The Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.
The Rainbow Family has no leaders, no structure, no official spokespersons, no official documents, and no membership. Documents are produced as needed and maintained by various groups, and certain themes are consistently seen in this Rainbow literature, namely: Love, Peace, Non-violence, Environmentalism, Non-consumerism and non-commercialism, Volunteerism, Respect for others, Consensus process and Diversity.
Although each event is more or less anarchic, practical guidelines have been reached through the consensus process and are documented in a Mini-manual.
Rainbow Gatherings and the "Rainbow Family of Living Light" are an expression of a Utopian impulse, combined with bohemianism and hippie culture, with roots clearly traceable to the 1960s counterculture. Mainstream society is viewed as "Babylon," connoting the participants' widely held belief that modern lifestyles and systems of government are unhealthy and out of harmony with the natural systems of planet Earth.
Talking circles are one of the many features of rainbow gatherings. Each participant in the circle talks in turn, all the others present listening in silence. A ceremonial stick or feather is passed from person to person around the circle to mark their role as the speaker. If they don't wish to speak, they may hold or pass the stick in silence.
There are no paid organizers, although there are volunteers ("focalizers") who are crucial to setting up the gathering site. Participants are expected to contribute money, labor, and/or material. All labor is voluntary and never formally compensated.
Within the Rainbow Gathering, security, conflict resolution, and emergency situations are handled by the Shanti Sena ("Peace Keepers"). Hypothetically, anyone at a Rainbow Gathering can call out "Shanti Sena!" (instead of the more widely recognized "Help!") and swiftly receive assistance from those nearby who are ready and willing to deal with the given situation. Shanti Sena also sometimes act as liaisons to observers and law enforcement officers who patrol the Rainbow Gathering, often tracking the movements of police and park rangers through the gathering, and overseeing the interactions between officers and people attending the gathering to ensure that neither group instigates or takes part in illegal or inflammatory confrontations.
The original Rainbow Gathering was in 1972, in the US. From there it spread within the US and throughout the rest of the world. The first Rainbow gathering, a four-day event in Colorado in 1972, was organized by youth counterculture "tribes" based in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Twenty thousand people faced police roadblocks, threatened civil disobedience, and were allowed onto National Forest land. This was intended to be a onetime event; however, a second gathering in Wyoming the following year materialized, at which point an annual event was declared. The length of the gatherings has since expanded beyond the original four-day span, as have the number and frequency of the gatherings.
The largest Rainbow Gatherings pose significant logistical challenges, providing up to 30,000 people with food, water, sanitation, medical care, and order in remote settings. Relations with law enforcement and local communities are frequently at issue. Media coverage is often unfavorable, focusing on drug use, nudity, and the countercultural aspects of the assemblage. Nevertheless, the Gatherings have proven durable phenomena for 37 years.
main source: wikipedia.org
The Rainbow Family has no leaders, no structure, no official spokespersons, no official documents, and no membership. Documents are produced as needed and maintained by various groups, and certain themes are consistently seen in this Rainbow literature, namely: Love, Peace, Non-violence, Environmentalism, Non-consumerism and non-commercialism, Volunteerism, Respect for others, Consensus process and Diversity.
Although each event is more or less anarchic, practical guidelines have been reached through the consensus process and are documented in a Mini-manual.
Rainbow Gatherings and the "Rainbow Family of Living Light" are an expression of a Utopian impulse, combined with bohemianism and hippie culture, with roots clearly traceable to the 1960s counterculture. Mainstream society is viewed as "Babylon," connoting the participants' widely held belief that modern lifestyles and systems of government are unhealthy and out of harmony with the natural systems of planet Earth.
Talking circles are one of the many features of rainbow gatherings. Each participant in the circle talks in turn, all the others present listening in silence. A ceremonial stick or feather is passed from person to person around the circle to mark their role as the speaker. If they don't wish to speak, they may hold or pass the stick in silence.
There are no paid organizers, although there are volunteers ("focalizers") who are crucial to setting up the gathering site. Participants are expected to contribute money, labor, and/or material. All labor is voluntary and never formally compensated.
Within the Rainbow Gathering, security, conflict resolution, and emergency situations are handled by the Shanti Sena ("Peace Keepers"). Hypothetically, anyone at a Rainbow Gathering can call out "Shanti Sena!" (instead of the more widely recognized "Help!") and swiftly receive assistance from those nearby who are ready and willing to deal with the given situation. Shanti Sena also sometimes act as liaisons to observers and law enforcement officers who patrol the Rainbow Gathering, often tracking the movements of police and park rangers through the gathering, and overseeing the interactions between officers and people attending the gathering to ensure that neither group instigates or takes part in illegal or inflammatory confrontations.
The original Rainbow Gathering was in 1972, in the US. From there it spread within the US and throughout the rest of the world. The first Rainbow gathering, a four-day event in Colorado in 1972, was organized by youth counterculture "tribes" based in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Twenty thousand people faced police roadblocks, threatened civil disobedience, and were allowed onto National Forest land. This was intended to be a onetime event; however, a second gathering in Wyoming the following year materialized, at which point an annual event was declared. The length of the gatherings has since expanded beyond the original four-day span, as have the number and frequency of the gatherings.
The largest Rainbow Gatherings pose significant logistical challenges, providing up to 30,000 people with food, water, sanitation, medical care, and order in remote settings. Relations with law enforcement and local communities are frequently at issue. Media coverage is often unfavorable, focusing on drug use, nudity, and the countercultural aspects of the assemblage. Nevertheless, the Gatherings have proven durable phenomena for 37 years.
main source: wikipedia.org
