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 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.
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 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, 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 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
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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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
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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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
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.
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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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.
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
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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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,
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 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 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. 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. 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 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
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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.
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, 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 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 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. 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
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 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, 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 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
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.
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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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
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
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 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 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 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. 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 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
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 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,
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. 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, 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 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 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, 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
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 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, 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
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 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 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, 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 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 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 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
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 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 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. 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
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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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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