Am finally “getting to” putting this up where it should have been about 6 months ago! At that time I was having trouble even logging in to this blog, and so a friend was kind enough to post it on their blog for me in the meanwhile! ( link to unsettling subtle settler unsettlers blog )
The apparent reality of humanity’s grimish predicament was brought home to me, recently, when I attended, via deep spiritual challenge trajectory, this year’s national Rainbow Gathering in a mountain range near the settler town of John Day, Orygone.
To begin with, I heard lots of peace-oriented folks complain about ‘the problem’ of “the agros” (a.k.a. “dirty kids”, etcetera), and how THEY didn’t seem to have a clue about how to “stop” the problem of people unsettling their liberal asses in ways that did seem “a little” overboard, even by this streetwise unhoused person. Secondly, the numbers of attendees seemed way way down for a project as long-running as the Rainbow Gathering, as back only ten years ago they used to have at least 20,000 attendees for the full week, while today, it seems that most come only for the 3rd-5th (of July) or thereabouts. While someone at info thought there were only 5,000 attendees this year.
So what is going down, do you think?
A lot of people pointed to “the dirty kids”, a.k.a. Gutter Punks, and their ilk (heh) as being the reason for the apparent mass exodus away from Rainbow Gatherings. Perhaps those who own the political police know better, and we’ll find out in a future FOIA file. Perhaps these owners of the political police decided that someone had to “up the ante” against a pretty strong community of people that has been able to survive all sorts of bullshit from the feds and local cops for the last 40-some years??
After all, the Rollback dictum (since around 1975) pushes all political police to not allow meaningful community to even germinate, much less bloom, seeking to block such challenge to the status quo before it can even gather momentum. (source: see the intro to Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky, where he spells this out.)
Perhaps certain privileges have been allowed since most of the attendees have been kept (?) to remain mostly white folks (i.e. not to just come in and arrest everyone, as I thought might happen in the context of a trump whitehouse, especially). What with the latest evolution of successful respectful practices between Rainbows and a Burns, OR area Indigenous nation, this would likely be “too much”, and the political police HAD to “raise the stakes” even more than usual? Except this time, more covertly??
So on the one hand, yes, it does seem like the political police, the new COINTELpro, the truly fooled and tooled, have “gained” a foothold and are finally “effectively” fucking with the peace-seeking visionaries of the Rainbow project.
On the other hand, I do not know for sure what is REALLY happening! (HEY!) So the following is merely my feelings, my intuition, my praxis, and the reality that I’ve been “around the block” a few times (including being a “vet” of a few national and regional gatherings and Rainbow community since 1991, off and on). So I compare the patterns of political-police-seeming activities deployed my way before attending the gathering with my experiences (and others’) during the gathering.
Meeting my fellow strategically-challenged head-on
I might have been smarter to have met these folks intellectually (“head-on”), but my intuitive spiritual path led me firmly in the direction of observation ..and listening (but not responding –While at the same time, responding when i felt it crucial, such as when i have mobilized to take on an especially difficult situations that could turn into what a political cop may seek). ….A kind of passivity and yet not! After all, those who know, know that just my mere presence has a way of sending shock waves to those who tried so hard to intimidate me and others from even going at all! So I met their eyes, but I refused to play into their “playful” and not-so-playful provocations. Going with OTHER ways to approach, instead!
Making sense to you?
Were ALL the detractors and “agros” politicized police/feds/ corporate agents?
Or were they a mix of formal (with a job to do) and informal (uncomprehending) agents –say sex offenders sufficiently maligned so that they would take what jobs they could get–regardless of the bigger picture consequences??
Or…perhaps even more insightfully, a mix of the usual covert actors working to “drive a wedge” between and exploit all differences, with a mix of folks with very real symptoms emanating from very real insanities due to experiences in the institutions of Alienation, Inc.?
Granted, I had entered into this year’s Rainbow community with intrigue surrounding me. Right from the start, when I first made contact with Orygone folks, I let it be known that I am a “constroversial” figure, but I didn’t explain further. One Rainbow elder took me in previously for over a month without knowing much more than that I was homeless and seemed amiable enough. We got to know each other pretty good, but my carefully shared secret got the best of him in the end, I think, and he kicked me out on a misunderstanding, perhaps tired of my “beating around the bush” and not (yet) just saying “it”.
Well, I did tell him of the (“devoutly normal”) society as very much like a Nazi/fascist society, and in that context have to be very careful who I come OUT to…. So I ended up not coming OUT to him truly, but touching on the subject with someone else, instead.
And then I took that mystique with me, going so far as to approach Info/Rumor control camp at the gathering with the truth that I am a walking rumor….and then to please ask ME before assuming anything. I never fully explained, but I don’t think I had to (anyway, everyone seemed to learn of my notoriety soon enough –and such does follow me everywhere I go, I find). Notably, I remain within the law on the most pointed parts of this truth (that could get me put away for life), while choosing to try to speak “nonsilently” for sides of truth that are being rendered nonexistent/forgotten, in the ongoing pogrom to wipe people’s memory of the value of informal intergenerational solidarity.
So, yeah, I was already a target, and I knew it. And I also know that to have tried to speak about it at the Gathering was not only strategically foolish but would play into the hands of those who seek to finally crush the Rainbow Gathering spirit. So despite a few provocations, I remained mum. In other ways, such as around my visionary ideas, I spoke freely, yes, and that made all the rest of the bullshit quite worthwhile.
Psychological difficulties of agro-stuck folks?
Granted, as I touched on above, way-out-of-balance psychological difficulties also have curiously been allowed to run more and more rampant –most notably, i think, around dissident communities or in the down-towns of cities– apparently without meaningful response. A certainly exploited “crack” that the Left, for one, has been incapable of truly addressing, besides doing the work of capital/neocolonialism by going along with the social scientists among them!
For example, if one decides not to trust (or is a survivor of) bio psychiatry, who can they turn to? It seems like groups like Eugene, Orygn’s own www.mindfreedom.org (once publisher of the thriving “Dendron” zine) have been successfully maligned, into merely scholarly approaches these days…Oh, there’s the amazing CAHOOTS project (which apparently acts as an informalish 1st-responder group before the cops are called, for street-type issues, see: http://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/ ); and my understanding is that they do not force people into the biomedical psychiatric model…instead working to truly (?) help in other ways, which are more in line with being a human being with each other.
So what happens? You got more and more people dealing with their difficulties in living via self-taught ways of doing things, or within the confines of the neocolonial social sciences. ….Surrounded by more and more people who are being taught to ignore them at all costs, not seeing the folly of it all.
So, at the Rainbow Gathering, all of this coming “to a head”, where liberal-types (superficially-challenged peace-wagers) get a taste of the truth –that “the crazies” WILL NOT “go silently” –as the Middle Class meta rule pushes for. At Rainbow, at least, they have a chance to get up in the restrictive-protection-oriented liberals’ face!
Of course, to reiterate, the political police certainly seek to exploit this difficulty, and you know they must be deploying some of these victims of institutional realities, a.k.a. “the crazies”, in varying ways (even if that’s just rounding a bunch of angry inarticulates up from a large city and covertly bringing them to the gathering and setting them loose.
So to me this state of affairs has an invitation in it that we would not normally see when not at a gathering. The invitation is to really get to work/play on creatively intelligent ways we may respond, instead of being lazy in our thinking, and merely labeling THEM with continuances of the character assassination game.
One Rainbow participant thought that having the gathering last a month might be one approach; because it’s hard to create truly viable alternatives in only the span of a week. Sounds interesting to me!
Also, the late Indigenous champion, John Trudell, really put it in the heart with this: “In the reality of many realities, how we see what we see affects the quality of our reality.”
Think about how most alleged peace-wagers will react to all of this challenge.
More and more they will seek “closed doors” and higher and higher expenses (gate-keeper prices) in order to keep off-balance intensities OUT. This is “protection via restrictive” means. They will believe they are protecting themselves, but not see that that tactic only seems to work when force is held in reserve.
On the other hand, the Rainbow gift-way teaches me that its heart is more about “protection via mutualist strategies of enrichment” instead of restriction.
I think this approach makes much more sense, because of the possibilities that accrue in the context of more human, more authentic, non-adversarial/non-dichtomous responses.
Non-adversarial-style responses such as seeing “the crazies” as proverbial “Little Johns” blocking the way of “Robin Hood” as he attempts to cross the bridge in the classic european story. And if we engage in a little physicality (because, in the reality of how people have been made as dumbed-down as possible, some people just DO NOT trust anything except such!).
With such “Little John”-type approaches, we may well find a whole lot of sanity just underneath all the crazy cammo!
What do you think?
So i think that the challenge then becomes:
With whose ability do we respond? Social science-stuck values that come with our Rollback programming (post-1970s, pretty much ALL got that!), or a more anti-authoritarian set of values?
Sample challengers
A) When out of seemingly nowhere (or was his HQ “Tea Time” camp?) a short guy sporting a nationalist leather jacket (reading “ENGLAND” on the back) approaches me a little too close-up while I hang out around Eugene Camp (after everyone else has taken down the camp). He is able to get “too close” via the cammo of appearing to be oriented to “NAMASTE” (which I’m not especially conscious of, but which he seemed to think I might be), only to whisper threats, and then knock me with his fist right on my chest. I took it unwaveringly (i think to his possible surprise), and as he walked away, I yelled at him that such would not stop me from getting into the middle of fights in the future (which I have a semi-suicidal tendency to do, I find, over and over). Thus I responded in non-sequitor to his non-sequitor (or at least it seemed to me).
(Notably, he apparently did this type of action towards various people, as one person told me of something like that happening to him, and another said that the Tea Time camp guy was “mean”; the context, the Tea Time camp folks blasting various horns thru-out the night, every night, in an apparent intention to keep all the peace-niks and their families (?) as off-balance as possible, and possibly “see their true colors” more readily…?)
B) Meanwhile, on another side of camp, closer to Tipi Village, some “mean woman” (said one female observer) in the Montana Mud kitchen vicinity apparently worked overtime to yell obscenities and be all kinds of agro thru-out the night, much to the chagrin of peace-niks and their families over there.
And yet, on the morning of July 4, right up to noon, there was STILL an amazing quiet just like the Rainbow focalizers sought, and even the OM went off pretty well (tho I would like to help focalize at least one inner circle organized so to enhance the sound of the inner circle together with the outer circle!).
So, the gathering felt like a mystery and maybe a mystery more magick’L than the middle-class-values-planted in ME wants to egoicly admit!
Magick’Ly wradical’s wradical even, in the case of what one elder holding space at Tipi Village told me about “the madhouse” of the nextdoor neighbors’ heavy drinking and such loud carrying on.
Unsettling the peace-niks among them, for sure.
What can we possibly learn from all of this? Well, for one thing, I think more and more people are lacking solidarity experiences in their lives. And another thing, more and more people are being duped into not seeing “crazy behavior” (a.k.a. unreasonable) in its quite sane/reasonable context. “Symptoms” are not our enemies, they are our friends as the late great, R.D.Laing posited (promoting the idea to HELP FACILITATE nuts TO GO ON THEIR JOURNEYS OF DISCOVERY!).
To allow free expression of symptoms is a good thing, even tho it smashes up against the Liberal ideal of “a peaceful camping adventure”.
Perpetuating rigid dichotomies only perpetuates rigid dichotomies! No matter who is most “reasonably” labeled and reduced!
This brings up something I’ve been wanting to share for awhile:
Even when such symptoms are perpetuated by folks we assume are Only Oppressive (i.e. covert actors tooled by the State), how do we KNOW that such oppressors are not still oppressed (even as they oppress)—by their mindset and belief systems?! The mindset that gets forcefully passed ‘down’ to even them! And which they still uncritically Believe in, amongst all others, even as they foolishly work to undermine bigger picture THEIR OWN INTERESTS!!!
NOTE: We do NOT allow people to crush or trample others, and yet we ALLOW for symptom-exploring and consciousness-raising efforts and ancient solidarity villager recovery!
And this reminds me of the “Good Peasant, Bad Peasant” style –and beyond (source: https://visionaryhumanity.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/good-peasant-bad-peasant-some-ideas-for-interacting-with-tyranny/ )!
Up to our dared imagination, I think!
If this isn’t clear enough for you, that’s your problem. If you can get something out of this, that is my intent.
The bottom line for me in writing this up is to promote that anti-authoritarians realize the value of exploring the daunting challenges being visited on such a long-running anti-authoritarian visionary project like the Rainbow Gatherings (since 1972!).
To conclude, given the vibrancy of the Rainbow spirit, I cannot help but to wonder if all of this controversy isn’t in fact a “grand illusion” or “movie” (the latter used by Rainbow folks in a way I have yet to fully grasp, I think!) that is meant not only to reach caring people’s hearts, but also force them/us to think deeper than we’re programmed to think!
I can certainly imagine some kind of meta construct like this, especially amongst such long-time stoners!! Getting us to think that they are about to be crushed, as a device (?) to inspire Rainbow newbies (and other somewhat clueless folk like me, heh) to put in their better best!!!!
Well, it is possible!
In this “yank and splash” (yanking our proverbial necktie/leashes, and splashing us with the ice cold water of reality not bullshit) routine (?), we are CHALLENGED in serious ways to PROVE our peace mettle, our alleged GREAT visions!!
Imagine this: Folks like “agros” and other survivor champions of hard-core are sick and tired of bullshit peace so they’re veritably “calling out” all the alleged bliss and testing it!!!!
Programmed in soldier-ese, they’re on the one hand being duped to out-fight an entity (i.e. Alienation, Inc.) that has perfected that kind of stupidity and similar Misery Loves Company, while at the same time, following their GUT INSTINCT to challenge ‘the liberals’ with something they think is MORE REAL and MEANINGFUL! (even tho physicality is only a part of the process!)
I say, hear out John Trudell where he speaks of out-thinking those, whom “in their legions, do not have permission to think (only to follow orders),” and how this state of affairs “starts to even out the numbers.”
Grand “movie” illusion or not, any would-be visionary or budding (r)evolutionary, if they’re “Worth Their Salt” should very much experience AT LEAST ONE Rainbow Gathering national in their lifetimes!! And if you go armed with serious consciousness, you’ll be that much more capable of finding mutually liberating solutions bringing sure gifts not only to an apparently besieged visionary community, but to yourselves as well!