Talk to the Washtenaw Community Action Team on Building a Radical Co-op Movement

I was recently asked to present on co-ops to the Washtenaw Community Action Team. The night it presented the group was also attended by about 17 bikers with a group called Co-cycle, cooperative activists who are biking across the country to learn about co-ops, and in celebration of 2012 the year of the co-op. The cross-pollination between the Community Action Team and the Co-cyclers led to a lively discussion afterwards. Regrettably I don't have notes from that. Below are my notes from the talk, because I talked off of the text some and did not read it word for word, these notes are not exactly what I said, but they capture the basic points. 

First a disclaimer, while I am a board member of the Peoples Food Co-op my thoughts here are my own and do not represent the position of the board. 

2012 was recognized by the United Nations as the international year of the cooperative. I think this is a big deal and I hope that this discussion tonight can help do what the ICA, the International Cooperative Association hopes will emerge from the international year of the cooperative, that greater attention will be brought to the importance of cooperatives.

 What I'd like to do tonight is first address some theoretical and historical background regarding the place of co-ops in left strategy, then I’ll talk a bit about the scope of cooperatives and then a little bit about what is happening with co-ops in Michigan. Then I want to raise some issues that I think speaks to the limitations of cooperatives, then I'd like to return to theory and discuss cooperative values, and some important co-op vision, finally I'll suggest some the elements that I believe are important for building a radical co-op movement. In dialect terms that theory, practice , theory, praxis.

Progressives and specifically that segment of progressives who call themselves the anticapitalist left needs strategies and tactics for economic change. I think that questions of strategy and tactics are immensely important so I want to start by mentioning the main strategies that I believe have dominated left praxis at least in America, or at least through my lenses as an activist over the last 35 years. There is revolutionary politics that seeks to organize and educate, or trained for a potential revolutionary moment. There is unionism, direct organizing of workers to struggle against their bosses for better economic and working conditions. And then there are efforts at political reform. A fourth strategy is building cooperatives to provide direct ownership of the means of production, or systems of distribution, by workers and/or consumers. My friend Donald Roberts suggests that the first co-ops were organized by slaves in ancient Egypt as a way of survival in the context of their enslavement. With a nod to my Norwegian heritage I might like to find co-op roots in the cooperative villages of Scandinavia, on the other hand there's plenty about Viking marauders I want nothing to do with. Usually in English-speaking countries the Rochdale co-op is seen as they're beginning of the modern cooperative movement in 1844.  John Curl’s book “for all the people: uncovering the hidden history of cooperation cooperative movements and communalism in America “ demonstrates that cooperatives were alive in America before 1844, but more importantly his history shows how cooperative organizing went hand-in-hand with union organizing throughout the 1800s. Building a cooperative society based on cooperative institutions was in fact very much a part of revolutionary vision in early America. My take is that we have lost that vision and regaining it is an important task for building a successful left at our current point in historyMy opinion is that this fourth strategy is increasingly our best option for forwarding a progressive agenda, and unfortunately has often been overlooked by the left.

My friend Donald Roberts suggests that the first co-ops were organized by slaves in ancient Egypt as a way of survival in the context of their enslavement. With a nod to my Norwegian heritage I might like to findco-op roots in the cooperative villages of Scandinavia, on the other hand there's plenty about Viking marauders I want nothing to do with. Usually in English-speaking countries the Rochdale co-op is seen as the beginning of the modern cooperative movement in 1844.  John Curl’s book “for all the people: uncovering the hidden history of cooperation cooperative movements and communalism in America “ demonstrates that cooperatives were alive in America before 1844, but more importantly his history shows how cooperative organizing went hand-in-hand with union organizing throughout the 1800s. Building a cooperative society based on cooperative institutions was in fact very much a part of revolutionary vision in early America. My take is that we have lost that vision and regaining it is an important task for building a successful left at our current point in history

So where are we currently ?

The cooperative movement is really larger than most people realize. Let me share some quick statistics: worldwide there are over 1 billion co-op members , there are over 300 million co-op members in the United States. But counting membership can be misleading, I am probably counted at least three times. My bank, my insurance, my grocery store are all cooperatives. another way to look at Co-op membership in the U.S. is that 120 million individuals belong to at least one co-op or credit union. The 30,000 co-ops in America provide 2 million jobs.  Some cooperatives are owned by consumers, of the cooperatives are worker owned. There are only about 300 worker owned cooperatives in the United States. The largest of these workers cooperatives is a home healthcare cooperative with over 1000 worker owners. If we look beyond true worker cooperatives we see 1100 worker owned companies with around 13 million worker owners. This is the number I really want you to focus on 13 million worker owners. Now were talking about many people who are owners through employee stock ownership plans. Some ESOP companies as they're called are entirely owned by the workers, others are not. Nonetheless, 13 million workers is nearly twice the number of union workers in the private sector.  Credit unions are the co-ops in the world of finance.  There are over 7000 credit unions the United States with combined assets approaching 1 trillion. The occupy movement deserves credit for helping that grow. Last year with the campaign for people to leave the big banks.

Okay what about the state of cooperatives in Michigan?

Let's start with Ann Arbor and Washtenaw county, some of the easily identified coops include: The “HUD housing coops”: Colonial square, Arrowwood, Pine Lake, University Townhouses, & Forest hills then there is the student housing co-ops, The Inter-Cooperative Council, my own community co-op Hei Wa House,  in the food sector we have the Peoples Food Coop, and the Ypsilanti Food Coop, there is a new growers co-op in Ypsilanti, and the food hub may eventually be organizing as a cooperative. The campus group houses (co-ops, fraternities, and sororities)  have Student Buyers Association. The Community Farm of Ann Arbor is a community supported agriculture project that is organized as a co-op. The Potters Guild is a cooperative ceramic studio. There are about 5 local Nursery school Co-ops, Several Credit unions are active in our area, University of Michigan Credit Union, is perhaps the best known credit union in Ann Arbor, but Lake Trust Credit Union is open for membership from anyone living in Michigan.

The membership for food co-ops in Michigan numbers around 20,000 (this doesn’t include buyers clubs) I sit on the board of the peoples food co-op, and in many ways the peoples food co-op is very successful, our membership is considerably larger than other food co-ops in the state. Our sales are good and the storefront is a nexus for the local community. Let me put out an advertisement, we are looking for a new general manager, someone with retail business experience, good people skills, and at least a little bit of an ability to do “vision”.

 Although Detroit lost its main food co-op a couple of years back, there is at least one and maybe more efforts to start a food co-op in Detroit now.

Let me get away from numbers and lists, and talk about some interesting projects, there is a grassroots cooperative organizing network with for lack of consensus on a better name, is called, the latter-day society of equitable Pioneers. This group organized out a circle Pines is hoping to pump energy into the co-op movement by putting young activists together with co-op old-timers. I know at least one project that has spontaneously emerged from this cross-fertilization.

It's also through this organization that I learned about Deb Olson's work with the center for community-based enterprise and the Detroit community cooperative. The idea here is to build a network of workers cooperatives, and if I understand things correctly they have launched a business services cooperative, an organization that can provide resources such as marketing and accounting and so on for small co-op startups. Now they are launching Sew Detroit workers co-op, and I have had some conversations with one of their organizers about the possibility of a home healthcare workers cooperative

I should also mention that I have heard a number of co-op oriented activists in Ann Arbor speak about developing an Ann Arbor co-op business incubator,

I now want to take a look at Coops with our eyes wide open, I want to discuss some of the limitations of coops as a strategy for radical economic change.

First I want to point out that co-ops are really two different models of doing business. There is the consumer co-op model which tends to dominate cooperatives at least in this country, and then there is the worker co-op model. I believe that the latter tends to have much more radical potential, but represents a much smaller segment of the cooperative sector.

Then there is the issue of what we could call bosses coops: Land O Lakes butter, Ocean Spray,  True Value hardware, Ace hardware, best Western hotels, even some KFC franchises are all cooperatives, cooperatives of farm or business owners, the employees of these businesses are not part of the cooperative. Nonetheless, Ocean Spray is not Pepsi, our local True Value hardware store, Stadium Hardware is locally owned, Lowe's is not.

Then there is the problem of democracy, co-ops are democratically owned and run businesses, but making the democracy work can be a challenge. Even with our food co-op, with a little over 7000 members, it can be a challenge to even know what the will of the membership is. About 10% of the members participate in elections, and board members who are elected then create a framework for the general manager. The power of operations lie in the hands of the general manager. For the UM credit union, the board is elected and an annual meeting, and it is hard to imagine why your average credit union member would make an effort to get to that meeting. So much of what we call democracy in consumer co-ops might be better described as trusteeship. Still the presence of democratic mechanisms allows for democracy when situations arise where it is important.

Another issue: is that businesses fail. Co-ops are no exceptions. While it is true that co-ops are generally more resilient than other comparable businesses during economic downturns, co-ops can fail, taking community and/or worker resources with them.

A final concern I want to raise about cooperatives, is the lack of co-op driven political action. We all know that unions play a very important role in our political process. I think there may be a variety of reasons why we don't see similar engagement from cooperatives. This isn't to say co-ops never do anything political. For instance our food co-op is engaged with the campaign to label genetically engineered foods. But the scope of engagement is considerably less than what we see from unions, and, I would argue, considerably less than it should be.

Co-ops in theory stand for something, they are value based businesses. Many co-op members may be familiar with the co-op principles, but behind those principles stand co-op values. I have recently started to focus more on these values. The international organization for co-ops, the International Cooperative Association (ICA) identifies six co-op values: Self-help, Self-responsibility, Democracy, Equality, Equity, and Solidarity. I think that Self-help and Self-responsibility are particularly interesting because they are values that the right wing tends to try to claim as exclusively theirs. Beyond these values, which might be considered values for internal operation, the IAC also identifies four co-op ethics values, Honesty, Openness, Social responsibility and Caring for others.  It is out of these 10 values that the classic 7 co-op principles are articulated:

The following principles were adopted by the 1995 Centenary Congress of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA). They reflect how the co-operative values are put into practice.

1. Voluntary and Open Membership: Co-operatives are voluntary organisations open to all persons who qualify for membership and are willing to accept the responsibilities of membership without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.

2. Democratic Member Control: Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to their members. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic manner.

3. Member Economic Participation: Members contribute equitably to, and control democratically, the capital of their co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion with their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities as approved by membership.

4. Autonomy and Independence: Co-operatives are autonomous, self help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their

co-operative autonomy.

5. Education, Training and Information: Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, and employees so that they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.

6. Co-operation among Co-operators: Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.

7. Concern for the Community: Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.

In the most exciting cooperative projects in the United States today, we can see vision of how to build an economy based on from cooperative values and principles.

Gar Alprovitz author of America beyond capitalism : reclaiming our wealth & and the director of the democracy collaborative argues that wealth is a more important target than income, and that we should focus on building community wealth, this includes more than cooperatives, land trusts, and other community institutions, but his big project has been the Evergreen cooperatives in Cleveland. These are a series of workers cooperatives aimed at employing low income people from Cleveland, and giving them not just a job, but a share in the workplace. Key to this project success has been its strategic ties to the Cleveland foundation, and what he calls anchor institutions, in this case hospitals and universities. So far three co-ops are up and running, a green laundry, a solar leasing company, and a urban greenhouse growing salad greens. Gar says he's trying to model these co-ops after the Mondragon co-op system in Spain.

The Mondragon cooperatives (MCC) in Spain's Basque country. MCC is a 50-year-old thriving and ongoing experiment in radical democracy consisting of some 120 worker-owned cooperatives involving nearly 100,000 workers and allied with another 130 allied coops in the region, with revenues in 2011 of some $24 billion. &$33.5 billion in assets

While were talking about Mondragon, Mondragon and USW are developing a project that promises to be far-reaching. They have worker co-op collective-bargaining model that they plan to roll out in their own series of co-ops, starting interestingly enough with a green laundry modeled after Cleveland's laundry co-op.

Deb Olson’s development of the Detroit community cooperative is another project with a similar vision, launching in linking workers cooperatives, in order to create jobs and a whole lot more. This project has over seven years of preparation going into it and just now it is beginning to flourish. I only met Deb once at a weekend at circle Pines, what was clear to me was that she was clearly a visionary.

Where else is there potential for cooperatives, let me just give you one idea, Solar energy cooperatives are being organized in a number of communities. In Cleveland we see a workers co-op model of the solar leasing company. There appears to a highly decentralized solar consumer co-op model emerging in the DC area. One way solar consumer co-op can work, is allowing individuals to get the benefits of solar power when their own homes don't have solar access, by buying panels collectively, and for instance, putting them on a public building, and then individuals receiving returns proportionate to their investment. There are also tax reasons why I think a co-op model for solar power makes a lot of sense (I hope I'm understanding the tax issues here correctly). One of the beauties of solar power is that it allows for total decentralization of energy production. I think there's a link between decentralization of energy, and decentralization of political power. Our present tax structure allows for corporations to depreciate the value of equipment, in this case solar panels, as a homeowner, I don't have the same ability to depreciate my appliances, in this case solar panels. If I'm not mistaken a co-op should allow me to own the equivalent to my panels in value, while at the same time benefiting fully from depreciation.

But perhaps as exciting as anything that has recently happened in the co-op movement was the call by the people involved with Occupy Wall Street for people to shift their funds from traditional banks to credit unions. This action put the “movement” back in to the cooperative movement. The challenge is to keep the cooperative movement moving, going, to create ways for activists to participate, as activists, in building a cooperative economy.

Where do we go from here?

I think an interesting question is, at what point does building cooperative alternatives within the capitalist economy result in a real shift in the economy. I'm talking about a shift towards a more democratic, more egalitarian system. And how can we build a radical coop movement.

We need co-op leadership, this is part of the reason why I ran for the board of the food co-op in the first place. Let me again make a pitch for the general manager position that's open at the PFC. We also need organization & institution building. In many ways my proudest achievement as a co-op activist is the starting and development heiwa house cooperative. I would like to encourage any activist interested in building a cooperative economy, or a cooperative society to identify some human need that could be addressed through a cooperative institution, and then to set about building.

Beyond leadership, and organizations, movements are built around culture. When individuals identify as being part of a co-op movement then there is a co-op movement. We need co-op songs, and creative expression.

Finally I'll suggest that a radical co-op movement should have political goals, goals for legislative change that will help cooperatives to grow, but also broader political goals that reflect cooperative values.

The Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival

I went to the seventh Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival yesterday. Apparently the seven events have all happened in the past three years. This one has several before it was housed at the Rudolf Steiner high school.

The reskilling movement is aimed at sharing skills and practices that are useful for a resilient transition to an anticipated low carbon future. The assumption behind this movement is that we face twin challenges of peak oil which is the time where global oil production will be exceeded by global oil demand, and carbon driven global climate change. Reskilling, or the great reskilling is an idea that was put forth by Rob Hopkins, the man who also started the transition town movement. The transition town movement is essentially people working together to prepare local communities for these twin challenges. The Reskilling Festival in Ann Arbor was launched by people involved in the transition town movement. The basic idea of reskilling is that in a low carbon world we will have to know older skills that have been lost or forgotten, we will also need new skills to help us with the transition to a “post-carbon” consuming world.

While transition town and reskilling are responses to what many people think of as the end of the industrial age, these movements remind me of some of the social responses to the brutality of life early in the industrial age. The Luddites were those workers who saw the devastating effects of industrial production, and took to destroying factories as an act of self-defense. Ned Ludd for whom these radical conservatives were named is said to have destroyed a couple of knitting machine apparently driven mad by the monotony that they require. The arts and crafts movement, often described as a design, was started by a man named William Morris, and inspired by the thinking of John Ruskin. (Ruskin by the way was a major influence on Mahatma Gandhi, who proposed the development of India through its villages rather than industrial centers). One of the notions of the arts and crafts movement was that industrialization was leading to an impoverishment of style, and a deskilling of craftsmen. In fact we see that there is a skills curve in the technological advancement of production. At first advances in tools require greater skills, then a point is reached where the machine takes over and less skills needed. The outdoor summer camps which started in the 1800s was also a protest against the progressive leaning urbanized and industrialized world. In various forms these movements ideas and ideals have carried forward throughout the industrial period. Certainly the back to the land movement of the 1960s picked up many of these threads.

On the surface transition towns, and reskilling are movements that respond more to the material effects of industrial society on our environment, while past movements perhaps responded more to its effects on our souls. But a closer look shows that reskilling does embrace the spiritual and social skills we need in forging ahead. The festival offered classes in four general areas, home, food and garden, skills and crafts, and heart and soul. I was at the festival, in part, because I was asked to facilitate a class on co-counseling. Later in the day I attended a workshop based on the thinking of Joanna Macy, the Buddhist who has worked with issues of hope and despair in this time of global transition. I think this embrace of “heart and soul” skills is important. We need eco-technique, and eco-knowledge, but we also need eco-wisdom.

You can find out more about the specific programs that were offered yesterday at the Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival website http://a2reskilling.com/. It was an eclectic, and to be honest, and incomplete collection of classes. I want to report on the meeting that happened at the end of the day. This meeting was called to discuss the future of the Reskilling Festival. First let me say that this festival with nearly 30 classes was free and open to the public, its organizers were all volunteers, the Steiner school shared their space for free. But the two main organizers of the event are both stepping back. So the essential question of the meeting “was who is going to step forward?” This is not such an easy question to ask, the job clearly comes with a large time commitment. At the end of the meeting I did see a couple of people sign up to help.

Instead of focusing only on this need, the meeting raised the question of what we might want from such an event in the future. Various ideas were suggested, some of which were considerable divergences from the present format. There is nothing wrong with change, and any effort to teach the skills that the Reskilling Festival aims at promoting is promising. My own take on what direction the festival, or the local reskilling movement should take is really through the lens of what builds this movement as a community. At the same time that I was teaching the basics of co-counseling, the architect who helped me design my super insulated addition, and the man who runs the summer camp where my children have gotten to learn things like starting fires with flint and steel were both offering classes. This type of overlap of people with common ground, and the in the hall conversations between workshops and classes is the warp and weft with which community is woven. This is part of why simply posting videos of workshops on YouTube is not enough

One of the more exciting things I heard spoken at this meeting was reference to related efforts and projects, such as the Ann Arbor free skool . A real movement is made up of many efforts. To change things, to prepare for the coming change, or to help midwife what Joanna Macy calls the great turning, our little bit of reskilling as represented by this festival is not enough. The task in front of us is huge. Fortunately the Reskilling Festival is also not alone. Whether or not the leadership is found to organize a next Reskilling Festival, and I very much hope it is found, Ann Arbor will continue to have those of us who are interested in creating a sustainable and vibrant culture. The Reskilling Festival is a node that can help that culture to emerge. If you have lots of time up on your hands and are inspired by this vision for a future culture, the Reskilling Festival could use you.

The Rainbow Gathering, the Fourth of July, A Memoir

Summer solstice has just passed. I started the morning today reading the letter from some friends of mine who always seek a spiritual message in the tradition of a particular band of the Ojibway people on the solstice. But a week and a half after the solstice, all of the first week of July, there is an eclectic gathering of the Rainbow “tribes”. Those peoples who emerged as latter-day tribes in a conscious way first in the 1960s. The extended families of choice that in their diversity of colors, inclination, and orientation make a rainbow.

The first gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light (as they call themselves) was in 1972, apparently against a fair amount of government resistance.  Around 20,000 people finally got past the roadblock. At one of the few gatherings I ever attended, I walked in on a circle of people, where one storyteller was recounting this event, only to hear the end of the story, about a group of people climbing up some plateau and being met by others with food and hugs.

In the 1980s I made my way to three Rainbow Gatherings. Michigan in ‘83, Missouri in ‘85, and Pennsylvania in ‘86. There are lots of things that I liked about the Gatherings I attended. The sharing, and communal spirit, the beauty of being in the wilderness, the dedication of the hard-core Rainbow crowd to a good event, the care for the environment, and the amazing fact that these events are non-monetary. On the Fourth there is a big community circle and a prayer for world peace. But on the Fourth of July, one thing I particularly enjoyed was that it was possible to be with thousands of people, and not hear a single firecracker, not a single skyrocket. I don't believe I even saw a sparkler, a local manifestation of peace.

As a young anarchist attending these gathering, what I saw was a demonstration of the principles of anarchism brought into being in a small and temporary wilderness city. All decisions for the community as a whole were made by consensus in a general assembly. Of course these were sparsely attended assemblies, as most people preferred other ways of enjoying their week in the wilderness, but the mechanism was there, and from my observation, careful deliberation clearly occurred. Beyond the decisions for the community as a whole, the Rainbow Gathering is a celebration of freedom of choice. 

But freedom of choice in no way is a descent into chaos. Several large kitchens emerge capable of feeding thousands of people. Labor, supplies, and financial resources are all freely given. At the end of each meal they pass the magic Hat. No doubt there must be some who give a lot, but many of the gatherings attendance are hippies who live what might be called a marginal existence in the capitalist world of “Babylon”. But it isn't cash donations alone that make the kitchens happen. I remember traveling to my first gathering in northern Michigan with Lee and Sally and a couple of others packed into a little car, somehow in addition to all our bags, Lee harvested a crate of lettuce from his community garden plot, and that also made its way into the trunk. For another gathering I believe we scavenged some granola, or flour in a 50 pound bag from a local dumpster.

Here I was among thousands of “my people” and yet I ran into the problem of only knowing a handful of them and feeling quite isolated at times. It was through this isolation that I learned the important lesson, that you want to make friends, or you're feeling lonely, it's a good idea to volunteer in the community kitchen. There are always onions to chop or potatoes to peel. My favorite kitchen experience, only because it was amazing to me to see it happening in the wilderness, was the soy kitchen. At the time I worked making tofu at a cooperative back in Ann Arbor. It is a process that requires some labor, grinding beans, cooking beans, extracting the liquid milk, curdling it and then pressing it. Cleanliness is also important. And here was a fine operation soybean slurry cooking in a large 55 gallon drum, instead of the press system I was used to, the slurry was poured into a sack that was hung from a tree and twisted to extract the milk. The final product, the tofu, was then given to other kitchens to turn into dinner. And dinners were served up free to anyone who had a plate. Each kitchen had its own name and identity. I particularly remember the good food that the Krishna kitchen made. Of course they always put a little sugar in the cream of wheat.

Other functions of the community were met by similar principles of voluntary association. Healthcare, childcare, water and sanitary services, people working to resolve conflicts in the community, I believe I even saw some emergency housing services, and the dedicated rainbow hard-core stay around for months after the gathering to re-seed trails and make it so you can't tell the gathering was there a year later.

Of course all is not perfect in paradise, there has been an ongoing struggle with the Park Service, over the use of the National Forests. The Park Service have wanted the gathering to apply for a permit.  The Gathering, describing itself as a non-organization of nonmembers lacks any entity to apply for a permit. Further, those from the Rainbow Family side of things will point out that the Constitution grants the right to peaceably assemble. But my impression is that at the end of the day, the “Rainbows” generally remain on good terms with local Park service folks, and their care for the land is appreciated.

Then there is the problem of drugs and alcohol. Of course, drugs are accepted at  gatherings.  In fact, for some they are a sacrament. I remember a peyote tea tent, where one man offered an all-night ceremony, the tea was not very strong, I had one cup and felt the faintest of effects. But I imagine that if someone stayed the whole night sipping a cup every hour or so, it would have become quite the peyote experience.  I remember seeing a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms that a man said he grew all year long just to be able to bring to the gathering. Alcohol is another issue. In general, alcohol is not favored at rainbow gatherings, but there are plenty of rainbow brothers and sisters who struggle with alcoholism. There is a camp on the edge of the encampment that is alcohol friendly. But alcohol elsewhere meets with antagonism. I remember a discussion where an “old timer” suggested if you see someone with the six pack, a group of you could descend on that person, and “help them” drink the beer. I don't know how useful this suggestion would be in practice, but it does suggest something about the direct action spirit of “Rainbows”. There is a group of people calling themselves Shanti-Sena after Gandhi's term for peace force. When conflicts, alcohol-related or otherwise, emerge the Shanti-Sena come out of the woodwork, or should I say come out of the woods and worked to defuse the conflict.

Although it's been over 20 years since I've been to a rainbow gathering proper, I still respect and honor the community that starts with the search by a site committee.  And then in June slowly grows as backwoods campers lay sticks and stones as guidelines for future trails. And then in late June kitchens began to grow, and numbers began to grow. And by July 4^th thousands of people inhabit this Temporary Autonomous Zone. And finally in late July and through August a hearty volunteer crew repair the land from the stress of millions of footsteps.

My partner's brother is there again this summer as he often is, helping to focalize the Turtle Soup kitchen (not to worry no turtles were harmed in the making of this kitchen or its vegan food). I wish him and the rest of the rainbow gathering a happy Fourth of July, and successful prayers for world peace.