Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center to recognize the still unsolved bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney

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On Friday, May 22, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC) will join other cities around the nation in commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1990 pipe bomb attack on environmental activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland, Calif.

The event will feature a screening of Darryl Cherney’s award-winning 2012 film Who Bombed Judi Bari? and music by George Mann, a longtime union organizer, anti-war activist and producer of folk and protest music.

“Especially now, 25 years later, a lot of people aren’t aware who Judi was and about the bombing,” says Betty Ball, co-administrator and nonviolence education coordinator for the Boulder-based RMPJC.

At the time of the bombing, Ball was the co-coordinator — as well as the co-founder — of the Mendocino Environmental Center in Ukiah, Calif. Ball met Bari in 1987 at a demonstration at the Mendocino County Courthouse across the street from the offices of the environmental center. They continued to work together from that point on, particularly to end logging of the region’s Redwood forests.

“I just think it is important to let people know who Judi and Darryl were, and why [they were] bombed,” Ball says.

Bari joined the Mendocino chapter of Earth First!, an international environmental advocacy group, in 1988 and organized protests against the over-cutting of old-growth redwoods. The group frequently met at the Mendocino Environmental Center. Bari’s protests, tree sitting and forest blockades were successful in impeding logging, but her actions came with attention and consequences.

Loggers retaliated by punching and shooting at demonstrators and running their vehicles off the roads with lumber trucks, including Bari’s Subaru station wagon in 1989.

The following year, Earth First! organized Redwood Summer, a series of protests, demonstrations and marches targeted at halting logging of old-growth redwoods. Bari lobbied college campuses across the country to participate, receiving death threats in response to her efforts.

On May 22, 1990, Bari met with local loggers to agree on ground rules for nonviolence during the Redwood Summer demonstrations, but only two days later a motion-activated bomb detonated in her vehicle while she and Cherney were driving through Oakland on their way to Santa Cruz.

The attack on Bari drew major attention from activists across the country.

“It galvanized the movement,” says Ball. “People just came out of the woodwork to help out, and the Redwood Summer was much bigger than it would have been otherwise.”

Bari was seriously injured by the blast, while Cherney sustained only minor injuries. Bari was taken to Highland Hospital, where she and Cherney were arrested for transportation of illegal explosives. While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives initially led the case, the FBI soon took jurisdiction, claiming Bari and Cherney committed an act of eco-terrorism.

“It has taken a long time — a lot of people believed [Bari and Cherney were eco-terrorists] right away,” Ball says. “There are still people in different parts of the United States [who] believe Judi and Darryl bombed themselves. It has just been a really long road to get that perception changed.”

The Oakland district attorney eventually dropped the charges, but the investigation continued. Bari and Cherney later filed a federal civil rights suit claiming that the FBI and Oakland police officers attempted to frame them as terrorists to discredit their work.

Bari passed away from breast cancer on March 2, 1997. In 2002, the judge in Bari and Cherney’s civil rights case ordered three FBI agents and three Oakland police officers to pay a total of $4.4 million to Cherney and to Bari’s estate for violation of their First and Fourth amendment rights.

Still the case remained unsolved.

In 2010, the FBI announced plans to destroy remaining evidence from the bombing, including two pipe bombs that had never been tested for DNA evidence. A U.S. federal judge in California ordered the federal agency to preserve the evidence the following year.

There has still been no one charged in Bari’s attempted murder. However, there is still hope for new revelations.

“We finally have access to a lot of the evidence that the FBI wanted to destroy,” Ball says. “We know there is DNA and we believe we have some DNA that may be the bomber’s.”

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has proclaimed May 24 as Judi Bari Day, for her environmental and social justice activism.