Judi Bari

<infobox> <title source="name"/> <image source="image">

</image> <group> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Relatives</label> <label>Affiliation</label> </group> <group> <header>Biographical information</header> <label>Marital status</label> <label>Date of birth</label> <label>Place of birth</label> <label>Date of death</label> <label>Place of death</label> </group> <group> <header>Physical description</header> <label>Species</label> <label>Gender</label> <label>Height</label> <label>Weight</label> <label>Eye color</label> </group> </infobox>Judi Bari (1949 - 1997) was an anarchist, environmentalist and feminist involved IWW and Earth First! organizer, activist notable for her efforts to organize Redwood Summer, an effort to unite timber workers and environmentalists to protect forests in Northern California, and her ideas became the precursor of Green Syndicalism.

Life

Family

The daughter of a famous mathematician and a diamond settler. Her grandparents were Polish-Jewish and Italian immigrants to the United States of America.

Assassination Attempt

On the 24th of May, 1990, a car she was driving around Oakland, California had a pipe bomb explode under her seat, seriously injuring her and placing her in critical condition. FBI bomb squads and Oakland police rapidly descended on the scene and she was accused of carrying explosives, which was dismissed by the district attorney and herself for insufficient evidence. This led to multiple conspiracy theories about who really planted the bomb.

Theory 1: Far-Right Terrorists

Five days after the bombing, a journalist recieved an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the bombing signed by 'The Lord's Avenger'.

Just five days after the bombing, on May 29, while Bari was still in hospital, Mike Geniella of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat received a letter claiming responsibility for placing the bomb in Bari's car and at the Cloverdale mill. It was written in an ornate, biblical style with heavily misogynistic language and signed "The Lord's Avenger,"^[35] stating further that the letter writer's motivation was outrage at Bari's offense against his religious sensibilities during an anti-abortion protest at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ukiah, California in December 1988. The letter also described the construction of the two bombs in great detail. The bomb in the Cloverdale sawmill included a pipe bomb and a can of gasoline, but it failed to ignite and did no damage. The other bomb was in Bari's vehicle.^[36] The letter focused suspicion on Bill Staley, a former professional football player and self-styled preacher who had been at the demonstration. Staley was eventually cleared of suspicion in the bombing. The detailed description of the bombs tied the letter's author to the construction of the bomb, however, the author's explanation of when and where the bomb was placed in Bari's car was found to be implausible. The author claimed to have placed the bomb during an event when Bari's car was parked on a busy street and the location of which was not widely disseminated. The author claimed an implausible malfunction of the timing mechanism to explain the delay between the claimed time of bomb placement and its detonation. It was decided among both supporters and detractors of Bari's favored theory of the bombing that the letter was sent by the bomb builder in an effort to divert attention to Staley.^[3][16]

Theory 4: The FBI

Several people have speculated that the bombing was planted by the FBI as a continuation of COINTELPRO. The evidence includes:

• The FBI's claim that the bombing was an accidental detonation was shown to be completely implausible in the face of physical evidence.
• There was a close resemblance of the bombing of Bari's car to "crime scenes" fabricated by the FBI in a "bomb school" held in redwood country earlier that year.
• Those same schools taught that bomb explosions inside a vehicle were not likely to involve targets of bombing but indicated the knowing, criminal transportation of homemade bombs. This was said to be because it was difficult to break into a locked car to plant a bomb.
• Judi had received numerous death threats citing her activism in the weeks before the bombing. She had reported them to local police, and after the bombing, Bari's attorney turned written threats over to the FBI for investigation. The local police and the FBI never investigated, court evidence later showed.
• Judi had suspected that several people in Earth First! were FBI informants.
• The FBI has a history of killing left-wing activists in the US.

Death

Judi died of breast cancer on the 2nd of March, 1997 at her home in Willits, California, USA.