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Book Review
| The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First! By Kate Coleman. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005. 261 pp. Illustrations, bibliographical references, index. $25.95
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| This account of the life of radical environmentalist Judi Bari speaks to two quite different audiences, both of whom consider themselves to be environmentalists. The first are members of such activist organizations as Earth First! who saw Bari as a leader in crusades using radical means to achieve their goals. The second audience is a broader one. It consists of people who support such traditional means of protecting endangered resources as lobbying, lawsuits, and fund raising. Because the goal of the two differing groups is the same—protecting endangered resources—each group would do well to understand the beliefs, motives, and strategies of the other. |
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The author, Kate Coleman, an investigative reporter experienced in various manifestations of the counterculture, succeeds in presenting a balanced view of Bari's life. She shows that Bari was a radical first and an environmentalist second. Bari's parents hid their former affiliation with the Communist Party when Bari was young, and when she showed an interest in radical politics, they tried to talk her out of it. But by then Bari was deep into the counterculture (and, in her case, drugs as well) that was spawned by the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. Union activism and marriage to a Stanford graduate who wanted "to be a working-class hero" followed (p. 27). When she and her huband moved to redwood country in California's Mendocino County, Bari's personal need to reenter militant politics was met. She happily embraced the eco-radical campaigns of Earth First!: blocking roads from logging trucks and disrupting timber companies and nuclear facilities. She also organized a branch of the IWW when workers believed they were exposed to PCBs. |
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When Bari was seriously injured by a car bomb and arrested by the FBI for transporting a bomb, she was in the middle of organizing what she called a "Mississippi Redwood Summer." She readily accepted martyrdom and accused the FBI and/or the timber industry of setting the bomb. Coleman is careful to point out that although the FBI's arrest of Bari was eventually disallowed, the FBI was cleared of placing the bomb in her car. In fact, no one to this date has been charged with the action. Bari developed breast cancer and died seven years later. Coleman believes Bari's death left a vacuum in militant actions to protect redwood groves, not filled in any way by Julia Butterfly Hill's tree-sitting, which Coleman points out saved only one tree. |
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This book should help the reader assess the methods available to environmental activists. Is supporting the goals of such organizations as Earth First! that believe in militant action to secure such endangered resources as the redwoods as part of the public domain the right way to go? Or should activists continue to support the approach of such groups as Save the Redwoods League, who raise money to purchase forest land at fair-market value from willing sellers? The methods of the latter group are familiar ones, but Coleman's book provides a window into the goals and actions of radical environmentalists. |
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Polly Welts Kaufman is preparing an updated edition of her National Parks and the Woman's Voice: A History for publication next winter. She teaches history at the University of Southern Maine and recently returned from Norway, where she taught at the University of Tromso under a Fulbright grant. |
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