Hank Rosenfeld's Articles on Lions Roar

No, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. We're in Arizona, where sixties' peace and love live on at the annual Rainbow Family gathering. Hank Rosenfeld says everyone should go at least once in their life. If I am to spread the information properly-"take all the junk in the news and make it sing like poetry," as I.F. Stone taught-then I must inform you I'm starting with disinformation. Disinformation as opinion piece, from the United States Senator from these parts of Arid Zone A, Republican Jon Kyl, in the White Mountain Independent up in Show Low, AZ: Arizonans near the site of this year's event already are finding out how disturbing this supposedly peaceful and spiritual group really is. . . . Residents of the town of Springerville have been told if they try to interfere with the group's illegal activities, this "peaceful" group would "trash the town". . . . Rainbow members have urinated on food in stores so the shopkeepers will throw it in the trash where members could then retrieve it. . . . I would think all Arizonans would be concerned for the safety and well-being of their fellow citizens and for our state's beautiful natural resources. My pal Cape appears to be playing it straight this time, we're covering this for CBS after all, but once inside the RX-7, he's still a goner and sooner than ever, stoked by the strong coffee he made on the trunk, followed by a joint, a cigarette, a Coke and more coffee. We're late and we have to wait for Black Rock headquarters to Fed-Ex the relay equipment from New York: CBS-issue cellphone and mini-disc recorder. We really came here of course, to The Rainbow Family of Living Light's annual world meditation for peace, in order to see all them thousands of hippies dancing naked and tripping around their teepees. To conduct a radio investigation for CBS. Who are these people? Are they just some kind of weird Neil Young leftover hippie dream, or the last and best hope still leftover from the 60's? Cape sends this first report back to network headquarters: "They came to the Apache Forest in northeast Arizona to pray for world peace, but the Forest Service said `Get a Permit.'" Pretty good lidlifter. Then our CBS cellular dies-or maybe the wilderness is bereft of cells-whatever, we have to go use a payphone 30 miles back in Springerville, where they don't get folks from CBS too often. "Aw these kids are awright, they just don't like the government is all," says Joe Ellis, 73, in a laundromat on N. Hopi Drive and Main. "Hell, I don't like the government either." Heh, heh. Way to go Joe, set the scene for us here in the heartland. Eagar, two miles away, is the home of eastern Arizona's most famous militiaman/supremacist, who just happens to be on the front page of today's Arizona Republic for refusing to obey a court order and come down from his hilltop lodge/bunker. Eagar's also where we find the National Incident Control Readiness Strike Force Team, the authorities that the U.S. Forest Service headquarters sent here to handle the Rainbow Family. From this command post in an Eagar elementary school, National Incident Team Information Officer Rose ("I used to be in radio") Davis sits us on teensy kindergarten seats for an interview. Davis says she's from Idaho, and there are Forest Service officers here from as far away as Georgia. The U.S. Forestry and Senator Kyl are upset because the Rainbows adhere strongly to the part of the Constitution where it talks about the right to peaceful assembly. So why don't FS Officers just go in and bust those 'bows for the no-permit no-no? "Sheer numbers," Davis shrugs at last. There are 20,000 Rainbows arriving but if any of them are seen using the lake on reservation land, they'll be kicked off by the Apaches because, she says, "the Apache do not like the Rainbows. They think they're American Indian wannabes." On the mountain top, the wannabes greet us warmly. All we've got are sleeping bags and dead technology, but they invite us out in the meadow for a huge drumming circle to communicate with the rain gods. It has been another dusty hot day, 100 plus degrees, even here at 9,000 feet. But "it always rains at a Rainbow Festival," Running Cloud, our guide says. Rain soon arrives, followed by a double rainbow. Then an additional prayer wish is added, for both rain and bow to be sent to "Our brothers and sisters in Flagler County, Florida." Two days later, it will rain in Florida for the first time since the fires started. No propaganda. Just fact. We're CBS, we can't make this stuff up. Sure, the double rainbow will turn into "nine rainbows" according to Wolf Hat, sipping tea by a fire the next night. Probably on acid there were nine rainbows visible, but why argue about rainbows? A red-tailed hawk flies overhead. There's a guy Red Hawk, too; all the Rainbows have names like this, like gang monikers, only the opposite of gang monikers in that these seem peaceful. Running Cloud's been camped here 34 days already. He's a scout who helps find the landing site for the Gathering. He says Senator Kyl's opinion piece was the typical retro-propaganda re Rainbows, something they're used to from the local scare-mongering fishwraps. "Migosh," he laughs, "any damage we do to this forest, which we repair before we leave, doesn't hold a candle to corporate industry's weapons of mass destruction. This is just more diversion, puffery, makeshift reality. Like Shakespeare says, the masters of culture always hatefully resent the promises and the trustworthiness they're forced to demonstrate. They loathe it. The reason the Forest Service is upset is twenty thousand people are having too much fun in their park." After harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man would have discovered fire.-Teilhard de Chardin As night falls, we throw our sleeping bags on some pine needles and go meet Jackie from Iron River, Michigan ("up in Superior") working at the Gathering's Info Center tent. Jackie also helps run the Lost and Found there: a hemp hat, knife from Kathmandu, a puppy, and "Oh, we found your husband..." That sorta stuff. Jackie gets us stoned. "Welcome home!" Amazingly this is also CBS's motto: "Welcome Home." (Nice yin-yang there, the somethingness and the nothingness mutually necessary.) CBS deemed it okay we spend our days straight and nights stoned to get perspective on the scene here. I have never seen so much grass smoked. And this just in the Info Center, because I haven't been here long enough to see anything else. Psychedelics use appears much more discreet. We can't find any mescaline at all for instance, nothing for sale, certainly. Only barter is done here. "Using money jeopardizes our right to use public land," says the Guide. My green energy, five bucks, dropped into the "magic hat" is welcome barter. "Remember," says the Guide, "The energy you give will come back. Wherever possible." "It's a pleasure doing pleasure with you," one trader says after I exchange my WalMart canteen for a rock. Cape, trading with a six-year-old from Pt. Loma, gives up Pez for a crystal. We heard Rainbows love sweets. In fact, this place runs on sweets and no sleep. Everybody's slept two hours in the last three days and has been up for about 38 hours straight, depending on their drive or hitch to get here. Directions from the Info Center lead us to a living breathing Whole Earth Catalog, with workshops on everything from earthship building (solar homes in Taos, I learn), to Lubavitcher Kosher cooking (chicken, trust me). Something else from the guide: "What you have, share. What you are, teach." Pretty intriguing. To see if it works, I show Jackie some sign language I learned from my nephew in San Diego, and she teaches me how to draw a new Lost & Found sign (somebody lost the old one). Cape says Abbie Hoffman said, "There are no teachers, we are all each other's teachings." This seems to grok what the Rainbows grok. We get into a discussion with her friends about Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Huxley, Buckley and Cassady, touching on Groucho, The Free Speech Movement, SDS, the Diggers and Dharma Bums. Jackie suggests that from now on, the Info Tent will be where one brings information. She calls me "brother" and takes me to sit by the "Gypsy Cafe" fire. There is a total fire ban statewide, but the Rainbows got an okay from the Forest Service to architecturally-construct a couple of safe fire pits. Beautiful faces reflecting rising firelight are chanting in front of us. Some of the sisters bare their breasts and beat drums with beatific looks beamed back out into a widening circle of dancers. I've died and gone to tribal heaven. Welcome home. High on popcorn, fire and dope, this is the best party I have ever been to. One of the keys I think, was realizing that being a "reporter" sent a bad vibe. Plus all our CBS TV references and movie references are lost on the Rainbows. They are not only a US Forest Service headache, they're Hollywood's worst nightmare. They just do not meditate at the multi-plex; they're busy making their own movies in the moment. Hippies, lawyers, stroke victims, people with broken necks, architects, grandmothers, all here doing it. So Cape and I have decided to tell them we are "elders," and in this way the media wrapper peels away and kids and women and men will overcome their inhibitions more easily and speak with us. Not that they have any... "Omitakuye oyasin!" I keep hearing this by the fire and along the trails here, as a greeting or exclamatory. Or: "Om atakwe ase," as BeeohBee spells it for me. It means: "All my relations. Two-legged and four-legged. Whole!" Shared responsibility (Oglala). We dance around religiously for a bit, meet parents and their children, Willow and Miracle, Ocean and Stony. I meet Roger, who hitches to the gathering every summer. The rest of the year he is an electronic underwater...

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