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