Re: Historical accounts of the first Rainbow gathering Colorado 1972

Further Letters On Rainbow's Origins - Part I

This letter from Jodey was included in the 1996 Rainbow Anthology.

This is from the introduction of my book on Rainbow about the context
of the times when Barry Plunker (of Marble Mount Outlaws) met up with
Garrick Beck (of Temple Tribe) and they began to plan the first
gathering.

In May, 1970, the radical youth movement reached its height. When the
USA invaded Cambodia, the National Guard killed four anti-war
demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio and two at Jackson State
University in Mississippi. Student strikes closed down over 400
universities and colleges across the country in protest against the
invasion and the killings. That was the week that Chuck Windsong, who
was deeply upset about the killings, went into the forests of
Washington to camp out with his cousin Barry. Barry had left
Haight-Ashbury long before and was now helping draft dodgers and
deserters escape across the border into Canada. That week of student
week of invasion and killings and student strikes, Barry and Chuck
started making plans to invite everyone who would come to stand in a
circle on a mountaintop on a Fourth of July.

It took over two years of preparation before Barry, Chuck, Garrick,
Karen, Jean Vision and the others could have the silent circle at the
first Rainbow Gathering in the mountains of Colorado on July 4, 1972.
During those two years, the left-wing movement went through a period of
decline. Already in June, 1969, Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS), the main radical youth organization, had split at its national
convention. SDS chapters around the country had mostly refused to
follow any of the rival factions. Thus, the student strike of May,
1970, was not coordinated by any national organization and there was no
way of keeping the energy going.

By this time, large numbers of SDS'ers and other leftists were mentally
and physically exhausted from five years of working against a war that
went on and on. In May, 1970, there was hope that the revolution - or
at least the end of the war - would come soon. By that fall the hope
was dying down. Some places the hope died later than others. In
outlying areas, young people were just starting to turn onto the
counter-culture and the vague hope of the revolution that had come to
them at second and third and tenth hand from the radical youth
organizations, while in the main centers, the hope was dying. There was
a brief surge of hope again around the May Day anti-war demonstrations
of May, 1971, but the hope died down again.

The left-wing people who had provided the moral leadership for the
counter-culture went out of action. Some went to graduate school,
others to a piece of land in the country and others to heavy alcohol
and drug use. Some kept on with the struggle, but the media weren't
paying attention and the goals looked further away than ever. In 1972,
an article in "U.S. News an(i- World Report" noticed that as protest
died down, crime in campus areas was increasing. With no more goal of a
revolution to give a moral purpose, the dropouts and runaways in
college fringe areas started stealing more and more. As trust broke
down, students and other people were no longer ready to give them a
place to stay. The use of LSI) and other psychedelics declined. There
was a big increase in the use of alcohol, downers and heroin.
Apparently in most people, psychedelics inspire bright, hopeful visions
and when people no longer believe they can make these visions into
reality, they prefer to blot them out.

As young people lost hope that the revolution would come soon to
transform the world, many came to believe that Jesus would come soon to
do the same thing. Jesus freak groups grew rapidly in counter-culture
communities. They usually disapproved of some things that were
considered basic in the counter-culture - pot smoking, non-married se*
and protesting against the war. The basic viewpoint of most Jesus freak
groups was socially conservative. Although most Jesus freaks did not
think of themselves as political at all, they disapproved of protest -
anything that might hint that people could make the world a better
place by their own efforts. Only Jesus could do that at his coming.
Jesus freak groups gave young people stability and hope as the
counter-culture communities around them fell into moral chaos, but they
didn't have the kind of moral leadership in the counter-culture that
the leftwing groups once had. The Jesus freaks did not see their job as
improving the scene, but as helping their converts to be in the scene
but not of it. The same thing is true of the numerous eastern religious
groups such as Krishna Consciousness that began to flourish at this
time. They regarded the counter-culture not as something good in itself
that should be developed, but as a hunting ground for converts.

Among the Plains Indians when they were conquered by the whites, the
Ghost Dance arose - the faith that an Indian Savior would appear who
would renew the earth and bring back to life all the Indians that white
guns and diseases had slain and all the buffalo the whites had
destroyed. It would be sudden - all that would be necessary was to keep
dancing the Ghost Dance - making that energy circle, dancing until very
soon the power came that would redeem the land for the Indians. For
some, the first Rainbow Gathering in Colorado was a Ghost Dance for the
hippie movement.

On July 3, 1972 Phil Coyote looked over the thousands of people he had
helped prepare the way for in the Colorado mountains. These people had
dared a National Guard road block to gather at the foot of Table
Mountain, a holy mountain of the Arapaho Indians, ready to go to the
top on the Fourth of July and make the silent circle as the spirit had
said. The counter-culture was in decay. The non-religious protest
movement that had given it purpose was too weak to stop the decay. So a
spiritual renewal movement had brought these people to the Rainbow
Gathering at Table Mountain. Phil tells his hope at that time - the
hope of many who came - for the immediate redemption of the
counter-culture, a vision straight out of the Ghost Dance: "I thought
it was the end of an old world, the start of a new one. We expected
things at the gathering too quick. We expected that the fences would
come down around the world, the prisons would crumble, the cities would
be gone and the buffalo would come back and Christ would return." The
next day, the great circle on the mountain was held. There was no big,
sudden, universal change. Phil Coyote comments, "A lot of different
people went up to Table Mountain to wait for the world to end. It
didn't." But Phil didn't go up the mountain to see what did happen.
Apparently Table Mountain is a center in a mountain complex that might
be compared to a human nervous system. This center would amplify the
energy raised by this huge circle of intensely praying silent people as
they gathered on the day of independence with the sun directly
overhead. Many Rainbow people deeply enjoy the release of energy done
by what Light Owl calls "a lot of strong praying." JaySun apparently
considers the "boogying and praying" he did in Colorado to be different
aspects of the same thing.

The human energy was apparently supported by the energy from the
natural world, The deepest feeling of Rainbow people seems to be that
the inmost energy of humans, the sun, the mountains and the other
natural objects is the same as what has been called period or spirits.
Chuck 'Windsong told me, "Barry and I seen Christ appear on "able
Mountain. At every gathering people have seen him ascend." I asked
Chuck did he mean descend, but he insisted Christ' ascended from the
earth. In other words, 'the earth we are on now is a sacred place as
much as any far-off heaven or different state of consciousness. This
sacredness is recognized in many ways, from praying on a mountaintop to
picking up cigarette butts and waste paper from the ground after the
gathering is over. I have used the word energy a lot. It is a frequent
word in Rainbow. Someone will tell a friend, "I like our energy." Matt
would not use cocaine because the greed of the coke dealers "fucked up
the energy around the cocaine." Once when somebody started to crush a
cockroach on a blanket at a gathering, the blanket's owner,
nine-year-old Erica, came running to prevent the insect from being
killed. "No!" she shouted. "I don't want that kind of energy in my
blanket!" The world is felt as all alive with everything radiating
energy - good or bad that can connect it to everything else. And there
is trust that the most basic energy is good.

Of course not enough energy was raised on Table Mountain to transform
the world in a moment. But there was enough generated to begin to drive
away the darkness that had fallen on the counter-culture. A long, slow
process began there of individuals changing and communities trying to
form, using the Rainbow Gatherings as a focus. It is not being done by
a spectacular, apocalyptic force from the outside, but by slow, steady
work - like digging a latrine at a gathering. The Rainbow Family links
together many thousands of people - more all the time. The Family is
assuming the moral leadership among counter-culture youth that the
left-wing groups had in the sixties. When I hitch around the USA, many
young people who pick me up have heard of the gathering and wish they
could go. If they know nothing else about Rainbow, they believe It
stands for share what you have and don't steal.

Best wishes, Jodey (postmark 1/28/91).

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This letter from Jodey was included in the 1996 Rainbow Anthology.

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