(First email to prospective FOJB list members)

From: INFO at FOJB.ORG

January 5, 2005

Subject: (FOJB) New Judi Bari support group and list

Introducing Friends of Judi Bari (FOJB)

Dear Friends of Judi Bari,

You are receiving this because we are pretty sure you are a friend of Judi Bari. We are a group of Judi's friends who have formed a new support group to defend Judi and her legacy from attacks, and there is a vicious new attack on Judi being launched this week. (More about that below.) If you are a true friend of Judi Bari, then you are automatically a member. (Sham friends need not apply.) We're an informal unincorporated association of volunteers with no officers, no dues or bank accounts, and no formal structure. We hope to keep it that way.

We do have a new website at www.fojb.org  Please visit and bookmark it. (Be careful -- the .com version is a right wing political candidate's site.) Our site has just two pages so far, but it will keep growing it as we compile more information.

And we are starting an email list -- this is the first message to our preliminary address list. If you are not interested in Judi or our issues and want to be removed from this list and/or from informal membership in FOJB, please reply with REMOVE in the subject line. This is a private, human-operated list, no robots are involved. All emails to the list will be sent by anonymous Bcc so that no one will see your name or email address, and it will not be made public or sold to spammers. If you know others who would like to join the group and email list, please ask them to send an email to info(at)fojb.org with the words JOIN or SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. If email to your address bounce back as undeliverable we will eventually remove your address from this list. Email us if you would rather have our emails sent to a different address.

Why are we forming Friends of Judi Bari at this time? Primarily it's to organize against a new right-wing funded smear book about Judi, which  is being released this month by Encounter Books. The title is "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, The Fight For The Redwoods, and The Death Of Earth First!,"  and it's written by Kate Coleman. While pretending to be an objective biography of Judi, it's an out-and-out hatchet job written by a freelance character assassin who has worked for years as a paid contributor to neocon warrior David Horowitz's online propaganda outlet, Front Page Magazine www.frontpagemagazine.com   Coleman has written several articles for Horowitz attacking the Black Panther Party and its key leaders. This is her first book, and Horowitz facilitated her contract with Encounter Books on the basis of an article Coleman wrote attacking Judi and her supporters for Bruce Anderson's Anderson Valley Advertiser (AVA) in December 1999.

Coleman's "Secret Wars of Judi Bari" is filled with lies, factual errors, omissions, and distortions from the title to the last sentence. It's so full of factual errors that a group of us have compiled a catalog of 327 of them so far, and we're still adding to the list. You can see the Master Lie List online at www.colemanhoax.info  There is also an Instant Proof section where we provide documents and photos that instantly prove the falsity of some of Coleman's key allegations.

Coleman is beginning a promotional tour to speak and sign books at book stores and libraries. The first one that we know of will be this coming Saturday, Jan. 8, 2005 at 10:30 AM at the Fort Bragg public library on Laurel St.  Since this will be part of the annual meeting of Friends of the Fort Bragg Library, which has over 500 members, her presentation may be very well attended, with most of those present not realizing what they're in for, or what Coleman's (and her sponsors' ) agenda is.  We will be there with handouts that will give attendees a heads-up, and provide them with the address of our website www.fojb.org as well as www.colemanhoax.info , www.judibari.org where they can get more info about Judi and refutation of this well-funded attack on her, as well as on the radical environmental movement and the left in general.

Coleman will be speaking and signing books at Gallery Bookshop on Main St. in Mendocino town on Sunday, January 23, 2005 at 3 pm. She is also rumored to have events coming up at Bay Area book stores. We will keep you posted via this list.

Please stay tuned, and lend a hand if you can. Please visit our www.fojb.org website and bookmark it. We'll be adding bulletins, press releases, schedules and links to more information.  Please email us if you see or hear any publicity about Coleman or her smear book. Please email us the names and email addresses or phone numbers of any book reviewers or book store buyers you can dig up for your area.

We are currently sending out our first FOJB news release to reviewers and bookstores, and will also send it to this same FOJB list that you're reading. The release includes specific information about the book, the author, the publisher, and the right-wing foundation that paid for it. The release will also be available on www.fojb.org  And don't forget www.colemanhoax.info for the mother lode of well-researched info about Coleman and the page-by-page catalog of lies and mistakes in the book.

Viva Judi Bari!
Nicholas Wilson FOJB coordinator
info (AT) fojb.org