In their mind, if the idea of Rainbow Gatherings presents itself, they
see themselves in the shoes of the Forest Service. So if they can see
the gathering through the eyes of the Forest Service who were involved
in the Oregon gathering, maybe it will bring them a step or two in the
direction of what we're doing.
Also, these documents show how torn up the Forest Service is about the
gatherings. It seems to me that the LEOs basically have lost the
respect of the folks on the ground, so they have to resort to
intimidation tactics within their own ranks. In Missouri, the Park
Police from Washington were able to pull rank. In Oregon, it looks like
they didn't get their way so much, and since things went so smoothly
overall, the non-LEO Forest Service are able to argue that the "law
enforcement" approach is counterproductive.
The best way to read the documents is to keep in mind that they were
obviously arguing all the way through the "incident" about how to handle
it, and this argument carries over into the report. Yes, the report
only has one side of the story, but readng between the lines we can get
pretty much all of it.
"The times they are a'changing." Yesterday, in a high school drama
class in this area, they had an exercise in "self expression." Two kids
came to the class wearing towels and, according to news stories, the
towels "slipped off" at one point. Big scandal, supposedly. The
teacher was "horrified." But there are thousands of kids listening to
the news, wondering if they could be so daring.
-- Kirk Wattles <kwattles@mindspring.com> http://www.mindspring.com/~kwattles/