ABSTRACT
If Judi Bari's three-year-old daughter Jessica had not caught pneumonia, her mother would not have taken the girl to the Ukiah Hospital for treatment. If Bari had not gone to the hospital, she would not have talked to the man who called himself "Fred, the Walking Rainbow." And if she hadn't had a conversation with this unique person, Redwood Summer might never have happened. But after Earth First!ers caught Palco apparently building the road into Headwaters, Bari did not wait for this dispute to be resolved. Instead, in early March at a gathering of ten California colleges in Sacramento organized by the Student Environmental Action Coalition, she asked for "Freedom Riders for the forest" to come to Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties that summer to "defend the redwoods with nonviolent civil disobedience." Bari's effort to chart a course between the moderates and radicals had merely angered both. Tucson Earth First! claimed that "leftists" had taken over Redwood Summer.
