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I am still a Rainbow Family sister. I always will be. The gatherings I grew up in taught me that people can live in peace without greed — that community works when everyone gives and no one takes more than they need. That lesson is why I became a writer. And it’s also why I’m heartbroken watching what politics and media have done to that same spirit.

When I first came home to the gatherings, the media called us lawless and sneered that we were “dirty hippies.” That was funny, because we weren’t the hippies of the ’60s — we were the counter to the yuppies. We were grunge before it had a name, rejecting the corporate leash disguised as success. Society wanted us to wear our own ball and chain — a tie around the neck — and call it freedom. We refused.

Out in the woods, far from money and politics, we built something better. There was a Children’s Village where everyone took turns watching each other’s kids, a Shroom Tea Shop where kindness was the currency, and circles where Christians, Quakers, and Rastafarians prayed side by side.

No one charged money. No one stood above another. We respected the land, cleaned the forest, and fed each other from what we had. That was our economy — generosity.

One of the strongest symbols of that generosity was the Quaker camp. They came to more than one gathering, always quiet, always humble. They never preached or sought recognition. They simply dug great earthen ovens and began baking bread for anyone who was hungry.

Year after year, the smell of warm bread and wood smoke drifted through the trees. People brought flour, potatoes, herbs, and whatever food they could spare. The Quakers mixed it with patience and prayer, baking enough loaves to feed ten thousand people — sometimes more. They didn’t ask who you were or what you believed. They simply fed you.

They never made a spectacle of it, and they never asked for money. They just showed up, again and again, proving that service doesn’t need to be advertised to be real. That quiet faith — doing good without reward — is something our modern world has almost forgotten.

In Rainbow, nobody went hungry and nobody freeloaded. Everyone gave something back — hauling water, cooking, tending fires, caring for children, cleaning up the forest. That shared responsibility was our heartbeat.

We also had boundaries, born from love. We said no hard drugs and no hard alcohol, not out of judgment but out of care. We had seen what those substances could do to peace and trust. Psychedelics and cannabis were part of spiritual connection; wine was shared in moderation. But we protected our space from the chaos that follows addiction.

Then, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, came a different kind of Rainbow — people fresh out of universities with degrees in sociology, psychology, and urban studies. They said our rules were biased and judgmental, that forbidding hard drugs and alcohol wasn’t “inclusive.”

At first, they formed a second village far from the main circle. But slowly that camp moved closer, bringing the chaos we’d tried to keep out. The overdoses, the fights, the bad press — all came after those boundaries were erased. Yet the media blamed us.

They called it compassion, but what it really did was destroy everything that worked. When those “experts” erased our boundaries in the name of empathy, they erased the very structure that kept people safe. They told us saying no was cruel, that accountability was judgment, that responsibility was outdated. The result was predictable: a second village for the hard drugs, the hard liquor, and the broken promises.

That same pattern has now spread across our entire country. The same kind of academic and political “experts” who dismantled a thriving community in the woods are dismantling the one we live in now. They call it progress, but it’s manipulation dressed up as morality. They use the language of empathy to control the flow of money, to build careers, to tighten their grip on power.

It’s no different from what I saw at Rainbow when greed and deception began to masquerade as love. What we have today is a national version of that second village — a society run by people who enrich themselves by managing misery. They claim to care about the poor, the addicted, the homeless, but every new program and every new grant seems to make the problem worse, not better.

And the cruel irony is that when I speak out about it, the same political machine that created the mess calls me “extreme right.” They say that because I write for a conservative paper, I must have abandoned the values I grew up with. But the truth is, I’m still the same Rainbow Sister I’ve always been — anti-greed, pro-community, and deeply committed to humanity. I just happen to see clearly who’s profiting from pretending to care.

Rainbow taught me that true compassion is work, not words — that generosity must be real and personal, not managed by bureaucrats or manipulated by parties. The people who destroyed that spirit inside the Rainbow Family are the same kind who are destroying it in America today.

Until we remember what genuine cooperation looks like — the kind you can taste in fresh bread baked in a forest by strangers — we’ll keep losing to greed dressed up as empathy.

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