In a tragedy widely mourned by environmental activists and virtually unnoticed elsewhere, Earth First! icon Judi Bari passed away March 1 from cancer. She was 47.

Bari--like many Gandhian activists--was best known not for her work, but for the stupidity and violence with which authority reacted to it: a 1990 car bombing in Oakland that nearly took her life and that of an EF! companion. The attempted assassination was never seriously investigated by the FBI, which, ludicrously, initially arrested her in her hospital ward as a suspect in her own bombing. Many others believe the bombing was the work of either corporate thugs or the FBI itself. A current lawsuit against the FBI may yet shine interesting light into how corporations and the state attack political dissent in the '90s.

While her lack of mainstream recognition is a shame, Bari's extensive eulogizing by EF! friends distorts and does a disservice to her work. For the last decade Bari was a central figure in the Northern California effort to stop clearcutting and redwood logging. Her focus, on trying to build alliances between forest agitators and forest industry workers, was a long-overdue attempt to put the heat where it belongs: not on loggers, but on corporations that treat both workers and planet as expendable. Her tactics and leadership also had a national impact in at least partially eroding the macho-boys-in-the-woods ethos, modelled by Edward Abbey, Dave Foreman, et al, that has plagued Earth First! over the years.

At the same time, Bari never won policy victories. The trees are disappearing faster than ever; her attackers probably will never be prosecuted; and the IWW-inspired labor-enviro alliance she worked for has never been more than symbolic. There has been little logger participation--let alone leadership--in anti-clearcut movements, in Northern California or elsewhere. Claiming otherwise eerily recalls the tokenization white activists often bring to inner-city issues with people of color. Bari's campaigns, like most others of the genre, have been plagued by in-fighting and the visibility of fringe cultures profoundly (and needlessly) alienating to middle America.

As with many grass roots activists, Bari's legacy is not her immediate results. It is that she cared deeply, and her persistence and courage not only changed the people around her, but inspired thousands of others to care and to act. Regardless of the issue, motivating people to care is the most radical, and needed, step in creating any kind of change in Anesthetized America. To win on the issues she cared most about will require thousands of Judi Baris in every region of the country. Her greatest contribution is that some of those will have been inspired to act by her example and her life. Her hard, unglamorous, and nearly invisible work will be paying off for generations to come.