A Forest Service Delegation of Authority to Incident Command imposes Emergency Law on every Rainbow Gathering – displacing fair special use management by qualified foresters with preemptive law enforcement powers and retaliatory policies against First Amendment exercise.
The provocations of the “Incident Creation Team” are legend over the past 30 years, but FedCops are now trying to take over public policy on speech by these devices.
We have researched and raised these issues through years of FOIA’s, official diatribes, and hard experiences on the land. In 2017, a new phase of this fight commences:
20 years ago Oregon Foresters raised the alarm on management of the Gatherings, and who was running the show: Are they Resource events with Law Enforcement support, or the other way around?
They saw the trend of LEO incursions on their duties and policy decisions, by fiat, and their analysis presaged this crisis of Incident Command excesses and abuse of preemptive powers.
As for their Question, the USFS Washington Office answered the next year – approving big budgets with overtime pay for LEO’s on the ‘Team’, cranking up IC operations… it got worse after that.
RbwOR’97_FSReport-97729.pdf
As the pattern of IC conduct became luridly clear in those years, PCU•Free Assembly Project took a clear stand in opposition: We joined public dialogues with former USDA UnderSecretary Mark Rey, and presented a dissenting analysis in January 2004 – outlining the deviations of Incident Command from lawful policy powers. It was a germinal statement and source on these issues.
This was one in a series of policy critiques conveyed to that office during his tenure, profiling the First Amendment strife of that era and providing useful context:
Official Correspondence to Mark Rey, USDA Under Secretary… June 2002- Nov. 2008
When the 2011 Rainbow Gathering came to Gifford Pinchot N.F., Washington Foresters refused to cede authority to Incident Command – instead forming a “Multi-Agency Coordination Group (MAC-G)” under the direction of the Supervisor, retaining control of USFS policy in Region VI.
This innovation highlighted the urgency of the problem, and pointed the way to a workable solution; LEO’s kept up some harassment, but clearly on their own, in cross-purposes with the plan.
gpnf_DelgnAuth-jn11.pdf
On 6/8/17 a formal policy critique and demand was conveyed to the Regional Forester (R-6) — calling upon him to desist from the customary Delegation of Authority, and disempower the ‘Incident Command’ regime for the 2017 Rainbow Gathering in Oregon:
“We believe the course of USFS policy toward expressive assembly must change now:
This is a critical step, fitting to be taken in Region VI, with its legacy of independent thinking and responsible care for National Forest lands. This appeal provides a hard-won analysis of failed ‘Incident’ policies, with corroboration from good-faith foresters who have dealt with them.”