Preserving the legacy of Bay Area Action’s environmental work from 1990–2000 and beyond.
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Even before the BAA History Project launched officially in late 2024, material from the BAA Archives had been used by several publications, filmmakers, and even the US government.
As this new Archives website gets built out and content is added, we expect this impact to increase exponentially over time, because:
Known uses as of January 2025:
In 2010, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s Arcata, CA, office was searching for pictures of Headwaters Forest protests online and found Mark Bult’s Flickr photostream, where he’d posted a few from his large archive. Park Ranger Julie Clark asked if BLM could use them for interpretive signage planned for a new education center being constructed at the Headwaters Forest Reserve. Permission was granted, and the signage was produced. In 2011 Mark and his family visited the education center to view the result.
In 2019, BLM produced a video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the forest’s public acquisition, and again used some of the BAA Archives’ photos in the excellent 5-minute video (photos at 4:53).
These uses by BLM are an example of the importance of “findability” — the ease with which people can locate desired information on websites or through search engines. It’s crucial to note that information not present on the internet is inherently unfindable through digital means, highlighting the importance of making information available and accessible. To wit: If Mark hadn’t put the photos online (making them findable), the BLM may have not located any other protest photos to use in the displays. Instead, tens of thousands of visitors to the reserve now see educational displays showing that it’s very often protests and citizen action that causes parklands to be preserved for future generations.
In 2023, director Lisa Landers contacted Mark to use photos of Headwaters Forest protests in her documentary, “Giants Rising.” Like the BLM, she also found them on Flickr. The feature-length film, released in 2024, explores the awe-inspiring world of redwood trees, delving into their biological wonders, cultural significance, conservation efforts, and the profound connections between the ancient giants and human well-being. The filmmakers sought permission to use several protest photos in the film, and it was granted.
In 2019, New York magazine’s “The Cut” published an article, “Rick Springer Was an Activist in the World, a Terrorist at Home,“ by Rose Andersen, one of Rick’s stepdaughters. It recounts Rick’s strict and sometimes abusive parenting and his alcohol abuse, and has caused many in the peace and environmental movements to reflect on our ignorance and perhaps retrospective responsibility. New York editors asked permission to use a photo of Rick from the BAA Archives, and permission was granted.
In 2022 UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science used a photo from the BAA Archives to illustrate an online textbook in the Global Systems Science’s series, an interdisciplinary, integrated course for high school students and focusing on “societal challenges that science can help us understand.”
In 2015 the public radio show “Living On Earth” used a photo from the BAA Archives to illustrate an online transcript of the August 21 program, in a segment titled “Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West”.
In 2011 the Rose Foundation used photos from the BAA Archives in a video titled “Saving Headwaters Forest.”
A photo from The Hundredth Monkey was used in a PDF poster about the Nevada Test Site on www.nuclear-risks.org, part of an exhibition by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians in Social Responsibility.
When Rick Springer died in 2010, the North Coast Journal used a photo of Rick from the BAA Archives in the article.
Several email action alerts and news updates sent by BAA’s Headwaters Forest Project were cited in the book Earth for Sale: Reclaiming Ecology in the Age of Corporate Greenwash, by Brian Tokar (published in 1997). While the online versions of those action alerts (circa 1996) are no longer available, we hope to make them available again through the BAA Archives.
When assessing the Bay Area’s environmental movement in 2000, the researchers of the book Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action (Doug McAdam and Mario Diani, Editors; Oxford University Press, 2003) cited BAA’s EcoCalendar as one of three sources used: “A survey of the Bay Area environmental movement was conducted during the spring of 2000... The preliminary list of environmental groups was composed from three sources available on the internet: the Bay Area Progressive Network, Bay Area Action’s EcoCalender directory of Bay Area environmental groups, and Yahoo’s listing of environmental groups for each of the nine counties.”
Last but not least, the Smithsonian Institution somehow has a BAA Rad Sheep button in the collection of the National Museum of American History.
At least a hundred other sources on the internet — beyond those above — cite or used BAA’s work. And that all happened before the BAA History Project started putting the rest archives online — when less than 1% of the BAA Archives were online. Imagine what could come of releasing the other 99%.
Citations dwindle as websites go dark, information gets removed, and articles get locked away behind publications’ paywalls in the name of “monetization.” But this type of information should be free.
Please donate today to help us put more content online, permanently, for free public use.
