Part Two: Judi Bari Didn't Bomb Herself: Earth First! & the Timber Wars

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Gare about the labor organizer who tried to bring loggers and environmentalists together to save the redwoods and had to survive a car bomb to do it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. My guest today is Sophie.
Who is this weird person on the zoom call. It's
just they're weird. They're just Garrison. I'm very normal, very normal.
Why would you think they're weird? It was the lime

(00:22):
green ski mask? Oh is that weird? That's pretty normal
for me. Our guest today is Garrison. That's what their
Zoom name says. Anyway, I can't op sick failed. Damn it.
I forgot to sign out of my Zoom account. Damn it.

(00:46):
Our producer is Sophie Lichterman. Hi, Sophie, Hi Magpie. Our
audio engineers Ian. Our theme music was written for us
by young woman. And this is part two of a
two parter. And you know the real You are not
allowed to listen to this until you listen to part one.
If you do, Garrison will find you and you'll see

(01:12):
someone with a lime green ski mask and it would
be the last thing you ever see. I love that.
I've gotten much more mysterious since the first part, so
that's good. It's true. Yeah, that was the adjective you picked,
so it makes sense. Not ever joyful. God forbid? I wait,

(01:33):
I'm kill joy? Okay? So this yeah, well, yeah, come on,
what this week we are talking about Judy fucking Berry,
the earth First or and labor organizer and all around badass,
who has just started organizing against logging in California by
organizing the loggers themselves, and we're gonna talk about how
she did that. Judy, among others, they start a chapter

(01:54):
of the Industrial Workers of the World, the anti authoritarian
radical labor Union who rule, who we talked more about
last September in an episode about the Spoken Free Speech Fight,
when in the nineteen tens they organized loggers in the
Pacific Northwest so effectively that the government started shooting them.
This is, unfortunately, a decent gauge of the efficacy of
your movement is the degree of violence to which the

(02:18):
state resorts in order to suppress you. This new IWW
branch has two goals. First, to bring environmental consciousness to loggers, second,
to bring class consciousness to environmentalists. Well and more than that,
the iw's goal. IWW's goal here is to organize the
loggers just like literally organize them and fight for better
working conditions. But the sort of like larger metaphorical goals

(02:40):
are these other things, and the bringing of this organizing
is to do that. And they were largely effective at this.
They didn't like succeed outright, but they made a lot
of progress, They made a lot of allies, and they
did a lot of fucking good shit despite the fact
that there are a lot of factors working to keep
these two camps at odds. A couple of weeks ago,
we talked about Chico Mendes, Brazilian organizer and the Rainforest,

(03:01):
who went the opposite route. He went from workers organizing
to environmentalism and he got shot for it. And he
has this quote that I didn't include last time, mostly
because I couldn't source it, and I still can't source it,
but it's such a good quote that I'm going to
say it anyway. He has this quote, environmentalism without class
consciousness is just gardening. Yeah, it's just like not actually

(03:27):
going to get shit done unless you fucking work together
with your you know, fellow working class people. And that's
what Judy Barry and her friends are on about. And
they did this in a lot of ways. Judy says,
the main way that they did it is just by
fucking talking to people. Sometimes even the people that they
were busy blockading, Like they'd be like, no, you can't
go log hey, tell me about your life, tell me

(03:48):
about how this company treats you like, and just like
listen to people and hear them out and hear their
problems instead of these sort of condescending city kids of
fancy degrees who've never stepped into the woods trying to
tell them what to think and what's to do. So
they don't like show up and be like have you
read the Marxism or whatever? It's not an effective strategy.

(04:09):
She also interviewed loggers on her radio show at some
point around there. Around here she gets herself a weekly
radio show, the based fellow fellow podcaster we love to
see it right, fellow podcaster Judy Barry. And the way
that she got her podcast is much like the way
that you and I got our podcast. It's not actually true.
The only way I found describing how she got her

(04:30):
podcast is someone who hates her describing it. So I
don't know how true any of this is. But apparently
a local radio station fired the only woman who had
a talk radio station, so she stormed the radio station
and wouldn't leave until justice was served. And in the
end of the way that they were like, all right,
we'll fine, We'll just give you a weekly talk radio show.

(04:50):
Just like fine, fine, we'll let you all the radio,
just leave us alone. Yeah, exactly. And she's actually a
really good podcast I mean radio host. I listened to
one of the episodes that she did where she is
interviewing a logger and she's interviewing this logger because this
logger wrote a letter critical of earth First and a

(05:11):
letter also critical of old growth logging all at once,
and so she was like, all right, like I'll talk
to you, you know. Yeah. And so a lot of loggers,
even once critical of Judy and earth First, realized they
were also critical of maxim and clear cutting, and like
because they're not like they're not they're they're intelligent people.
It kind of threatens their job security. Yeah, and they

(05:31):
know it. And sometimes they just like, well, my backs
to a wall, what am I going to do? Yeah?
You know, but like yeah, people are like, oh, this's
clear cutting. That's a bad development in things. And so
Judy gave a voice to these people by publishing their
writing and environmentalist newspapers, by talking to them on a
radio show, and loggers who don't like, who like won't

(05:52):
cut old growth, who won't take jobs that they involve
cutting old growth, become a thing and now it's time
for a personal story an do do do Do Do Do
Do Doo. One time, in like two thousand and three
or four something, I was working with UM. I was
working at blockade, this old growth timber sale in southern Oregon,
and one morning, the loggers they get around our blockade

(06:13):
and me and two other folks are like yelling at them,
probably like don't log old growth, but maybe less politely
than that, I'm not sure. And one of the loggers
was like, well, what the hell do you do for
a living? And we like all thought for half a second,
and I was like, well, I'm a landscaper. And then
the other two people boy with were like, we're loggers,
because that's like what people don't like a fuck tone

(06:33):
of earth firsters are foresters, loggers, whatever, like people who
work in the forest for a living care about the
forest quite often, you know, and like the loggers that
I was working with in that particular time were people
who refused to cut old growth. So the loggers they
were taken aback and they were like, you're on the
wrong side, and we were like, no, you're on the
wrong side. It was not a very generative conversation. And

(06:55):
then they quit their jobs they joined us. We all
had beers and became friends. That part isn't true. They
went up the mountain and illegally logged old growth and
we failed at stopping them. And that particular timber sale
was in a state like no in state logging company
would touch it because everyone who lived within a fuck
one hundred miles. I was like, what the fuck, We're
not gonna cut that fucking forest, like fuck's wrong with you,
and so they relied on bringing people from out of state.

(07:18):
Almost done with the personal anecdote, when I went back
to work a couple of weeks later as a landscaper,
my boss was like, Magbie, you don't have to come
into work today. We're cutting down a tree and I
don't want you to be sad. And I was like, no,
I'm a big kid. I can handle taking down a tree.
I just don't want to fucking log old growth forests
or clear cut at all. It was just like a
pine tree that was like maybe gonna fall in someone's

(07:39):
house in the suburbs of Portland, like whatever that is.
That is an interesting perception of people's critiques of locking.
You know, it was very sweet that my boss was like,
you don't have to come into work if you don't want,
because we're gonna kill a tree or whatever. You know.
So Judy Barry is on that tip, the whatever on

(08:01):
the like actually cares about workers tip. She organized the
Industrial Workers of the World local and soon she's like
meeting with mill workers and loggers and ships separately and
helping them organize. And it's not just Earth First organized
as loggers. As loggers organized themselves with the help of
an Earth First organizer, and they fight for union type shit.
But they got to do it all secretly. Louisiana Pacific,

(08:22):
another logging company in the area, they had a PCB spill,
some toxic chemical shit poly chlorinated by fennols. No one
knew that they had any recourse, but Judy filed a
complaint with cal Osha and they won compensation for the
workers and this helps This helps her cred, right, But
all the organizing is secret because none of these logging
companies are union and so they got to keep it

(08:44):
all under wraps, which unfortunately means that's a part of
her legacy that's often overlooked. And as I read, together
with some workers, she got the county to claim three
hundred thousand acres from Louisiana Pacific to put into public
hands and keep safe. And now let's talk about the
most contentious tactic around this time. We're going to talk

(09:06):
about tree spiking. Real quick, we're gonnae into tree spiking discourse.
This discourse is still going on, Margaret, I'm not going
to talk about modern discourse. I don't touch modern discourse.
I'm a historian, thirty year old discourse. Yeah, this is
newer than I like talking about. I'm so nervous to
release this because it's about people I like care about

(09:27):
and shit, you know, like I like writing about dead people.
But tree spiking, I am not going to give you instructions.
It is a crime and it has complicated ethics. In
the early eighties, Earth First advocated tree spiking, or some
individuals amongst it it or whatever the fuck. The basic

(09:48):
idea was that a metal or ceramic rod or spike
is inserted into trees and then you put up warning
signs everywhere saying these trees are spiked. If a chainsaw
hits a spike, it can break the chainsaw and it
can endanger the wielder. There were no known sarious injuries
or deaths caused by tree spiking until suddenly one day
there was. In May nineteen eighty seven, a sawmill worker

(10:08):
named George Alexander was nearly decapitated when the blade on
his mill hit a spike and the blade broke. It
cut his jaw on half. This was not an Earth
First related spike. It wasn't an old growth tree. It
also was added after the log was cut. It was
like while it was waiting in the yard at the mill.

(10:29):
Because tree spiking has done by the environmentalist, was done
on public lands with huge warning signs and announcements, because
the goal was to minimize the economic viability of a
public timber sale project, to bring it down below its
like threshold of value. These old growth forests and these
private forests, it wouldn't have made much sense because the

(10:49):
economics of private timber is completely fucking different. Least of
all to do after the logs are cut, because at
that point you're not saving a tree. And it was
some twelve inch diameter tree. They don't know who spiked it.
There's a bunch of people guessing there was like a
crank in the area who very clearly spiked the trees
in his property. I say crank, but this thing that

(11:10):
he did, like he spiked the trees in his property
because it was right next to private land and they
were always known for like famously cutting the trees on
the other side of the fucking like cutting other people's
trees illegally and just getting away with it. So he
spiked all of his own trees and like put up
signs and ship and so I spiked all these So
it probably wasn't even him. I don't fucking know. I

(11:33):
don't know if I can spike this tree. As soon
as this happened, some North Californian and Southern Oregon Earth
First chapters renowned spiking as a tactic, and Judy Berry
is a big part of this renunciation and being her,
She tracked down the injured worker, interviewed him, and published
his words in a local newspaper and the Earth First
Journal and later the Industrial Workers of the World's website.

(11:54):
The IWW's website put it up. George Alexander was a
twenty three year old. He was a second generation lumber
worker and he had the most dangerous job in the mill.
He was the off bearer who make the first cuts
through the log. He used a giant bandsaw designed to
cut through old growth redwood, and somewhat regularly, the off
bearer hits metal pieces like from old fences and old

(12:17):
nails and shit, because there are just pieces of metal
and trees from people like fucking nailing as signed to
a tree or whatever the fuck you know. Yeah, so
it's fairly regularly that the band saw blade hits these things,
lose his teeth and so the workers wear like face masks.
George feels quite strongly that the company and its disregard

(12:37):
for its workers safety is to blame. He was working
with a blade that had already started to wobble and
had cracks, so he complained about it and his bosses
were like, get the fuck back to work, We don't
give a shit about you. He thought about not going
back to work because it was very dangerous, but he
had a pregnant wife. It was the only work he
knew and he didn't have a union. So the bandsaw

(12:57):
hit a spike and eleven inch nail and the blade broke,
and it almost killed him. It cut his jugular, it
ripped out twelve of his teeth as he lay on
the ground dying. I'm going to quote him about what
happened next. I knew I was dying, and all I
could think was Dick Edwards, the boss, and all the
shit he gave me when I complained about the saw.

(13:19):
I tried to get up, but they pushed me back down.
I tried to beckon Edwards so he could come close
enough for me to get my hands around his throat
in a death grip. If I had to die, I
wanted to take that bastard with me, and so his
fellow workers saved his life. Someone stopped the bleeding, literally
holding his veins together for a fucking hour before the
ambulance arrived, while others used to blowtorch to free him

(13:41):
from the twelve foot section of saw that was wrapped
around him. From his hospital bed, he made his position clear.
I am against tree spiking, but I don't like clear
cutting either, And this is the only documented injury as
a result of tree spiking. It's enough from my point
of view. I guess I am or any of this
course it feels so clear to me that the powers

(14:03):
that ought not be are working really hard to keep
the working class from uniting. And to me, this is
a very resonant story about I don't know about this
fucking guy, you know. Yeah, But as hard as she
and some others were working to try and unite the
working class, most loggers did not really like her or

(14:24):
earth First at all, and you get this whole fucking
culture war thing. Northern California, most towns were either logging
towns or hippie towns. A small handful, because of hard
organizing work, managed to have sort of a piece between
the two, and the owners started organizing two And this
is a recurring theme on this show. The workers get
a union, why doesn't the right wing management get a union?

(14:47):
Or in this case, to save the trees and treat
workers okay group as a movement. Why can't the fuck
the trees, fuck the workers group have a movement, so
they make themselves a movement. Nineteen eighty eight, you get
what's called the wise use movement, or it gets its name,
or it became more popular. I don't know. It's like
fucking rid. A lot of different versions about exactly when

(15:09):
it came into being, but we're going in nineteen eighty eight.
It's a pro extraction movement with a clever name. It's
not about wise use, it's about fucking use up everything. Yeah,
because it was wise used to be chill. We talked
on the Chico Mendes episode about how the workers in
the Brazilian rainforests they fought for extractive reserves where the
forest is kept intact but rubbers gathered naturally and buy

(15:31):
in large Earth first, even with its no compromise attitude,
wasn't actually entirely against logging. They put together a ten
part program about how to do logging sustainably, which includes
shit like no clear cutting, no old growth logging, You
must leave wilderness corridors for wildlife to move through. Million
jobs must be kept, local logged areas, can't be turned
into non forested areas, et cetera. Super fucking chill. It

(15:53):
sounds like an actual wise use exactly. And that's something
that like it would have taken me a while to
understand when I first got involved, is that that is
still part of a no compromise attitude, right, because it
is not a compromise to allow humans to be part
of the ecosystem. Yeah, humans have been building shelters out
of trees for yeah, tens of thousands of years. Yeah.

(16:16):
The wise use movement instead was the owner of big
evil companies trying to get ranchers, farmers, miners, property owners
at VARs et cetera to fight against environmentalists and to
say that environmental restrictions were attack on the cultural values
of rural people. It's what we call AstroTurf, a fake
grassroots movement, and sadly it's been very effective. Of course,

(16:37):
every time some rich kid from the city tells a
lag or some ignorant shit, the wise use movement grows
some wings. I don't know whatever, Yeah, you just you
just set the ecological movement back decades, you know, twenty
year old from Seattle. Well, and it's like, I mean
I also get why people are like, fuck you don't
cut trees. I like totally get that. Yeah, but like,

(17:04):
fuck your bosses for putting us in this situation. Is
what we'll actually get us out of this ship. The
wise use movement people they use yellow ribbons as their sign,
which is funny because like fucking ten fifteen years later,
me and my friends are ripping yellow ribbons off of
cars as part of the you know, stop the invasion
of Iraq and Afghanistan thing. And they tried to get
the sawmill operator, the one who had been hurt almost

(17:26):
killed by the by the spike. They tried to get
him to go on tour denouncing earth First, and he refused.
And I am guessing that Judy and other organizers making
it clear that they were in solidarity with him is
why he didn't go on tour denouncing earth First. Yeah.
This is the one thing I know about this tree
specky incident is that the person did not turn into

(17:47):
like an anti earth First campaign or afterwards. They actually
were kind of chill, right, Yeah. And once he's healed,
his bosses put him back on the night shift. They like,
he wasn't on the knight shift, but they're like, fuck,
you're going on the night if we don't like you.
And then they laid him off when the mill closed
because they clear cut everything. His quote about it was
LP Louisiana Pacific is just sorry I didn't die wild. Yeah,

(18:12):
and I believe it. I believe that they were like, fuck,
we almost had a mar or why do you have
to fucking survive. You know. Yeah, they could have like
drafted like legislation or something. Yeah, they could have. They
could have tried to hold a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah,
if they could use this person's like dead memory to
continue their extraction. But fortunately, since he was able to

(18:33):
speak for himself, he was able to be like, fucktree spikes,
fuck clearcuts. You know, shit is heating up earth versus
blockading the shit out of stuff. Loggers are getting angrier.
Judy and some of the others are running interference, like, hey,
maybe you should have better conditions. But workers at this
point are like shooting shotguns into the air. They knock

(18:54):
a fifty year old person out like out colds by
punching her in the face. People are like running into
the crowd with chainsaws that are running like what the fuck. Yeah,
they're fucking mad, and they hang Judy Berry in effigy.
They hit people with axe handles. It's like a rough
time and it's like yeah, and they're they're on the

(19:15):
non violence thing right as a strategic move and they
hold to it, and you know, it is one way
to build a movement is strategic non violence. And during
all this, the FEDS are infiltrating like crazy. It's the
whole co intel Pro handbook for anyone who hasn't listened
to anything that's happened fifty years ago. Co intel pros
the counter intelligence program the FBI, basically disrupting leftist organizations

(19:41):
all throughout the sixties and frankly to the present day.
They're like in this case, they're sending letters claiming to
be one earth First organizer to another, like talking shit.
They're sending in spies and provocateurs. They're using their spies
to start paranoia by accusing other people of being spies
and provocateurs. Which is why it's always dangerous to talk
about co intel pro is because you need to make

(20:01):
sure people know that one of the things you have
to not do is talk about co intel pro so
much that you then spread this. Yeah, but it isn't
stopping them. Co intel pro does not stop Earth First.
I like to think that their horizontal organizing structure help
people like a lot in a lot of ways, Like

(20:21):
since they're all equals, they're able to kind of more
be like hey, no, I didn't send you that letter,
you know. And they have a culture that despite all
of these like these evolutions and arguments and people leaving
managed to overall not turn into hatred and actual fighting.
And maybe that's my idealized take on it from like
talking to folks, but it's what I believe. And the

(20:43):
loggers are fucking mad. They're mad that they can't get
the same deals that you all can get by doing God.
The ads are getting like worse, Like there's an ad break.
I thought, I was like, what type of deal is
Earth First half? They're not getting paid like sales on

(21:07):
bumper sticker. Earth First mostly sells bumper stickers. I think
at this point, t shirts you can, you can, you
can subscribe to the journal. That's true, there's an actual ad.
Go subscribe to yourth first journal. Anyway, Um there's stuff
you can buy stuff if you want. I don't fucking care.
This episode brought to you by Green Ballaclavas. Get yours today, yeah, otherwise,

(21:29):
otherwise Garrison's gonna be real easy to pick out. If
you don't get over what happened. If you don't get
a lime green balaclava, Garrison's fucked. You don't want Garrison
to get fucked. Do you get a lime green balaklava?
And we're back and just like the loggers are mad.

(21:53):
I hope that you all got everything you needed out
of that. Okay. So, in nineteen eighty nine, a logging
truck slammed at a Judy Barry's car and sent six
people to the hospital, including four children. And it was
a logging truck that Earth First had been blockading less
than twenty four hours earlier. It was very clearly a
targeted attack, and we have reason to believe that this

(22:15):
was like an intentional, intentional thing. Yeah, there's like no
particular reason to believe otherwise, Okay, unless you're the cops,
in which case you're sure must just be a traffic accident,
even though like this is literally I think I think
they got like photos of being like this is the
same truck. You know, the cops never investigated at all.

(22:36):
Then in nineteen ninety what gets called the timber Wars
are heating up. California was set to vote on Proposition
one thirty, which is basically a bunch of restrictions on
logging in California, including a bunch of money for the
state to buy old growth from logging companies, and it
include a compensation for loggers who would lose their work
as a result, because the people who make this actually
care to some degree I don't. I don't know as

(22:57):
much the ins and outs of who wrote position thirty.
It becomes a culture war issue. Yeah, culture war. The
thing that is designed is set one half of the
working class against the other half. A lot of it
was framed around shit like save the spotted owl, right,
which is you know, was not doing so well, and
that lives in old growth redwoods, especially in the snags
and the dead trees. So laggers started wearing shirts that

(23:20):
were like spotted owl tastes like chicken. I could just
imagine Twitter during this time. I mean, but this, this,
this is such an this is such a I mean,
this tactic has used all the time still, but yeah,
reducing these things into little like little like like uh
you know, just trying to like annoy the other person
with with like distasteful jokes back and forth. And that's

(23:43):
what this. These types of movements get like reduced to yep.
And it's a very effective tactic, and it's it's fucking
terrible yep. But these clear cutting companies, they're like, I
don't even want to calm logging companies at this point,
they're like, oh shit, we might not be able to
clear cut come, so we should clear cut right the
fuck now, just a lot, just clear cut the shit

(24:05):
out of everything, anticipating this earth first and others they're like, well,
we just have to hold them off until the election,
you know, until we can vote for this proposition, save
as much for us as we can. So they call
for a summer of mass civil disobedience, non violent resistance,
and they call it Redwood Summer. This is in the
early nineties. This is nineteen ninety okay, Yeah, And I've

(24:28):
had it described to me as Judy Berry's brain child.
I've also read an article from someone saying that a
different person came up with it. But either way, Judy
Berry's one of the primary organizers. She wasn't the sole organizer,
but which is a big part of it. Everyone, especially students,
since you like don't have to do shit during the summer,

(24:50):
please come here and chain yourself to shit and sit
in trees and blockade roads and do all that stuff, please,
or we're fucked. It's based on Mississippi sm from nineteen
sixty four from the civil rights era. See our episode
about the Armed Civil Rights Defense for more from that
air of organizing, and it is earth first first mass action.
Maybe I already said that. I don't know Judy Barry's

(25:14):
she's organizing it as well as her musical and at
some points romantic partner, a guy named Darryl Churney. He
writes songs that annoy right wing people, kind of like
what you're just saying, how things get done to annoy
the other side. He has songs like Jesus was a mushroom,
Will the Fetus be aborted? And spike a tree for Jesus? Okay,

(25:35):
all right, yeah, I mean, I'm sure the songs were
pretty funny. That's funny. They're not friend makers, no, no,
there there wants to put on with the people who
are already on your side and laugh as you're liked,
like an afternoon or night together. Yeah. And so they're

(25:57):
running around the country and playing shows and recruiting people
to come out. But meanwhile, Judy is getting more and
more death threats. Uh, they're sending people are sending her
photos of her playing a show that someone took while
stalking her, like crosshairs drawn over her face. She showed
all this shit to the cops and the cops were like,
we don't care. Look, I'll tell you what. We'll investigate
if they kill you. How about that? I mean, it's

(26:19):
also important today like this was like this was before
like internet death threats. This was like yet yet threats
were like a lot there was a lot more threat
implied with a death threat, I know. And you have
to like be careful around like actual like it was
kind of before DNA forensics, but like actual like forensic shit,
because you're sending like physical things in the mail, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

(26:41):
And on May twenty fourth, nineteen ninety, Judy and Darryl
were in Oakland. They're staying at a Seeds of Peace house.
This isn't the same organization as the current really cool
organization called Seeds of Peace. This is an earlier Seeds
of Piece, really cool organization of rad hippies. They head
out in Judy's car, Suberu station Wagon because of course
it's a super station wagon. They're going to drive to

(27:04):
Santa Cruz to play a show and recruit some college kids.
They get in the car, they throw a guitar in
the fiddle on the back seat. They start to drive
off and a bomb explodes under the driver's seat and
fucks them both the hell up, real fucking bad, especially Judy.
It shatters her pelvis and her tailbone. She's in paying
the rest of her life and has greatly reduced the mobility.

(27:26):
The FBI was there within twenty five minutes, because discovery
shows record of them talking to Oakland PD or something
within twenty five minutes after the explosion. Probably they were
there way sooner, within minutes or seconds. Even though the
Bay Area headquarters of the FBI is in San Francisco
on the other side of the fucking Bay. It sounds

(27:47):
like they were just feeling like the Judy says, it's
almost like they were waiting around the corner with their
hands over their ears. To spoiler it, we don't know
who bombs you and Daryl. We might not ever find out.
We do know that the FBI intentionally and maliciously bungled

(28:07):
their investigation of the bombing. That was proven in court.
It's quite probable the FBI was directly involved in the
assassination attempt, and is generally accepted within the movement that
the FBI was directly involved in the assassination attempt. There's
a chance that it wasn't sure, but we'll talk about that.

(28:28):
The car explodes, they go to the hospital, They get
arrested in the hospital on the charge of bombing themselves. Ah. Yes,
that classic Earth First caper of blowing themselves up. Specifically,
they claim that they were transporting a bomb when it
accidentally detonated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Immediately the press is ready

(28:51):
to jump on this accusation, and the headlines are basically like,
dumb bitch blows self up, you know, looking vultures pieces
of shit. Yeah, press somehow right away has a picture
of her holding an oozy. Jesus. I've read this part
described a bunch of ways, but as best as I
can piece together, there was a guy in the movement
they probably shouldn't have trusted. One day, they're all hanging

(29:14):
out and he's like, Hey, you know it would be funny.
I got an oozy in the trunk of my car.
Why don't we all take photos with it? Wow? What
a great idea random dude. And I think he was, like,
actually part of the movement. I'm just specifically not naming
him because there's a chance that he's an infiltrator, but
I don't know that, and so I don't want to
name him. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. But and

(29:38):
it's possible that they were like, oh, that would be funny.
We'll use it as an album cover photo because Darryl
Churney is working on an album with the kind of
sick title. They sure don't make hippies like they used to.
I mean, that would be such a metal cover. Yeah,
so why not have a photo of a hippie with
an oozy? So they take photos lo and behold the photos,
which only that one guy had. What a weird coincidence

(30:01):
they end up mailed to the media as soon as
the bomb goes off. That is m curious. And I
relate this story not because I want to point fingers,
but for the same reason it was related to me
when I first joined the movement. If a guy gets
you high and it's like, yo, let's go take pictures
of my illegal gun, wouldn't that be funny? The answers no,

(30:23):
just say no, yeah, just say no to posing with
illegal firearms. My opinion about posing with firearms period is like,
not incredibly positive, but I understand the like necessity of
why people choose to make certain decisions or whatever, but
don't pose with a fucking easy, don't take maybe don't
take a picture with it. Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't take

(30:45):
a picture with an illegal firearm, and so like, and
so just don't trust the person who has you take
this picture. Don't like point and be like that guy's
a fed, because in general we should judge actions like, hey,
we're in a movement with this, and this guy wants
me to take pictures of an ouzy. That's an action
that isn't good, rather than that's a man who is

(31:07):
an X you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, It's just a
way to kind of minimize the way that kentto pro
tears as a part through paranoia. But there's a picture
of her with a Newsy and the bomb entirely fucks
up the solidarity work she's been doing building a bridge
between environmentalists and lumber workers. Not only she's a hippie,
but she's a bomber, right, she's trying to fu kill you,

(31:29):
you loggers. And so the culture work continues, and during
the first several months, the Feds investigate zero people who
aren't Judy and Darryl. That doesn't feel like a very
very solid investigation. I don't know. I've done a few
investigations in my lifetime, usually usually against Nazis. And uh

(31:52):
that that doesn't sound like solid investigative practis to me. No, No, again,
proven in court to be malicious. Yeah, after two months
they give up because and no charges are filed because
there's literally zero physical evidence that the bomb was THEIRS.
There is a lot of evidence the FBI and Oakland

(32:12):
PD directly lied about the physical facts in the case,
like they claimed the bomb was on the back seat
when it was under the driver's seat. That kind of shit.
It's worth knowing about the bomb's construction just so you know.
There really isn't any chance that it was THEIRS. Um,
there's no like wink wink, nudge, nudge. They were secretly
weather underground and we all don't want them to it's
it was not their fucking bomb, No they yeah it was.

(32:36):
It was a pipe bomb, and it was an anti
personnel bomb. It was wrapped in finishing nails as shrapnel,
and the supposed use that the Earth First would have
been using it for was property destruction, right, not a
personnel attack. So already fucking out window, that's not a
property destruction weapon. Yeah. It also had three different switches
that all had to be activated for it to go off.

(32:56):
First was a regular switch like a I don't fucking
know they made it, but you know, you switch a thing,
and then that triggered a watch countdown for twelve hours.
And then at the end of it was a motion
sensor basically a steel ball bearing that completes the circuit.
So as soon as the car moves that it blows exactly,
But it doesn't blow up if the car moves when

(33:17):
it's near the bomber, because the bomber now is twelve
hours to get away. Twelve hours. Yeah, so not the kind.
It is a bomb that is meant to blow up
in a car, not a bomb that is meant to
blow up at a sawmill or whatever the fuck that
they claim. You're not throwing the bomb like like a grenade.
It's not yet. Yeah, So since they couldn't charge Judy

(33:40):
for blowing herself up, the Fed's brought in their investigation. Finally,
you're excited. Are they gonna do good? You think they're
gonna take edge of my seat? They use it as
a fishing expedition for more information better at first activists,
I bet they do. Around this time, a newspaper gets
a letter taking or sponsibility for the action. It's almost

(34:02):
certainly fake. Yeah, it was probably sent by the bomber
bombers to throw people off the scent. Or it was
a random crank who wanted to take responsibility for something
they didn't do. And the letter was like I wanted
to kill her because God told me too, because she
supports abortion or whatever. But it's actually worth quoting because
it's kind of a funny letter. I saw Satan's flame

(34:23):
shoot forth from her mouth, her eyes, my ears, proving forever, Yes, okay,
come on, Satan's flame shooting from her mouth, Yeah, her
ears and her eyes, yeah, proving forever that this was
no godly woman, no ruth full of obedience to procreate

(34:46):
and multiply the children of Adams throughout the world, as
is God's will. There's a lot of capital letters in here.
You're gonna be shocked to know how I bet let
the woman learn in silence, with all subjugation, all subjection.
But I suffered not a woman to teach, nor to
use surp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Timothy to one great incredible Yeah, is that is that

(35:14):
a first or second? Timothy too. I don't know, two
coal and one that's what I got. Well, that's well, yes,
that is all right. I don't know. I'll look it
up later, just just so I have the personal assurance
of which book of tidy I know. I really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, later.

(35:34):
DNA evidence from the envelope reveals that it had two
people's DNA on it, Like I think one person licked
the stamp and another person licked the envelope. That's wow,
what a horrible decision. You know. Well, okay, to be fair,
I think DNA forensics wasn't a thing when this happened.
It got DNA in like twenty ten. I'm making twelve

(35:56):
or something it was. Yeah, it was probably the two thousands,
that makes sense. Yeah, and it only happened once Daryl
Cherney and some other people like insisted on trying to
actually figure out who the fuck it bombed them. Yeah,
So FEDS show up in northern California and they go
to the newspapers and they're like, all right, give us
the letters to your editor, because you know they're trying
to do an investigation. Give us all the letters to

(36:19):
the editor in support of Earth First so we can
match typewriters or whatever the fuck forensics they do. It's
really transparent. They're not looking at the letters the editor
against the person who got bombed, even though a letter
of the editor taking fucking credit had just fucking come through.
This is the same thing with like I don't know this.

(36:40):
This is something that that was definitely talked about a
lot in Atlanta with how people are trying for how
the state's trying to use like domestic terrorism charges and
like any like credence or extra extra ability you give
the state to like get cracked down against like like
right wing errors or like like like you know, like
the Capitol rioters whatever, Like any anything you give them,

(37:00):
it's gonna get used so much more against any any
type of like left of ye like environmental social justice,
like like racial justice movement. It's all every sing every
single time, all of the domestic terrorism gun laws. Great example,
the domestic terrorism charges being used in Atlanta stem from
a law created in part response to Dylan Roof. It's

(37:24):
every every every every time you give them like a
little a little bit, it's always it's always gonna get
used so much so much worse. Yeah, against people who
actually like threaten the status quo of how the state
wants things to run yep, which in general in general
isn't the right wing. So the FBI never actually investigates

(37:45):
the bombing. They just don't. And besides, it would be
a spider Man pointing itself mean moment if they investigated
the bombing. Because here's my favorite part, my favorite, I mean,
I hate everything about this. A month or so before
or the bombing, the FBI ran a bomb school locally
on car bombing, on specifically how to respond to car bombs.

(38:12):
They had it on Louisiana Pacific property, the company that
hates Earth First. They practice blowing up cars with car bombs,
and the security personnel from Louisiana Pacific or invited to
attend the event quote as security since it was their property.
So were the FBI trying to teach them how to

(38:36):
blow up cars? Like? Is that? Man? I am not.
I mean, there's there's no way to yeah, Like, theoretically
it is to teach FEDS how to respond to car bombing. Sure,
what you all should respond to is the subliminal programming
of advertising. Sure, fuck it and we're back. I really

(39:06):
enjoyed the hypnotode I'm older everyone, God damn it. I yeah,
you are much much older. It's an advertising thing from
I think future rama where there's just a fucking wrong
Trump is a is A is a TV shark fuck upon,

(39:30):
I was like, how long does it take for them
to remind us that we're old? Like you did? You
did so well over ninety minutes. This is a record.
This is a gear record. I'm proud of you. You
didn't even fall for the bait. When I started off
by saying how old I was in nineteen eighty eight,
I know, I refused once you said what I was

(39:51):
getting get involved in two thousand and four, I refused
saying how old I was. Yeah, which is funny because
the people liked talk to you about this or I'm
I'm the gear to anyway, Yeah, because they're all much
but yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So so the FBI has
bomb school and bomb school the security of the Love

(40:13):
for Company just watching the whole time. Yeah, and then
there's even like some oddly specific things like during bomb school,
they're like and most car bombs are actually not inside
the passenger cabin, they're under the car or in the hood.
But then two of the three cars that they blew up,
they put them in the past in the passenger compartment,
and that is where the bomb was in Judy Barry's case.

(40:36):
Also the passenger compartment like underneath the driver. Yeah. Yeah,
well passenger compartment means like not outside the car, but
inside the car, you know. Okay, And the guy who
ran the bomb school and four guests who showed up
to respond immediately after their car blew up in Oakland,
why it was the guy who ran the car bomb

(40:58):
school and four of his students, at which he said
he told his students, this is your final exam on
the scene. Okay, this is so weird. This is so weird.
This is like, this is so weird. It's so fucking transparent.

(41:19):
And Judy described it once, well, you're either a conspiracy
believer or a coincidence believer. I mean, that's what I'd
tell myself every time I look at a mountain. But
this is this, this, this is a lot this is
a lot more intense. Yeah. The chief investigator Okay, And

(41:39):
I've read actually two different descriptions to who the chief
investigator was, but I'm going with one of them. I
think there's different types of investigators at different points. I
don't know. A man named Richard held who headed Cointel
proma great already off to a great start. Yeah he
was personally responded, this is the guy who I think
was personally responsible for the arrest of Geronimo Pratt and

(42:01):
Leonard Peltier. Um, yeah, let's let's let's get him on
the case. He'll start that one on the case. So
that's bad. After the bombing, with her unable to do
as much organizing, more women stepped up to take her place.
Just an astounding number of women showed up to organize

(42:24):
from all over the West Coast to make sure that
Redwood Summer happened. And they're stepping up into roles as
needed because not only is Judy busy, but so we're
basically like mostly existing organizers are busy because they're busy
now supporting Darryl and her on medical and legal fronts,
because you know, they're and like all the press shit
about like Earth First is mad bombers or like like,

(42:45):
from now, it's so obvious it wasn't Judy Berry blowing
herself up, right, But at the time, they don't have
any of that information. They don't have any of the
publicly accessible documents they don't have. Yeah, it's right, story,
completely unfamiliar to the modern audience. In the end, and
Redwood Summer was organized ab about three quarters women, of
which Judy Barry was too hospitalized and arrested to be

(43:06):
one of. And Redwood Summer was a success, but not
what the activists had hoped. But the fact that they
pulled it off is a huge fucking win for decentralization,
for creating a leah full movement. Right and past actions
had had upwards of one hundred and fifty people at
you know, Redwood blockades and things. Redwood Summer actions drew
like three thousand people, but it was fewer people than

(43:30):
they hoped for and more devastating still because of all
the culture warship and the framing of Judy Berry for
own bombing. Proposition one thirty failed. Fifty two percent of
people voted against it, forty eight percent for it. Oh man.
It's opponents mostly used, don't give in to the evil
eco terrorists like Judy Berry who hate our rural way

(43:50):
of life and are trying to blow everything up or whatever.
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder where we've seen this
narrative since then, hah, that's nowhere. That's odd. Yeah, curious,
jurious stuff. Go ahead, what's the one that I mean,
we're just even we're just even seeing like ripples of
this style of propaganda in Atlanta, like this you know, framing,

(44:11):
framing like lethal force encounters um and using that to
try to, like with the state controlling all of the
narrative around that, to try to make it seem like, oh,
everyone involved in this campaign is a terrorist from out
of state and trying to like trying to drum up
people who live in the area to turn against what
what what is a very popular movement. Yeah, and that's
actually I mean, that's that's why I wanted to you know,

(44:33):
I always knew I was going to be talking about
Judy Barry. But the reason I was like, I'm doing
this now is because of all this shit happening in Atlanta,
and like, I feel like there's a lot It's not
just like, oh, I think people should learn from this,
although I think that's true, right, but there's also a
lot to be like proud of and to see where
we come from as a movement, you know, and to
see that we come from strong fucking people, and we

(44:56):
are strong, sucking people and looking looking looking at the
past is like, yeah, the level of resiliency that we've
seen in the past and the way that continues now,
it's it's it's it's it's good to know your own history. Yeah, exactly.
And within a year, Judy and Darryl bring suit against
the FBI, claiming that they'd maliciously fucked up the investigation

(45:18):
and unlawfully arrested them. Especially because of this lawsuit, they
avoided speculating too hard about who bombed them, right because
of the lawsuit in progress, and they don't want to
suck it up by running around and mean like it
was whatever if if you if you say like it
was the FBI, as you're trying to see the FBI
that can be used against Yeah, yeah, that is That
is the smart way tiggle about things. Yeah, the way

(45:39):
I understand it. The most plausible thing. I am not
making an accusation here. The most plausible thing is that
the FBI planted the bomb or convinced an informant too.
I you know, I'm not going to make a guess
about who among who might have been the informant or whatever.
It's also possible that it was a random crank. And
that's the really fucking weird coincidence that it's right after

(46:02):
all of her political enemies how to how to blow
up a car with someone in at training. And there's
some conspiracy theorists too, because of course there are the
evidence for the conspiracy theories. Seems to boil down to
that meme. That's like source, I made it up, I've
made it up. Yeah. Judy doesn't think it's a coincidence
that the bombers targeted a woman. Here's a quote from

(46:22):
her about that. I believe that the reason I was
subjected to such excessive violence was not just that what
I was saying, but the fact that a woman was
saying it. I recently attended a workshop in Tennessee on
violence and harassment and the environmental movement. There were thirty
two people in the circle, drawn from all over the country.
As we each told our tale, I was struck by
the fact that the most serious acts of violence had
all been done to women. But whoever bombed her, Judy survived.

(46:47):
She got back to organizing. She moved away from Frontline's
work a lot because of her injuries, and moved to
a remote cabin with her daughters, but all the attention
helped her network and organize. Soon the demos became massive
civil disobedience. This is like celebrities and shit. John Biez,
Bonnie Rate, Woody Harrelson, who's an anarchist, climbed the Golden
Gate Bridge with a with North Coast Earth First to

(47:09):
drop a banner that said her wits aren't ancient, redwoods
more precious than gold. I did not know this. Yeah,
that's wild. Yeah, there's footage of it too. There's footage
of the banner and the footage of him getting interested.
Judy Barry kept up her radio show and speaking and organizing.
I don't know at what point she stopped being a

(47:29):
construction worker, but I've read somewhere that it was around
this time that she wasn't able to be a construction
worker and that would have been hard, hard to do
with injuries. Yeah, so she becomes a paralegal. And I
have seen several people who are targeted by the state
for violence and unlawful arrest and all that shit become
legal workers, whether like go to law school or become paralegals.

(47:50):
It's a very yeah, common career path and it fucking
rules as noble as hell, you know, being like I
went through some shit, I'm going to fucking help people. Absolutely.
She was involved in a fight for what in nineteen
ninety seven became the Headwaters Forest Reserve, another three thousand
or so acres of old growth forest, with another three
thousand or so acres buffer zone around that old growth forest.

(48:13):
I listened to a speech from after this point where
she talks about she's really excited about this tactic that
people started doing where they start wrapping all the trees
in yarn, in acrylic yarn because it gums up chainsaws. Huh.
I have never I've never heard of this. Yeah, I
would never advocate anyone do anything. But you know, there's

(48:37):
a if you listen to the album Who Bomb Judy Berry,
there's a lot of her speeches on it. It's like,
if you want to really quick, I just want to
listen to some Judy Berry. I don't want to read
a whole last book or whatever. Just listened to Who
Bomb Judy Berry. There's a couple like clever songs where
she's like, the FBI won't give me my fiddleback. But
it also has a lot of her speeches and shit,

(48:58):
and she's a fucking good she's good at what she does.
But in nineteen ninety six, she was diagnosed with inoperable
breast cancer. In her case, chemo would extend her would
have extended her life only a matter of months, so
she refused it. It wasn't a like it wasn't like

(49:18):
a hippie thing, you know. Yeah. Yeah. She kept up
her paralegal work and her radio show, but she dropped
everything else. As she was dying of cancer. She got
letters of well wishing and support, even from her opponents,
such as like the county's district attorney and some other
state officials who had lost their family who had also
lost family to breast cancer, and Judy said this about it.

(49:40):
I was totally cynical, But then I realized their acts
were reaching down to a deeper level of humanity, and
I appreciate that. One of her last quotes was, I
have no regrets at all except getting into that car
in Oakland. Just I don't know. I think it's funny. Yeah.
On March second, nineteen ninety seven, she died at home.

(50:02):
A thousand people came to her memorial service, and Darryl
Cherney continued their lawsuit against the FEDS and made gain
after gain, improving their bias. Like the FEDS kept trying
to squash it on like random things, and then just
like it it was so fucking obvious the FBI was
lying and being terrible that the judge just kept throwing
out all the FBI's motions. But it took a long

(50:24):
time and a fuck ton of work. It finally went
to trial in two thousand and two and they won,
and they won a four point four million dollars settlement
to Darryl and to Judy's estate. By the end, the
Feds in Oakland, PD were both trying to blame each other,
like as like the whole ship is sinking, you know. Yeah, yeah,
because divide and conquered goes both ways, and we tend
to think of the state as this monolithic thing and

(50:47):
it is not. It's it's these little, these little cliques
and kind of in some ways similar to how like
edicacyment's operating, Yeah, it's it's these it's these little cliques
that are always vying for more control and more power,
like even in Atlanta, it's it's funny to listen to
scanner audio of like Atlanta police into Cab County Police

(51:09):
arguing about who can do what when they're trying to
do a raid, and it's like it's it's it's these
it's these little it is these little people trying to
trying to exert as much control as they personally can. Yeah,
and man, you know what's so funny is it it
was really effective against our movements to sow division. But anyway,
one juror came out of the court and told the
press a bit later after the gag order lifted, and

(51:31):
basically it was like it was so fucking obvious the
cops were lying. Just was like going on about being like,
oh my god, none of us believed them. They are
so obviously lying because they kept up the same lies
to the end. Like they it was like twelve years later,
and they were like they knew the bomb was in
their car because it was on the back seat and

(51:52):
they put their instruments on top of it, even though
all material evidence had disproven this twelve years earlier. It's
like they just they just you know, we know what,
like you know what, even like caught in the lives
that you're like still trying to like get out of
it and be like with like little tidy weasel ways,
but you're like you could feel the walls closing it. Yeah, exactly.

(52:17):
Stick to your story, kids, I guess yeah, because they
had testified that you can't you know, they had like said, no,
this is true, so they can't, like it, perjure themselves
or admit they perjured themselves. Yeah. Yeah, they absolutely could
perjure themselves. They did so, And on May twentieth, two

(52:37):
thousand and three, the Oakland City Council declared May twenty
fourth to be Judy Berry Day in the city. Really, yeah,
and I know that some people still go and go
to the spot where it happened every every May twenty four.
Her work can be remembered in a thousand ways, but
one of the most important was the class consciousness that
she brought to earth First, and people kept and keep

(53:00):
fighting for the Redwoods. In nineteen ninety eight, I mentioned
this in the Chico Menda's episode Unfortunately two an earth First,
Her named David Chain was killed by a logger who
more or less intentionally dropped a tree on him. YEP.
Between nineteen ninety seven and nineteen ninety nine, the most
famous tree sitter. This person doesn't die. The most famous
tree sitter, Julia Butterfly Hill, lived in a two hundred

(53:22):
foot thousand year old redwood for seven hundred and thirty
eight days until they finally were like, all right, fine,
we won't fucking cut it and we'll create a two
hundred foot buffer around it. Will you please come down
and stop making hippies love your cause? And that's fucking cool.
And the campaign against Judy Barry, the campaign against her,

(53:44):
did not stop with her death. So fucking great, so gross.
In two thousand and five, a biography came out about
her and was published by Encounter Books. Encounter Books is
a right wing nonprofit publishing house that is based on
a maggot that the CIA funded in the Cold War?
What what the fuck? And this is not conspiracy talk.

(54:05):
That's from their about page. No, yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
Well I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm sure this biography was
heavily vetted, full of full of reliable sources. Yeah, they
didn't interview like a single person who was friends with
Judy Barry. They only interviewed all the people who hate
They're just like interviewed her enemies, just gonna be like, hey,

(54:25):
here's a biography. It's like a smiling picture of her
on the front. It's like presented as if it's a
regular biography. It's not like the evil Marxist terrorists, who
I don't think she's a Marxist, but the evil eco
terrorists who tried to you know whatever. Um. Yeah. The
same house publishes attack biographies of like Anita Hill and
Hillary Clinton. One of their current bestsellers is BLM The

(54:49):
Making of a New Marxist Revolution. But they mean it
in a bad way. Yes, yes, so they paid an
author named Kate Coleman. This is what I was read.
People say as true. Sue Happy Publishing House. They probably

(55:11):
paid an author named Kate Coleman about ten thousand dollars
to write the biography. Apparently she admitted this when people
came to her talk, because she tried to give a
fucking talk in the Bay and people were like, fuck
in the Bay. Great, yeah, great, great choice. Yeah. Judy's
friends were in the crowd with like signs that said
lie and they would just hold up the sign this
is lie. Anytime she would tell a lie, that's great,

(55:32):
you know, that's that's see that, that is like that.
That is extremely effective non violent practice, No totally. And
then you know, when I was talking to when people
did it, and she was like, yeah, we did it
because like that way, we weren't being loud and disruptive,
you know. But apparently wal confronted at one of these talks,
she admitted to being paid to write this biography. That
that is where I'm drawing that from. Okay, other than

(55:54):
this book, she's written dozens of books. They're all I
bet they're They're all pegg they are all I don't
know if you'll see this one coming poorly reviewed romance
novels with photoshop covers. I mean, yeah, that's that kind
of touch track. It's like the grocery store romance cover
with the with the ripped guy with the shirt list

(56:16):
and a woman with like loose clothing like grasping his
leg or so. It's then a knockoff version of that.
It is the it is the like, look at Kate
Coleman's good Reads. You're not even gonna find it on Amazon,
but she has dozens on good Reads and they're all
like The Last Duchess, The Duchess Cometh. I don't know,

(56:38):
I can't remember the name of the fucking books. Sophie
has clearly found it as giggling. Kate Coleman seven deadly
Sins of Women in Leadership intended us is that the
same Kate Coleman I chased seven years for a duchess
dance for the duchess, A lot of irving duchess wager

(57:02):
for a duchess. Luisa's Lessons, the Scholars Duchess, the Duchess,
Duchess Chronicles, the Duchess Right Duchess, Duchess Duchess, and ruins
and they all have like duchess turtles, the Fugion of
Duchess two point five star dus in Ruins Gere. I'm

(57:26):
looking at all of the there's like this. There's gotta
be like over thirty thirty duchess books here, hate Coleman. All.
If there's two of you and you're not the one
who wrote the Attack biography, I am so sorry. But
I did check, and it is like a good Reads
verified thing. It's just that the one book is so
out of line with all the rest that that's why

(57:47):
I double checked. Yeah, that is but yeah, and the
bad reviews the better of the Secret Wars of of
Judy Barry. The bad reviews aren't for I hate this
person's politics. The bad reviews are like this wasn't really
a book, has read like an outline instead of a book. Yeah,

(58:07):
and unfortunately, the Attack biography seems to be one of
the main sources for Judy's Wikipedia page, which focuses on
her as like a contentious person that everyone was afraid
of and all this shit. It's not the only attack
book that someone was hired to write about Earth First.
It's one of these movements that has had an incredible
impact on society that's hard to get objective writing on

(58:30):
because of how many people have been paid to fucking
slander it. But I'm going to leave you with one
last Judy Barry quote. History will remember people who destroy
bulldozers as heroes. You win a lawsuit to stop a
logging plan, then the timber company files an identical plan
the very next season. Besides sabotage, what else is left

(58:55):
that is not an accurate summation of the whole of
her work or whatever? But I think it's all is
worth understanding that well, one of earth First strengths. I
was talking to my friend about this earlier. One of
Earth's first strengths is they are not a sabotage organization,
and they do a lot of stuff that like super
cool radicals would consider like boring and liberal. They do

(59:16):
a lot of lawsuits, they do a lot of like
gathering where there are nests of different animals in the
forest in order to save timber or lands. But the
thing that makes them, I think resilient is exactly this
celebration of a diversity of tactics, because you can't draw
a line between people if everyone recognizes that all the

(59:39):
tools in the toolbox are valid. And obviously some people
do draw lines at like some people draw the lines
at actions that hurt working class people, you know, But
that's not sabotage, no, no, I mean, yeah, that diversity
of tactics is the it's when consistently employed you do

(01:00:00):
see like measurable winds. There's been very good work done
by a Cascadia Forest Defense, which is a decentralized collective people.
We've interviewed them a few times on it could happen here,
but they've done fairy good work getting getting using a
combination of direct action and the court system to shut
down logging in the Pacific Northwest. In Atlanta, we're seeing

(01:00:23):
people employ tactics, tactics of sabotage. There are there are
like construction equipment that does spontaneously burst into flames, shotting manufacturing,
so true, but there's there's also like people like yeah,
organizing neighborhood groups. There's people trying to pressure the construction
companies and the contracting companies to drop out of the project.

(01:00:45):
And that that has that has produced like measurable successes.
Um is a large a large diversity of tactics is
almost like a cliche saying at this point, but it's
like it's true, like it is it It is something
that is that is shown shown to have successes. It's
how especially in ecological movements. Yeah, and it and and

(01:01:07):
I think that it really does go both ways. It
involves respecting the people who do things that you find boring,
and it involves respecting people who do things that you're like, oh,
that's going to alienate everyone. Well, like historically sometimes but
more often than that, diverse tactics make strong movements, and

(01:01:29):
strong movements are harder to disrupt with co intel protype tactics.
And the fact that Earth first is still around forty
three years in after decades of attempts to destroy it.
It is fucking saying something that's my earnest earnest summation. No,

(01:01:51):
and like not not every campaign they're involved with is
going to be successful by any means. But that's that's
not how you measure that's not how you measure like success.
When you're trying to, you know, save the planet from
ecological collapse on a global level. Well, listener, if you
want to save that's my plug. Get involved in some shit,

(01:02:15):
Like if you're trying to figure out what to do
with your life, go get involved. Don't. I'm not telling
you go do crime. Specifically, do not go do crime
at anyone you hear in your fucking earphones telling you
to go to crime. But movements, social movements could probably
use you and is and there's ways if movements that

(01:02:36):
believe in diversity of tactics also have a lot of
different ways to get involved. No, yeah, the onboarding process
for diversity of tactics movements is a lot more manageable
than something that's like we explicitly only do crimes and
we only allow people who want to do big crime,

(01:02:56):
which in general is a little bit less sustainable. And
they cry down against it can be a little a
little a little more targeted, I suppose, because there's still
is crackdowns against large, diverse movements. But the more people involved,
in some ways, the safer everybody is. Well and I crackdown,
I mean, and I know that's probably not the etymology

(01:03:16):
of crackdown, but like literally they try and create cracks.
And the way they do it is they take the like, well,
we know you're a good protester and you would never
support people who throw a water bottle at a cop,
you know, and like the more that you're like, yeah,
I'm a good protester, I'm here on the sign whatever,
that's like my thing. I don't do all the dangerous
shit because I'm fucking it's not my thing. But those

(01:03:37):
people are also like on my side too, Like if
someone breaks a bank window and you're like, well, I
wish that they hadn't broken a bank window, I'm like, yeah,
but which person do you care more about? The person
who is fighting against capitalism or the CEO of the
or the window of the bank. Yeah, like exactly sure. Yeah,
And the more people holding signs, the safer it is

(01:04:02):
for the for the person who decides that hey, I'm
angry that the cops killed somebody. I'm going to smash
his bank window. And so the more people who are
who are willing to stand there holding up banners, holding
up signs, it's it creates, It creates a scenario that
allows people to employ a diversity of tactics in a
much more broad way. And yeah, no action is too

(01:04:23):
big or too small. You don't know what the ripple
effects of any individual thing is gonna it's gonna turn
out to be. I do think it is. It is
a little upsetting that I knew that there was like
a car bombing incident against an Earth First activist in
the nineties. But it is a little upsetting how little
I knew about this story and this person. Yeah, honestly,

(01:04:43):
I was because Judy Barry's story was such a big
part of when I first got involved in Earth First. Um.
But I also, like you know, I got involved, like
I was at a celebration for when the lawsuit won. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But it's so it's something that we need to we
need to keep aware of, you know, and we can

(01:05:05):
we can learn from history. We shouldn't get mired in history, um,
but we can learn from it, well, any other plugs,
huh well, nothing besides I guess like the fight continuous,
like this type of stuff that people are doing in
the eighties. You you see you see ripples of that
of that same fight. Now, Um, when we were talking

(01:05:26):
about like old growth forests in the first episode, I
think this is this is one kind of one narrative
we've seen try to try to get used against people
doing forest defense in in uh in Atlanta. Is that
the forest slated. It's not. It isn't an old growth forest,
So it's fine, it's it's it's it's fine to chop
it down. Yeah, where do they think exactly. It's like

(01:05:48):
like the East Coast has already been like completely decimated
by all of its old growth forest and you think
it's just you just it just isn't gonna like grow
back itself. You know one day in old old forest
will just pop into existence. Yeah, uh no, like it's
it needs to survive. And the fact that like young
forests are so different than than old growth forests, but

(01:06:11):
that doesn't mean they're worse, they're just different. Like it is,
it is, it is a different type of beautiful Walking
through the Wilannie Forest versus walking through then walking through
a forest in the middle of the Pacific Northwest. It's
it's it has a different atmosphere, it has a different vibe.
The forest in Atlanta is like this weird, resilient punk forest.
You like trees like desperately trying to crawl out of

(01:06:33):
the clay for life, and it's cool and they should
be able to continue growing. So just as we're talking
about a lot of like old growth stuff today, I
think it's it's important important to mention that, you know
that shouldn't be the single barometer of if if a
forest should be protected is old growth yes or no?
It's like no, it's a fucking it's it's one of

(01:06:53):
the it's it's the biggest remaining forest in the city
of Atlanta. Like no, totally old growth, like absolutely no,
don't fucking cut old growth? And then like what you
do cut? Yeah, shouldn't be in the middle of the
city so that you can build a place for cops
to practice murdering people. Like anyway, probably everyone who's listening

(01:07:18):
knows that, but well, hope hopefully a few a few
more might um and the stuff will continue even if
you can't make it to the Week of Action, there's stuff.
Stuff will continue and the type of repression we're seeing now,
the repression is a sign that the movement is winning,
as you can see with some of a lot of
the stuff in the in the eighties. In the eighties

(01:07:39):
and nineties, repression starts intensifying the moment that people in
power realize oh oh no, yeah, they might actually win
this one. Yeah, so stuff is going to continue past
the Week of Action. There will probably be future weeks
of action. There's this summer will be a very important
turning point as as land disturbance permits are kind of

(01:08:00):
like we are, we are waiting to see like the
final final ones get issued. And yeah, the more people
that comes down, the safer everybody is. It's the It's
the only way to beat the panopticon is that everyone
all goes at once. And if you're not going, yeah,
support the people who are. And but this is just

(01:08:21):
a history podcast. I don't know what you're talking about.
We just talk objective, objective facts about some stuff from
back in the day that have no relevance to the present.
This is this is one of the weird things that
I was thinking about as as I was in it
as I was in Atlanta last time. Is that people
don't sometimes realize that like they're living through history, Like yeah, totally,
they are living They are living through the things that

(01:08:41):
will be talked about in this way in thirty years,
and that is a weird thing to go through and realize,
like the actions you take have impacts beyond the here
and now that you can't even imagine. How do you
want to sound when you're on Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff as a subject, and everyone needs to think,
what would Margaret Killjoy making me? No, don't do that.

(01:09:05):
Never mind, before before you throw that ball top, think
formal Margaret kill Joy say about this in twenty years?
Will she? Will she critique my arc on this? Should
I do forty five degrees or thirty degrees? Which vota
will she prefer? I'm so optimistic that will all be
here and anyway, but we will be here next week

(01:09:26):
with more Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. Cool People
Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
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