That was her sheroism. She challenged all kinds of macho forces on their own ground. When Louisiana-Pacific Security shoved her to the ground and conned the cops into arresting her falsely, she replied a few days later by leading a circle of women through their gate at Albion, surrounded the security officer while chanting the many names of the Great Goddess. “My God, they’ve cast a spell on me!” he cried, eyes rolling back into his head. When in the process of discovery she obtained Oakland Police Department photos of her bombing, she looked at them over and over until she could harden herself to reliving the trauma, and actively conduct her case against the FBI for harassment, slander, and other equally slimy machinations conducted by their COINTELPRO program.
Judi inspired many of us to embrace Earth First! principles, because she lived and worked by those principles and the principles of nonviolent direct action. She inspired us to learn the principles of forest management from all sides. She saw clearly and led us to see that the trust of honest men, who believed the forest would still be there for their children the way it had been for them, had been betrayed and broken by the giant corporations. She inspired us to work to save the trees of our backyards, stretching through northern California to the Oregon border and beyond: the Cascades, the Siskiyous, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, Clayoquot Sound, clearcut after clearcut all the way to the Brooks Range.
Six years—the last years of her life—of relentless organizing true to her shero’s mission, cleaning up the corporate Augean Stables as if the corporate steeds were eating and eliminating the world. She never gave up, and she never lost her laugh. Great, deep, holding all the world laughter, even through the pain of her last months. She was cut off too soon—way too soon. What the bombing didn’t do, breast cancer—the women’s neutron bomb—did. Judi made the sheroic decision to die with dignity, surrounded by her children, her family, and her friends. In the months left to her after the 1996 Headwaters Rally, the greatest mass civil disobedience in the history of the U.S. forest movement (1,033 arrests that day; over 200 actions in the months following) she organized, explained, and delegated the mountains of material she had amassed: from the stuff for making banners (her last hangs on the Skunk Train Line proclaiming L-P OUT! and it’s coming true) to extensive files on her case against the FBI.
In that time, she also had the opportunity to see how much the hometown folks loved her. There was a benefit tribute a month before she died. Judi was there and took the time to express her joy and thanks by singing, “I am a warrior of the earth; I came alive in the Ancient Redwoods,” clutching all the while a bottle of Headwaters water, and, lastly, toking a bit of medical marijuana and blowing it into the Willits High School Auditorium air. “I’ve liberated Willits High!” she cried, and as we cheered and cried and howled to see that ephemeral smoke ascend the shaft of the spotlight, we knew we would never be the same for knowing her, having seen the Spirit pass among us once more with her great belly laugh. Viva Judi! Presente Siempre.
“The woman brave enough to sit in the crotch of a tree had hers blown up today.”
— Robin Rule, on the bombing of Judi Bari
Awesome Athletes: Leveling the Playing Field
Greek mythology tells us of the first female Olympian, Atalanta of Boetia. Born to Schoeneus, she cared not for weaving, the kitchen, or for wasting her precious time with any man who couldn’t hold his own against her athletic prowess. Her father, proud of his fleet-footed Boetian babe, disregarded the norms of ancient Greek society and didn’t insist on marrying his daughter off for political or financial gain, and supported her decision to marry the man who could out-run her. Her suitors were, however, given a head start, and Atalanta “armed with weapons pursues her naked suitor. If she catches him, he dies.” She was outfoxed by Hippomenes who scattered golden apples as he ran, slowing down the amazonian runner as she stopped to pick them up. Well matched in every way, they were happy together, even going so far as to desecrate a shrine to Aphrodite by making love on the altar! For this, the Goddess turned Atalanta into a lioness, where she ruled yet again with her wild and regal spirit.
In real life, women athletes have been crushing barriers and high jumping their way to fame since the nineteenth century. In 1972, they got a bit of help from the federal government in the form of Title IX. Although President Richard Nixon signed the law stating, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” it is still hotly debated as to whether this legislation is enough to give women parity. Since the passage of Title IX, statistics have shown a seven percent increase in the ratio of women athletes in high school. Although this is a definite improvement, there’s still a long way to go to reach the 50 percent mark.
Even without full equality in funding, sports is an arena where women can compete with men openly again now, thanks to such sheroic trailblazers as tennis star Billie Jean King, who went up against Bobby Riggs in the heavily hyped match of 1973. Riggs, with preening braggadocio and banty-rooster crowing, declared that he would exhaust King because men were “stronger” and “better tennis players.” Telecast from Houston’s Astrodome, the world watched while Billie Jean King beat the shorts off the chauvinist Riggs and leveled the playing fields (and courts!) for every woman and girl on that herstoric day. Like King and today’s stars, Venus and Serena Williams, the sheroes portrayed here have bucked the odds with passion, pure guts, and sheer ability to make it to the top of their games.
Suzanne Lenglen – She Ruled the Court
Before Venus and Serena or even Chris Evert, there was Suzanne Lenglen, a flamboyant, brandy-loving Parisian trendsetter named “La Divine” by the French press, who in her brief life transformed women’s tennis. Suzanne was born in Paris in 1899; as a child, she was frail and suffered from many health problems including chronic asthma. Her father decided it would benefit her health if she built her strength up by competing in tennis. Her first try at the game was in 1910, on the family’s tennis court on their property. The eleven-year-old liked the game, and her father continued to train her, with training methods including an exercise where it is said he would lay a handkerchief in different parts of the court and have Suzanne hit the ball towards it. Only four years later, at age 14, Lenglen made it to the final of the 1914 French Championships; she lost to reigning champion Marguerite Broquedis, but later that spring won the World Hard Court Championships at Saint-Cloud on her 15th birthday, making her the youngest person in tennis history to this day to win a major championship.
At the end of 1914, most major tennis competitions in Europe were abruptly halted by the onset of World War I. Lenglen’s promising career was on hold for the next five years. The French championships were not held again until 1920, but Wimbledon resumed in 1919. Lenglen made her debut there, taking on seven-time champion Dorothea Douglass Chambers in the final. The historic match was played before 8,000 onlookers, including King George V and Queen-Consort Mary of Teck. Lenglen won the match; however, it was not only her playing that drew notice. The media squawked about her dress, which revealed her forearms and ended above the calf; at the time, others competed in body-covering ensembles. The staid British were also shocked by a French woman daring to casually sip brandy between sets.
Lenglen dominated women’s tennis singles at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Belgium. On her way to winning a gold medal, she lost only four games, three of them in the final against Dorothy Holman of England. She won another gold medal in the mixed doubles before being eliminated in a women’s doubles semifinal, and a bronze after their opponents withdrew. From 1919 to 1925, Lenglen won the Wimbledon singles championship in every year except 1924, when health problems due to jaundice forced her to withdraw after winning the quarterfinal.