A Car Bomb Nearly Killed Eco-Activist Judi Bari—and Yet the Feds Blamed Her

I spent the summer of 1990 “hiding out” at my parents’ modest home in western Sonoma County. At twenty-nine years old I’d landed back at the family abode after my two closest colleagues had been violently attacked and almost killed for attempting to protect redwood forests. After I’d lived through five years of threats and assaults for the crime of trying to save the very last ancient redwood groves still standing outside of parks—a disturbing tide of attrition now horribly punctuated by an assassination attempt—I had little choice but to take up residence in my old bedroom, surrounded by the safety of family.

On May 24, Earth First! activist Judi Bari was piloting her Subaru station wagon through Oakland, California, when a pipe bomb exploded under her driver’s seat. When Judi hit the brakes a ball bearing broke out of a small slot and rolled into a groove where it connected two points and ignited the sophisticated bomb. The explosion blew a wide hole through the floorboard beneath Judi’s seat and blasted the roof of the Subaru wagon into a dome. Nails from the bomb entered the seat back but miraculously missed Judi. Bari was severely injured. Her passenger, fellow Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney, suffered a scratched cornea and a blown eardrum.

As if the bombing wasn’t bad enough, the FBI and Oakland Police immediately arrested Bari and Cherney for “transporting their own bomb.” The arrest of the non-violent activists set off a chain of events that would once again demonstrate the FBI’s complicity in violence aimed US activists for exercising their constitutionally protected right of protest. The Alameda County district attorney refused to file charges against the pair, citing a lack of evidence, as it was clear that Bari and Cherney had been set up.

Read more at The Daily Beast.