Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke
by Greg Williams (25 Apr, 2006) The book 'Burning Rainbow Farm' exposes the truly evil nature of the drug war
Burning Rainbow Farm by Dean Kuipers
Two days before the 9/11 attacks that led to war in the name of democracy, two Michigan men were shot to death for simply trying to exercise the very rights their country was now supposedly fighting for.
On a remote farm that they owned in southwest Michigan, Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm created their own peaceful utopia called Rainbow Farm. Essentially a campground, it quickly grew amidst Tom and Rollie's libertarian attitudes into the center of marijuana and environmental activism in the state.
“Burning Rainbow Farm”, written by Dean Kuipers, chronicles the history and events that led up to the murders of Tom and Rollie and a fire that burned the farm to the ground. Stephen King could not have conjured up such a monster as County Prosecutor Scott Teter, who spearheaded the nightmare that was about to land on Rainbow Farm. He created a task force specifically designed to shut down the farm, harass festival-goers with roadblocks, and infiltrate the crowd with narks, desperate for anything to use against this embarrassment and potential threat to his political career. When marijuana plants were found on the farm, it was all Teter needed to unleash his army of darkness.
Tom and Rollie were arrested for growing marijuana and faced minimum prison sentences. Rollie's 11-year-old son was taken away and placed in foster care. A bit of drool slid down Teter's fang, but he wasn't done yet – he wanted to take the farm away too. Forfeiture laws allowed him to seize the property, but not until the defendant was found guilty. He went ahead anyway. When Tom and Rollie realized what was happening they vowed that their land would not be taken from them… or at least, there would be nothing left to take.
Author Dean Kuipers has done a tremendous amount of research and has talked to virtually everyone who was involved. This is a must-read for everyone, not just the cannabis culture. The War on Drugs is a real war, no different than any other war that's ever been fought. Scott Teter wields the Sheriff's Dept, Michigan State Police, ATF, the FBI, and DEA like any army general. He set them on Rainbow Farm, and at the end of the day the army had completed their mission and Tom and Rollie lay dead. It’s true the pair had taken up weapons to defend their land, but a professional army sniper can take the head off a pin at 600 yards. It evidently wasn't possible to shoot the ‘suspects’ in the leg; instead there were two shots, two kills. Of course it was found to be “justifiable homicide” – but then, none other than Scott Teter investigated it internally.
“Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke” is a true testimony to the absolute madness of the War on Drugs. It illustrates completely that we do not have the right to free speech or to bear arms. It also shows the malicious intent and the monstrous actions by men and women of law enforcement who are willing to kill to protect their paychecks. They do this without remorse or any sense of peril because they know they are fighting a war against people who are not shooting back.
This incident was a horrible nightmare, completely vicious in it’s intent. I encourage everyone to buy this book, as it needs to be on the best-seller list so the rest of society will read it too. Although, when you delve into this terrifying true story, I suggest leaving the light on.
“Cannibalism? Racism? Dude, that’s not for us ... those decisions are better left to the suits in Washington. We’re just here to eat some dude!”
-Charlie Kelly
Michigan
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Ever since they were gunned down by cops on their spread in southwest Michigan more than four years ago, News Hits has been interested in the story of star-crossed hippies Rollie Rohm and Tom Crosslin.
When the standoff at the Rainbow Farm campground and concert venue in Kalamazoo County began, the news media were out in force to chronicle the fate of these two gun-toting pro-marijuana activists who'd dug in to resist attempts to have their place seized by authorities. And when bullets from snipers killed the pair around Labor Day weekend in 2001, it looked like the whole thing would become a big issue, a story with echoes of Ruby Ridge and Waco. Then 9/11 happened, and the Rainbow Farm dropped off the media radar.
But Dean Kuipers could not let go of the story. The deputy editor of the alternative newspaper Los Angeles City Beat, Kuipers had grown up in that part of Michigan. And from the moment he read about the shootings in the Kalamazoo Gazette, which he continued to have delivered to him in Los Angeles, he had a feeling that something about the story "stunk."
So, like any good reporter, he followed his nose. The results of his investigation will be showing up soon in a bookstore near you. In Burning Rainbow Farm ( set to be released by Bloomsbury Publishing this summer ), Kuipers offers a detailed account of events leading up to the siege at the campground, and a look into the lives of the two men who died there. We missed Kuipers when he was in Ann Arbor recently to promote the book at the annual Hash Bash, but caught up with him by phone last week.
Rainbow Farms wasn't around when Kuipers, 42, was a kid. But he knew the area and the kind of people who lived there.
"This is like a regular Michigan rural neighborhood," he says. "That's why I wanted to write about it. I grew up out there."
What he found in the two central characters were men that didn't fit any easy stereotype. They were a gay couple whose Rainbow Farm, home of the Roach Roast festival, became a focal point for Michigan's pot-legalization movement. But they were also pro-militia and hunters with a libertarian streak.
Kuipers says he didn't approach the story with any agenda. Do enough good reporting, he figured, and the story would eventually sort itself out. And that's what happened.
What he found were two men who paid the ultimate price in defense of their beliefs. The war on drugs has given law enforcement "an incredibly heavy tool bag," observes Kuipers, and there are some people willing to risk everything -- their jobs, property, money, even their lives -- in an attempt to oppose that power.
"This ends up being a story about the demonization of pot culture," Kuipers says.
The final chapter of this sad saga has yet to be written. Rohm's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in a civil case that's still moving through the federal court system.
“Cannibalism? Racism? Dude, that’s not for us ... those decisions are better left to the suits in Washington. We’re just here to eat some dude!”
-Charlie Kelly
r.i.p. rainbow farm. i never knew ye, and, i never will.
[ rainbow farm wasn`t far from where i live. ]
[img]http://www.freewebs.com/cupcake666/nessie.gif[/img]
``we all enter this world the same way; naked, screaming, and covered in blood. but, if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn`t have to end there.``
