Interview with Earth First! leader Darryl Cherney: 'Environmental movement is a force for revolutionary change

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Darryl Cherney: "Environmentalism is going to have some very heavy economic repercussions."

Redwood summer: A call for On May 24, Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari, two leaders of Earth First!, were injured when a bomb exploded in their car in Oakland, Calif. The FBI and local police responded by charging that the victims made the bomb themselves.

The following interview with Darryl Cherney was conducted by Socialist Action reporter Barbara Putnam on June 10 at the hospital where Judi Bari is recovering from severe injuries to her pelvis. The interview has been abridged for publication.

Socialist Action: Darryl, why did you agree to give Socialist Action this interview when all the big dailies are clamoring for interviews?

Darryl Cherney: Well, I have been taking some of the interviews with the mainstream media, but I feel it's important to do outreach to all segments of society. The mainstream certainly needs to hear from Earth First! but the "left" community also needs to hear what we have to say-as we need to hear what they have to say.

S.A.: Today's San Francisco Examiner ran an article titled "Green Mafia: New Target of Political Suspicion." I guess that makes you a godfather. Why is Earth First! being characterized as "Green Mafia" by the logging bosses?

Cherney: As the Cold War is defused in Eastern Europe and in Asia, the FBI and the CIA need to come up with a new enemy and I think they're now trying to fabricate the "Green Menace," using techniques I see as "Green-baiting."

I see environmentalism as being one of the new prime forces behind revolutionary change. Ultimately, the exploitation of peoples is an environmental issue as much as exploiting the environment because the reasons that they have to go into South Africa or South America or any other nation is to get the resources. And in order to do that, they need to exploit the people-or slaughter them.

So environmentalism is going to have some very heavy economic repercussions as we as environmentalist activists become more successful. The corporations certainly cepting the limitations of what the earth has to offer.

S.A.: Under pressure, the capitalist politicians and their bosses are jumping on the ecology bandwagon. How does Earth First! deal with their fraudulent claims of cleaning up the environment?

Cherney: A good example of that was this past February when the timber industry and some really shady politicians came up with a bogus patter that made all the front pages. They said that Pacific Lumber wasn't going to log in some old-growth grove and they weren't going to export logs and that they were going to open themselves up to an audit. ARTH FIRST All these things sounded somewhat good on the surface, but if you looked at what the agreement actually was, all the logging companies were already doing these things. Pacific Lumber doesn't export anyway, so agreeing not to export didn't really make a difference.

They said they weren't going to log in Headwaters Forest, a 3000-acre redwood grove, even though we knew damn well that they were going to. In fact, we caught them in the middle of building an illegal logging road after they agreed not to log in that area.

So what Earth First! did was launch a series of protests with civil disobedience that was non-violent. They did involve a number of arrests. "No shady deals" and "No closed doors" was the theme of our demonstration.

S.A.: In your view, what were the strengths and weaknesses of Earth Day?

Cherney: Well, Earth Day's message was "Buy, Buy, Buy." It kind of became the Christmas of the environmental movement. You make a day of celebration, arbitrarily assigned, and you open yourself up for cooptation. There was no way of monitoring who could be a sponsor for Earth Day.

In fact, Dennis Hayes and the 1990 Earth Day committee essentially invited lots of large corporations to co-opt the environmental movement. On the other hand, it did (continued on page 10)

companies themselves are anti-worker?

C.B.: I would say so. Definitely. I think it is incredibly irresponsible on the

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am/Socialist Action Barbara