We work toward the goal of peace for all.

September 20, 2021 5:05 PM

The Shanti Sena Mini-Manual pretty accurately sums up the way the Rainbow Family of Living Light deals with violent situations when they arise at Gatherings.

A gatherer shares a 'hipstory' about a personal experience involving the use of Shanti Sena.

Michael Niman wrote an article about the technique. Niman also wrote a book about the Rainbow Family.

There are a lot of different camps and kitchens at gatherings. One of the camps that the Gatherings rely upon is called CALM (Center for Alternative Living Medicine). One of the most controversial camps is called A Camp. A 'hipstory' about how A Camp came to be.

The Rainbow Family previously and previouslier.

Shanti Sena previously.

posted by RobinofFrocksley (22 comments total)

Wow, this is really interesting and inspiring. I knew a bit about the Rainbow Family, but this is my first encounter with the idea of Shanti Sena.

I would love to see these practices put into wider use, especially at protests - and at other large gatherings, like music festivals.

The notion that everyone present is responsible for keeping everyone safe, AND that the expectation is to accomplish that without violence, is powerful.

Thank you for posting this, RobinofFrocksley! I am glad to know about this.
posted by kristi at 6:36 PM on September 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Rainbow Family are charming and naive, and in 2021 I am abrasive and cynical. My most recent experience of The Rainbow Family was at festival in 2012 when the police were called and a man died. Writing on the event, an anarchist said:

The Rainbow Family Australia are an ideal expression of the ideology of nonviolence and this tragedy perfectly represents the impossibility of pacifism in practice. When faced with the threat of violence, pacifism necessarily results in either default submission to the aggressor or the delegation of violence to those who practice it professionally.

I am a strong believer in non-violence as a tenet of activism but this quote is necessarily true and I don't know how to hold it.
posted by Thella at 6:41 PM on September 20, 2021 [20 favorites]

at festival in 2012 when the police were called

I've been to several National Gatherings in the US across a couple of decades, and there has never been a requirement to "call" law enforcement to these things. Getting into them is usually a gamut of checkpoints by various agencies. Generaly once you're at the gathering site, they aren't around, but man, they're just literally right outside.
posted by hippybear at 6:58 PM on September 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Weird disclaimer:

This is Not an offical document of any kind by the Rainbow Family. This Home Page is my own creation, and as such only represents my own ideas. In no way does this mean I or anyone else here at welcomehome.org represent the Rainbow Family, regardless of what the Family wingnuts say.
posted by slater at 7:22 PM on September 20, 2021

Nobody represents the Rainbow Family. They are an organization that has no leader. Nobody speaks for the group.
posted by hippybear at 7:25 PM on September 20, 2021 [4 favorites]

Next time you need a cop, call a hippie.
posted by y2karl at 7:59 PM on September 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thanks for sharing, and the extra commentary Thella. I recommend the comments on that article as well (!) for a few more perspectives.

I don't want to rain on these people's parade, but there's a large space between ideals and reality.
posted by Braeburn at 11:42 PM on September 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

I had heard a little bit about the Rainbow Gathering in the past but I've learned a lot more today by clicking around from the links in the post - thanks!

Looks like (in the US) law enforcement has a fairly antagonistic relationship with the folks coming for the Gathering?

I've never been to Rainbow Gathering nor to Burning Man.... I presume the former has influenced the latter a bit?
posted by brainwane at 4:17 AM on September 21, 2021

If someone has committed a felony crime such as rape or murder, … it can be decided by a council to turn that person over to police. This is only after all Rainbow alternatives have failed.

I imagine law enforcement takes a pretty dim view of that practice. I find myself wondering what a “Rainbow alternative” prosecution for murder might be. Not reporting it to the police would leave several people as accomplices after the fact.
posted by panglos at 4:31 AM on September 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

I find myself wondering what a “Rainbow alternative” prosecution for murder might be.

Vigilante justice?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:51 AM on September 21, 2021

Thank you for sharing the Links. I must admit i am way to cynical for this kind of thing. But following down the rabbit hole i found this to me fascinating blog of a guy involved in the European Rainbow gatherings, Tom Thumb. Especially his account of an attempt to have a gathering in the Austrian alps makes great reading. Overall Tom seems quite down to earth and his stories and anecdotes feel authentic and realistic and humorous at times.
posted by 15L06 at 9:04 AM on September 21, 2021

I'm a pretty cynical, "normal boring American person" and I really appreciate this post.

I have attended many Rainbow events in the past (though I've put them in the time-out corner since their behavior toward the Lakota people - I'm heartened by the general response to COVID though and am considering getting back to the next gathering.)

I am emphatically *not* a hippy, I think it's a very self-centered identity that is manufactured by people who want to externalize their own shortcomings and typically need (a lot of) therapy and psychological intervention. But I very much enjoy participating in Gatherings and spending time with the various flavors of hippies in the U.S. - because I have developed appropriate expectations.

1. Hippies are frequently undifferentiated assholes. They want you to respect their "wisdom" or raps or whatever but you should never, under any circumstances, expect them to treat you with deference or respect. Expect them to talk down to you like you would a teenager who has been told they have "an old soul." Relax into this experience. Behave as if you are...

2. An anthropologist experiencing a unique intersection of human life and behavior. You cannot insert yourself into the "tribe," - but you shouldn't want to! You are a whole person already and you're here to have fun!

3. The greatest challenge you will face is the wild discrepancy between who they are and who they claim they are. If you don't have a history with a given kitchen you will be treated like an amateur outsider. This is going to be very, very challenging - but it's true of just about any marginalized sub-culture. My first experience with a Gathering was that I had no "home" kitchen and despite being very, very careful, having several buckets of water on hand and being an experienced EMT-W and first responder, a self-appointed "rhino" stomped out my cook fire and loudly and publicly berated me.

4. I apologized profusely. I asked if I could help at his kitchen and he responded that I would obviously be a danger in his kitchen - I would be most helpful by staying away.

5. I have had the best times of my life when I've decided to share what I have. I'm a pretty talented musician on a non-guitar stringed instrument that's not too terribly loud (violin). I find that just making my music attracts marvelous people. I had initially thought that I'd be useful as a medical first responder but I quickly learned that this was emphatically *not* the case - my habitus of western medicine represented an existential threat to the "healers" who were there to do the "real work."

6. A case of Snickers bars (especially toward the end of the week) will buy you massive quantities of exceptionally good drugs.

7. Gatherings are the *only* festivals I've ever attended where I return home feeling healthier and more refreshed than when I left. A week of long walks in the woods, very healthy food, no alcohol or tobacco, and interacting with challenging (almost alien) human beings is akin to a semester of college level humanities classes. I honestly can't recommend it highly enough so long as...

8. You are actually able to suspend your ego and disdain for people who are frequently deeply wounded, chronically unaware of their own psychic injuries, and projecting a fantasy of security all around them in lieu of acknowledging the material circumstances of their lives. Gatherings are a magnet for human beings who have been treated very, very unfairly by our sick, late-capital culture - human beings who, in another age or culture, would perhaps thrive and bring forth great and wondrous things, but who have been cheated by being born into a hostile world.

Post Script: I cannot overemphasize the importance of understanding that hippies are not reliable people. They are not reliable narrators. They have very little sense of personal boundaries, property rights, etc. They will not be helpful, on time, courteous, they will not treat the things you give them with respect and you should never, ever expect them to return anything you "loan" them.
"Well, why the hell would I want to spend a week around these assholes?!"
Because - in all that they lack in reliability and accountability, they make up for in sheer beauty, the sweeping fashion in which they completely disregard and transgress the totally fabricated rules of "common sense," and their life-giving, child-like openness to radically strange ways of negotiating a relationship with reality. For me, it *is* worth it. For exactly five days out of the year.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:13 AM on September 21, 2021 [28 favorites]

This is really interesting.

Rainbow Gatherings aren't my bag. But, I've been night-shift security for protest camps a few times in the past. (Not because I'm particularly excited about doing it, but because I was usually awake anyway and reasonably good at talking to both cops and people who are freaking out.) We were never this explicit about the rules, but this sounds pretty familiar, except the meeting-before-expulsion bit, which we didn't consider. At 3am, I'm not sure anyone would have appreciated it. The best security guy I ever met was a bus driver by day, which probably shouldn't be surprising.

We also tried to make sure the people we kicked out had some place to go, if only to keep them from coming back angry. Often that meant grabbing some cash from the donation box for a taxi or a night at a nearby SRO. Which, I'd argue, was a pretty good use of those funds.
posted by eotvos at 9:22 AM on September 21, 2021 [4 favorites]

I need to add something because in reading my previous comment it comes across as needlessly condescending.
First of all, I've never met a hippy who didn't already know these things about other hippies. They don't seem to lack self-awareness, generally.
But more importantly - this behavior *does not* describe everyone at Rainbow. You will meet incredibly wise, self-aware, and generous human beings.
In my mind I always call them "guides" but you can call them whatever you want. You will know them by this sign:

They will exercise a warm, occasionally intense curiosity about you and where you are in your life journey. They will volunteer practically nothing about themselves until they have satisfied their hunger for knowing you at a very deep and personal level - you can use the word "grok" here, if you'd like. These people will talk to you as though you are the only other human being on the planet. They will seem to be hungry to understand where you are going, the battles you have fought, and they will want to know what you are seeking after, and sometimes they might even take you by the hand and show you something that is deeply holy and precious to *them* if it appears to align with your journey.

If their pupils are dilated as wide as dinner plates it's because they have consumed an absolutely tremendous volume of entheogens but this is no reason to dismiss them or refuse to open up to them. Take what they have to give you and show gratitude - as your gratitude is frequently the only form of currency or recompense that they are seeking from the general universe, anyway.

I met a man at Bread of Life kitchen, once, who was a Christian mystic and he gave me some kind of powerful soul-force that changed my life for the better. I can't remember his name but his face was incredibly kind and I'll never forget it. I was overcome by the sense that he would literally do anything for me, so deep and intense was his love for me, and that all I had to do was relax and accept that he loved me at a molecular level. Once I was able to do this I was changed forever. I wish I could manifest even a fraction of his loving power. I think he had obtained satori in his walk with Jesus Christ and he had no place to "share it" save for the hearts of strangers.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2021 [11 favorites]

" You are actually able to suspend your ego and disdain for people who are frequently deeply wounded, chronically unaware of their own psychic injuries, and projecting a fantasy of security all around them in lieu of acknowledging the material circumstances of their lives."

This is nice to reread.
posted by firstdaffodils at 11:11 PM on September 21, 2021

I cannot overemphasize the importance of understanding that hippies are not reliable people. They are not reliable narrators. They have very little sense of personal boundaries, property rights, etc. They will not be helpful, on time, courteous, they will not treat the things you give them with respect and you should never, ever expect them to return anything you "loan" them.

Does being unreliable with items and concepts of personal property and 'totally fabricated rules of "common sense,"' really make them unreliable as people? I'd rely on a hippie to give me food, shelter, love and kindness - the things I need to live - any day above someone with a well-defined commitment to personal property.
posted by Thella at 12:25 AM on September 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

Rainbow was a big thing for me in my late teens and early 20s. I think I went to 6 regionals and 3 nationals. As a social outcast from a conservative region of the country, the hippies were the first people to actually be nice to me. Rainbow was there for me at a very vulnerable part of my life, and I will never, ever forget it.

From what I could tell, the Shanti Sena model works pretty well. For an event that size, very little in the way of violence, or any bad behavior at all, really. However, that’s once you’re inside the gathering.

Outside the gathering, you have the parking lot, which is known as “A-Camp” because it’s the only part of the gathering where open drinking is allowed and where money can change hands. A-Camp was an uncontrolled shitshow, somewhere between a tailgate party and a hobo shantytown. Hard drug addicts, folks on the lam from one thing or another, and just plain ornery alcoholics. It’s where pretty much all the violence at a gathering occurs. I’m not sure the Shanti Sena rules apply there.

So yes, go to a gathering if you are intrigued by the concept and are of firm constitution (you will probably get mildly sick at one point or another). But stay clear of A-Camp.
posted by panama joe at 11:07 AM on September 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

panama joe: It's really interesting to me because I think of A-Camp as like the unmoderated comment section of a website.
The fact is, if you want to attend the Gathering you *must* hike about five miles in to camp. For whatever reason, that seems to be a high enough threshold to keep out the worst of the assholes.
And so it's similar to Metafilter's requirement (if it's still in place) that you pay $5 to activate your account. It's not much, but it's enough to stem the tide of drive-by assholes who would otherwise turn something beautiful into their own personal dumping ground.
A-camp is a miserable place and I actively try to avoid it and hike around it. Same goes for a couple of the more experimental kitchens where, rather than simply trying to cook one thing well, they are trying to make some sort of statement or interpretation about the philosophy of rainbow in general. I'm looking at you, fat kids kitchen.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:05 PM on September 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

Wow, this is the perfect opposite of my own week-long adventures in national forests: I camp alone with lots of guns and alcohol.

The Rainbow Gathering seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do in a national forest, so long as they clean up their garbage and don't burn the place down. Their impact is nothing compared to logging and cattle grazing in national forests. National forests are meant to be used.
posted by ryanrs at 9:07 PM on September 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

so long as they clean up their garbage and don't burn the place down.

If I recall correctly, there are teams who stay behind after the week of the Gathering who spend up to a month rehabilitating the site. They eradicate trails made by the Gathering, usually they have a lot of native grass seed and tree seedlings donated to them to plant. I've seen photos of Gathering sites even just a few years after the event where it was impossible to tell 10-20K people were once camping there.
posted by hippybear at 5:47 PM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's way above and beyond what the forest service asks of commercial forest users. It's great that they do it, though.

I spend a lot of time in California National Forests. In the last two years, I've camped at Trinity, Six Rivers, Mendocino, Los Padres, Lassen, Tahoe, Eldorado, Toiyabe, Stanislaus, Inyo, and Sequoia National Forests, and lots of BLM land in the Mojave. And in my experience, our National Forests are under-utilized for recreation.

This June I spent a week in Mendocino National Forest and didn't see anyone except a few forest workers and a couple cars on the road. There was a five day stretch where I didn't see anyone at all. And I wasn't out in the back country! I was in a named campground directly off one of the largest roads in the forest. I asked around in town, and apparently June is the "off season". They get people tubing in the river during the spring, and hunters in the fall. But if you're a weirdo who goes camping in the summer, you have the place to yourself.

If you've only ever camped in National Parks and State Parks, you are missing out on a totally different car camping experience. National Forest camping is much more like Oregon Trail. Chopping firewood, hunting rabbits, fording streams in my minivan, shooting guns, etc. All the fun stuff that you're not allowed to do at Yosemite, because it wouldn't be fun if thousands of people were doing it all at once. But unlike the parks, our National Forests are really big and not many people visit. What I'm saying is, go visit some national forests, even if you're not a hippy. (But maybe not right this weekend, since it's the middle of deer season.)
posted by ryanrs at 9:38 PM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hunting wabbits?
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on September 23, 2021