Remembering Civil Rights Attorney Dennis Cunningham and Judi Bari bombing with Karen Pickett

On March 6th, Famed Civil Rights Lawyer, Dennis Cunningham died of cancer. He was 86.

In his long and varied career Cunningham successfully represented Attica Prison Inmates, members of the Black Panthers. He also represented Earth First! organizers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in a case they won against the FBI and Oakland police for violation of their civil rights when they were arrested after a car they were traveling in had a bomb detonate under the passenger seat nearly killing Bari.

Despite having numerous death threats against them Bari and Cherney were named as suspects in their own bombing. They were never charged, and a jury awarded them 4.4 million dollars in a 2002 for the violation of their civil rights.

On this episode of Breaking Green we will talk with Karen Pickett.

Pickett has been a grassroots activist for over 40 years. She has focused on forest and habitat preservation as well as environmental justice, protecting the civil rights of activists, and alliance building with Indigenous campaigns and the labor movement.

She is a founder and Director of the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, Biocentric Media Inc, as well as earlier organizations, including the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment. She is a Board member of the Global Justice Ecology Project and has a decades-long affiliation with Earth First!.

Pickett worked closely with Mr. Cunningham on the trial against the FBI and Oakland police and was a close personal friend of Judi Bari.

Breaking Green is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

Breaking Green is made possible by donations from people like you. 

Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights and expose false solutions.  Simply click here to send a donation or text GIVE to 1 716 257 4187.

Transcript

Steve Taylor  
Welcome to breaking green, a podcast by global justice ecology project. On breaking green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, Steve Taylor. On March 6, famed civil rights lawyer Dennis Cunningham died of cancer. He was 86. In his long and varied career, Cunningham successfully represented Attica prison inmates, members of the Black Panthers and Earth First! organizers Judy Bari in Darryl Cherney in a case that they want against the FBI and Oakland Police for violation of their civil rights. Judy Bari and Darryl Cherney were arrested after a car that they were traveling in had a bomb detonate under the driver's seat, nearly killing Bari. Despite having numerous death threats against them, Bari Cherny were named as suspects in their own bombing. They were never charged and a jury awarded them $4.4 million in 2002 for the violation of their civil rights. In this episode of Breaking green, we will talk with Karen Pickett. Pickett has been a grassroots activist for over 40 years. She has focused on forest and habitat preservation, as well as environmental justice, protecting the civil rights of activists and Alliance building with indigenous campaigns in the labor movement. She is a founder and director of the Bay Area Coalition for headwaters biocentric Media Incorporated, as well as earlier organizations, including the Alliance for Sustainable jobs and the environment. She is a board member of global justice ecology project, and has a decade's long affiliation with Earth First! Pickett worked closely with Mr. Cunningham on the trial against the FBI, and Oakland Police. And she was a close personal friend of Judy Bari . Karen Pickett. Welcome to breaking green.

Karen Pickett  
Hi, Steve, thanks for having me.

Steve Taylor  
I wanted to ask you, what brought you to the environmental movement?

Karen Pickett  
Well, I, in some ways, I feel like, this is what I have always done my entire life. But, um, I grew up in a in a rural area. So I was outside a lot. And I had just, you know, an innate appreciation of the natural world without ever thinking about it without ever knowing that there, you know, there was any other reality, I was extremely lucky in that way. And I graduated from high school in 1968. And that's when I left the rural area, because there was all of this stuff going on in the late 60s and early 70s. And it wasn't very visible in my little town. So I did go out in the world and to the urban areas to figure out what was going on. I ran into activism in the Bay Area, and it was actually through the Ecology Center. And the Ecology Center was doing a lot at that point in Berkeley, but they had a recycling program and recycling was at that point, very kind of fringe. And it was it was a radical act in itself. And had was far from being accepted into the mainstream, but it was all about resources, and not wasting resources. Because resources are part of the earth. And if you respect the earth, and you don't, you don't waste the resources. And given that I had always a very hands on approach. You know, just give me something to do. Don't tell me about a problem. Just give me something to do about it. Getting into the work that the Ecology Center was doing was perfect because I went out on recycling trucks and picked up bundles of newspaper and took them to a plant where they turned the paper fiber into egg cartons. Right their local industry. They weren't shipping it overseas, but that's how I ran into Earth First!  was being at the Ecology Center and doing that initial work. And then that's what it was the RS first philosophy that grabbed me. It did not make sense to compromise. So that slogan worked and I found that I was a biocentric without knowing it. And and direct action also made sense. So

Steve Taylor  
that's very interesting and I Want to get more into Earth First!, but first, I want to talk about the career of Dennis Cunningham. Dennis Cunningham, his famous civil rights lawyer died at age 86. Earlier this month, March. What do you know of Mr. Cunningham?

Karen Pickett  
Well, Dennis was a very good friend and comrade since around 1990, when we first got to know him, and he, he did some work with Earth First! activists and then he became the lead attorney for the lawsuit. That was Judy Berry and Darryl Cherney versus the FBI and the Oakland Police, and which became quite a famous case, in in one sense, because it it happened after Judy and Darrell were bombed. I mean, it's it's, it's a whole story unto itself. They were targeted as radical environmental activists. And they were blamed for the bombing and the civil rights lawsuit that was filed, charging the FBI and the Oakland police with violating Judi and Darryl's constitutional rights and conducting a smear campaign against Earth First! was a case that it took 12 years to go to trial. And it was a very long trial. And it was also very precedent setting, in that it's extremely difficult to sue the FBI or any police agency because of their qualified immunity. And we actually won that case. And there is just so many issues that came up in the case, it was really a modern day COINTELPRO operation that the FBI in the Oakland Police had conducted against the Earth First! activist. So you know, it, it. That's That's one. We were working with Dennis, the closest but he really became part of our movement at that point. But he was also a great personal friend.

Steve Taylor  
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit more about his career in general. In 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, were killed in their apartment during a police raid. Mr. Cunningham argued that the killings were the result of a government conspiracy to murder Mr. Hampton. There was an 18 month trial. And this was in 1982, some years after. But there was a settlement for $1.85 million. He also represented inmates from the 1971 prison uprising at Attica state. And interestingly 25 years after that event, won a settlement for $12 million. Um, and as you mentioned, he also represented Judy Bari and Darryl Cherney Earth First!ers who were arrested for their own bombing, even after they had received multiple death threats. That was a case that demonstrated that Judy Berry and Darryl Cherney civil rights were violated and they were defamed when they were arrested for an assassination attempt on their own lives. So that's quite a career. And I was wondering, according to The New York Times article, Mr. Cunningham stated that he must, he needed to take care not to undermine the values and goals of the clients activism. You're an activist, you knew Mr. Cunningham, you know, his work. How do you respond to that?

Karen Pickett  
Yeah, well, it's it was this philosophy that Dennis operated within his legal work, which isn't, you know, that it's not necessarily the accepted way to move forward in civil law, and most of the law that Dennis has practiced is civil law, although he did some criminal cases as well. But it was a philosophy that that was essentially defined as saying politics lead. And he worked with a lot of activists and that was kind of the thing when we met Dennis. Around 1990. He had in his back pocket, what actually some people would consider, really a lifetime of just amazing and good work. And you know, and then there came so much more. But he he started out with his law practice in Chicago and as you say, defended the Black Panthers. But one of his first cases also was with the the people who are the Chicago eight that were on trial, they were, you know, all that activity was going on in the late 60s. And he had, he had defended Fred Hampton in a in a criminal case as well, when he was charged with inciting a riot or something similar to that. And then came the civil lawsuit after Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed by the Chicago police and the FBI. And also, as you said, he came in after the Attica prison riots. And at that time, he and other young lawyers founded the the people's Law Center in Chicago. And that was really his his beginning. And so he was well acquainted with COINTELPRO type operations when we met him. And, and it's actually what drew him to our situation, because we were kind of fumbling around and we knew that there were these parallels between the way that the police and the FBI were operating, particularly after the bombing, and dismissing the death threats that had been made against the activists working up to the bombing. But we, you know, it was difficult to put all together because it really took us by surprise. I mean, we were, we were largely white environmentalists, and we did not expect the kind of tactics that had been used against the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, and etc. And, and it, they were very similar tactics. In fact, it was, you know, the same program, it was COINTELPRO, without it being called COINTELPRO. Because COINTELPRO had been declared illegal. But, you know, this is what Dennis Cunningham was steeped in. So the, you know, the, the, the coming together of the Earth First! activists and Dennis Cunningham was something that was really meant to be, but he, it's funny, because he also had not worked with environmental activists before. Because given that he was he was deep into the work of representing the underdog, you know, representing people without a voice. And people who were being, you know, not just having their rights violated, but people who were being murdered by the police and the FBI, he kind of saw those working on environmental issues, as you know, that, that, that environmental work was, in a way a luxury because, you know, in the case can be made, that when you're dealing with issues of survival, you know, work on quote, unquote, saving the whales or, or, you know, saving the Earth can seem to be a luxury. I think, you know, we're in a whole different context with, with the climate crisis disasters that are happening these days. But in any event, what he saw in what we were doing was that, you know, we were being hit by the same tactics that he had seen employed before, against political activists.

Steve Taylor  
That's very interesting observation. I believe, according to The New York Times article, Mr. Cunningham said the civil rights marches were the engine of his of his work or his activism. So that type of work probably was in a different context than what people typically associate with the wider movement of environmentalism. At least at that time. So you mentioned COINTELPRO, could you help remind us what that stands for and what that program was?

Karen Pickett  
Well, COINTELPRO stands for counter intelligence program, and it was actually the brainchild of J. Edgar Hoover, in back in the early days of the FBI and it, it was a campaign targeting  political activist. The aim of their programs was to, in their words, to neutralize radical organizations, politically radical organizations, and they neutralized these organizations through disruption campaigns. And, and some of those campaigns ended up being lethal. And they had, they did a lot of undercover work. I mean, the way that it played out with the Black Panthers was, there were a lot of people who were killed in the height of the COINTELPRO campaign against the Black Panthers. But it wasn't always carried out by the either the police or the FBI agents themselves. Sometimes it was, but sometimes they would, they would sow dissent, they would sow discord within these organizations, and these groups that would end up you know, just setting people at odds with each other and create these, these fights within organizations. So that they were no longer cohesive, and so that people would, would carry out actions against each other. And, you know, based on these rumors based on lies, and that did end up happening with the environmental movement in that they, they put out phony press releases. They started rumors, that sort of thing, that the same kind of tactics that they had used against not just the Black Panthers, but the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican Independentistas is and so this was, this was something that had been going on for a long time. And, you know, largely behind the curtains, and when it was exposed, it was actually COINTELPRO was exposed in 1971, when activists broke into the FBI offices in Pennsylvania, and liberated all of this documentation of COINTELPRO operations against political activists. And after it came to light. And of course, it had been operating for decades. But after it came to light, there were hearings, about it in Congress, and it was declared to be illegal. It was the church committee hearings, however, how that played out was that the operations that the FBI was carrying out were no longer called COINTELPRO. But they were exactly the same and, and in fact, you know, they became more secretive, and less forthcoming about the work that they were doing. And so it you know, in some ways, it made it worse, because it was harder to track down. But nothing really changed. In terms of it being declared illegal.

Steve Taylor  
Did not the COINTELPRO files also include people like Martin Luther King? Or am I miss remembering that?

Karen Pickett  
Yes, no, he was one of the targets as well. And, you know, not everything that they did was uncovered because, you know, there's this tool called the shredder machine. And so, you know, there's, there's so much that did not come to light, they, they were pretty arrogant about the way that they were operating. And so when the activist exposed all of the paperwork there was there was a lot there because they felt that they were justified in in carrying out these operations, you know, for the sake of America for the sake of capitalism. So, there, there was a lot that was exposed, but it was in the past. And there was a lot that was not exposed but suspected. And so, there were a lot of stories around. People like Martin Luther King, people who were prominent.

Steve Taylor  
This is your host Steve Taylor, and we will be back right after this.

Theresa Church  
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with small nonprofits when a group or organization whose nonprofit work closely aligns with our mission by becoming a fiscal sponsor. This helps them minimize bureaucracy so they can focus on their crucial work for ecological and social justice, forest protection and human rights. GJEP is proud to sponsor the Vermont based center for grassroots organizing. The Center was founded to organize diverse mass social movements with space where people from different fields can spend time together, share resources, get creative and build collaborative strategies. Their purpose is to build grassroots organizing education, training, direct action and other efforts to help unite contemporary social movements into an effective mass movement. Each summer they hold up rise Youth Action camp, an amazing week of teen empowerment, creativity, action and friendship, all while strategizing for our collective future. To learn more, go to grassroots center dot net

Steve Taylor  
Welcome back to breaking green. Mr. Cunningham, he sees what happens with Darryl Cherney and Judy Bari who were driving in a car to promote protests at Redwood Summer. And the car blew up and they were arrested. In essence, under the theory that they blew themselves up that they were transporting explosives. I believe they were handcuffed to their hospital beds. But Mr. Cunningham saw what was going on. And he felt that there was a COINTELPRO flavor to this. Could you tell us a little bit about that maybe what happened in the early days of the bombing? And and what what might have made Mr. Cunningham interested in the Barry, Cherney case?

Karen Pickett  
Yeah, well, initially. I mean, the bombing happened on May 24 1990. And this bomb blew up in Judy's car in Oakland. Both Judy and Darrell lived in counties in Northern California. But they were down here we actually had had a Redwood Summer meeting the night before the bombing at the Seeds of Peace House, another group that we were working with, to launch Redwood Summer, and Judi and Daryl were on an organizing tour, going down to play music and talk about Redwood Summer at the university down in Santa Cruz. So after our meeting up here they were they were headed to Santa Cruz and the bomb had a motion device. So when Judy was getting on the highway that was triggered and the bomb blew up right under her seat nearly killed her. It was a bomb that was meant to kill. It didn't explode completely. And that was the only reason that she wasn't killed. So it was an assassination attempt. And Darryl was injured but not as severely. And so immediately, both the Oakland police and the FBI but the FBI was running the show. They were on the scene and they said these people are known to be violent terrorists, therefore, they must have known that they were carrying a bomb. They intended some nefarious use of this bomb on their organizing tour. And that's they are the primary suspects. And I actually talked to the FBI immediately after the bombing. I was the first person at the hospital and because somebody called me and said this had just happened and it was horrifying. But when I got to the hospital, soon after they were they were crowds that converged on the hospital. But at that point, the there were these undercover people I didn't know they were the FBI that started asking me questions which made sense to me because a bomb explodes. You're supposed to ask questions. But I told them at the time, because they were the the Oakland Police, you know, operate down here in the Bay Area a couple 100 miles from where Judy lived. And I said okay, you know, you might not know about what's been going on in Northern California, but we're doing this organizing around, liquidation logging and there have been threats, including death threats that have been becoming increasingly more frequent and and increasingly serious, lodged against act Earth First! activists up there particularly Judy, because she is a primary spokesperson and organizer. And this, those threats seem to have just culminated in somebody trying to kill her. So, you know, I would advise you to go and look at what's been happening in the previous days and weeks, right away while the trail is hot. And they, you know, they were kind of nonplussed, they just didn't seem interested. And they were asking a lot more personal questions about myself and about Judy. And it didn't make sense to me. But we still had no idea what was going on. So as things unfolded in the months after that, they said that they were the primary suspects, but duty and Darryl were not charged. And after a number of weeks, the charges ended up being dropped without ever having been filed in court. And that's where Dennis came in. And the rest of the legal team, it it was a year after the bombing that we filed the civil lawsuit, because it took a while to to figure out how we would do that and what our grounds would be and make a case that these people had had their constitutional rights violated. And that was the basis of the lawsuit that they had their fourth amendment and first amendment rights violated. And in fact, the FBI and Oakland Police have conducted a disruption and smear campaign against Earth First!, with the goal of neutralizing Earth First! Those words again, that are primary to J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO operations. So while we, we didn't think that we were immune from COINTELPRO type operations, being white environmentalists, it it became clear that, that we were now you know, in the arena of political activists who, who could see that kind of repression. And, and I, you know, I have to say that it was also our, our awareness. It sparked our awareness of intersectionality, before intersectionality, within the environmental movement became a thing, which it is now and even though we still have a long way to go in that respect, I believe. At that point, we realize that from the very beginning in 1990, when we had press conferences about the bombing, and then and then announcing that we were filing this, this constitutional rights lawsuit against the FBI in the Oakland Police, that we had to include at every single press conference, representatives from the Black Panthers, who have always been active in Oakland. So we did have good representatives, right here in our neighborhood, and also representatives of other groups that have have had that kind of repression meted out against them, like the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independenistas is and on and on. So, it was in many ways, you know, a time of political awakening and political growth, even though we were, you know, fighting for our lives and fighting for our rights.

Steve Taylor  
I think it might be helpful for people to know that prior to this incident, Judy had encouraged non violence and actually made public statements that that that the upcoming Redwood Summer would be based upon a principle of non violence. 

Karen Pickett  
Yes, very much. So one of the reasons why we felt it needed to be expressly a non violent campaign was because we were inviting all these young people, many of whom had never been involved in civil disobedience had not been arrested. Out to join us and camp out with us in the forest in and it was already quite politically hot up there because the timber workers were being told that the environmentalists were up there taking their jobs away, and, and so there was there was all of this discord that had been deliberately sowed by the corporations and by law enforcement. And and it you know, this was also organized by people who believed in the power of nonviolent civil disobedience and who were allied with the philosophy of people like Martin Luther King. So we, we were using those people and those movements as a model. And, you know, even in the face of violence, because there was violence that was going on up there.

Steve Taylor  
There is an interview of Judy Bari, and it's Judy talking about upcoming protests, and how they are working with workers, forest workers, and her analysis of what's going on, even with the economics of this clear cutting, and this complete destruction of the forest. So I wanted to take a quick listen, and then come back and talk to you about it.

Judi Bari  
So we're watching the death of the redwood forest in my area, and along with the death of the forest, comes the death of our economy, because this economy is entirely based on timber, it's not diversified at all, there's pretty much nothing to do except for timber here. And so there's been there's no concern, they don't care any more about the timber workers and they care about the forest. So when the trees are gone, the jobs just dry up and people are expected to move on. Like the Dust Bowl, we call it the saw Dust Bowl. And their concern is it's real funny that they walk around trying to get people to hate the environmentalists and act like the corporation's are on their side. I think a lot of people learned a lesson on that was last year, because now they're out of work. And the companies don't care what happens to them either.

Orin Langelle  
I think that was one of the things that big corporations really tried to do was pit the environmentalist against the workers. I know you've been very much involved in trying to get everybody involved in this. Today, you're going to interview a logger and I believe he's been laid off. 

Judi Bari  
Yeah. 

Orin Langelle  
And what do you think he's going to tell you now that he's laid off?

Judi Bari  
Well, one of the things his employer with this letter I'm talking to you today, his employer is one of the nastier ones. Most of the logging is not directly done by the corporations anymore. It's done by what's called gypo companies. It's smaller contractors. And this is one of the larger small contractors. And he's one of the ones who we have very strong we have been told, was paying vigilantes to lie and wait for us and in the woods last year, armed vigilantes who were given both arms and money to try to hunt down Earth First!ers, basically, and I'm hoping to find out some of the details about the vigilante ism that went on last year. But that is an element that's happy as last year, they told the loggers that they were in immediate danger from Earth First! that you know, they basically they 5000 gun toting hippies were going to come in and apply for welfare, and sabotage your equipment. And in fact, what happened last summer? And back to your original question, what happened this summer, in spite of a brave attack on us of the worst kind of violence, and not just against me, also less publicized attacks, we maintained our presence and our non violence the whole summer, we made history in this region.

Steve Taylor  
Listening to that Karen reminds me how Judy Bari was more than just an environmental activist, she was actually building or working to build alliances within the labor movement. And a lot of people felt that that may have led to her being targeted that she was a real threat to the industry.

Karen Pickett  
Yes, because she was a threat to the industry. And Judy believed in very strongly in alliances in that there's there's always common ground and there's with oppressed people. And and she would she made the point to the workers who were out there in the forest, cutting the trees or in the mills making the lumber that the timber corporations were treating the forest the same way that it was treating its workers and, you know, that was borne out by actions that the corporation's would take like, like cutting worker safety issues. And I mean, it it over the decades, you know, since the when, when logging was really accelerated, you know, in like in the 40s and 50s working up to what was happening in In the 90s, logging, it was the same practices, but logging became a much, much more dangerous occupation. And it was because the multinationals took over the small family owned corporations. And because the multinationals didn't care a twit about worker safety, and so they came in with their profit motive. And we're essentially steamrolling over not only the workers safety issues, but also their, you know, their ability to make it a livelihood, most of the timber workers on the north coast were not unionized. And so they did not have job security. And, and the, the way that the, that the forests, and the wildlife habitat was being utilized simply for the sake of profit, really paralleled the corporation's practices in other ways. And so Judy was pretty effective at making that point was were in and she, you know, they were her neighbors, so she would get out there and talk to them, one on one, and, and she changed the way that the that the forest campaigns had been operating up until then.

Steve Taylor  
Dadly, Judy Bari passed prior to the verdict. She died of cancer and was not able to see justice served in her case. What was it like, though, for you to see the trial unfold? In 2002?

Karen Pickett  
Yeah, it was a long time coming. We went to trial, 12 years after the bombing. And it was tragic that to Judy passed in the meantime, however, she made sure that we were headed into that courtroom. Judy worked on the case. Until the day she died, quite literally, you know, I I stayed up at her house, the last two weeks of her life and, and many times working up to those last days. And, you know, she would have me sit next to the bed with this binder. And read to her from the binder and in the binder was, you know, it was the evidence binders. It was depositions. It was all material that we were using to build the case. And and she would, you know, say wait a second, go back to you know, what you just said and, and okay, refer back to this other page, because those things don't line up. And we make a note of that. So so much of the case was was ready for court when she died in 1997, actually, And and but the you know, the delays were largely from the other side as one would expect, because the because police agencies have qualified immunity. And they certainly tried to play that hard. And because we had to prove, you know, it was very clear that the FBI in the Oakland Police lied at the time of the bombing and that they lied in the police report. You know, even about things that should have been very clear like the location of the bomb. They lied as they were standing there looking at the hole in the floorboards in Judy's car. But even with all of those facts lined up, you in order to not have your lawsuit die under the burden of qualified immunity. You not only have to prove that the police agency lied, but you have to prove that they know they lied and that they lied maliciously, and that is pretty difficult to do.

Steve Taylor  
I was talking to someone in prep for this interview. I was talking to someone else who was also at the trial, but he said that seeing the FBI and the Oakland Police as defendants very an emotional thing.

Karen Pickett  
Right. And and they you know, there were moments in that trial. Like when we took the jury to to see the the bombed car, and which was part of the evidence. And they had already seen and heard the police report that was written the day of the bombing. And there's, you know, this, the Oakland police and the FBI are standing there looking at the car. And at the direction of the FBI, the Oakland Police, who wrote their report on the scene, said that the bomb blew a hole in the backseat. And that was the basis of what they said about the fact that it was, quote, unquote, their bomb. They said, you know, the bomb was in the backseat. And therefore, when they loaded the car and put their guitars and gear into the car, they must have seen the bomb, because there it was in the backseat, and they put their stuff on top of it. And you look at the car, and there's this huge gaping hole directly underneath the driver's seat, and there's a hole. I mean, the driver's seat itself is destroyed. And we also brought the the backseat into the courtroom, because the backseat is pristine. And there's no hole in the backseat of the car. So you know that that was, it was easy to show that they lied. The difficult part was to show with certainty that they had malicious intent in why they lied.

Steve Taylor  
I did meet Judy Bari a little while after the bombing. And I do know that she was in great pain from what happened that that car seat blowing up underneath her so that that was not only you know, a very difficult thing being arrested. And and and being smeared by the FBI and the Oakland Police Department. But she suffered grave injuries.

Karen Pickett  
Yes. Yeah, as I said, it was a bomb that was meant to kill. And she was she was in the hospital for eight weeks in traction, right after the bombing. And we had to provide around the clock security for her. Because somebody had just tried to kill her so to, to, you know, go through that. And, you know, she she could have gone back and said, Okay, you know, I've got two kids, I'm gonna I'm gonna go live in my cabin in the woods and raise my children and I think I've paid my dues. But that that wasn't, Judy. And you know that and, and and Dennis's  method of operation was much the same to you know, we had we took 12 years to go to trial, and it was take a six-week trial. And then we waited a couple of weeks for the verdict. It was it was an incredibly long time and and just a tremendous amount of work and the legal team did not get paid, we had to raise a lot of money for the depositions and that sort of thing. But our lawyers did not get paid until, you know, years after the fact when we got legal fees. And then when they finally did get legal fees, one of the things that Dennis did was he divided them up and share the legal fees with the activists who had not gone to law school, but who had made sure that that case get into court and that the and that the trial happen and be in was supported. And he he shared that money was everyone, including myself. And you know who does that?

Steve Taylor  
That is extraordinary. That is extraordinary. And I had never heard that. Wow thank you for sharing that. Final note, it seems to me that this must be a very personal loss for you the passing of Mr. Cunningham and that's probably extra poignant. Given that Judy Judy passed prior to the trial.

Karen Pickett  
Well, it is a personal loss, but I, you know, I also I have the benefit of having had these people and these movements in my life, which gives me reason to live and gives me reason to, to keep on fighting. And basically, you know, live my life the way that I do as a full time activist. And so, you know, knowing knowing that there's, you know, it's kind of an affirmation, that, that this is, this is the way that we need to live in order to in order to respect our circumstance, that we get to live on this earth, in order to have community, you know, in order to have the benefits that we that we may have, and to believe that that these fights are worth fighting. So, you know, we, we lose these people, I mean, I'm getting older myself, but it's, you know, we certainly don't lose the experience and, and I, I am just so incredibly grateful for the community that I still have a community of activists as is, as far as I'm concerned, the best community in the world and to have had people like Judy and Dennis and all the rest in my life, and, and they all, you know, they, they all of the leaders in our movement, were mentors for other people too. And, and you know, you can see this in the I'm not a youngster anymore, but I look at the youngsters that are out there in the streets every day, and you know, you can see the mentors in those young activists as well. So this is how we do it.

Steve Taylor  
Well, Karen, thank you so much for sharing this with us. 

Karen Pickett  
Thanks, Steve. 

Steve Taylor  
 You have been listening to breaking green, a global justice Ecology Project podcast. To learn more about global justice ecology project, visit global justice ecology.org. Breaking green is made possible by tax deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text give g i v e to  1-716-257-4187. That's 1-716-257-4187. The interview of Judy Bari was conducted in 1991 at her home in Willits, California by Orin Langelle and myself. It was for community radio in St. Louis.