It gets sticky trying to frame these causes into ideological boxes. The only certainty about people good or bad is that people are nuts. Especially going off when pushed to desperation by authoritarian powers.

Written explorations attempting to untwist the stories also presents difficulties in understanding people, their motivations and their sliding scale of nutso-ness driven actions.

Yet it does seem society would be better if there was a basic human right not to be thrust up against the wall.


Reefer Madness
Michigan's Rainbow Farm was a utopia for stoners, gays and dissenters. Then America's anti-drug insanity erupted in its ugliest form.

...a number of assaults by Crosslin, including a drunken, unprovoked beating of a woman who was upset by his shouting "Long live David Koresh" on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The book's central focus is on a volatile entrepreneur, ex-con, gay, Republican militant libertarian and fervent marijuana-legalization supporter named Tom Crosslin, the owner and creator of Rainbow Farm.

"We wanted the farm to be a family campground," [Crosslin's Lawyer] Leinbach says.  "Most people with alternative lifestyles find it hard to go to a public campground, for fear of arrest or harassment by other campers.  This was never a gay campground...

"We were tired of seeing our friends, relatives and others jailed because of marijuana use," he continues.  "Too many families destroyed, to many tax dollars wasted, just for use of a god-given herb.  The sense of injustice grew, and then Tom decided, 'We're going to throw hemp festivals here.'"

When Crosslin decided to hold festivals at Rainbow Farm, he did his research.  He would allow visitors to smoke on his land, which is a misdemeanor in Michigan.  Technically, a cop can't enter private property to issue a ticket for a misdemeanor.  Gathering to smoke pot in the house, Crosslin knew, would constitute a felony called "maintaining a drug house," but no such law exists for an open field.  This was the thin green line Crosslin drew around Rainbow Farm, and for five years it protected all of them.

Darker elements also descended, Altamont style -- in this case the Michigan Militia, whom Tom hired to work security at some festivals (provided they left their guns at home) and who one night famously managed to chase off a nosy state trooper. This involvement with the militia movement reflected a worldview that stubbornly resisted easy classification.

"Tom's position on pot was basically a right-wing critique," writes Kuipers. "He thought drugs should be legal not because the government should provide some kind of utopian experience; he thought drugs should be legal because policing them was unconstitutional." In those post-Waco days, it was reasonable that such a person would form an alliance with the anti-government militia so active in his state. As Kuipers points out, the "hemp movement meshed perfectly with the work of the patriot and militia movements, despite the apparent clash of values over guns."

...After a few years of unsuccessfully trying to gather evidence using undercover cops, the prosecutor decided to stage a bogus tax raid whose sketchy justification ...[the South West Enforcement Team],  found Tom's paperwork to be perfectly in order, though they also stumbled upon a few racks of hydroponic pot in the basement. Not only were Tom and Rollie arrested on felony manufacture charges, but Rollie's beloved son, Robert, was taken into foster care.

Neither of these results, however, met the real goal of Teter's campaign. What he really wanted was to get his hands on Rainbow Farm itself under the broad asset forfeiture laws brought in by Ronald Reagan.

...The blame, rather, lies with the prosecutors who hounded Tom and the lawmakers who have decided to wage war against a naturally occurring weed. Their persecution of Tom caused him to "become a dreadful enemy: a loving, well-intentioned man who had looked into the heart of the law and found himself erased."

The State Reserves the privilege of violence. Always remember that. I don't care if it were "An Accident". Waco should never had happened. Negotiations and sitting it out is always an option.

Waco is what turned me off to Clinton/Reno and the rest.

Fuck The State.