Prepared by the Colorado Legal Eagles <info@coloradolegaleagles.org >
[Denver] -- Video was posted on the Internet Thursday (8/3) of a confrontation between attendees of the North American Annual Rainbow Gathering and the U.S. Forest Service at a Forest Service roadblock on June 20, 2006 in the Routt National Forest, north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The video clearly shows that the Forest Service lied about the Rainbows hurtling sticks and stones at them during the confrontation.
The Rainbows were peaceful and did nothing more than try to surround the Forest Service with a prayer circle. Many shouts of "We love you!" and "We bring peace!" are heard. Although some obscenities and name-calling can also be heard, there were no sticks or stones thrown as the Forest Service claimed. The gathering attendees are armed only with flowers, guitars, and American flags. However, the Forest Service law enforcement officers at the roadblock were heavily armed with semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, pepper spray and mounted patrolmen.
The Forest Service tried to shut down the Gathering this year because the group failed to obtain a permit for the estimated a 20,000 attendees. The Rainbows contend that they are a group without structure or leaders and therefore no one has the authority to request a permit for the Gathering. They instead work with the Forest Service to create Operating Plans.
The event, which attracts about 20,000 people per year, comes about through the efforts of volunteers who gather every year to commune with nature and celebrate peace and love. The Gathering's focal point is a July 4 prayer circle, where thousands of people hold hands in a circle for hours and Om and pray for world peace.
The Forest Service employed an unprecedented media and public dis-information campaign this year, aimed at discrediting the Rainbow Gathering attendees as "drifters, criminals, homeless people, runaways, sexual predators, drug addicts, skinheads and members of violent groups ranging from the Earth Liberation Front to the Ku Klux Klan." http://www.coloradolegaleagles.org/rainbow/2006-06-22-csindy.html
The Forest Service also tried to paint Rainbow volunteers as destroying the land, despite years positive Forest Service reports on past Gatherings. They ignore the fact that every year after the Gathering, the Forest Service praises the Rainbows on their ability to clean up the sites and leave no trace of the event. http://www.coloradolegaleagles.org/rainbow/
The Forest Service paints themselves as guardians of the National Forest
against thousands of undesirable human beings. They neglect to publicize
the fact that they denied all permit applications this year because a
logging company has a previous permit to build logging roads and cut down
the forests in the same area later this summer. A few thousand peaceful
feet over the course of a week are no comparison to the destruction a
logging company will do to the forest in one day. But the Forest Service
propaganda machine chooses to ignore this inconvenient truth. The truth
is in the video of the roadblock on June 20, 2006, when the Rainbows
peacefully overcame the Forest Service law enforcement officers attempting
to shut down the gathering.
href=http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/sites/co2006/video/
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