Judi Bari

Judith Beatrice Bari (November 7, 1949 – March 2, 1997) was an American environmentalist, feminist, and labor leader, primarily active in Northern California after moving to the state in the mid-1970s.

Bari was born on November 7, 1949, and was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, the daughter of mathematician Ruth Aaronson Bari, who became a recognized mathematician, and diamond setter Arthur Bari.

Her parents were Jewish and Italian in ancestry, respectively.

The elder Baris were both active in left-wing politics; they advocated for civil rights and opposed the Vietnam War.

Judi Bari was the second of three daughters; her older sister is Gina Kolata, a science journalist for the New York Times; and younger is Martha Bari, an art historian.

Although Judi Bari attended the University of Maryland for five years, she dropped out without graduating.

She said that her college career was most notable for "anti-Vietnam War rioting".

Bari began working as a clerk for a chain grocery store and became a union organizer in its work force.

At her next job as a mail handler, she organized a wildcat strike in the United States Postal Service bulk mail facility in Maryland.

Bari moved to the Bay Area in Northern California, which was a center of political activism.

Sweeney had graduated from Stanford University, and for a time in the early 1970s had been a member of the Maoist group Venceremos, which had mostly Chicano members.

He had been married before.

In 1978 she met her future husband Michael Sweeney at a labor organizers' conference.

They shared an interest in radical politics.

In 1979, Bari and Sweeney married and settled in Santa Rosa, California.

In the 1980s and 1990s, she was the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Mendocino County and related areas.

She also organized Industrial Workers of the World Local 1 in an effort to bring together timber workers and environmentalists of Earth First! in common cause.

During the early to mid-1980s, Bari devoted herself to Pledge of Resistance, a group that opposed US policies in Central America.

She was a self-proclaimed virtuoso on the bullhorn.

She edited, wrote, and drew cartoons for political leaflets and publications.

They had two daughters together, Lisa (1981) and Jessica (1985).

Around 1985, Bari moved north with her husband and two children to the vicinity of Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California.

It was an area of old timber towns, such as Eureka and Fortuna, and a new wave of hippies and young counter-culture adults who migrated here from urban areas.

In 1986, Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz acquired Pacific Lumber Company, with assets in Northern California, including in redwood forests.

He doubled the company's rate of timber harvesting as a means of paying off the acquisition cost.

This enraged environmentalists.

The federal government also investigated the transaction because of Hurwitz's use of junk bonds.

Activist protests against old-growth timber harvesting by Pacific Lumber became the focus of Earth First!

in the following years.

The couple divorced in 1988 and shared custody of their children.

Bari suffered severe injuries on 24 May 1990 in Oakland, California, when a pipe bomb went off under her seat in her car.

She was driving with colleague Darryl Cherney, who had minor injuries.

They were arrested by Oakland Police, aided by the FBI, who accused them of transporting a bomb for terrorist purposes.

While those charges were dropped, in 1991 the pair filed suit against the Oakland Police Department and FBI for violations of their civil rights during the investigation of the bombing.

Bari had died of cancer in 1997.

The bombing has not been solved.

In 1999 a bill was passed to establish the Headwaters Forest Reserve (H.R. 2107, Title V. Sec.501. ) under administration by the Bureau of Land Management.

This protected 7472 acre of mixed old-growth and previously harvested forest.

It was a project that Bari had long supported.

A jury found in their favor when the case went to trial in 2002, and damages were awarded to Bari's estate and Cherney.