Activist Judi Bari protected redwood trees despite car bomb, false arrest

At the end of her life, prominent North Coast environmental activist Judi Bari expressed only one regret: getting into her white Subaru station wagon in Oakland on May 24, 1990.

She was with fellow Earth First! organizer Darryl Cherney that day en route to Santa Cruz to recruit students for Redwood Summer, a series of nonviolent demonstrations against unsound logging practices on the North Coast. But when she hit the brake at a stop sign, a pipe bomb under her seat detonated in her car.

The blast “fractured her pelvis, damaged her spine and paralyzed her right foot,” according to a Press Democrat report. But it was only the beginning of her battles.

Shortly after the bombing Bari and Cherney were arrested on suspicion of possessing and transporting the pipe bomb that blew up her car. The charges were ultimately dropped, and the pair later filed a federal civil rights suit against the FBI and Oakland police for falsely arresting them to discredit their political organizing.

The bomber was never found. However, Mike Geniella, The Press Democrat’s Mendocino County bureau chief, received an anonymous three-page letter on May 30, 1990, at his Ukiah office from someone who took credit for the bomb and called themselves the “Lord’s avenger.”

Bari persisted in her work with the Earth First! environmental group and her quest to save old growth redwood trees.

“There’s no reason to stop because the alternative is to let not just the forests go, but the entire life support of the Earth go. If that’s the alternative, there is no alternative. We can’t back down no matter what they do,” Bari said in an interview published in her 1994 book, “Timber Wars.”

Originally from Maryland, Bari moved to Santa Rosa in 1979 when she married Mike Sweeney. They later divorced and she moved to a “hippie shack” near Willits.

Bari announced in November 1996 that she had breast cancer. Shortly after, in an interview with Geniella, she reflected on her life. She was a fiddler, a carpenter, union organizer, feminist and mother. She said she was proud of her efforts in the North Coast environmental movement.

“It used to be male dominated, but not anymore. It’s largely led by women now, women who are home-based and defending the place they love,” Bari said. “I think we’ve created something much deeper, and more enduring.”

Bari died on March 2, 1997, at age 47. She was survived by two daughters. In 2002, U.S. District Court ordered the FBI and Oakland police to pay $4.4 million in damages to Bari’s estate and Cherney.

See photos from Judi Bari’s life in the gallery above.