Upon the conclusion of Redwoodstock, on Monday, September 3, 1990, Redwood Summer was officially over, as far as the capitalist press was concerned, but in actual fact, the issue remained very much alive on all sides. The campaign’s organizers, be they Earth First!ers, Wobblies, members of Seed of Peace, or some combination of all three, were as committed as ever to continuing the fight, as it was far from over. Corporate timber was only escalating their efforts to prevent the passage of Proposition 130, Forests Forever and its cousin, Proposition 128, Big Green, from passing in the November Election. The Yellows were entrenched in their continued reaction to the Greens and all that they stood for. There was much debate about “who won,” but for all intents and purposes, the fight was still in progress.[1] The Santa Rosa Press Democrat editorialized that now that the summer was over and the north coast communities had “survived” the season of direct action and industry reaction, it was time to “heal divisions” and “return to normalcy” as if what had existed before had been harmonious and somehow undivided.[2] The implication of the opinion ostensibly calling for responsibility from “all sides” really put the onus for the “division” on the shoulders of the activists, which was grossly unfair considering that it was the liquidation logging practices of corporate timber, the dictates of the existing market conditions under capitalism, and the utter capitulation to the dictates of capital by the collaborationist business unions (where they still represented workers at all) that had caused the divisions in the first place.[3] The Eureka Times-Standard was no better, announcing in one of its headlines that the summer had been “free of violence”, which was true on the part of the Greens, as if violence from them was expected, whereas it was utterly false in the case of the Yellows who had been consistently violent towards their adversaries.[4]
Judi Bari continued to received death threats from anonymous and semi-anonymous sources. Right around Labor Day weekend, during Redwoodstock, Willits Police found copies of a leaflet taped to a phone booth in town.[5] Residents found copies of identical leaflets taped to mailboxes on rural roads east of Willits, at High Forks.[6] The leaflets, composed of letters cut from newspaper headlines and strung together read:
“Bari get out. The hippys (sic) of String Creek Road east of Willits built a hideout for radical terrorist Judi Bari 3 and ½ miles up from Hearst Road. We don’t want a new headquarters for Earth First Forest Forever terrorists in Willits. Case of Coors to stud who burns her hideout. Knock first if you want. Six pack for every hippy shack burned on String Creek Road. Earth First kiss my ax. Stompers.”[7]
The leaflets also gave the name of the landlord. The Willits News reported that it had received an anonymous call a few weeks previously from an anonymous man, calling himself “James Madison,” who gave the exact mileage to Bari’s new home, and claimed (as did the leaflet) that it was to be “the new world headquarters for Earth First!”. Bari’s “new headquarters” was, in actual fact, an abandoned cabin that had been “red tagged” for building code violations by the Mendocino County Department of Planning and Building. She had planned to move there well before the bombing. Bari had been seriously crippled by the bombing and was wheelchair bound most of the time, though on occasion she was able to move around through the use of a walker. In response to the absurd paranoid about the nature of her new home, she said,
“My role is going to be very different, obviously. This is to be my home, not headquarters for anything. I’m enrolling my children in Willits schools on time, and I’m just going to have to stand up to this…There really isn’t any place I can go that I won’t be known or somewhat threatened, so if there is any place I can reestablish myself, it’s in Willits.”[8]
The notion that the String Creek neighborhood in which her home was located was some sort of “hippie commune” was equally absurd. As described by Bruce Anderson:
“The String Creek neighborhood is in fact home to working people including a log truck driver. The neighborhood is worried but standing tall. Judi Bari is [temporarily] moving into the Willits home of Walter and Karen Smith, a real logging family who—all by themselves—redeem the honor of their profession in standing up to the rural fascist scum who think they can threaten, bomb, and beat with impunity which, of course, they so far have.”[9]
Judi Bari confirmed that the neighbors were defending her right to live in their community, stating, “The neighbors have mixed feelings because they too have been threatened. Some wanted to stand up and state emphatically that I have a right to live anywhere I want. But we don’t really want to advertise where we are at the same time.”[10]
Bari’s presence in the community was also vociferously defended by Karen and Walter Smith, who had been temporarily housing Bari and her children until her String Creek Road dwelling was ready for habitation. Karen Smith, in particular, declared:
“Despite differences of opinion, our citizens have always respected the rights of individuals and many times axes have been buried in order to continue to make Willits a truly warm, open and caring place to live and work.
“Willits needs now to raise its voice against the tyranny of what is probably a very, very small number of people.
“Judi is frightened, frightened every moment of every day for her life and for the well being of those she cares for. As of this weekend she has not yet decided whether she will move to Willits.
“I must say that the neighbors, those whose ‘hippie cabins’ were also threatened, have indicated their unequivocal support for her right to live where she wishes and continue to welcome her into their small community with open arms…
“We are not members of Earth First! but because Judi’s new home in Willits is not ready for occupancy, we had offered her a place to spend her nights so that her daughter would be able to start school on time.”[11]
Karen Smith recalled that earlier in the year, before the bombing, Walter Smith had met Judi Bari, and was impressed with her breadth of knowledge and her ability to look at environmental issues from the perspective of the timber worker. It was this connection which inspired the gyppo contractor—already critical of L-P—to become openly outspoken against them, a fact which the industry no doubt was well aware. Much of this was ignored by the corporate media in part to whom Karen Smith traced the roots of the threats of violence:
“I would like to state unequivocally that Judi was and continues to be a person to whom nonviolence is as sacred as life itself. In fact, Judi’s influence on the local Earth First! membership has been so great that it was solely because of her efforts that tree-spiking and other forms of ‘eco-terrorism’ were renounced on the North Coast. Judi advocated grass roots, highly visible ‘theater’ protest and nonviolent civil disobedience as the most effective means to identify the problems and enlighten the general populace.
“Ever since the bombing that left her crippled, the mainstream media has constantly refused to clearly make these distinctions. The bigotry of the ‘Judi is an Earth First!er is a radical eco-terrorist is guilty’ syndrome is part of the media’s subtle strategy of discrediting those of us who are opposing the undeniable exploitation of resources and workers in our region’s commercial timberlands.
“The media has largely cooperated with a campaign of disinformation that is threatening to tear apart the very fabric of our forest communities.
“The campaign has seen leaflets printed by timber industry supporters, but falsely attributed to Earth First!, advocating violence. This campaign has lowered itself to the basest forms of demagoguery, while totally ignoring the critical forestry issues which should be the real issues at hand.
“Lists of businesses to boycott have been distributed, along with threatening, anonymous phone calls. This is a campaign which I firmly believe would be capable of spiking its own trees just to further discredit the opposition.
“This campaign is succeeding in polarizing our communities and creating an atmosphere of mistrust which feeds on its own ignorance. And last, but not least, it is responsible for threats of violence against a single mother with two children who has done nothing more than speak her mind in a country that supposedly guarantees our right to free speech, a woman who has already been the victim of the most brutal violence imaginable…
“We need to get back on track and continue the dialogue which Judi did so much to initiate, while respecting each other’s basic, fundamental inalienable rights. After all, burning down someone’s home or killing someone with a bomb is a violent, illegal act. Standing up in a boardroom and singing a song is a constitutionally guaranteed freedom we all have.”[12]
However Karen Smith did not stop there. She knew full well that the ultimate source of the violence against activists was traceable to the employing class declaring:
“(Bari) was the first to clearly point to the fact that the exploitation of our forests cannot be separated from the exploitation of the workers in those forests and in the mills.
“Overcutting is a form of exploitation of the worker’s labor. A 25 percent pay cut is a form of exploitation. Covering up a PCB spill is a form of exploitation. Refusing to keep wages and payments to gyppo timber operators in line with inflation is form of exploitation. Hiring of illegal, untrained aliens at even lower wages is a form of exploitation.
“Tree spiking and equipment sabotage were also acts committed at the expense of workers and Judi started by cleaning up her own house first. Walter and I both respect this woman and her courage tremendously. She is extremely intelligent and informed as anyone who bothers to communicate directly with her knows.”[13]
Karen Smith concluded by noting how ironic it was that those workers in whose interests Bari had worked so consistently and diligently to protect had turned on her, but it’s not certain at all that the anonymous “Stompers” were in fact timber workers at all. A look at the list of Bari’s most outspoken adversaries on the North Coast reveals few actual timber workers. Certainly T. Marshal Hahn, Charles Hurwitz, and Harry A. Merlo were not workers, nor were any of their management personnel. The leaders of Mothers’ Watch, TEAM, and WECARE were not really workers either, and those that ran gyppo firms tended to be those that inherited their businesses from parents who had been at one time, perhaps. Likewise the owners of most of the gyppo firms fell into that category, and those that tended to be actual timber fallers, like Jerry Philbrick for example, generally did not display a crass or openly hostile attitude towards Bari, even if they disagreed with her politically. Bill Bailey, who was a business owner and not strictly speaking a timber worker, could certainly be considered one of Bari’s political adversaries, and—even though he was willing to negotiate with Earth First! at the urging of the much more reasonable Art Harwood—was sympathetic to those who shared the crude, reactionary politics exhibited by the “Stompers” (such as Jack Azevedo). But did Bailey have any connection to them? There is no evidence that suggests he did, no matter how vehemently he disagreed with Redwood Summer.
Don Nelson had been a timber faller, once, and he bore the title of union representative, but he actually “represented” the worst example of a collaborationist bureaucrat in the eyes of many rank and file timber workers, and he had thrown in his lot with the reactionary and anti union Yellow Ribbon forces. Then, of course, there were the likes of William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation who had declared, in no uncertain terms, that the industry as “at war” with environmentalists. The rhetoric of so-called “Wise Use” organizations like the MSLF was eclipsed, however, by the extreme rightist Sahara Club, who spoke openly and favorably towards the use of violence against Earth First!ers. These folks weren’t timber workers; they were off-road motorbike enthusiasts. All of these reactionary elements, whether working separately or in concert with one another were allowed to operate with seeming political immunity despite the heavy handed presence of the FBI who was very quick to declare Earth First! a band of “terrorists”, even to the point of infiltrating and disrupting them, and even going so far as to entrap them in an effort to undermine their “leaders”. The stompers were, whomever they were, anonymous, and they may have had connections to any, all, or none of these forces, but if they included among their ranks actual timber workers, the latter were merely those that had been whipped up into hysterics by the forces of capital. There was no independent, class based initiative to these reactionaries, and it is doubtful that they were primarily motivated by point of production based economic concerns.
Those few who were directly linked to the timber industry who had anything to say on the subject were appalled at the death threats, such as Art Harwood, who circulated the following open letter among his employees and mailed it to numerous local periodicals:
“There are some people circulating flyers saying derogatory things and urging violence against Redwood Summer participants, Earth First!, and Judi Bari, This type of behavior serves no purpose except to make the tarnished image of the timber industry even worse.
“Many of us in the industry have worked very hard this summer to project an image of reasonableness and nonviolence while, at the same time, standing up for what we believe in.
“Please, those of you who are promoting these acts of violence, stop! We need to be looking for ways out of the mess we are in, not getting ourselves in deeper.
“This starts with respecting the basic Constitutional rights of all people, whether you agree with them or not.”[14]
Judi Bari’s means were limited as a result of her injury and her disability claim with the State of California, which would ultimately be denied, on the dubious grounds that her injuries were not permanently debilitating. This put her in a difficult situation logistically, as she needed full-time adult companionship, in order to take care of her own needs and that of her two daughters which, as Bari somewhat ruefully recounted, “(drove) her crazy, because (she didn’t) have a minute to herself.”[15] She was able to find a willing companion in the person of Lisa Henry, whose parents were not especially keen on the idea, but ultimately albeit reluctantly supported their daughter’s decision.[16] Bari elaborated:
“There has been a special needs trust set up for me, which will help pay for additional medical expenses and security. I plan to protect myself and get on with my life. The Stompers are calling for ‘studs’ to come forward to burn me out, or my neighbors, but it doesn’t take a stud to threaten the lives of a crippled single mother and her children, and a 20-year-old daughter of a County Supervisor.”[17]
Lest there was any ambiguity about what Bari meant about “protecting herself”, it did not involve the use of an arsenal or even weaponry. Instead, Bari relied on a number of Earth First! volunteers to stand watch over the grounds of her home until the threats of violence abated, which they ultimately did. One such volunteer was Robert Parker, who, along with Bari and Darryl Cherney wrote a humorous trilogy in response to the situation as a means of keeping their sanity. The lyrics of the three part song were penned to the tunes of Okie from Muskogie, These Boots Were Made for Walking, and Ghost Riders in the Sky:
I. Stomper From Fortuna
(Tune: Okie from Muskogie)
We don’t grow marijuana in Fortuna,
We get it all from hippies in the hills,
We make our living cutting old growth in the hills,
And working double shifts in all the mills,
And I’m proud to be a stomper from Fortuna,
A place where Earth First! hippies ain’t allowed,
We still shave off dreadlocks down at the jailhouse,
And we broke Mem Hills nose ‘cause we ain’t proud.
Caulk boots are still in style for manly footwear,
Red suspenders make us fancy duds,
We go down to Ukiah to play car-over,
And we drop redwoods just to hear them thud,
And I’m proud to be a stomper from Fortuna,
A place where Earth First! hippies ain’t allowed,
We still shave off dreadlocks down at the jailhouse,
And we broke Mem Hills nose ‘cause we ain’t proud.
Now Candy Boak is flying yellow ribbons
She’ll boycott you if you don’t buy her lie,
You’ll find her down at Dunkin’s testin’ donuts,
Or slamming Earth First! for the FBI.
And I’m proud to be a stomper from Fortuna,
A place where Earth First! hippies ain’t allowed,
We still shave off dreadlocks down at the jailhouse,
And we broke Mem Hills nose ‘cause we ain’t proud.
II. These Caulks Were Made for Stomping
(Tune: These Boots We’re Made for Walking)
Now you’ve been messin’ where you shouldn’t be messin’,
Organizing workers at the G-P mill,
Now Jerry Philbrick’s arming all of his loggers,
Don Nelson’s turned beet red and’s fit to kill.
These caulks are made for stompin’,
And that’s just what they’ll do,
One of these days these corks are gonna stomp all over you.
Now if you stop logging in Mendo County,
Don’t be ‘specting help from Sheriff Shea,
Azevedo’s calling out the Nazis,
With Charlie Stone on Radio KKKK.
These caulks are made for stompin’,
And that’s just what they’ll do,
One of these days these corks are gonna stomp all over you.
So if you get a phone call after midnight,
Don’t be surprised if you’re hearing stomper words,
We’re stapling yellow ribbons to our death threats,
And underneath we’ll leave a pile of turds.
These caulks are made for stompin’,
And that’s just what they’ll do,
One of these days these corks are gonna stomp all over you.
Are you ready caulks?...Start Stomping!
III. Stompers in the Sky
(Tune: Ghost Riders in the Sky)
An old logger was driving down String Creek road one day,
When he passed Judi Bari’s house he said, “I can make this pay”,
‘Cause win a case of Coors if I burn her hippie shack,
And If I burn out one of the neighbors then I’ll get a six pack.
Hippie go home,
Hippie go ‘way,
Stompers....in the sky.
How there’s one job I know that is really hard,
It’s sleeping in the driveway as Judi’s bodyguard,
Now Robert don’t want to stay out there, he wanna to come in and hide,
He don’t want to wake up to stompers in the sky.
Hippie go home,
Hippie go ‘way,
Stompers....in the sky.
All summer long at basecamp that’s where their time was spent,
There were two hundred hippies to poor to pay their rent,
They came to save the forest at least that’s what they said,
But mostly they just hung around, and listened to the Dead
(And waited to be fed)
Hippie go home,
Hippie go ‘way,
Stompers....in the sky.[18]
Sometimes maintaining a sense of humor in the face of death threats was the best one could do under the circumstances. During this time, Judi Bari’s outgoing phone message, for example, began with “Anybody who wants to leave a death threat call 463-4411”. That number was the non-emergency contact for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s department.[19] Still, Bari continued to receive death threats. On the morning of Saturday, September 22, 1990, Betty Ball arrived at the Mendocino Environment Center and found a note taped to the door which read, “Judi Bari hope you (sic) getting a bang out of life.” Furthermore, the September issue of the Sahara Club Newsletter was chock full of threats aimed at environmentalists in general and Judi Bari in particular.[20]
Notes:
[1][1] “‘Summer’ Activists, Critics Divided over Outcome”, by David Forster, Eureka Times-Standard, September 12, 1990.
[2] “Summer Survival”, editorial, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 5, 1990.
[3] 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., passim.
[4] “‘Summer’ Free of Violence Despite Frayed Tempers”, by David Forster, Eureka Times-Standard, September 11, 1990.
[5] “Voice Against Tyranny”, by Karen Denton Smith, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[6] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[7] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 5, 1990.
[8] “Bari Dealing With New Threats of Violence”, by Carrie Switzer, Willits News, September 5, 1990.
[9] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 5, 1990.
[10] “Bari Dealing With New Threats of Violence”, by Carrie Switzer, Willits News, September 5, 1990.
[11] “Voice Against Tyranny”, by Karen Denton Smith, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[12] “Voice Against Tyranny”, by Karen Denton Smith, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[13] “Voice Against Tyranny”, by Karen Denton Smith, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 12, 1990.
[14] Letter to the editor by Art Harwood, numerous publications, including, but not limited to, Willits News, September 19, 1990 (“Respecting Rights”); Ukiah Daily Journal, September 21, 1990 (“Plea for Peace”); Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 24, 1990 (“Plea for Peace”); Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990 (“No on Fascism!”); and Mendocino Beacon, September 27, 1990 (“No to Violence”).
[15] “Bari Dealing With New Threats of Violence”, by Carrie Switzer, Willits News, September 5, 1990.
[16] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[17] “Bari Dealing With New Threats of Violence”, by Carrie Switzer, Willits News, September 5, 1990.
[18] The lyrics are reused by permission of Darryl Cherney.
[19] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 5, 1990.
[20] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, September 26, 1990.