Court asked to stop Rainbow Family trials-Rocky MT News

cross posted as follow-up of this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2700356
Bush declares state of emergency - BIG SECRET - Orders Federal Incident

-edited to add that I just checked google news for this story and found that it was just posted 4 hours ago on google (I originally found it by reading the reader forum at stemboat pilot)
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/forum/msg/75021916

I don't know what time this was posted at their site (Rocky Mt news), so don't know if it qualifies for LBN

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4808578,00.html

Court asked to stop Rainbow Family trials

By Deborah Frazier and Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News
June 28, 2006

Rainbow Family members on trial for camping without a permit and other charges should be tried in a larger public courtroom – not a small, rural firehouse near Steamboat Springs, attorney David Lane said today.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Lane said the public and some of the attorneys for more than 200 Rainbow Family members facing trial were denied access.

He said the firehouse’s limited space effectively turned the trials into "secret proceedings," and he has asked for a temporary restraining order to stop the proceedings.


...snip...

"The Rainbow Family chose a remote location for their gathering, and the government wanted to provide a court facility that would not be inconvenient for them," said Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney.

..more at link

courtroom. That's what they get for having the poor taste to choose a little town at the top of the water stack.

On Edit: here's the correct link: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4809086,00.html

Also, the forests are tinder dry this year. We're looking at a really bad fire season, and we've already had several. Our National Guard units are in Iraq, along with most of our forest-fire fighting equipment, and even if we could get it back here tomorrow (not possible) it won't be refurbed and ready to use until August. I'll be damned if my tax dollars are going to pay to put out a fire started by idiots when they've been told they can't do something. We have enough problems with lightning fires -- we don't need to be worrying about crystal-licking sage burners.

As it happens, I (for once) agree with the county going after them. Rainbowers may yammer on and on about loving the earth and being in tune with it, but they can destroy a section of delicate land faster than a bulldozer with a nitro tank. They consistently fail to understand that arid, high altitude areas are not suited for mass gatherings of people. A site that they occupy can take decades to rebound from the effects of hundreds of feet and tons of waste. (Considering that there are areas not far from Steamboat where wagon ruts dating back to the gold rushes of the 19th century are still visible, it's not a newly discovered problem.)

As a teenager, I lived within a couple of miles of a site that the Rainbowers took over in north eastern Arizona. They polluted a spring that feeds the fields of a local produce farmer, tore down his livestock fences for firewood and cut down trees on his land. (He had allowed them to camp on his forest property with the agreement that they would Do No Harm, which they patently did not follow.) They told him that about 150 people would be coming, when in actuality, they knew and were planning for at least 3000, and up to 7000. They also wore paths in the pasture just walking around and killed several large patches of meadow by erecting and leaving tents for up to three weeks.That guy is still remediating the site, nearly 20 years later. E. Coli levels in the water have never dropped, and invasive weeds took over the patches of meadow. The paths ended up so compacted that it has taken a lot of digging and compost to remediate. And because they're utterly not organized, there's no one to sue for rightful damages.

Especially for those of us who live at the top of the water column, where 100 gallons of flow may mean the difference between having water and not having water, when the Rainbowers come in and start tapping dedicated springs and streams, lots of people suffer.

There are hundreds of national and state parks that can handle gatherings like these, but remote, privately owned land is not one of them. I'm sorry if they don't feel that's appropriate for their needs, but there are 6 billion of us and 300 million Americans and we have to be considerate of the natural resources that belong to all of us. It's selfish to destroy a piece of land in the vain pursuit of a "natural experience."

The Rainbow Gathering got on my bad side when I heard that they routinely will "Clean up" historical archaeological sites, in the process destroying what makes them valuable. By picking up all the artifacts and throwing them away, they effectively remove all the information from the site. It's like tearing all the pages out of a book but leaving the cover.

I have no respect for them.

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2002:



To the despair of the U.S. Forest Service, the Rainbows always gather during the week of July 4th, and they always gather in a national forest. The more pristine the location, the better. This year's site is one the Forest Service explicitly asked them— begged them, actually—to stay away from. It surrounds a 19th-century ghost town that contains delicate archaeological specimens, including dishware and the foundations of homes built beginning in the 1800s. The area also has a fragile water table near the ground's surface.

According to Becky Banker, a Forest Service information officer, by the beginning of the week, the Rainbows have already damaged some artifacts and polluted the water with their waste. "You can't put thousands of people in one area without there being long-term damage," Banker says. "You do the math. That's a lot of shit."


http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2002/scene_twohey_sepoct2002.msp

And from 1999. Forest Service having to beg some halfwit to move his fucking portable shower off of another site:

One site was shovel probed to confirm it's existence. Fragments of nails, whiteware were present. Buffer zones were established at the site to keep people from camping or setting up kitchens. One man set up a public shower on the site. I repeatedly asked him to move, as did the Rainbow Council,

http://prop1.org/rainbow/adminrec/99fsreport/000411.report.htm

on public lands, in national forests, is another.

I support better site selection, reducing impact, and more careful cleanup.

I also support our right to gather in the national forests.

Yes, I am a Rainbow, and I'd have been there this year, had I been able to go.


Welcome Home!



What is the Rainbow Family ?

Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization. To be honest, the Rainbow Family means different things to different people. I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world. Many of our traditions are based on Native American traditions, and we have a strong orientation to take care of the the Earth. We gather in the National Forests yearly to pray for peace on this planet. For another viewpoint, Try Carla's much better explanation.

http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow.html

can handle 20,000 people and can recover from it. And you have every right to assemble in a place where you will not be putting others at risk by your actions. (I.e. assembling on the 405 Freeway at rush hour is a good way to die and take people with you, therefore illegal for a good reason. While I have no problems with natural selection taking out the feeblest of the herd, I do have a problem with the feeble forcing me to be taken out because of their lack of foresight.)

But there are very few sites anywhere that can handle that many people and recover from it. The footsteps of that many people averaging 150 pounds and travelling 3 km a day over the same area is enough to pack soft dirt into bricks. That's billions of tons of force. Places with low rainfall, uncertain water supplies and thin soil cannot and do not recover.

Having been to Burning Man now a couple of times and having seen the site before, during and after, my feeling is this: Either pick a site where people can do no damage and then clean it up perfectly afterwards, or pick a site that can recover (i.e. the Mississippi River Basin, Eastern Plains, or a few others) and clean it up perfectly afterwards. When ya'll damage a piece of federal or private land beyond repair, it's not you that have to live with it -- it's my nephew and niece and the people who live in the area. Ya'll go home. We don't, and our children have no choice in the matter; we ruin something and it's future generations who never get to experience it. Ya'll come into our homes, so we ask you to wipe your feet and not piss on the rug. When you rip up our rugs and smear shit on the walls, you cease to be welcome guests and turn into inconsiderate pests. (And this can apply to other groups, as well; though both Pennsic and Estrella War (that was) do an amazing job of keeping a few tens of thousands from damaging delicate ecosystems....)

I just noticed this post, having read several of your other posts in this thread. You're right about the whole attitude of the Rainbow Gathering vs. Burning Man. At this point the BLM love Burning Man about as much as any federal agency can love 30,000 naked, drug-abusing freaks, and it's all down to the attitude of the organisation and the participants. Burners take care of their shit, both literally and figuratively. They financially contribute to the community in Gerlach because they understand that community should not be insular. BLM uses their cleanup plans as the standard by which others are judged. I love how Rainbowers bitch and whine about not getting permits from the government, as if the Forest Service has some sort of vendetta against hippies. How do you give a permit to a non-organisation that consistently ignores your requests and cannot be held responsible for its actions? It isn't impossible for something like Rainbow to get a permit. You just have to not be complete fucking morons in every conceivable way.

It absolutely doesn't surprise me that they're now moaning about secret trials and matial law and a police state. They believe that their shit don't stink. They think it's sufficient to simply spew a bunch of sanctimonious new-age garbage about loving the earth. They have repeatedly proven that they are both unwilling and unable to make any sort of compromises whatsoever.

I know I'm painting with a broad brush here. I know lots of Rainbow people who don't fit this stereotype. And I know burners who can't deal with their shit. But I also know that any time the infernal Rainbow Gathering is happening within a thousand miles of Gerlach, BRC is innundated with people who can't be bothered to clean up after themselves or take responsibility for their actions in any way at all.

End rant.

Will we be seeing you on the playa this year? Just submitted my theme camp plans today (20 hours before the deadline. :) )

This is not a good year for me to be spending 6 days in the sun, so I went to the regional this year. My eyes are giving me all sorts of crap (I'm going blind) and work's interfering.

But I'm making a hot pink, flowered fuzzy bunny suit for my 6'2" tall, pierced and tatted friend, so look for the guy in combat boots and a bunny suit with the Uzi water gun. The suit will be my work.

Don't worry. If I see him (her?) I'll say hello!

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or a jewish convention or a carpenters convention or a peoples of colour convention it might be different-fuck that --they have the right to gather just like any other group

water up there, and Colorado doesn't have the manpower or equipment to deal with either a major fire or an influx of 20,000 people right now.

There's no waste treatment up there but since that's the top of the watershed, anyone below will have to deal with the thousands of diseases that human waste carries, and it takes nearly a decade for waste to decompose up there (It desiccates rather than composts.) That's ten years of people having to be careful of hep, typhus, typhoid, giardia, e coli and dog knows what else. That's an extra strain on every water treatment facility from here to Yuma, AZ.

Our fire fighting equipment is in Iraq, along with our National Guard firefighting corps. We get a bad fire here, we're screwed. The states with whom we have reciprocal fire fighting agreements are either over-allocated themselves or already fighting fires. There's no one to bring in. All it will take is a single stray spark or a ditched coal and then we're trying to rescue 20,000 non-taxpayers on a strapped budget. Do ya'll have an extra $200,000,000 to spare as an insurance policy? Because it costs about $10K to rescue a person from a forest fire.

20,000 people is a large town. It's not a gathering; it's an invasion. We don't have the infrastructure to support such a group. I'm sorry you don't like it, but this is our home. We live here all the time. They go home and don't pay for the mess they make. TANSTAFFL.

And perhaps the Feds bust the group because they consistently refuse to comply with reasonable and coherent instructions (like no fires in a tinderbox and don't steal water)?

you're being asked to mind your own damn business.

I'm quite sure the rainbows are aware of the dryness and would cope fine

They aren't supposed to be there. Period. They don't get special hippie dispensation.

Or more accurately, 20,000 people's auto exhaust, shit, trash, water usage, fires, and food needs.

You mind your fucking business by staying out of my home. I go into your house, I don't fuck up the walls. You do the same when you come into our space. You do so, we get along. You fuck it up, we come down on your asses like a ton of bricks. We live here. We have to deal with the messes they create long after they go the fuck away.

Cooperate with us and we're easy to get along with. But Rainbowers don't fucking cooperate. They want it their way and when they're told that their way is bad medicine, they scream persecution. It's not persecution -- it's fucking respect. Period.

But you don't get that. They're not aware of the arid climate and they sure as hell aren't aware of the water issues they're causing. They don't have a right to the water, the land or the forests, and they sure as hell don't have a right to burn them down.

I don't think you want to hear what a person who lives in the community feels. Ya'll just want it your way, and fuck the rest of us. No way. Sorry. If we have to jail all 20,000 of them because they start a forest fire that wrecks archeological, historical, environmental and other sensitive sites, then so be it. If the good apples aren't asserting control over the fuck it and fuck off crowd, then the good apples need to take responsibility for their failure to act.

Sorry you don't like it, but it's my home. I am not minding my own business when threatening shit is going on in my backyard.

"I am not minding my own business when threatening shit is going on in my backyard."

when ya going after bush?

such a place should be part of every park, a "park" within the nature preserve.

I would prefer that the Forest Service/ National Parks NOT allow huge groups to assemble on public land for the very reasons that you state. It becomes an environmental disaster. If they are allowed to do this, this group needs to pay a bond to provide for the cleanup and restoration of the land. And given that the conditions are tinder-dry right now, they should pay for any fire that they cause.

That's blindingly overreaching. It's not just their forest.

From the Steamboat Pilot (different stories):
---
"On Thursday, a small, human-caused fire within the Rainbow Family gathering area was extinguished by a Forest Service employee after campers were unable to put it out, Ritschard said."
---
"Also Tuesday, an incomplete special-use permit application was submitted to the Forest Service, Ritschard said. She said the application contained profanity where the applicant was supposed to write the location of the gathering."
---

It's a high-altitude, arid National Forest, and you can't just waltz in with 20,000 people, no permit, and no facilities and expect NOT to get kicked off, by force if necessary. The right to assemble does not trump the rights of people near them to be free from the danger posed by their presence. What happens if they do start a forest fire and end up self-immolated in some kind of awful hippie armageddon? Will you then complain that the Forest Service wasn't able to extinguish the fire? There's a reason they've not been granted a permit. A very good reason.

would make a great name for a band. someone had to say it.

Shades of Charles Manson, you know.

I live in the mountains to have peace of mind and get away from the rat race down below when ever I can. I think that is something like the Rainbow Family might identify with. Any Rainbow people out there?

Went OK. The location they originally picked the Forest Service objected to. There was some wrangling back and forth and finally they chose another location, actually a site of an old WW2 prison camp near Cranberry Wilderness.

Once they got that location going seemed to do ok mostly. There was some shoplifting from local stores, I think 1 person got stabbed, somebody stole a car, a few people got written up for drugs, or parking in the wrong place in the National Forest, but my friends who went said overall it was ok.

One of the things I kind of think reflects negatively on the gatherings is the large number of panhandlers that comes with the event. I mean like people bumming money 10 or 15 miles from where the gathering is even. One of the panhandlers called my mom a cheap bitch cause she only gave him a dollar. ;-)

In any group of 20,000 people there are going to be a few thieves, morons, and losers. Most of the rainbow people I know aren't any of those things. My problem with them has always been the attitude of the organisers. The fundamental problem with the Rainbow Gathering as I see it is that they believe the rules don't apply to them. Why should the Rainbow Gathering receive special treatment? Why shouldn't any similar group of well-intentioned (or maybe not so well-intentioned) people be able to do whatever they please in the national forests? If everyone did the same thing as the Rainbow Gathering, our national forest system would be a mess. Upthread, I said that I didn't think they should receive "special hippie dispensation" to ignore the rules, and I stand by that. I think they would set a far better example by playing by the rules of the national forests and selecting sites that are not ecologically or culturally sensitive. There have been at least two cases in the last five years where their beaviour has been utterly indefensible in terms of their treatment of the national forests. I feel that it's one of those "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" situations. I understand that they truly believe they're doing a good thing. But the simple facts are against them. Despite their good intentions, they are doing bad things. And at a very basic level, they don't seem to care. It's the difference between truthiness and truth.