‘He devoted his life to social justice’: Sonoma County activist Irv Sutley dies at 79

As a young man, Irv Sutley was a U.S. Marine and then a member of the American Communist Party.

A native of Marin County, he became known in Sonoma County and far beyond as an atheist adamant to force the government to stay clear of any sort of religious symbols or practices.

Sutley was both vilified and cheered for successfully demanding that Sonoma County officials ban Christmas tree stars and angels from county offices.

A political gadfly, who in recent years was homeless for a time and stayed active by collecting coffee grounds and passing them to friends for their gardens, he died on Saturday. He was 79.

Knowing he would lose did not deter Sutley from running often for public office as a candidate of the socialist Peace and Freedom Party.

His name surfaced frequently in accounts of the mystery over who built and placed the homemade bomb that exploded beneath the driver’s seat of Earth First! activist Judi Bari’s car in May 1990, seriously wounding her.

Leftists Sutley and Bari became adversaries, with Bari accusing Sutley of being an informant and/or a provocateur, and Sutley alleging that Bari had a friend offer him $5,000 to kill her ex-husband.

“He devoted his life to social justice,” said friend, fellow Sonoma County activist and former wife Toni Novak of Healdsburg.

Like Novak, Penngrove’s Anthony Tusler met Sutley while both were students involved in anti-war and anti-old-guard efforts at Sonoma State College in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Tusler said of Sutley, “He was kind of ubiquitous.”

“He always had something going on politically. He was a pretty focused guy. You weren’t looking to pal around with him.”

Sutley was a generally soft-spoken but physically imposing man known for his appreciation of firearms.

The broadly built former Marine was disabled by an injury he suffered while working as a warehouseman decades ago in Minnesota.

He came to Sonoma County amid the social and political turbulence of the mid-1960s.

In 1972, he helped to found the Peace and Freedom Party of California, and to elect reform-minded young activists Stephen Laughlin, Annette Lombard and Geoff Dunham to the Cotati City Council.

Sutley exalted in a 2010 piece in The Press Democrat that one of the new leaders’ first acts “was removal of a religious sign from the city-owned plaza in the center of town.”

The story goes that Sutley, who was born in June 1944 in the Marin County town of Ross, began refusing to say the “Pledge of Allegiance” when he was 10.

It was 1954 and Congress had added “under God” to the pledge.

He enlisted as a Marine following his graduation from Tamalpais High in 1962, serving mostly in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Friend and former wife Novak said he bore the consequences of refusing as a Marine to recite the pledge or attend church services.

In Sonoma County a few decades later, Sutley set his sights on the city councils that still began their public meetings with an invocation.

In the early 1990s at one especially memorable meeting of the Petaluma City Council, Sutley exchanged angry words with Vince Landof, a churchgoer who addressed the council often on flooding issues.

As they both left the council chambers, Landof shot Sutley a dirty look. Sutley bellowed, “Who appointed you hall monitor?” Landof responded by cracking Sutley across the head with his cane.

Sutley would recall attending a meeting of the Santa Rosa City Council in 1992 and bolting to his feet when a preacher stood to open the session with a prayer. He said years ago, “People were yelling at me to sit down and shut up, but I kept saying that invocations and prayers at public meetings were illegal.”

Sutley was forcibly removed from the council chambers by police. He said, “They took me to jail, but I won that one and they haven’t prayed since.”

He moved on to Rohnert Park, where the council opened a meeting with an invocation. In 1995, the city capitulated, then-mayor Dave Eck declaring, “I’m trying to avoid a dog and pony show, where people yell at each other and disrupt the speakers.”

Sutley made national news in December 2009, after he told of walking into the county recorder’s office at the Sonoma County Administration Center in Santa Rosa and noticing an angel decoration on a Christmas tree, and then a star.

“I just don’t believe government has the right to intrude on anyone and force them into sectarian behavior,” he said at the time. He arranged a sit-down with acting county Administrator Chris Thomas.

A short time later, Thomas directed staff to remove any decorations that might be interpreted as religious.

Public reaction was quick and pointed.

Amid a few comments of praise for the action, one Press Democrat reader commented in print, “I hope a reindeer runs over Irv Sutley.”

A storm of criticism prompted Thomas to rescind his ban shortly before that Christmas 2009.

The other news event that put Sutley’s name in print was the car-bomb blast that critically injured anti-logging activist Judi Bari in 1990.

She and her partner and fellow Redwood Summer protester Darryl Cherney were in Oakland when the blast occurred.

Who planted the bomb beneath the driver’s seat of Bari’s Subaru remains a mystery more than 30 years later.

Friendships and alliances among some activists were shattered when some sided with Bari’s allegation that the bombing was the work of the law enforcement establishment, while others who believed the bomber was Bari’s ex-husband. Both the FBI and her ex-husband have denied the allegations.

Amid the finger-pointing, Bari, who died of cancer in March 1997, accused Sutley of acting as an informant for the police and/or FBI. Sutley, in return, accused a close friend of Bari’s of offering him $5,000 to kill Bari’s ex-husband.

Sutley denied being an informant or provocateur, while Bari said the proposal that Sutley kill her ex-husband was a joke.

Sutley also received minor press when he ran as a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for offices that included sheriff of Sonoma County, the state Senate and Assembly, and for Congress. Novak said the running wasn’t about winning.

“He wanted to promote the party’s ideas and platform,” she said. “To get the ideas out there.”

Mary Moore, the longtime west Sonoma County activist, said she didn’t always agree with Sutley but she never doubted his commitment to advocating for a more just world.