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Cherney to Receive Sempervirens Award
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Dan Clore
Nov 12, 2011, 4:13:38 AM11/12/11
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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http://www.redwoodtimes.com/garbervillenews/ci_19256435
Cherney to receive Sempervirens Award; recalls early days of activism
with EPIC and Earth First!
Redwood Times
Posted: 11/03/2011 10:24:50 AM PDT
Redwood Times
Darryl Cherney, who will receive the 2011 Sempervirens Lifetime
Achievement Award at EPIC’s annual meeting and celebration this Friday,
is a familiar name, face, and voice not only in Southern Humboldt but
throughout the environmental movement.
A native New Yorker, musician, and political activist, Cherney came to
Southern Humboldt in 1985 and almost immediately found himself at the
offices of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, in
Garberville.
When he first arrived, Cherney rented a room at the Bridgewood Motel
(now Chinmaya Mission in Cook’s Valley) and earned his living doing odd
jobs such as digging trenches and waxing cars, but he soon found himself
deeply involved in EPIC’s struggle to protect the redwood forest.
"I cut my teeth working on the Sinkyone Wilderness issue," Cherney said.
His work began with typing. "The first thing I noticed about EPIC ...
they did not have a functioning typewriter. They had one electric
typewriter that worked, and the only thing it typed was italics.
"And so when Richard [Gienger] and company wrote a grant, I looked at
them and I said, ‘You are putting $200 for a used IBM Selectric in your
grant budget, and you do not have a choice.
"If I am typing the grant proposal for you... then you’re putting a
typewriter in here."
He joined the EPIC board in 1986. Arlo Hagler was chairman of the board
at the time, a board that included Agnes Patak, Cecelia Lanman, Ruthanne
Cecil, Gil Gregori, and Sally Bell.
"Maxxam was in the headlines when I arrived in ‘85," Cherney recalled.
Maxxam, Inc., a Texas-based holding company headed by CEO Charles
Hurwitz, had recently acquired the Pacific Lumber Company in Scotia.
"I’m the person who convinced Woods, Robert Sutherland, to create the
lawsuit campaign [against Maxxam] for violations of the Forest Practices
Act," Cherney continued. "We did it together. We couldn’t do it without
Woods.
"And while I was doing that I joined Earth First!... And so I started
organizing demonstrations. And I resigned from the EPIC board in May of
‘87 when 14 of my associates in Earth First! were arrested for
trespassing during a tree-sit at a log deck.
"EPIC said, and it was pretty much agreed -- it was a mutual departure
-- that they couldn’t have somebody organizing arrest actions who was
also on the board."
"A lot of people said things to me that I’ll never forget ... When they
wound up cutting a deal to save the Sinkyone, it came to my attention,
to my absolute bewilderment and even horror, that there was only 300
acres of old growth left in the area.
"And I said to Gil Gregori, ‘Why are we trying to save 3,000 acres of
forest, of which only 300 is old growth?’
"And Gil said these words, I’ll never forget: ‘There was more than 300
acres of old growth when we started.’
"And that’s the story of Headwaters [as well]," Cherney said. "We wound
up saving just a little, but there was a lot more when we started."
Another of Cherney’s contributions to EPIC was the concept of the
"generic Timber Harvest Plan challenge... As long as you mentioned the
word ‘owl’ or the word ‘stream’ or the words ‘old growth,’ you could sue
on that premise, your lawsuit could say anything about those things as
long as you referenced to it in your challenge.
"So I wrote a challenge that could be generically applied to every THP.
I wrote a two-page, probably 2,000-words in small print generic
challenge... The premise I worked on was that if CDF was going to
rubber-stamp every single timber harvest plan, sort of like a generic
rubber stamp, why were we wasting our time studying these things? Just
make a generic challenge.
"And CDF’s response was to close their office three days a week and only
have their office open two days a week for people to come in to
challenge timber harvest plans, and the Board of Forestry shortened
their challenge time from 30 days to 15 ...
"Which just proved to me, the more you actually participate in
democracy, the more democracy shies away from wanting you to participate.
"But this was real educational. It teaches us that no matter how bad a
company can be, like Maxxam, corporate raiders from Texas... no matter
how bad something is, when they’re called out on it, they’ll just hunker
down and get worse.
"Which we see today, with the titans of Wall Street. ‘Oh, the American
public is angry with us because we bankrupted the United States? Let’s
just give ourselves $80 million in bonuses.’"
Cherney ran for Congress in 1988 against the incumbent, Don Bosco. "I
lost ... but it was like getting a degree in poly sci without paying
tuition."
"Working with timber workers was really one of the more pioneering
things that Judi Bari and I did," Cherney said, recalling the Forests
Forever and Redwood Summer campaigns of 1990.
"We predicted Hurwitz was going to bankrupt Pacific Lumber. We said that
in the very first poster we put out, ‘Will the Jobs Be Here in 20
Years?’ ... That was in 1986 ... and 21 years later they went
bankrupt... And they were laying off people long before that.
"In fact ... the most dangerous thing that Judi and I did, with emphasis
on Judi, was to build bridges with the loggers, and we often thought
that’s the reason we were bombed, not just because we were saving trees
... but also that we were building bridges and that Judi’s IWW union was
really gaining ground ...
"Judi and I had everything to do with the worker component in the 1990
Forests Forever [state ballot initiative] that put forth a $33 million
fund to keep Pacific Lumber’s workers employed.
"That was translated into another worker component that was translated
into part of the Headwaters Forest legislative component that we wrote
for Dan Hamburg, and then that component became the Headwaters Fund...
"One of the problems that environmentalists have is that we want to save
the owls, or we want to save the forest, or that we want to create a
fund for workers," Cherney said, "but when government gets a hold of it,
you’re no longer in charge of your phrasing, and one of the reasons
people hate environmentalists -- actually, they hate environmental
regulations and they blame us for the regulations that we didn’t write."
Currently Cherney is working on two film projects related to the events
of Redwood Summer, in particular the still-unsolved car bombing of
himself and Bari in Oakland in May 1990. The FBI and Oakland police
accused Bari and Cherney of carrying the bomb to the Bay Area for an
"act of terrorism."
Bari and Cherney sued the FBI, a lawsuit that was eventually settled in
their favor, unfortunately after Bari’s death from cancer in 1997.
Cherney now wants to re-open the case to prevent the FBI from destroying
the last bits of evidence, which may contain DNA samples that could lead
to the identity of the bomber.
Cherney’s first film, a feature-length documentary called "Who Bombed
Judi Bari?" is now complete except for some adjustments to the
soundtrack. He will be taking it to the Occupy Wall Street movement in
New York next month for a showing at the Brecht Forum, a
left-libertarian collective.
After that, he will show the film wherever he can. "If I can’t get a
screen and a permit [for a full-scale showing to Occupy Wall Street],
I’ll show it on a laptop to groups of 20," he said.
The film includes Judi Bari’s deposition for the suit against the FBI,
which she gave from her deathbed. Other portions of the movie come from
over 700 hours of videos taken by people Cherney calls "eco-paparazzi"
and photos gleaned from thousands of magazine and newspaper articles.
The search for the bomber is interwoven with the story of the creation
of Headwaters Reserve and other environmental campaigns.
Among the film’s North Coast videographers are SoHum’s own Andy Caffrey,
Kay Rudin of Westport, and Howard Russell of Freshwater.
Among the producers are many people well known in the film world, people
who have "one foot in filmmaking and one in activism," as Cherney
describes them, including executive producer Elyse Katz, director and
editor Mary Liz Thomson, and co-producers Sheila Laffey and Bill and
Laurie Bennenson.
When he gets back from New York, Cherney expects to show the film
locally in Garberville and the Minor Theater in Arcata.
At the same time Cherney has been working on a dramatic feature intended
to reach a wider, more commercial audience, a movie with a script and
actors in the parts of himself, Bari, and other activists and real-life
persons involved in the story. More emphasis will be placed on the love
story of himself and Bari, he said.
Two drafts of the script have been written, one by SoHummers Al "Owl"
Ceraulo and Sherry Glaser, and one by Jessica Sharzer, a director and
writer best known for the independent film "Speak," the story of a young
girl who becomes mute after a trauma.
Several well-known directors have expressed interest in the film,
including Michael Apted, Linda Obst, and Bob Chartoff.
The purpose of both films is to educate people about successful
strategies for protecting the environment, to inspire them to take
action, to introduce a new generation to Judi Bari, and perhaps to renew
interest in solving the bombing.
After the films are produced, Cherney’s next project will be to write a
book about the Headwaters Forest campaign. The proposed title, "Doesn’t
Anyone Here Have a Real Name?" refers to the "forest names" of the Earth
First!ers. Forest names will be used for all the chapter titles.
EPIC draws a "strong line" between itself and Earth First!, Cherney
noted, but they’re still "simpatico and very accepting," he said. He
noted a long list of activists who have been involved with EPIC, either
before or after being part of Earth First!
"When I got the call from Gary [EPIC executive director Gary
Graham-Hughes]... I was absolutely sure he was going to ask me for
advice on who should get the Sempervirens Award. When he told me it was
me, and asked me if I would accept, I cried. There’s nothing more
important than to be recognized by your local community, your neighbors.
"But I just want to make sure everybody knows that despite this being a
lifetime achievement award, I have at least one more lifetime that I’m
going to be putting on for the protection of Mother Earth."
EPIC will celebrate Darryl Cherney’s achievements and another year of
working to protect the ancient forests of the North Coast at the Mateel
Community Center this Friday, Nov. 4.
The evening will start at 6 p.m. with EPIC’s annual membership meeting.
A Mediterranean-themed dinner by Tryphena Lewis will be served at 7
p.m., followed by a rousing blend of Romanian, Balkan, Turkish,
Flamenco, Gypsy Jazz, and Tango music from the Fishtank Ensemble.
Tickets for the entire evening are $40, music and dancing only for $20.
Advance tickets are available at Redway Liquor and the Blue Moon gift
shop in Garberville. For more information call EPIC at 822-7711.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.redwoodtimes.com/garbervillenews/ci_19256435
Cherney to receive Sempervirens Award; recalls early days of activism
with EPIC and Earth First!
Redwood Times
Posted: 11/03/2011 10:24:50 AM PDT
Redwood Times
Darryl Cherney, who will receive the 2011 Sempervirens Lifetime
Achievement Award at EPIC’s annual meeting and celebration this Friday,
is a familiar name, face, and voice not only in Southern Humboldt but
throughout the environmental movement.
A native New Yorker, musician, and political activist, Cherney came to
Southern Humboldt in 1985 and almost immediately found himself at the
offices of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, in
Garberville.
When he first arrived, Cherney rented a room at the Bridgewood Motel
(now Chinmaya Mission in Cook’s Valley) and earned his living doing odd
jobs such as digging trenches and waxing cars, but he soon found himself
deeply involved in EPIC’s struggle to protect the redwood forest.
"I cut my teeth working on the Sinkyone Wilderness issue," Cherney said.
His work began with typing. "The first thing I noticed about EPIC ...
they did not have a functioning typewriter. They had one electric
typewriter that worked, and the only thing it typed was italics.
"And so when Richard [Gienger] and company wrote a grant, I looked at
them and I said, ‘You are putting $200 for a used IBM Selectric in your
grant budget, and you do not have a choice.
"If I am typing the grant proposal for you... then you’re putting a
typewriter in here."
He joined the EPIC board in 1986. Arlo Hagler was chairman of the board
at the time, a board that included Agnes Patak, Cecelia Lanman, Ruthanne
Cecil, Gil Gregori, and Sally Bell.
"Maxxam was in the headlines when I arrived in ‘85," Cherney recalled.
Maxxam, Inc., a Texas-based holding company headed by CEO Charles
Hurwitz, had recently acquired the Pacific Lumber Company in Scotia.
"I’m the person who convinced Woods, Robert Sutherland, to create the
lawsuit campaign [against Maxxam] for violations of the Forest Practices
Act," Cherney continued. "We did it together. We couldn’t do it without
Woods.
"And while I was doing that I joined Earth First!... And so I started
organizing demonstrations. And I resigned from the EPIC board in May of
‘87 when 14 of my associates in Earth First! were arrested for
trespassing during a tree-sit at a log deck.
"EPIC said, and it was pretty much agreed -- it was a mutual departure
-- that they couldn’t have somebody organizing arrest actions who was
also on the board."
"A lot of people said things to me that I’ll never forget ... When they
wound up cutting a deal to save the Sinkyone, it came to my attention,
to my absolute bewilderment and even horror, that there was only 300
acres of old growth left in the area.
"And I said to Gil Gregori, ‘Why are we trying to save 3,000 acres of
forest, of which only 300 is old growth?’
"And Gil said these words, I’ll never forget: ‘There was more than 300
acres of old growth when we started.’
"And that’s the story of Headwaters [as well]," Cherney said. "We wound
up saving just a little, but there was a lot more when we started."
Another of Cherney’s contributions to EPIC was the concept of the
"generic Timber Harvest Plan challenge... As long as you mentioned the
word ‘owl’ or the word ‘stream’ or the words ‘old growth,’ you could sue
on that premise, your lawsuit could say anything about those things as
long as you referenced to it in your challenge.
"So I wrote a challenge that could be generically applied to every THP.
I wrote a two-page, probably 2,000-words in small print generic
challenge... The premise I worked on was that if CDF was going to
rubber-stamp every single timber harvest plan, sort of like a generic
rubber stamp, why were we wasting our time studying these things? Just
make a generic challenge.
"And CDF’s response was to close their office three days a week and only
have their office open two days a week for people to come in to
challenge timber harvest plans, and the Board of Forestry shortened
their challenge time from 30 days to 15 ...
"Which just proved to me, the more you actually participate in
democracy, the more democracy shies away from wanting you to participate.
"But this was real educational. It teaches us that no matter how bad a
company can be, like Maxxam, corporate raiders from Texas... no matter
how bad something is, when they’re called out on it, they’ll just hunker
down and get worse.
"Which we see today, with the titans of Wall Street. ‘Oh, the American
public is angry with us because we bankrupted the United States? Let’s
just give ourselves $80 million in bonuses.’"
Cherney ran for Congress in 1988 against the incumbent, Don Bosco. "I
lost ... but it was like getting a degree in poly sci without paying
tuition."
"Working with timber workers was really one of the more pioneering
things that Judi Bari and I did," Cherney said, recalling the Forests
Forever and Redwood Summer campaigns of 1990.
"We predicted Hurwitz was going to bankrupt Pacific Lumber. We said that
in the very first poster we put out, ‘Will the Jobs Be Here in 20
Years?’ ... That was in 1986 ... and 21 years later they went
bankrupt... And they were laying off people long before that.
"In fact ... the most dangerous thing that Judi and I did, with emphasis
on Judi, was to build bridges with the loggers, and we often thought
that’s the reason we were bombed, not just because we were saving trees
... but also that we were building bridges and that Judi’s IWW union was
really gaining ground ...
"Judi and I had everything to do with the worker component in the 1990
Forests Forever [state ballot initiative] that put forth a $33 million
fund to keep Pacific Lumber’s workers employed.
"That was translated into another worker component that was translated
into part of the Headwaters Forest legislative component that we wrote
for Dan Hamburg, and then that component became the Headwaters Fund...
"One of the problems that environmentalists have is that we want to save
the owls, or we want to save the forest, or that we want to create a
fund for workers," Cherney said, "but when government gets a hold of it,
you’re no longer in charge of your phrasing, and one of the reasons
people hate environmentalists -- actually, they hate environmental
regulations and they blame us for the regulations that we didn’t write."
Currently Cherney is working on two film projects related to the events
of Redwood Summer, in particular the still-unsolved car bombing of
himself and Bari in Oakland in May 1990. The FBI and Oakland police
accused Bari and Cherney of carrying the bomb to the Bay Area for an
"act of terrorism."
Bari and Cherney sued the FBI, a lawsuit that was eventually settled in
their favor, unfortunately after Bari’s death from cancer in 1997.
Cherney now wants to re-open the case to prevent the FBI from destroying
the last bits of evidence, which may contain DNA samples that could lead
to the identity of the bomber.
Cherney’s first film, a feature-length documentary called "Who Bombed
Judi Bari?" is now complete except for some adjustments to the
soundtrack. He will be taking it to the Occupy Wall Street movement in
New York next month for a showing at the Brecht Forum, a
left-libertarian collective.
After that, he will show the film wherever he can. "If I can’t get a
screen and a permit [for a full-scale showing to Occupy Wall Street],
I’ll show it on a laptop to groups of 20," he said.
The film includes Judi Bari’s deposition for the suit against the FBI,
which she gave from her deathbed. Other portions of the movie come from
over 700 hours of videos taken by people Cherney calls "eco-paparazzi"
and photos gleaned from thousands of magazine and newspaper articles.
The search for the bomber is interwoven with the story of the creation
of Headwaters Reserve and other environmental campaigns.
Among the film’s North Coast videographers are SoHum’s own Andy Caffrey,
Kay Rudin of Westport, and Howard Russell of Freshwater.
Among the producers are many people well known in the film world, people
who have "one foot in filmmaking and one in activism," as Cherney
describes them, including executive producer Elyse Katz, director and
editor Mary Liz Thomson, and co-producers Sheila Laffey and Bill and
Laurie Bennenson.
When he gets back from New York, Cherney expects to show the film
locally in Garberville and the Minor Theater in Arcata.
At the same time Cherney has been working on a dramatic feature intended
to reach a wider, more commercial audience, a movie with a script and
actors in the parts of himself, Bari, and other activists and real-life
persons involved in the story. More emphasis will be placed on the love
story of himself and Bari, he said.
Two drafts of the script have been written, one by SoHummers Al "Owl"
Ceraulo and Sherry Glaser, and one by Jessica Sharzer, a director and
writer best known for the independent film "Speak," the story of a young
girl who becomes mute after a trauma.
Several well-known directors have expressed interest in the film,
including Michael Apted, Linda Obst, and Bob Chartoff.
The purpose of both films is to educate people about successful
strategies for protecting the environment, to inspire them to take
action, to introduce a new generation to Judi Bari, and perhaps to renew
interest in solving the bombing.
After the films are produced, Cherney’s next project will be to write a
book about the Headwaters Forest campaign. The proposed title, "Doesn’t
Anyone Here Have a Real Name?" refers to the "forest names" of the Earth
First!ers. Forest names will be used for all the chapter titles.
EPIC draws a "strong line" between itself and Earth First!, Cherney
noted, but they’re still "simpatico and very accepting," he said. He
noted a long list of activists who have been involved with EPIC, either
before or after being part of Earth First!
"When I got the call from Gary [EPIC executive director Gary
Graham-Hughes]... I was absolutely sure he was going to ask me for
advice on who should get the Sempervirens Award. When he told me it was
me, and asked me if I would accept, I cried. There’s nothing more
important than to be recognized by your local community, your neighbors.
"But I just want to make sure everybody knows that despite this being a
lifetime achievement award, I have at least one more lifetime that I’m
going to be putting on for the protection of Mother Earth."
EPIC will celebrate Darryl Cherney’s achievements and another year of
working to protect the ancient forests of the North Coast at the Mateel
Community Center this Friday, Nov. 4.
The evening will start at 6 p.m. with EPIC’s annual membership meeting.
A Mediterranean-themed dinner by Tryphena Lewis will be served at 7
p.m., followed by a rousing blend of Romanian, Balkan, Turkish,
Flamenco, Gypsy Jazz, and Tango music from the Fishtank Ensemble.
Tickets for the entire evening are $40, music and dancing only for $20.
Advance tickets are available at Redway Liquor and the Blue Moon gift
shop in Garberville. For more information call EPIC at 822-7711.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra
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