Red-throated Loon: Rainbow Organization, Anti-militarism at Rainbow, Universal Health Care in California?

Rainbow is fascinating for its organization. It's very loose, and has worked out over the years, pretty organically. I think a number of people stay in touch during the year, especially those who made the kitchens go the previous year, and organize around this. In some years, Rainbow prints something, occasionally not.


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And the Rainbow Gathering now is multi-generational. Kids of folks who attended Rainbow in the 1970s are coming to the Gathering these days. I haven't heard of grandkids coming yet.

I met Ian at this Gathering in a little camp at some distance from the main meadow, near where I was camping. His mother had come to Rainbow in the early 70s when she was 16. Around age 18 himself, he was wondering whether to go into the military or not. His mother had encouraged him to come to this Gathering, because she had loved it decades ago.

In a way, he observed, the Rainbow Gathering is the opposite of the military. He had smoked a lot of pot in high school, and was kind of at loose ends now with what to do with his life. At his parent's home in Sante Fe, there was a whole wall of photographs of relatives who had gone into the military, particularly the navy. He wondered whether he should apply. He had stopped smoking pot a few weeks ago, so, as he observed, he was actively thinking about it. But, despite the attractions of structure, an avenue away from his current life washing dishes, a decent income, and rich, educational opportunities after 4 years of service, his friends in the service already had all warned him against going into the service. Still, he was actively considering it.

I mentioned Quakers and Friends' historic peace testimony, as well as conscientious objection, as an alternative for Ian. Quakers have long looked for, and created opportunities for, an alternative to militarism. Friends these days are very concerned about youth and militarism issues, - see the AFSC's website, for example. I encouraged Ian to call the American Friends' Service Committee in Sante Fe. Perhaps they knew of ways to earn as good money as in the military, but not in war-related ways. I also mentioned how the nature of war may have fundamentally changed as a consequence of information technology (see Manuel Castells' arguments - ). Mortality for American soldiers has dropped dramatically since Vietnam, for example. As we talked, I also asked Ian why he didn't consider going into the Air Force instead of the Navy, because it has the reputation of having the best culture of the services, and culture here in the services can have radical effects on people (shaping roles which have life and death consequences), so why not pick the armed service with the best reputation, if he's going to go into the military. Lastly, I observed that the military has a history of killing its own soldiers by putting them into atrocious war situations, that it's a system which doesn't really care about its soldiers, once they're in the system, and that in a way he might be signing up to be cannon fodder. (This may have changed since the American public saw so many body bags of soldiers on TV - information technology which had a dramatic transformative effect - during the Vietnam war, and public sentiment came to change Pentagon policies). The culture of war is devastating especially to soldiers, when it's happening. {Moving to Canada to avoid the out-of-control Vietnam war and related draft system/culture which was killing U.S. citizens was one key way to save your own life in the late 1960s and early 1970s}. Why not listen to your friends, I asked, as we parted.


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Universal health care in the U.S.? ... Paralleling Massachusetts, let's make this happen in California, and expand from there, state by state ... There are still over 40 million people uninsured in this country.


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Gavia stellata (Pontoppidan, 1763)

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Red-throated Loon