspective. The corporate media, of course, made it sound like the two perspectives were irreconcilable.[22] Said Karen Pickett:
“Things now aren’t like the way it was in the beginning. Foreman felt like it was his own little club, and now it’s not the same group of people so he’s not as comfortable with the way things are going…(He’s paid) his dues and (brought) in a lot of people. He put the message out there, but back then the message needed to be simpler in order to popularize the issues. Now that that’s happened we have to put the issues in their proper political context.”[23]
As expected, Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton officially declared their resignation from Earth First! on August 21, 1990 in a four page letter which they mailed to numerous Earth First!ers (though neither Cherney nor Roselle were among them) as well as dozens of media outlets.[24] In their letter, Foreman and Morton made statements such as:
“We feel like we should be sitting at the bar of a seedy honky-tonk, drinking Lone Star, thumbing quarters in the country-western jukebox, and writing this letter on a bar napkin.
“Breaking up is never easy to do, whether it’s with a lover or an organization that’s been the central focus of your life for a decade. But people and groups change over time, and the Earth First! movement seems to be changing in such a way that we don’t feel comfortable sharing a name with it any longer.
“So it’s time to sit down and write a ‘Dear John’ letter to Earth First!. This isn’t a sad letter, but it’s not a happy letter either. It’s a letter that remembers the good times, but recognizes we and Earth First! are on separate trails. It’s bittersweet, with fond memories and glad anticipations…”[25]
Judi Bari, who was one of the recipients of Foreman’s and Morton’s letter, wrote a point by point response of her own, which began:
“I feel like I should be sitting around base camp listening to Bob Marley, smoking a hooter, and writing this on the back of a rolling paper.
“Dave Foreman’s ‘divorce’ from Earth First! did not just happen because of the hippies in Redwood Summer. Nor is it a personality conflict between Dave and Mike Roselle or Dave and me. This split has been brewing for a long time, and it is based on real political differences.” [26]
Foreman and Morton more or less agreed that the differences had existed, below the surface, for some time, and they likened them to the mutation of an organism into a new species:
“A good metaphor, we think, for Earth First! over the last decade is that of a generalist species in a new habitat with many available niches, (Say, a finch blown over to the Galapagos.) Slowly, different populations of that generalist species adapt to more effectively exploit the different niches and evolve into separate species. Oftentimes, external environmental stresses push a generalist species toward faster differentiation into separate, specifically adapted sister species.
“This is what has happened to us in Earth First! Those given to better exploiting the different niches of monkeywrenching, direct action, and conservation biology have been diverging.
“Unless we can adapt to both this changed environment and this divergence within our gene pool we will become extinct as a species. Our personal choice for adapting is to declare that the Earth First! movement has been a success, that it has accomplished far more than any of us dreamed possible ten years ago, and then retire the name “Earth First!.” We should then regroup under different names to continue the work to which we are individually best adapted and with those we are most closely related. In ecological terms, then, to declare our generalist species extinct because of evolution into separate sister species that are specifically adapted to different niches. Of course, this is unlikely to happen because many remain attached to the Earth First! name for various reasons and others are loath to give up the tribal sense of belonging inherent to the Earth First! movement…
“We therefore have come to the irrevocable decision to leave…We do not henceforth represent what has become Earth First! and we are not represented by it.”[27]
Foreman and Morton’s analysis seemed reasonable enough when argued from a biological standpoint, but it was full of contradictions from a political perspective. They attempted to claim that they were not interested in starting any sectarian squabbles with what Earth First! was becoming, but in the same breath they made numerous ideological distinctions that essentially declared that biocentrism and deep ecology could not be integrated with class struggle and social justice:
“(W)e wish to make it abundantly clear that for the most part these are honest differences between decent people who respect one another.
“In short, we see happening to the Earth First! movement what happened to the Greens in West Germany—an effort to transform an ecological group into a Leftist group. We also see a transformation to a more overtly counterculture / antiestablishment style, and the abandonment of biocentrism in favor of humanism.
“Mind you, we are not opposed to campaigns for social and economic justice. We are generally supportive of such causes. But Earth First! has from the beginning been a wilderness preservation group, not a class struggle group…
“(W)e are conservationists. We are not anarchists or Leftists. We are biocentrists, not humanists.”[28]
This was absurd. Nobody involved in the involvement of Redwood Summer was suggesting that it had to be one or the other. What they were arguing is that in order to effectively protect fragile old growth bioregions, one had to be both. Foreman and Morton were unconvinced, however, and based their rigidity on a Malthusian dismissal of ecosocialist ideals, namely egalitarianism, classless society, and sustainable civilization within an ecological context. The letter continued:
“We believe that human overpopulation has led to overshooting the carrying capacity of the Earth and will result in a major ecological crash. We do not think that believing this means one is racist, fascist, imperialist, sexist or misanthropic even if it is politically incorrect for cornucopians of the Left, Right and Middle.”[29]
Nobody among the Redwood Summer organizers was arguing against the notion that overpopulation was not at least part of the problem. The idea that it wasn’t didn’t necessarily flow from the notion that the workers at the point of production (or destruction as the case or situation might be) were the most strategically placed group of people that could potentially effect substantial changes to the nature of forestry. If this were not the case, corporate timber would not have gone to such great lengths to propagandize to their employees. Foreman and Morton concluded their resignation by expressing their desire not to force Earth First! to return to something it no longer was:
“We wish those who remain in Earth First! the best and we wish campaigns like Redwood Summer every success. We will not attack the evolving Earth First! organization or individuals in it. We will not encourage anyone to leave Earth First! with us. We will not tell anyone they have to make a choice between EF! and us. We will not claim we are right and the class-struggle Left/counterculture approach of the “new” Earth First! is wrong. We are merely different and have our own separate strengths and roles to play. We continue to admire and respect many of the people and local groups in Earth First! and have no reason to criticize them…
“Some will ask, ‘Why not stay and fight to return Earth First! to its original ideas and goals? Why abandon the movement to those who would transform Earth First! into an environmental reincarnation of the New Left?’ We can only reply that we have never seen a fight for control of an organization achieve anything positive…
“One reason for that is that we no longer manipulate the media. The media manipulate us and establish our style for us…
“Splitting the sheets is not pleasant but staying together with irreconcilable differences is worse. Happy Trails.”[30]
Foreman and Morton concluded with a postscript “apologizing” for their “resignation” being leaked to the media before they had a chance to send their letter. Mike Roselle to this day maintains that this statement was disingenuous, and that the “leaking” was anything but inadvertent and designed to manipulate the media exactly in the very way Foreman and Morton claimed they could no longer do.
The organizers of Redwood Summer believed that one didn’t have to read between the lines very much to see that what the authors claimed was not an attack was, in fact, exactly that. In her letter, Judi Bari rebutted Foreman’s and Morton’s claims of irreconcilable differences between biocentrism and class struggle:
“We certainly agree on the main principle of Earth First!—that of biocentrism, or ‘deep ecology.’ The earth is not here just to serve humans. All species have a right to exist for their own sake; and human domination of nature has left the earth in a state of serious imbalance that threatens the life support system of the planet.”[31]
Bari credited Dave Foreman for introducing the concept of deep ecology, and expressed her respect for the work he’d done thus far, but made it clear that she could not ignore the differences in their perspectives or analyses:
“I absolutely agree that we need to save anything we can, and I support all efforts to do so. But I don’t think preserving wilderness in set asides is enough. Our society is so destructive that any wilderness we preserve may be destroyed by acid rain, drought, or greenhouse effect. And, as the earth continues to deteriorate under the weight of human abuse, social pressure to consume any unspoiled land will become so great that we will lose it eventually.
“The only way to preserve wilderness and the only way to save our planet’s life support system from collapse is to find a way to live on the earth that doesn’t destroy the earth. In other words, Earth First! is not just a conservation movement; it is also a social change movement…
“It doesn’t make sense to bemoan the destruction of nature while supporting the system that is destroying it. Yet Dave Foreman proudly calls himself a patriot, and glorifies the dominant culture of our corrupt society…
“(I)t is wrong for Dave Foreman to characterize us as ‘leftists’ or ‘a class struggle group.’ We are not trying to overthrow capitalism for the benefit of the proletariat. In fact. the society we envision is not spoken to in any leftist theory that I’ve ever heard of. Those theories deal only with how to redistribute the spoils of exploiting the earth to benefit a different class of humans. We need to build a society that is not based on the exploitation of earth at all—a society whose goal is to achieve a stable state with nature for the benefit of all species…
“(H)aving this kind of worldview does not mean we are working on social rather than ecological issues. It just helps shape the strategies used in our Earth First! organizing…
“Dave Foreman would like to keep the movement small and pure. But profound social changes usually require mass movements…
“The strategy for Redwood Summer was to increase our numbers…We’re not watering down the movement—we’re spreading our radicalism by sending all those people home with new experience in direct action…
“We are a direct action group, and our policy is set on the front lines, not on the lecture circuit or in the minds of theoreticians.
“Nobody has all the answers. and one of the strengths of Earth First! has always been our diversity. Rednecks for Wilderness and Hippie WuWu’s can coexist in Earth First!, as long as we are all fighting to save this planet. Our decentralized nonstructure leaves room for many strategies to be followed at once. But if Dave Foreman or anyone else starts insisting on conventionality, we will lose our spark.
“I don’t see Dave’s leaving as a split in Earth First!, but rather as an evolution. The activities he proposes are not in competition with ours, and there is no reason for anyone to have to choose sides.”[32]
Bari’s perspective was shared by many Redwood Summer organizers and participants. Members of the north coast community—whose attention Foreman, Morton, and other Earth First!ers may not have even been aware they had—witnessed the debate within the pages of their local newspapers, and offered opinions of their own. One of the first of these was Richard Langello, who commented on the discussion even before Foreman’s and Bari’s letters were made public, declaring:
“Foreman reveals the greatest problem facing those of us of the left wing of the political spectrum: We are failing to recognize our common enemy.
“Whether you are fighting to preserve the Bill of Rights, or fighting to protect the spotted owl, you are fighting the same powers. Everything that is wrong with our society, is triggered by economics. The love of money and power sets the stage for all the injustices and exploitation that takes place. It is evident that there are some individuals who are willing to compromise human life, and our environment, to attain that wealth and power…
“We must remember that the common enemy is the wealthy elite. They are the ones who perpetrate injustice and exploitation for their own personal gain. We of the left must galvanize around this.
“We will not be able to save the environment, unless we attack greed and consumerism, and until we establish a just, equitable, and classless society. We cannot do this unless we are firmly united.”[33]
This was a point on which few disagreed, though Foreman’s and Morton’s staunch adherence to Malthusianism suggested that the latter two saw little value in political economy. Langello compared the resignation, which had evolved into a debate with Bari's and Roselle's responses, to the disruption caused by COINTELPRO. This made all the more sense given the fact that it was pretty obvious that the FBI sting operation against Earth First in Arizona and the bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were almost certainly COINTELPRO operations:
“(T)he so-called leaders of Earth First! are engaging in petty squabbling, instead of concentrating their efforts on the greater cause of the movement…
“This conjures up images of the movements of the sixties, that eventually collapsed under the weight of their petty bickering. Look at the Civil Rights movement, or the Antiwar movement, or the American Indian Movement. Each had become suc-cessful in getting its message across to the general public…
“Just as they were approaching their zenith, petty politics and personalities got in the way. Infighting effectively divided the movements, and they began to fizzle out. To rub salt into the wounds, it was later discovered that title FBI had instigated much of the trouble. But it was already too late.
“The greater good of the movements was sacrificed for a few giant egos. The leaders became more important than the movements themselves.”[34]
Langello then excoriated Judi Bari for invoking the “feminization” of Earth First!, dismissing the issue as a distraction:
“Judi Bari says that the Earth First! actions are more grown up because women are doing the planning. Does this mean that male activists are wholly incapable of planning grownup actions? She says that Earth First! actions are more feminine. Is there an activist out there who really knows the difference between a masculine action, and a feminine one?
“Yes, it’s wonderful that women are doing a lot of the organizing, but that is not the point. We are trying to save a fragile ecosystem from destruction. The gender of the organizers is irrelevant. This is not simply a masculine or feminine issue.
“The movement is too important to be split apart by gender. It is too important and far-reaching to be limited to the rhetoric of ecology, whatever that is supposed to mean. It transcends egos, personalities, and who gets the microphone.”[35]
In Bari’s defense, she wasn’t suggesting that men were less capable organizers than women, or that actions organized by men or women were “masculine” or “feminine”, except perhaps in the case of tree spiking which seemed to be defended primarily by men, whose arguments stemmed primarily from a sense of machismo in her opinion. Additionally, what Langello seemed to have trouble grasping is that Bari was convinced that at least some of foreman’s motivation for leaving Earth First! may have had everything to do with a shift in leadership to women, though there were many within Earth First! who debate Bari’s opinion, suggesting that women always played a role in many actions long before Bari joined the movement.
Regular Anderson Valley Advertiser columnist Fred Gardner found Langello’s dismissal of the debate as “petty squabbling” between leaders to be shallow and his history of recent American leftist movements as simplistic. Gardner also argued that it was highly inaccurate to (solely) assign the blame for the failure of the American (new) left (in the 1960s) to “factionalism” or “FBI disruption”, declaring:
“The left failed because it was class(ist) and dishonest and controlled by people who would actually hate to see the American working class take power. One aspect of their bullshit was an incessant attack on leadership per se. This attack resulted in the removal of honest, militant indigenous leaders and their replacement by opportunists with “movement” patrons…
“We look hopefully towards Earth First! but we sense confusion or coy dishonesty every time some ‘spokesperson’ calls it a ‘non-organization.’ Why can’t our leaders take responsibility for who they are, what they stand for and how they operate? Whose interests are served by all the vagueness?
“We need Earth First! the organization—an outfit that’s upfront about taking power and reorganizing this society. It’s ludicrous to think we can get off oil or take any of the steps necessary to save the planet without major social change. It’s going to take organization and forthright leadership. The rank and file are waiting.
“The anarchistic stance has its appeal, but when you come right down to it, anarchism is the ultimate liberalism.”[36]
While it is certainly true that Gardner’s critique of Langello’s simplistic dismissal of very deep rooted political differences within Earth First! was on the mark, and the critique of Earth First!’s constant refrain of “we’re a movement not an organization,” certainly had merit given the latter’s use of imagery and resources often used by actual organizations, his blanket dismissal of anarchism was at best unfair and at worst, itself sectarian. Most Earth First!ers would have readily agreed that substantial social change was indeed necessary, including a major restructuring of the distribution of power within human society. That Earth First! had no singular political line on how this was to happen is of valid concern, but this had little to do with the actual debate at hand, and in any case, most Earth First!ers at the time probably didn’t generally see themselves as “anarchists”. While Gardner’s criticism of Earth First!’s lack of an alternative vision for society was one shared by many on the left, including members of the IWW—even those openly working within the Earth First! “movement”, the crux of the debate was whether or not Redwood Summer could legitimately be considered an “Earth First!” campaign and whether or not Earth First! could incorporate both “deep ecology” and “class struggle”. Dave Foreman was certain it couldn’t. Judi Bari was certain that not only it could, but also that it must.
Rob Anderson, speaking for himself and presumably his brother, Bruce, (implied by the use of the pronoun “we”) agreed with Gardner’s criticism of Langello, stating:
“Langello’s Petty Squabbling theory of history doesn’t begin to explain the demise of either the civil rights movement or the peace movement (We don’t know enough about the American Indian Movement to comment on its problems). Both movements died natural deaths when they achieved their rather limited goals: The civil rights movement of the sixties sought equal access to both public facilities and the ballot box, for black people. The peace movement faded as U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia wound down with the ‘Vietnamization’ of the war under Nixon and, just as significantly, when the military draft ended.
“Both movements could achieve their rather limited aims within the existing social structure. True economic equality and opportunity for blacks would require radical changes in society. Ditto for the peace movement: Demilitarizing society in the wake of the U.S. attack on Southeast Asia would have clearly required fundamental changes. The necessary political constituency, for such change was nonexistent, regardless of the quality of the leadership of the two movements. The civil rights movement, when it reached the brick wall of the economic context of racial injustice, split into the legalistic, within-thesystem approach of the NAACP and Martin Luther King’s SCLC and the more radical black nationalist groups like SNCC.
“It’s interesting that Langello barely mentions what the political left has long considered the traditional agent of social change, the working class, in his comments, though he makes an indirect reference…
“If it’s a class struggle, significant social change isn’t going to happen without an insurgent working class—an idea fundamental to leftist political theory Marxist and non-Marxist—for generations. Anyone who fails to recognize this rather fundamental political fact can hardly be called a leftist at all.”[37]
Bari’s critique of Foreman’s positions included this critique, though it went further, arguing that regardless of the consciousness of the working class, a major reorganization of society was necessary simply because capitalism, by its very nature, was inherently destructive. Bari would a few years later argue that socialism in the traditional sense didn’t automatically translate to an ecologically sustainable society either, but at least it could be aligned to one; capitalism simply could not due to its tendency to externalize the social and environmental costs of its activity.[38] Anderson also critiqued Gardner’s admonishment of Earth First! to “take power”, declaring:
“Gardner, on the other hand, makes class analysis the focus of his critique of Langello…
“The working class, however, was never behind either the civil rights movement or the peace movement, and they’re clearly not behind Earth First! In fact, the working class is actually doing the work of overcutting our forests and milling the logs, and it appears workers will be unable to face the political reality of the situation until they’re forced to that is, when either the North coast is completely deforested and their jobs eliminated or when the timber industry is reined in by increased regulation…
“Earth First! has about as much chance of taking over the country as SDS did in the sixties…
“A large part of the problem is that the American working class hasn’t been a serious force for political change in many years. It’s important to realize that only about 20% of the working class in the U.S. is unionized, and the few strong American unions that do exist are preoccupied with bread and butter issues directly affecting their membership. The rest of the working people in the country are without organized political protection; they are, in short, essentially at the mercy of their employers…
“Most American workers, in fact, seem to be mirror political images of their masters. Harry Merlos without the money
“(There will be, by the way, a special place in Hell assigned to the members and leaders of the Democratic Party, a shameless collection of sellouts, unprincipled hacks, Cold War liberals, and fat cat unions. The U.S. is much like Mexico: It’s essentially ruled by one party, the Property Party. This is called “bipartisanship” and is considered the pinnacle of statesmanship and political “realism.”)
“Where does this leave us? Where we’ve been for years: in very deep shit, indeed. The movement for social change in the U.S. has no firm political or economic base. It is, instead, a loose coalition of women’s groups, civil rights groups, environmentalists, gay rights activists, and peace activists who can rarely unite on any one issue. Let’s not kid ourselves about the possibilities for change in the Land of the Free. It’ll take an economic catastrophe to derail the Great Shopping Spree long enough to result in meaningful social change. All the wise, charismatic leadership in the world can’t change that. Gardner puts his finger on the prime reason for the ‘failure’ of the Left: the lack of a ‘revolutionary situation.’ We haven’t had anything close to such a situation since the Great Depression.”[39]
This perspective was bleakly pessimistic, and it failed to account for the already existing analyses by revolutionaries throughout history that the revolutionary often seems to walk a very lonely road until the revolution actually happens, yet it is still necessary to walk that road lest they never reach their destination. While the situation may not have been “revolutionary” there was no denying that it was still necessary to address the class nature of corporate resource extraction, no matter what. Still it was fairly accurate; Earth First! would not likely take power (no matter how much hysterical ranting by right wing ideologues such as William Pendley suggested otherwise), at least not with substantially more organization. Perhaps it was not desirable for Earth First! to do so, but if not, it still left unaddressed the question of who would. Even if power were to be decentralized, there had to be a mechanism or process for doing so. Dave Foreman’s views on what Earth First! should have been had no process, no road map, no “DNA” for achieving this; Bari’s did. More to the point, Bari’s perspective was born out of actual struggle. Foreman’s most assuredly was not, at least not recent struggle.
That established, Rob Anderson, determined to be an equal opportunity contrarian, saved some of his critique for Bari, arguing against what he considered the “poor strategy” of uncritical acceptance of “alternative lifestyles” within Earth First!:
“This suggests a political equivalent to the old Timothy Leary slogan: Turn on, tune in, and drop out, and join Earth First! Surely Bari and others must realize that most working people don’t like ‘hippies’ and aren’t likely to join what they perceive as a counterculture led movement. Besides, we all—hippies or not—have to exist within the system until it becomes, well, a different sort of system.”[40]
To be fair, Judi Bari had earned the respect of several timber workers, and though she certainly had “hippie” roots, she was far more multidimensional than this. Still, the “hippie” label was a hard one for Earth First! in northwestern California to shed, and had continually haunted them throughout Redwood Summer, no matter how different reality actually was, which was especially apparent at the rally in Fort Bragg. Unfortunately, the perception of Earth First!ers as “hippies” would be inadvertently and substantially reinforced by Redwood Summer’s last major demonstration, the ill-fated and much misunderstood “Redwoodstock.”
Notes:
[1] Was it really? Locate source.
[2] “Earth First! Founder Makes it Official: He Quits”, by Bleys W. Rose, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 21, 1990.
[3] “Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 12, 1990.
[4] “Earth First! Leader Skips Big Rendezvous”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 13, 1990.
[5] “Earth First! Founder Resigns”, Willits News, August 22, 1990; and “Review: Dave Foreman’s Confessions of an Ecowarrior”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, April 4, 1991.
[6] “Talkin’ Earth First!: an interview with Mike Roselle”, by Alexander Cockburn, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 4, 1990.
[7] “Earth First! Leader Skips Big Rendezvous”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 13, 1990.
[8] “Earth First! Leader Skips Big Rendezvous”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 13, 1990.
[9] “Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 12, 1990.
[10] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 10, 1990.
[11] “Earth First! Founder Resigns”, Willits News, August 22, 1990
[12] Virtually every press release published by Redwood Summer organizers named three organizations under the Redwood Summer banner: Earth First!, Seeds of Peace, and IWW.
[13] Foster, John Bellamy, “The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class: Lessons from the Ancient Forest Struggle of the Pacific Northwest” New York, NY., Monthly Review Press (Capitalism, Nature, Socialism series), 1993.
[14] “Earth First! Founder Resigns”, Willits News, August 22, 1990
[15] “A Short Quiz”, Ecotopia Earth First! Extra, Special Baby Treesus Issue (December) 1990.
[16] “A Short Quiz”, Ecotopia Earth First! Extra, Special Baby Treesus Issue (December) 1990.
[17] Defending the Earth, a Dialog Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, Chase, Steve ed., 1991, South End Press, 48-49.
[18] “Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 12, 1990.
[19] “Earth First! Founder Makes it Official: He Quits”, by Bleys W. Rose, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 21, 1990.
[20] “Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 12, 1990.
[21] “Earth First! Founder Resigns”, Willits News, August 22, 1990
[22] “The Earth First! Debate”, by Richard Langello, Anderson Valley Advertiser, Aug ust 22, 1990.
[23] “Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!”, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 12, 1990.
[24] “Earth First! Founder Makes it Official: He Quits”, by Bleys W. Rose, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 21, 1990.
[25] “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, by Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990, and “Good Luck, Darlin’ It’s Been Great”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[26] “The Earth First Divorce”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990; and “Expand Earth First!”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[27] “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, by Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990, and “Good Luck, Darlin’ It’s Been Great”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[28] “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, by Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990, and “Good Luck, Darlin’ It’s Been Great”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[29] “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, by Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990, and “Good Luck, Darlin’ It’s Been Great”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[30] “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, by Dave Foreman and Nancy Morton, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990, and “Good Luck, Darlin’ It’s Been Great”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[31] “The Earth First Divorce”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990; and “Expand Earth First!”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[32] “The Earth First Divorce”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990; and “Expand Earth First!”, Earth First! Journal, Mabon / September 22, 1990.
[33] “The Earth First! Debate”, by Richard Langello, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 22, 1990.
[34] “The Earth First! Debate”, by Richard Langello, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 22, 1990.
[35] “The Earth First! Debate”, by Richard Langello, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 22, 1990.
[36] “Notes from the City”, by Fred Gardner, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 5, 1990.
[37] “Leadership, the Left, and Earth First!”, by Rob Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[38] Bari, Judi, Revolutionary Ecology, Biocentrism and Deep Ecology, 1995, self published; various sources, including, www.judibari.org.
[39] “Leadership, the Left, and Earth First!”, by Rob Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[40] “Leadership, the Left, and Earth First!”, by Rob Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.