I've got some really "scary" news. I learned of a Rainbow gathering in the Talladega National Forest on WelcomeHere.org. Directions to the campsite were openly posted. I've met many rainbows over the years and have always admired their non-judgmental, openly accepting personalities. I, myself, don't do drugs, or even drink alcohol. Never even had a single sip my whole life. I am "squeaky clean." But I don't judge others for their personal choices. I decided to go out to the gathering in Talladega and meet some more friendly "family." I looked at the WelcomeHere.org Alabama forum before going, and someone had tried to post a request for help that "shameless" was in jail. The post title showed up, but the post didn't, and it said it was posted by "ex member" so I presumed it was a faker that the moderator had censored. So this afternoon on my way home, I took a detour to locate the Talladega campsite. 1/2 mile before the campsite there was a Federal Ranger road block doing "routine safety checks" and blocking access to the road that led to the campsite. Obviously, they were harrassing the Rainbows that were gathering, and apparently shameless really is in jail and someone didn't want word of the crackdown to leak out. But they call it a "routine safety check" rather than "profiling" so that it is legal. I came to this conclusion after I logged onto the internet and tried to post my disappointment that the LEOs really did mind the Rainbows camping at that spot, unlike the original posting in the thread. My post also was blocked! I posted again as a new thread, and the title shows up, but once again the post was blocked and said to be submitted by an "ex-member." Maybe I'm paranoid, but it would appear that the feds have hi-jacked the bulletin board to prevent anyone from knowing about their little sting operation... I wasn't posting to prevent federal officers from exercising their right to enforce the law. I was merely posting my disappointment about not getting to go meet some new "family." I broke no laws, and have never broken such laws. What right does the government have to censor my posts to a public forum?!!! "Big Brother" is getting truly scary! regards, WhiteHillAL
I just checked this out and it is odd. the threads are not locked. I sent admin a message about the matter. If I get a reply ill post it. I just tried to post a new subject in several forums and it did the same thing it did to you. I was able to post to a thread tho, just couldnt start one.
Haven't been able to post there AT ALL. Even tried to open a new user and that won't let me in as well...whats going on???
I didn't know anybody actually used welcomehere. I've always found that site to be long on rumor, short on real information.
I dont know about rumor. I thought that was AGR. I post often at welcomehere and their calandar is well kept...
Well if you're referring to Shameless Heifer, she's still around here, posting today, not arrested as far as I know. They may have had a particular forum or forums set to moderate new postings or threads. In which case they just need to be approved before appearing. Webmasters do that when the site is being spammed or under troll attack. I just visited that site for the first time a few days ago. Didn't even know it existed. Relatively new. As far as who is behind it and whether it's a front, I couldn't say, but not likely the feds would need to go to so much trouble. They can read about shit online just like everyone else. No need to create a site unless they are looking to record and track individual's IP#s. Fortunately this site will still be around if anything happens there.
Hey Skip, welcomehere has been around for a few years now, Paix has a link in the 'Read here before posting' sticky...and there are a lot of older Rainbow folks who won't use it because it was started by Lookingheart (aka Azure) who spouted on about how much 'Rainbow sucks' and how 'Rainbow has it all wrong' starting not long after the Missouri "96 Gathering. (and this is not based on rumor...Lookingheart made the mistake of filling my ears with his attitude at a Schwagstock around this time). While sometimes the info listed is correct, there were several questionable posts on welcomehere last year; and I believe that is because "A Gathering of the Tribes" folks and the Peace Conspiracy folks were having events either at the same time or close to the time and in close proximity to the Annual Rainbow Family of Living Light Arkansas Gathering. Still, I know that some folks do like the site & so I sent Lookingheart a private e-mail after reading the first post in this thread, just in case he wasn't getting his administration e-mails. Me, I'm loyal to HipForums for cyber Rainbowing, tho I do check other places for info. WhiteHillAl please don't stress of feds hijacking Rainbow sites...there are a great many of them these days and the feds are more interested in the old old Family cyber hook-up...welcomehome. Folks like Garrick Beck, Joannie Freedom & other folks who have had direct contact with the feds for many years post on the welcome home e-mail list...and since the feds are most concerned with our non-existant 'leaders' and these folks seem to be in the 'leader' ranks due to their personal stances with federal authorities, they are at a higher risk of being watched on the net. That's not to say that the feds do not monitor welcomehere, the tribes.net groups, the yahoo groups, the myspace groups or our wonderful Rainbow group on HipForums, cuz the probably do, but they aren't interested in hi-jacking any of it...
thanks for the info hippiestead. Not being a rainbow I'm not into the politics or cliques or whatever takes place there (I must get out to a gathering one of these days!). I had thought that rainbows didn't want to stand out individually, and that's why I started the forum here. I am aware of the legal risks that come with becoming too obvious an organizer for the events. That's why I'm a bit surprised someone else went to the trouble to create a rainbow site. But from what I can see it's informative and organized. And yes I guess it's been around awhile, although for that long there aren't that many posts. Despite what some have claimed I have no problem with ppl going to other websites besides this. In fact there's absolutely no way I could stop them even if I wanted to. It's only spam that concerns me here. Fortunately rainbows don't do shit like that usually. Any website that has been around a long time and proved itself to be a great service to the larger hip community is cool with me. Websites like that don't need to spam other sites to get traffic.
Legally speaking welcomehere is not a Rainbow site...it is supposed to be an 'information point of light' for the Peace Conspiracy, Rainbow, and for the 'A Gathering of the Tribes'.
If there is no formal organization it can have no legal standing, organization wise, and that's the cool thing about anarchy. But individuals if they accept any sort of legal responsibility for the activities of the group, they become targets for those who would deny people the right to freely assemble and associate, right?
Exactly! Oh course, with Rainbow, we have several individuals who were targeted before accepting legal responsiblity, deemed 'secret leaders' by the federal authorities and pulled into court as organizers. They fought most of the cases as individuals, lost, were fined in the early cases, then some of these folks did prison time fighting for Rainbow's 'non-organization' status. Folks are trying to work with the Deptartment of Agriculture (the agency in charge of managing National Forests) to for 'operating plans' that would preclude the signing of a permit...only time will tell if this stragety works. I do know that the freedom to assemble has been greatly changed by the Patriot Act...permits must be obtained to assemble within cities, with city ordinances to stop people before even reaching the federal court system...
Thanks for the info. I probably over-reacted to a simple software crash... But it was disturbing to see Rainbow family calling for help when a family member's been arrested, and the posts won't show. And then to run into a roadblock and arrests and vehicle seizures on the way to the camp the very next day... Past experiences led me to some perhaps extreme assumptions... The LEOs can get so extreme in their own "assumptions" about those who believe in true freedom. We have a Center for Domestic Preparedness here at the old Fort McClellan that trains first-responders nationwide. When I went through the Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Caloun County program, we took a tour of the CDP. They opened with a retired Colonel giving a PowerPoint presentation on the need for the CDP and the growing threat of domestic terrorism (mind you this was shortly after the OKC bombing and long before 9/11 and the Patriot Act). I was stunned and apalled by the PowerPoint presentation. One particular slide reminded me of the McCarthy era. It had a map of "known terrorist organizations" on US soil with names of the supposed terrorist groups. I knew something didn't "feel" right about the presentation and I even publicly made the comment that all of the hype sounded like McCarthyism to me. This facility trains LEOs, firefighters, ambulance EMTs, nurses, and other first-responders from nationwide and they are (were?) all given this same PowerPoint presentation at the start of their training. After the tour of the facility was over, I went home and got on the internet and keyword searched each of these proclaimed to be "domestic terrorism organizations." Then I got really apalled. Some were actually ne'er do wells like skinhead racist groups that are potentially dangerous to social harmony. But most were no worse than the average Rainbow family gathering. One was particularly disconcerting. It was the owner of a large forest raising sustainable timber (in Indiana I believe) where the owner opens up the land every year for a giant free speech gathering. Yes, some skinheads do show up to spew their venom on the free speech platforms, and so do some others with extreme views, but the venue itself is only about free speech. And yet the man who sponsors this free speech event was listed by a Federal Agency on this PowerPoint map as a known domestic terrorist! I decided to email this man and correspond with him to find out if he truly was innocent of the domestic terrorist claim being publicly told to first responders from across the nation. He didn't know anything about the government watching him as a domestic terrorist, much less telling every LEO in the nation that he was a domestic terrorist. I sent him a xerox of my printed copy of the powerpoint presentation for his information, and we corresponded a few more times. This man is a true patriot. He loves this country and he loves the constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no way under heaven any sane person could consider this man a terrorist, but the Feds have labeled him as one anyway, and they were telling every first responder they train that he is a known terrorist. If it had been me, I would have approached the ACLU about a defamation lawsuit against the Federal Government! If this man can be labeled a terrorist, any of us on this website can definitely be deemed terrorists by the Feds... because we all believe in free speech, and that was apparently this man's only offense. We stopped corresponding and I don't know what ever came of it, but it was enough to wake me up to just how out of control this government has gotten. And that was in the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno days. It seems to have only gotten worse since. I am a mainstream businessman and part of the economic engine of my community (I help employ about 25 people). I'm not a live in the woods Rainbow. I don't use drugs or even drink alcohol, nor do I smoke. It may seem odd to some of you for me to be hanging out with hippies and to consider myself a "Rainbow" even if most would clearly label me, and probably deservedly so, a "yuppie hippie." But I believe in freedom. I believe in the vision of the founding fathers of this country. And I believe in protecting mother earth. I appreciate the Rainbow ethos and I want to protect it for the good of our nation. I'm the kind of yuppie hippie that is planning on building a net-zero energy home if I can manage to complete construction before the economy collapses. My career is involved in protecting the world from sewage spills. I leverage my business relationships to help mother earth. Later this year, PBS will be airing a documentary I spearheaded called "Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure," which explains what it will take to keep our sanitation systems sustainable in order to protect mother earth... I am a member of the Sierra Club. I am an environmentalist. I am a true American patriot. I may be part of corporate America, but I am not driven by greed. In fact, I've done a fairly good job within my industry of helping to clean up our business practices and forcing everyone to "compete fair." At any rate, it galls me when greedy, power-hungry people seize control of our government and try to strip away our constitutional freedoms to satiate their appetites for power and wealth accumulation at the expense of our society. Hippies are the grass roots resistance to materialism, greed, and power. I respect that and will always choose to associate with those who have such an ethos, even if I don't always appear to fit in. regards, "Rant"
Wow Bro, you're a busy ole hippie, ain't ya? Met a bro once who went by the handle 'Corporate John'...the bro's wife would claim he was on some fancy business retreat each year, when really he was at the Gathering, trading small gifts for smiles & groovin' on the Rainbow vibe. And I understand your worries about the man & welcomehere being down...you know something's goin' on when the LEOs tell you what your name is instead of asking what it is...
Wow, that was a great rant, Rant! Yes, it's all too easy to get on a gov't list now, and as usual, nearly impossible to get off it. If martial law is declared, they're going to pick up everyone on those lists and put them in camps. And it ain't gonna be like summer camp, although there will likely be a lot of Rainbows there. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that before we give Bushit the boot!
I always worry 'bout them bushes declaring martial law to extend their terms.... many a year, me, JuJu & the crew have joked that the feds were just going to build a fence around us all...but I don't know if Fam would be that lucky...most of us wouldn't blink an eye if we were suddenly trapped in the National Forest The scary part for me is knowing that the feds have been experimenting on Gatherings for a long time...they use us to test how particular crowd control methods will work, to see how far differing peoples can be pushed before they revolt and for regular old training purposes.
