"Who Bombed Judi Bari?" Join host Paul Roland as he interviews Darryl Cherney about his recently-released documentary on the 1990 car-bombing of Earth First! activists Bari and Cherney. The KBOO-sponsored Portland premiere will be the same evening at Clinton Street Theater (showtimes 7 and 9:15 p.m.).
For those too young to know about it, Bari and Cherney were in the middle of organizing a major campaign ("Redwood Summer") to stop the destruction of redwood forests in northern California when a bomb blew up underneath Judi Bari's seat in the car as they were leaving Oakland to go to an organizing concert in Santa Cruz, California.. She was almost killed and suffered debilitating injuries. Cherney, in the passenger seat, escaped with less serious injuries.
The two, incredibly, were charged with transporting an explosive device, while still in the hospital. Not only were the charges dropped, but they eventually (after Bari had died from cancer) won a virtually unprecedented lawsuit against the FBI.
The film tells the story of Bari's history, starting out as a union organizer from Baltimore to becoming one of the more creative and dynamic organizers in the Earth First! movement (and one of the few who reached out to mill and timber workers to forge worker-environmentalist alliances).
- KBOO