{"id":34824,"date":"2024-07-13T11:51:26","date_gmt":"2024-07-13T18:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34824"},"modified":"2024-07-13T11:51:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T18:51:27","slug":"its-ok-to-hate-hippies-rainbow-family-irked-by-california-reception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/07\/13\/its-ok-to-hate-hippies-rainbow-family-irked-by-california-reception\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s OK to hate hippies?\u2019: Rainbow Family irked by California reception"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Kurtis Alexander<\/a>,Reporter July 12, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A sign welcomes people to the gathering of the Rainbow Family in Vermont in 2016. A Rainbow Family gathering in Plumas County is just finishing up \u2014 marred, participants said, by a heavy law enforcement presence and local opposition.Wilson Ring\/Associated Press 2016<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not easy being a hippie in California these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slipping into the woods to spend time with nature and friends, maybe beat a drum, pray for peace, or smoke a little something, can come with all sorts of obstacles: environmental restrictions, rural residents wary of outsiders, high fire danger, tribes protective of sacred land, misinformed critics on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are a few of the issues encountered by the Rainbow Family when it tried to hold its\u00a0national counterculture gathering<\/a>\u00a0this month in Northern California\u2019s Plumas National Forest. Of course, inviting thousands of people to a weeklong camping event on public lands, and not getting a permit, complicates matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rainbows, a loosely affiliated group of drifters, dreamers and pacifists that meets up somewhere each Fourth of July, were ousted from their gathering site<\/a> this year by federal authorities just as it was getting started, amid numerous concerns about their presence. Many regrouped about an hour and a half away, but the ensuing event was smaller than expected and heavy on law enforcement. There were five arrests and 115 citations, authorities said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While several of the nearly 1,800 attendees praised the experience as \u201cepic\u201d and \u201chealing,\u201d others said the scrutiny cast a shadow over the gathering. Some felt misunderstood, unable to share their message of peace and love, and ultimately victimized by a world that may have passed them by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe represent something that doesn\u2019t align with most people,\u201d said Fern Rose, who attended the gathering with her husband and kids from Cave Junction, Ore. \u201cIt\u2019s not OK to be racist. It\u2019s not OK to hate brown, Black and yellow people. But it\u2019s OK to hate hippies?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose said she enjoyed her time at the event, spending most of it walking, cooking and attending children\u2019s programs. She, like others, despises stereotypes of the Rainbows as doped-up hooligans and said they\u2019re a judgment-free community offering hope and happiness. Still, she said her family felt the heavy hand of law enforcement at this year\u2019s gathering, specifically with threats to tow their truck, which she attributes to pressure from a broader community that just doesn\u2019t grasp the Rainbow Family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was no goodwill,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one wanted to work with us. They just wanted to call us drug addicts and get us out of the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony wasn\u2019t lost that California is proudly viewed by many as the birthplace of the counterculture movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crackdown on the gathering began on June 26, when National Forest Service officials issued a closure order for part of the Plumas National Forest near the Lassen County community of Janesville, about five hours from San Francisco, where the Rainbow event was initially planned. The agency deemed the assembly \u201cunauthorized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But things were getting weird long before this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the weeks leading up to the gathering, reports of early attendees running pipelines to carry water from creeks to campers \u2014 a potential violation of state and federal laws \u2014 prompted a few local residents to take matters into their own hands and remove the makeshift infrastructure. Tensions began to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after, a local group went to the area with the intention of blocking cars headed to the gathering site. Ultimately, it stood down but not without crystallizing the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to clean up this mess,\u201d Aaron Albaugh, chair of the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, told the Chronicle at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s going to come out of our county coffers. It\u2019s terrible that rural counties are getting (burdened) and the federal government doesn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, news of the event was fanning already sky-high fears about wildfires in Northern California. Memories of the devastating Dixie, Camp and North Complex fires are fresh, and the prospect of more people meant more chance of another catastrophic spark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were also the tribes. Representatives of the Maidu, Paiute, Pit River and Washoe asked the Rainbow Family, earlier in June, to stay out of the area, worried about disruption to ancestral sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To top things off, social media was stirring things up. Steady streams of posts chronicled what the gatherers were doing and, from the posters\u2019 perspectives, why they needed to be stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of June, when larger crowds began pouring in to the event ahead of the Fourth of July, public sentiment about the Rainbow Family was firmly against them. The forest service\u2019s eventual decision to push out the congregants was widely supported, and some who planned to attend just stayed home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople were just out there acting stupid. There were threats of violence from the locals. That\u2019s not what we represent,\u201d said David Smith of Burney (Shasta County), who has been attending Rainbow gatherings since 1997 for the sense of belonging he found after growing up in group homes and completing his military service. However, this year, Smith made the last-minute decision to sit out. \u201cI didn\u2019t want the harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lafayette resident Chris Bair wasn\u2019t deterred. He drove from the Bay Area to the second gathering site, which was near the community of Beckwourth (Plumas County) in Plumas National Forest. He immediately had second thoughts, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHonestly, I\u2019ve never seen so many law enforcement officers in a single location in my entire life,\u201d Bair said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bair was pulled over, he said, for going 21 mph in a 15 mph zone, then he had his car searched. The self-described \u201cboring dad from the suburbs\u201d who went to gatherings as a younger man and hadn\u2019t been to one since 2007, called the reaction to the assembly \u201cabsolutely egregious and uncalled for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I left, I was the most paranoid I\u2019ve ever been, and I\u2019ve got nothing to be paranoid about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bair and others acknowledge that the Rainbow Family might have made some missteps in planning this year\u2019s gathering, such as underestimating the region\u2019s fire risk. Still, they say the response was overblown. In the end, the site they convened at was an area that had recently burned, which likely presented less fire danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forest service officials said the group simply posed too many potential problems for the agency to ignore. They cited the need to maintain public health and safety as well as ensure adequate stewardship of public lands and natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In advance of the event, the agency assigned a 65-person \u201cnational incident management team,\u201d consisting of 36 federal law enforcement officers from outside the area, to help manage the situation. The team is regularly activated for the national Rainbow gathering, which has been held on forest service lands since 1972 and can draw upward of 10,000 people. Local police and sheriff\u2019s deputies also assisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hilary Markin, spokesperson for the forest service, said concerns about the event could have been sorted out in advance if the Rainbow Family had gone through proper channels and obtained a group permit. A permit is required for events with 75 or more people and allows for conditions to be imposed to limit impacts, such as requiring portable toilets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gatherers, though, have long asserted that they have no leadership and no one who represents them, meaning they\u2019re not a group. (Those who spoke to the Chronicle for this story made clear they\u2019re not speaking for everyone, and the Chronicle couldn\u2019t find anyone to speak for the Rainbows.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though we declared it an unauthorized gathering, they claim to be individuals camping in the woods,\u201d Markin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The forest service reported 384 law enforcement contacts over the course of the event, which was still going on at the start of this week, with a few hundred attendees at the site. The arrests and citations were for several alleged wrongdoings, including damage to natural resources, violations of fire restrictions, traffic infractions and narcotics possession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the gatherers were adamant that, while they felt bullied, they wouldn\u2019t be intimidated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re moving on now,\u201d said Rose, from Oregon. \u201cBut I will show up to every single gathering for the rest of my life until the day I die. We need to keep up our numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bair, from Lafayette, said, \u201cWe really are all in this together. With all that\u2019s going on in the world, if you break down the divisions and pray for peace, you\u2019re certainly not going to make things worse, and hopefully we can make a meaningful difference for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Kurtis Alexander: kalexander@sfchronicle.com<\/a>; Twitter: @kurtisalexander<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 12, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Kurtis Alexander<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

REPORTER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kurtis Alexander is an enterprise reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, with a focus on natural resources and the environment. He frequently writes about water, wildfire, climate and the American West. His recent work has examined the impacts of drought, threats to public lands and wildlife, and the nation\u2019s widening rural-urban divide.Before joining the Chronicle, Alexander worked as a freelance writer and as a staff reporter for several media organizations, including The Fresno Bee and Bay Area News Group, writing about government, politics and the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Kurtis Alexander,Reporter July 12, 2024 (SFChronicle.com) A sign welcomes people to the gathering of the Rainbow Family in Vermont in 2016. A Rainbow Family gathering in Plumas County is just finishing up \u2014 marred, participants said, by a heavy law enforcement presence and local opposition.Wilson Ring\/Associated Press 2016 It\u2019s not… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34826,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34824\/revisions\/34826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}