RIVERTON -- They come from every region of the United States. They drive or fly in -- just as they have to this central Wyoming city -- about 40 of them toting dogs, guns, cuffs and federal badges. Their job from now to the first half of July will be to follow and police a massive group of counterculture campers who advocate peace and love for the planet earth, and who assemble annually on federal lands -- somewhere.
Just like the officers, the campers also come from all over America.
This year, as it has done for the past 11 years, the federal government has assembled a highly specialized force under the generic title, "Incident Management Team," to patrol the Rainbow Family of Living Light.
The Rainbow Family has assembled on public lands every year, somewhere in the United States, since 1972, and the events occasionally draw up to 25,000 participants. The family has no official leadership structure, and all decisions regarding the gathering and its location are always made spontaneously by a consensus of influential participants.
While those participants claim a constitutional right to assemble for "peaceable" purposes on federal lands with or without a permit, officials with the U.S. Forest Service cite a legal obligation to protect the natural and cultural resources under their care.
Up until this year, the team has generally approached the get-together as a technically illegal event. This year, however, as the Rainbows start to gather near Big Sandy in the Wind River Mountains, the federal government is trying what USDA Undersecretary Mark Rey described as an "experiment."
The Forest Service is attempting to work collaboratively with the Rainbow Family, under an operating plan, in recognition of the agency's inability to stop the event -- but also in an attempt to better protect the forest from the impact of tens of thousands of people, their vehicles, movements and waste.
The gathering will be in full swing in the Bridger-Teton National Forest July 1-7, although possibly more than 1,000 participants have already arrived and begun setting up camps, rest room facilities and water delivery systems.
Incident Commander Gene Smithson, a senior special agent with the Forest Service, has worked on the federal management team for Rainbow gatherings for the past four years. A good portion of his year-round job since he took over command has been to track Rainbow get-togethers, advise and consult with local authorities for smaller, regional gatherings that take place sporadically, and coordinate efforts to minimize the impacts of the assemblies whenever and wherever they happen, he said.
The Rainbow Family is a loosely affiliated jamboree of craft-trading, music-playing, dancing, juggling, often pot-smoking and sometimes semi-clad folks, many of whom reject some of the federal and state laws the officers are sworn to uphold.
Especially those laws that criminalize the possession and illicit use of controlled substances.
"There's a lot of drug use," Smithson said. "Marijuana, LSD, methamphetamines, mushrooms, cocaine, prescription pain meds. Just about everything."
Because of the sheer size of the gathering, and because the Family has no real membership structure, the gatherings inevitably draw not only those who subscribe to the basic tenets of the Rainbow philosophy -- which are centered on peace and a gentle existence -- but also draw known criminals, as well as violent and troubled individuals.
During last year's Arkansas gathering, officers arrested about 100 participants for a wide variety of offenses, including disorderly conduct and crimes related to alcohol abuse, Smithson said.
Federal authorities also often must respond to outbreaks of communicable diseases and maladies, such as tuberculosis, scabies and even dangerous bacterial infections, Smithson said.
The Rainbows operate their own medical treatment center at the camp site, he said, but they can't handle all types of medical ailments and emergencies.
At a recent Rainbow gathering, there was an outbreak of potentially deadly meningitis, Smithson said. Local health authorities had to scramble to treat dozens of participants.
The Forest Service is attempting to work as collaboratively as possible with the Rainbow Family, Smithson said, in order to better protect not only the forest but the people in and around the event.
Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.
Poster Comment:
The bottom line folks is your right to assemble is extremely scary and inconvenient for the powers that be.
Without these twig pigs all that would happen is people would gather peacefully in the woods then go home. What is intimidating and unhealthy is not people exercising Constitutional Rights in a way that does not consume and buy event infrastructure services and insurance, but pigs intimidating unarmed people with automatic rifles, tasers, pepper spray, field court room set-ups to adjudicate harassment tickets on the spot to try to intimidate people into leaving.
I know people who have been beat up and arrested for merely going out to the woods with friends once a year.
The gathering peaks on July 4th, let's see what happens with it for all this garbage bullshit they have repackaged to try to sell this as kinder, gentler fascism we all need to protect ourselves from ourselves.
“The best and first guarantor of our neutrality and our independent existence is the defensive will of the people…and the proverbial marksmanship of the Swiss shooter. Each soldier a good marksman! Each shot a hit!” Schweizerische Schutzenseitunt (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
