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| Judi Bari |
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| Judi Bari with Darryl Cherney |
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| April 1990 death threat photo |
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| 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.
