The Forest for the Trees (2005)

Judi Bari

 

Judi Bari with Darryl Cherney

April 1990 death threat photo

Bari with attorney Dennis Cunningham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FOREST FOR THE TREES           A-                                                                            USA  (53 mi)  2005  d: Bernadine Mellis                     The Judi Bari Website 

Or – a portrait of a hard core social activist in America, and how they have been targeted by bigoted zealots from the other side throughout history, requiring specialized legal teams who are among the few who fight the unpopular fight exposing the unlawful conduct of the American criminal justice system that harasses, fabricates evidence, and ultimately frames these activists when their views are seen as a threat.  While this filmmaker, expanding on an earlier short film submitted as her Master's thesis from Temple University in 2004, narrates her own film about her legendary civil rights attorney father, Dennis Cunningham, he in turn paints a poignant, at times chilling portrait of Earth First! environmental activist Judi Bari, paying her his ultimate respect by defending Ms. Bari in the face of FBI charges that she was a terrorist, instead calling her one of the strongest moral leaders he’s ever met.  Cunningham built his career defending the Black Panthers, bringing a civil suit on behalf of Fred Hampton, a Panther leader who was shot to death by Chicago police, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), ultimately winning a $1.85 million dollar award for Hampton’s family, as well as representing the Weathermen and the Attica prison inmates.  A well-balanced piece showing both the side of the activists as well as the logging industry, Bari was actually mending fences with irate loggers who advocated revenge against her radical demonstration tactics, calling to their attention that the fight wasn’t against workers, but the owners of giant timber conglomerates who had already cut down 97% of the old growth redwoods in northern California, who were now targeting the remaining 3% for extinction.  Nonetheless, she received death threats and her car was rammed by a logging truck.  But on May 24, 1990, a car bomb exploded under the driver’s seat of a car Bari was driving, suffering crippling injuries which damaged her legs and pelvic bones, but she and fellow activist Darryl Cherney survived the blast, which led the Oakland police and the FBI to charge her with the crime, labeling her a terrorist, claiming she was responsible for carrying the bomb.

Incredulously, the FBI charges were brought by Richard Held, who led the secret FBI COINTELPRO (COINTELPRO [Counterintelligence Program] (1956-1976) •) tactics to undermine the Black Panthers, smearing the organization, planting false stories in the press, abusing the legal system to harass as many members as they could, conducting break-ins, assaults, and even assassinations, conduct that might be termed a form of official terrorism against its enemies.  But who guards the nation when the nation’s justice system itself is conducting its own illicit campaign to wipe out its enemies?  COINTELPRO remained secret until a burglary into an FBI office in 1971 exposed top secret files targeting such notable lawful activists as Martin Luther King, boxer Muhammad Ali, and actress Jean Seberg.  Twenty years later, despite documented death threats against her life, the police charged Bari for a crime that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence, which led her to bring a civil suit for false arrest, charging the Oakland police and the FBI with conspiracy, claiming it was a ploy to discredit her and the Earth First! organization.  A month before the bombing, Bari learned that the FBI’s lead bomb expert had conducted a “bomb school” for police officers on the property of Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Company.  The police never looked for any other bomber, despite evidence to the contrary.  Based on stalling tactics, the case never came to trial for twelve years, 5 years after Bari herself succumbed to breast cancer, but not before she provided a video taped deposition for Cunningham, which was played in court.  A chillingly intense film, one of the better observed studies of the aftereffects of the repressive social climate from the 60’s, where freedom was literally under siege from law enforcement officials, the body charged with protecting the lives of the citizens.  In 2002, a jury found that the Oakland police department and the FBI blatantly lied about the case and awarded $4.4 million in damages, successfully clearing their names.

Paul Wolf, principal author of the report COINTELPRO The Untold American Story, COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story, said of the Bari case:

Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation’s premier crime-fighting agency, the FBI has always functioned primarily as America’s political police.  This role has included not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of political dissidents and groups, but also counterintelligence operations to thwart those activities.... There is no better example than the Judi Bari case to show that the FBI kept on well into the 1990’s using covert action tactics against political movements and activists which they perceived as threats to the established order.... In spite of knowing full well from their own expert’s testimony that Bari and Cherney were innocent victims, the FBI and Oakland police continued to lie to the media ... saying they had plenty of evidence they were the bombers.

What is most compelling in this film is the ragtag group of lawyers who would sit around in a circle and discuss arguments and legal tactics, none of which is shrouded in dense analytic legalese, but which is downright folksy which anyone could understand, where Cunningham comes off as a latter day Jimmy Stewart, politely dissuading certain arguments for lack of legal grounds, but never raising his temper, always allowing everyone a voice at the table, including J. Tony Serra from the old Panther defense team, Bob Bloom who scoured the FBI documents on the case, paralegal Alicia Littletree, and Judi Bari’s daughter, who wanted to rectify her mother’s legacy from a terrorist who killed herself with her own bomb to a socially conscious activist who took the moral high ground and was instead targeted for assassination.  Cunningham comes off as a quiet, self-effacing guy who doesn’t believe he’s suited for the job, who’d rather tinker in his back yard with junk metal building odd-shaped art sculptures than spend his time in the pressure cooker of this courtroom, usually grumpy and downright morose with his daughter who films him after the day’s proceedings in the car.  While cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, there is an eloquent use of a tape recorder capturing some of Cunningham’s final argument, which is a wonderment to behold, as it discredits the authorities by summarily praising the goodness and moral character of the person charged, who he then describes as not just part of the moral fabric of being an American, but one of the special few among us who has the courage to stand up for something, an act which by itself is likely to ruffle a few feathers, but doesn’t deserve the smearing of her name, the overt fabrication of evidence, or her murder to shut her up.  Amusingly, the police objected to the jury’s request for copies of the 1st and 4th Amendments to the Constitution, claiming they might be construed the wrong way.  Cunningham’s exasperated reflections about how we have the best legal system in the world, guided by a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, but also a worrisome government that at times refuses to follow them, are priceless. 

Cowspiracy

Co-writer, co-director, co-editor, co-producer, and cameraman Kip Andersen

COWSPIRACY                     B+                  

aka:  Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

USA  (90 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d: Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn    cowspiracy.com/facts

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

—Martin Luther King

A curiously provocative film that may leave some scratching their head from all the statistics flying around, wondering what to make of all that, but the overall arc of trying to learn about how to live on the planet and do the least amount of damage to the environment seems like a noble cause, yet midway through the personal exploration the tone shifts dramatically.  We follow along the personal odyssey of one of the filmmakers, Kip Andersen, who is front and center throughout the film, initially seen quizzically scrutinizing his computer, where he spends a lot of time, apparently, exploring various environmental websites.  A graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo school of business while calling San Francisco home for more than a decade, Kip was initially wowed by a screening of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006), featuring former Vice-President Al Gore doing one of his power point slide shows educating the public and raising international awareness of global warming, which certainly caught the eye of this young citizen in the making, becoming extremely conscious at a young age of his own personal role, recycling regularly, turning out lights in unused rooms, taking shorter showers in drought-stricken California and turning the faucet off while brushing his teeth, riding his bike everywhere in lieu of a car, basically conserving his water and energy consumption, dedicated in his role to help save the planet.  What initially catches his eye is a UN News Centre article and press release (Livestock a major threat to environment) that indicates animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption, and pollution, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the accumulated fossil fuel pollution from all modes of transportation combined in the world today.  Since most environmental websites overwhelmingly stress the need to reduce fossil fuel transmissions from automobiles, trucks, ships, trains, and airplanes, claiming that as the leading cause of air pollution, he was initially curious that these websites made no mention whatsoever of animal agriculture.  Like a roving reporter, he decides to meet with some of the environmental agency representatives, scheduling appointments with Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, or Oceana, asking pertinent questions, finding it startling that they would collectively as a group exclude the primary offender, with most talking in circles or suggesting it was all a matter of personal preference to target fossil fuels, but none were willing to engage with him on the subject of animal agricultural.  Granted, there aren’t many cattle ranches in California, so livestock issues may not be a primary interest, but there is an ocean, where major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops, causing not only water pollution and dead zones in the ocean, but the destruction of coral reefs.  Surprisingly, without explanation, Greenpeace refused to meet with him altogether, sending him regrettable emails but thanking him for his interest.   What this film has going for it is the relentless curiosity of Kip, seen as a good-natured and honest narrator, often humorous, whose educational quest for the truth seems admirable, prompting viewers to ask the same kinds of questions, hoping to get underneath the hidden veil of like-minded language that surrounds climate change, where the public assumes these organizations have their best interests in mind, yet their own sustainability in a crowded field may actually be their primary concern.  To his credit, Kip opens the door to a diverse group of industry experts voicing their concerns, ranging from published authors, professors, climate activists, corporate executives, ranchers, doctors, and nutritionists, allowing viewers to make up their own minds. 

Asking various friends and journalists about this particular dilemma, most concede activist organizations don’t wish to offend their donors, as their existence is entirely dependent upon voluntary contributions, so they don’t wish to antagonize the large population of “meat eaters.”  But clearly, there is more to it than that, as the stonewalling of the truth is not what these organizations stand for, and Andersen’s friendly persistence in getting to the bottom of it is utterly fascinating, offering a different side of these normally environmentally friendly agencies.  What stands out in particular are the invaluable contributions of two men, Will Anderson, Greenpeace Alaska Founder and former Board of Directors, particularly incensed by the vast influence of the animal agriculture industry, where there are 50,000 wild horses in government holding pens, rounded up and taken off their land because ranchers want to graze their cattle on that land, also resulting in the wanton killing of wolves and other wild animals to protect rancher’s livestock, and Howard Lymon, a former Montana cattle rancher, now an animal rights activist known for promoting vegan nutrition (consuming no animal products at all) and organic farming, both disgruntled by the limitations of their respective industries, neither one hesitant in confronting the dominant issue of the agriculture industry, where livestock production is the leading cause of human-induced climate change, accounting for 30% of the world’s water consumption, occupying 45% of the Earth’s land, while responsible for 91% of the Brazilian Amazon destruction.  Rain forests, according to the film, might be described as the earth’s lungs, converting healthy, breathable air into the atmosphere, yet rain forest land is being cleared at the rate of one to two acres per second (the size of a football field) in order to make way for grazing land for livestock animals, where over one hundred plant, animal, and insect species are lost everyday due to this rampant destruction.  In the United States, agriculture is responsible for 80-90% of the nation’s water consumption, where growing feed for livestock consumes 56% of the water.  Using graphs and relevant statistics onscreen, Andersen makes quick work in convincing viewers that animal agriculture is the leading cause of environmental destruction, where it takes 660 gallons of water to produce a single McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, the equivalence of two month’s worth of showers.  But this doesn’t explain why all these environmental websites exclude the most damaging facts.  Lyman is an erudite ex-rancher who became famous by spilling the beans on the beef industry on the Oprah Winfrey show, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next two years defending himself from lawsuits.  Lyman also added that while everything he revealed on television was true, if the same thing were said today he would be convicted by the Patriot Act as being guilty of defaming the Agriculture Industry, deemed an essential ingredient in the War on Terror by the American government, placing a target on their backs for the topics being discussed.  Leila Salazar Lopez, director of Amazon Watch, offers even more chilling testimony, revealing that outspoken defenders of the Brazilian rain forests have been murdered by the cattle industry, some 1100 activists in the last 20 years, including Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005, an American nun who became an ardent defender of the poor and the indigenous.  All this paranoia started swirling around Kip’s investigation, made even more startling when major sponsors started pulling their funding from his movie, leaving him feeling particularly exposed and vulnerable to potential lawsuits, unsure whether or not he wanted to continue.   

The film’s final thrust veers away from investigative reporting, turning instead into personal responsibility, where he questions whether there is such a thing as sustainable farming, visiting the owners of the Markegard Family Grass-Fed farm, a nearby ranch known for raising cows, pigs and sheep on an open prairie, with no pesticides or chemical fertilizer and no injected synthetic hormones, interacting with their kids who obviously adore the animals, knowing that within a few months they will be slaughtered for meat consumption.  Despite the care taken to provide the best quality meat product, continually moving animals to new grazing land, the amount of land required is substantially more than normal farm operations, so while it may be sustainable in a smaller market, the model would not hold up if you were trying to feed the world, as there’s simply not enough land on the planet.  Spokespersons for both the cattle and dairy industries agree that their industries are not sustainable using a worldwide model, but their business models target a smaller consumer base.  And therein lies the real crux of the matter, whether or not it is advantageous to internationalize what are presumably local businesses, often feeding local markets, as most never originated their operations with a global market in mind.  How does one compare advantages and disadvantages if your “only” criteria is global sustainability?  Most businesses simply don’t operate under that criteria, where producing sustainable fish or meat within their own market outreach seems like a laudable goal.  Andersen’s insistence on global impact kind of changes the game for most people, but he’s all in when it comes to personal responsibilities.  Visiting urban farms, which offer surprising growth results from small plots of land, perhaps the most convincing diagram used is the football field model, where the smallest land usage required would be vegan consumers, where the land required to feed one person for one year is 1/6th of an acre, three times more for a vegetarian, and 18 times more for meat consumers that obviously require the lion’s share of land usage.  Another visit to a backyard farm becomes a hellacious experience, as viewers must watch a farmer take an axe to a duck, describing how he initially witnessed this at age 5, leaving him somewhat queasy, but now it’s simply part of any ordinary day.  The same could not be said for Kip, who found the footage objectionable, personally, yet showed it nonetheless.  Even more gruesome is footage of the senseless slaughter of 40,000 African elephants, an action recommended in the 1950’s by Zimbabwe ecologist Allan Savory, at the time a research officer for the game department, believing too many animals led to overgrazing of their grassland habitat, a misguided decision that was later proven wrong, but only after 14 years of relentless slaughter, a decision Savory now regrets, calling it “the saddest and greatest blunder of my life.”  Savory, by the way, did a complete turnabout and resurrected his career, learning from his earlier mistakes, something the filmmaker omits.  Yet it is these horrific images that finally persuaded Kip to take action, convinced there is an ethical and moral obligation to eliminate this practice of slaughtering animals.  Accordingly, he makes the transition to becoming a vegan, initially suspicious about leading a healthy lifestyle, but once he arms himself with the facts, the film makes the only recommendation it can possibly make, urging viewers that this leaves the tiniest carbon footprint and is the best possible means of saving the planet, the only option that leads to a sustainable global option, with no lingering regrets about the cruelty of having to kill another species.  75% of Americans consider themselves environmentalists, yet less than 3% are vegan, with suggestions that each day a person on a vegan diet saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forested land, the equivalence of 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, and one animal’s life.  What the film doesn’t address is the cost of converting to a vegan lifestyle, as it’s an expensive option not readily available in some parts of the world, particularly indigenous or tribal cultures, impoverished third world regions, areas of extreme drought, and polar regions.  While the film is perfectly enjoyable and extremely informative, Kip is an immensely appealing subject, kind of like a grownup version of the human host on the children’s television show Blue’s Clues (1996 – 2006), with no one disputing the vegan option would have a substantial global impact, and some may find this film life-altering, yet it’s also fairly obvious that despite the clear and insistent message, 7 billion people around the globe are not going to suddenly become vegans, but it’s a convincing mandate for those that do.