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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (July 12, 2017)
A8 News Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, July 12, 2017 RAINBOW HEADACHE Continued from Page A1 Continued from Page A1 has been swamped,” he said. “And the locals end up pay- ing for it all. It comes out of our local tax base.” Palmer said two people died at the event: George Ernest Rogers III, 43, of Dumas, Texas, and William Pasko, 74, of Takoma Park, Maryland. Pasko died of natural causes from a heart attack July 3. Rogers collapsed near a makeshift medical station at the gathering July 2. Palmer spent several days trying to identify the man and track down his family. Stabbings and beatings also occurred at the event, Palmer said. As of Monday, 15 arrests were made, and 117 vio- lation notices were issued, according to the Forest Ser- vice. Kevin Sonoff, a spokes- man for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said about a quarter of the arrests were felonies. About half of the violations were related to traffic or ve- hicle offenses, he said, and about a quarter were related to drugs. Other violations were related to alcohol, of- ficer interference, fires and forest roads and trails. The Department of Jus- tice and the U.S. Forest Ser- vice Office of General Coun- cil conducted three mobile court sessions near the event from across the country. This year’s event south of John Day in Oregon drew 13,120 campers — almost double the entire population of Grant County — much to the dismay of the Forest Ser- vice. The agency and the gath- erers are in a perennial tug of war over what campers can and can’t do on public lands. Every year, the gathering blooms to such huge numbers that officials can do little to stop it. It’s Not Lit delivered the box of raw meat to the out- door kitchen, surrounded by a hodgepodge of colorful tents among ponderosa pines. A tarp propped up by tall, dead branches covered a campfire where a few people talked intensely or strummed man- dolins. Similar camps were dotted across the 3 1/2-mile radius of the gathering. All kinds of people flock to the gathering each year, from elderly hippies to idealistic college students. It’s Not Lit goes, in part, to mother the many homeless teens who end up there. “They’re castaways,” she said. “You can see their wounds. They look like zom- bie movies. I’ve lost my own son, and these are all my chil- dren. My heart pours out to them.” At the camp, someone drew attention to sunset fes- tivities that were supposedly about to begin in the main meadow. “Are you going to the wed- ding?” asked one woman. “Of course,” said It’s Not Lit. “I always cry at wed- dings.” She hurried through the crowd toward a small wed- ding party that stood wait- ing for the bride and groom. One person held a wildflow- er wreath and a bride’s dress stitched together just that day, from extemporaneous lace and fabric. A young man clutched handfuls of wrapped candy to toss at the couple like wedding rice. The bride and groom were not in sight. “Misty!” shouted the man holding the wreath, over a ca- cophony of drums and chatter from the crowd. “Dirtbag! Time to get married!” While she waited, It’s Not Lit fished into her pocket for a condom. “Time for some Grandma Magic,” she said, blowing into it and then tap- ping it above her head like a balloon. A tall, thin man strode by, swinging a six-foot hula hoop around his neck. A young woman crumpled to the ground mysteriously. Al- most immediately, she was loaded into a wagon and toted to “Calm,” the first-aid area. For regular Rainbow at- tendees like It’s Not Lit, the gathering fulfills a deep spir- itual and emotional need. For many, it’s an escape from oth- erwise difficult lives. Rain- bow gatherers say they accept and welcome everyone — so- cial misfits, homeless teens, recovering drug addicts, emergency room surgeons and aging hippies. “Welcome home” they say to one anoth- er, strangers and friends alike. Each camper has a differ- ent personal reason why they come, but the larger focus of the gathering is an ideal that dates back to the first gather- ing in 1972: world peace. Still with no-shows for bride and groom, the would- be wedding spectators even- tually wandered away, includ- ing It’s Not Lit. In the fading light, she meandered toward her camp to prepare for the LAWS Continued from Page A1 themselves an amateur de- tective will have to forgo the old “Tracking device on the car” trick. Senate Bill 483 makes it illegal to attach a GPS device to a person’s vehicle without their knowl- edge. The misdemeanor of- fense becomes a felony if the perpetrator has previously been convicted of stalking or has a restraining order against them. It does not ap- ply to law enforcement. At school • Students in Oregon will be learning more about the historical contributions of social and ethnic minori- ties — including women, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities and the LQBTQ community — during social studies after House Bill 2845, which di- rects the Department of Ed- ucation to write statewide “ethnic studies standards” for K-12 social studies cur- riculum, with the help of a diverse advisory group. The department will also develop more financial literacy cur- riculum thanks to the pas- sage of House Bill 2229. • Juniors and seniors in high school will be able to register to vote thanks to Senate Bill 802, which low- ered the voter registration age to 16 starting in January. The actual voting age, how- PALMER Continued from Page A1 had been short-staffed for a variety of reasons, and he was unable to provide immedi- ate access to the records. Palmer’s attorney argued The Oregonian submitted many requests for records, which were confusing. The attorney said ensuring the Contributed photo/Richard Benson An aerial view of the Rainbow Gathering. site, and most of the people showed up to address their federal tickets. The mobile courts help alleviate the load on the local court system. Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter said his office was not inundated with cases as he was told to expect. Law enforcement officers were very busy, he said, but most cases were resolved without criminal charges. The DA’s office has had fewer than 15 cases re- lated to the Rainbow Gather- ing, primarily for intoxicated driving, disorderly conduct and shoplifting. “The sheer magnitude and volume at such a gath- ering will attract a certain percentage of people that cause problems,” he said. “For the most part, the Rain- bow Family has been good at self-policing and taking care of their own. ... My prima- ry objectives for the event were community safety and law enforcement safety, and we’ve been pretty successful at accomplishing both.” Carpenter said he is con- sidering accepting one juve- nile case from Forest Service law enforcement, and he has accepted two cases from them involving the posses- sion of controlled substanc- es. Palmer said a large amount of drugs — LSD, heroin, cocaine, marijuana — were confiscated at the event. He said he was par- ticularly surprised by the amount of LSD, a hallucino- genic. “From what I saw from the Forest Service law en- forcement, I don’t ever want to experience another Rain- bow,” Palmer said. “I would never wish this on anybody. I don’t think this is the Rainbow the founders envi- sioned.” ever, remains at 18. • If you forget to pay your child’s lunch bill, don’t wor- ry about “lunch shaming.” House Bill 3454 bans schools from making students do ex- tra chores, throwing away their lunch or otherwise publicly identifying them as having an overdue balance on their lunch accounts. In- stead, schools are directed to work directly with parents on settling the bill. • Worried about police in- terviewing your child while they are at school? House Bill 3242 requires law en- forcement to record inter- views with minors when in- vestigating a felony. • School volunteers with direct and unsupervised contact with students will also have to undergo a back- ground check first thanks to House Bill 2992. Everywhere else • Hermiston can finally move forward on building a new skate park after Senate Bill 327 restored recreational immunity to cities and other property owners who offer up their property for free rec- reational use by the public. The law removes the threat of lawsuits that has been hanging over cities since the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that a jogger injured in a hole in a city park could sue the worker who left it unattend- ed. • 20-year-old smokers will have trouble getting their cigarettes after Senate Bill 754, which raises the minimum age for smoking and buying tobacco products from 18 to 21 starting in Jan- uary. • Planning a wedding but not the religious type? House Bill 2113 allows a secular institution “that occupies a place in the lives of the orga- nization’s members parallel to that filled by a church or particular religious author- ity” to perform marriages starting Jan. 1. • Cans and bottles have been worth a 10 cent depos- it — twice what they used to be — since House Bill 2746 passed in April. • Teens and young adults who have hesitated to re- port a sexual assault because there was under-aged drink- ing involved are now being given immunity from being prosecuted for drinking if the drinking only came to light because someone contacted law enforcement or emer- gency medical services to report a sexual assault. The victim will also be protected from such prosecution, even if they were not the one to report the assault. • If you’ve decided the time has come for a vasec- tomy, you no longer have to wait for a physician. House Bill 2103 permits nurse prac- titioners to perform vasecto- mies starting Jan. 1, making Oregon the third state in the country to do so. records were not exempt from disclosure and that cer- tain information was redact- ed required time. He said Palmer was complying with the requests. Cramer agreed, in part, with both parties. “Plaintiff made numer- ous requests, which given their breadth, were con- fusing and voluminous. Given the cost and effort to respond, it was reasonable for defendant to seek clar- ification,” Cramer said in the opinion. “... But while all this is occurring, Sheriff Palmer did not give all the requests sufficient priority. I find he was frustrated and failed to choose to address all the requests in a timely manner as required.” Palmer declined to com- ment for this story. next day. July 4 is the pinna- cle of every Rainbow Gath- ering. From dawn till dusk, everyone is silent. There’s no drum circles, no slam poetry, no flutes, no verbal commu- nication. Gatherers break the silence at high noon, after a communal prayer circle. This was It’s Not Lit’s ninth gathering in about 20 years. In the small Southern California community where she works as a landscaper, she’s known as the town hip- pie. People laugh at her when she calls them “brother” or “sister.” “They laugh at love,” she said. “I think they see it as silly. It hurts. We just need to accept each other.” An annual headache The Rainbow Gatherers weren’t the only ones looking forward to the morning of si- lence. The day would also be a welcome, quiet one for the dozens of Forest Service law enforcement officers who put in long hours trying to man- age the unwieldy and unau- thorized event. The Forest Service knows to expect the gathering every year from July 1-7, but the Rainbow Family doesn’t set- tle on an exact location for their event until a few days before it starts. That’s in part because they don’t want the government to try and stop it. “They’re very secre- tive, or I’d call them sneaky, about their site,” said Mal- heur National Forest Deputy Supervisor Ryan Nehl. After a Rainbow council announc- es the location on Facebook, thousands of campers imme- diately head that way. “It just doesn’t give us a chance to put protections in place, and so we’re constantly in a reac- tive mode,” Nehl said. The Forest Service typi- cally requires groups of 75 or more to get a special-use permit. An organized gath- ering as large as Rainbow requires an environmental analysis that might take two years. But the Rainbow gath- erers buck those require- ments by pointing out that they have no official leaders. They ask the Forest Service to treat them like thousands of dispersed campers who simply happened upon the same site. Much to the agency’s frus- tration, there’s little the Forest Service can do to block the event. Instead, they go into high gear the moment they know the site location, flag- ging off sensitive wildlife habitat and giving the camp- ers instructions for where to dig latrines for human waste. “We’re treating this like a wildfire, a social wildfire if you will,” said Dave Hale- meier, a Blue Mountain Dis- trict Ranger for the Malheur National Forest. He worried about the gathering’s im- pact on wildlife, like nesting woodpeckers and baby red- band trout in the stream that cuts through the main mead- ow. This year’s 13,120 camp- ers were fewer than the Forest Service predicted. Approximately 50 Forest Service workers are divert- ed from their regular jobs to monitor the gathering. Each year the agency spends about $500,000 on law enforcement for the event, and the Malheur National Forest expected to spend at least an additional $250,000 on it, pulled from an already strapped budget. Rainbow gatherers argue that these are public lands, and they have a constitutional right to assemble. “You can’t go into a city and feel the same welcom- ing that you do here,” said Dylan Forester, a dreadlocked musician from Kentucky. “It doesn’t matter if you have a thousand dollars in your pocket or not a thing except a five-day old cigarette butt. You’re welcome here.” But many in conservative Grant County don’t join in that sense of welcome. Rancher Justin Galbreath has a permit to graze his cows in the exact area where the gathering took place. The For- est Service let him move his cattle to an alternate meadow, but he worried about the future impacts of thousands of camp- ers, in particular human waste. Even though the gatherers typically abide by the Forest Service’s request to dig bath- room trenches far from water sources, the combined waste from thousands of campers over seven days would weigh about as much as four African elephants. That waste is now decomposing in dirt latrines across the site. “If that stuff leaches into those creeks, that is going to affect us for a long time,” Gal- breath said. He’s worried that if the water quality declines, the Forest Service could lim- it the number of cows he can graze in the future. Galbreath visited the gath- ering and was dismayed to see the lush meadows where he normally turns out his cattle become trampled grass. He viewed the Forest Service’s dealing with the gathering as a double standard. A few years ago, he pointed out, he had to rehabilitate one of the mead- ows that was within the area of the gathering. His cows ate down the grass more than they were supposed to. “We electric-fenced it the next year and let it come back,” he said. This year, that area served as a parking lot for the gather- ing. “Now, that same meadow that we worked on so hard is full of cars and it’s just dust.” The Rainbow Family does have a good reputation for packing out trash and helping repair the site once the crowds leave. Hundreds of campers stay behind to rehabilitate meadows and plant new veg- etation. Some even return to the site the next year, to check for any lasting impacts. But deputy Forest Supervi- sor Ryan Nehl said that repair work is more about the visi- ble impact. “There are going to be subsurface and water impacts that are hard to see,” he said. “We won’t know the full effect of this gathering for years.” Prayer for peace On the morning of July 4, the gathering site was already hot and dusty. Campers trick- led into the main meadow all morning, some wearing special sparkly costumes or colorful face paint, others completely nude. Many sat cross-legged in the sun, eyes closed, in meditation. With the sun beating down directly overhead, the thou- sands of people silently joined hands. Somewhere, someone — or probably several peo- ple — began chanting a low, humming “om.” When a parade of children entered the center of the cir- cle, as they do every year of the gathering, the chanting erupted into a blissful cheer, punctuated by coyote calls and drums. For It’s Not Lit, that was the moment she was waiting for. “I come for the prayer,” she said. “Home is the people, home moves around. Wel- come home,” she said, out loud in the meadow, shouting into the crowd. She was speaking to both everyone, and no one, at the gathering. HOME SCHOOL PARENTS Home school students are required by law to be tested by a qualified neutral person following grades 3, 5, 8, and 10. [OAR581-021-0026 (5) (a) (A)] However, students who participate in interscholastic activities are required by OSAA rules to be tested every year and must score in the 23rd percentile to be eligible to participate in interscholastic activities. Grant ESD will offer assessment testing for home school students finishing grades 3, 5, 8, and 10. Cost $20.00 per student. Payment is due at the time of testing. Register your student for assessment testing by calling Grant ESD, 541-575-1349 on or before, July 17, 2017. Testing Dates: 541-523-6377 541-963-6577 541-573-6377 541-523-6377 05370 July 19, 2017 – 8:00am to 2:00pm July 20, 2017 – 8:00am to 2:00pm If you have any questions you may contact: Robert Waltenburg or Jo Sproul Grant County ESD 541-575-1349 05826
