Ashes At The End of Rainbow Farm

[DdC]

Ashes At The End of Rainbow Farm By Michael H. Hodges
CN Source: Detroit News  June 20, 2006

Michigan -- Some call it Michigan's own mini-Waco. Just one week before the September 11 terrorist attacks, FBI and state police sharpshooters took out the two owners of a pro-marijuana, libertarian enterprise known as Rainbow Farm in the southwest corner of the state.

The dead men, Tom Crosslin and Rolland Rohm, had been charged with growing marijuana, running a "public nuisance" with their yearly hemp festivals, and operating a "drug house." Weapons charges also were filed.

The question that lingers five years later is how in the world a minor-league dope bust managed to go so wrong, and how this stoner utopia, albeit one with connections to the Michigan Militia, passed in just a few months from flawed paradise to nightmare -- a small-town tragedy detailed in a new book by Dean Kuipers, "Burning Rainbow Farm."

At the heart of the story are two men, neither of whom was apparently willing to back down. One was Crosslin, whose belief that the government shouldn't control what adults put in their own bodies was absolute. He's now buried in a family vault.
The other was Scott Teter, the Cass County prosecutor in 2001.

Some paint what went on at Rainbow Farm as lawbreaking, pure and simple -- and lawbreaking of a morally corruptive sort. But for Crosslin and much of the ragtag community that gathered around the farm, his was a principled stand, an act of civil disobedience aimed at the War on Drugs.

Like the FBI and state police, Teter, who now works in the Michigan attorney general's office, says he is prohibited from commenting on account of a pending wrongful death suit on behalf of Rohm.

As for the people of the town of Vandalia, opinions still are sharply divided about the outcome.

A Tale of Two Sides

One of the big questions looming is whether putting FBI and Michigan State Police sharpshooters in the woods -- as opposed to starving the two men out -- was the right step.

"I just don't think they had to kill Tom and Rollie to get them," says Sondra Ursery, who was Vandalia's mayor at the time. "They were just two men."

Others maintain Crosslin and Rohm got precisely what they wanted, says Dale Williams, who owns Trail's End Sports in Vandalia.

"The rumor was they committed suicide," he says, "to draw attention to their cause."

The FBI has always maintained that the two men raised their guns at federal agents, who had little choice but to shoot to kill.

But Crosslin's brother, Jimmy, who still lives a couple miles from the farm, insists that even agents on the scene were shocked by what finally went down.

"When my brother got killed," he says, sitting outside his garage, wearing a baseball cap with a marijuana leaf emblazoned on it, "me and my son went kind of crazy.

"The cops were trying to push us back," he adds, "but there was one state trooper there who had tears in his eyes. He knew it wasn't right."

Author Kuipers, a Kalamazoo native now living in Los Angeles, first heard of the case when the Sept. 9 edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette arrived in his mailbox with Rainbow Farm splayed all over the front page.

What snagged him, he says, was that the case "shows the way that we really use the drug war laws." Legal tools intended to break drug kingpins -- like forfeiture of property -- end up, in Kuipers' view, getting applied to cases like this, "a nuisance complaint," he says, "that has nothing to do with a violent drug dealer."

Cannabis Capital of Michigan

Jimmy says Crosslin began assembling the property on Pemberton Road that would become Rainbow Farm in 1993. As it evolved, the farm became his life mission.

It was the place where Crosslin and Rohm, who were lovers, could raise the latter's son, Robert, and create a community of family and friends, many of whom took up jobs at or near the farm.

The idea was to create a farm and campground with services -- eventually including a store, head shop, coffee shop, shower facilities and laundromat -- where alternative folks of all sorts could party without fear of disapproval or police interference.

Soon enough, Rainbow Farm was the marijuana capital of Michigan. Crosslin, the politicized member of this pair, was a cannabis crusader and a big supporter of the Personal Responsibility Amendment, an initiative to legalize medical and private use that never made it onto the 2000 state ballot.

Those who attended the annual Hemp Aid and Roach Roast festivals -- author Kuipers describes them as "part Woodstock, part union picnic" -- were routinely confronted, says Jimmy Crosslin, by Rainbow Farm activists urging them to register to vote.

Doddery bands from the 1960s -- The Byrds and Big Brother and the Holding Company among them -- played Rainbow Farm's various festivals, belting out tunes while giddy festivalgoers slid down the aptly named "Naked Hippie Slide" on a nearby hillside.

One rule was absolute, however, according to Jimmy and Crosslin's former manager, Doug Leinbach -- nobody connected to the farm sold pot. Period. Crosslin knew that was an express ticket to prison.

In like manner, particularly once Teter began his investigation, hard drugs were actively discouraged. Indeed, a Rainbow Farm flier advertising Hemp Aid 2001 pointedly notes, "Nitrous oxide and other hard drugs suck! So don't bring them!"

A Prosecutor's Mission

It may sound far-fetched that two openly gay guys could run a marijuana campground unmolested in the most conservative corner of the state, but that's how things rolled along for several years. It changed shortly after Teter was elected Cass County prosecutor in 1996.

The way the story played out from there seems to have hinged on misjudgment leading to escalation on both sides.

In 1999, Crosslin, never a man to hide, began renting billboards to advertise Hemp Aid and Roach Roast.

By all accounts, Teter did his level best to catch Crosslin. But the brass ring -- tying the farm to drug sales -- always eluded him, Kuipers says, despite the undercover narcs the prosecutor sent to their festivals.

In March 1999, Teter sent Rainbow Farm a letter informing them that he would employ the forfeiture laws that are a key element of the War on Drugs to seize the farm if any hard drugs were ever found.

Crosslin's reply was enraged and blunt, snapping that his "friends at the Michigan Militia" -- who'd helped police the hemp festivals one year -- would have ideas on how to handle the prosecutor's threats.

Crosslin added that he and his family were willing to die "before we allow (the farm) to be stolen from us."

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings, invoking the Michigan Militia in connection to a criminal enterprise seems a little like waving a red cape in front of any law-enforcement officer.

Teter redoubled his efforts.

In May 2001, he sent in officers looking for signs of tax evasion.

They didn't find those -- but they did find 301 marijuana seedlings in the basement.

The men were arrested and released on bail.

A week later, officials seized Rohm's 12-year-old son on a school playground and placed him in foster care.

At this point, Crosslin was looking at serious jail time for the marijuana offense, the permanent loss of Rohm's child and all that the men had worked for the previous eight years.

Says Dori Leo, his attorney in Kalamazoo, "You understand that (in drug cases), they can take away all your property before you're even convicted. That's what I think tipped Tom over the edge."

Fought The Law

The endgame came on Aug. 31, 2001, when Rohm and Crosslin were supposed to appear in court.

They never made it. Instead, Kuipers says, they signed wills leaving everything to Rohm's son and then alerted their immediate neighbors that they might want to vacate for a few days.

The standoff began that Friday.

In camouflage fatigues and carrying Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifles, the men began setting fire to the farm's outbuildings. At some point early on, according to press reports, somebody shot at a WNDU-TV news helicopter covering the fires, piercing its skin.

Buggy Brown, who worked on a neighboring farm and knew Crosslin and Rohm well, found the area just outside the farm that afternoon swarming with law enforcement.

Though he loved hanging out at the farm, Brown says he'd always had a bad feeling about an eventual run-in with the authorities.

"To tighten the noose around them like that, with (sharpshooters) crawling through the woods, was unnecessary," he says. "But I also know it was inevitable."

Crosslin, who was armed at the time, was shot through the forehead Monday afternoon by an FBI sharpshooter, supposedly while retrieving a coffeepot from a neighbor's house.

A neighbor's son, Brandon Peoples, who'd sneaked onto the property, was walking right behind him. Fragments of Crosslin's skull cut the young man's face.

Kuipers, who has examined the FBI reports, says Peoples never could say whether Crosslin had raised his gun.

Rohm, all alone in the house, agreed in late-night negotiations to surrender at 7 a.m. the next morning. Part of the deal was that he'd get to see his son before being taken away.

But it didn't work out that way. Around 6 a.m., an upper bedroom in the farmhouse caught fire, and Rohm -- always the cheerful, low-key half of this couple -- was spotted running from the house, rifle in hand.

Kuipers reports that state police roared up to the house in an armored vehicle resembling a tank, and ordered Rohm to drop his rifle.

Rohm looked scared, according to Kuipers' account, and ran back into the house, possibly to get the couple's dog, Thai Stick.

When he ran back out, the police say he took refuge behind a small pine tree and raised his rifle. One bullet fired by a state police sniper went through the butt of Rohm's rifle and into his chest. Like Crosslin, he never fired a shot.

Says their attorney Leo, "When an animal does something wrong, we use a tranquilizer. When there's an escalation in human behavior, the criminal-law system moves toward deadly force.

"I'm not sure that's what America is about," she says. "And I'm not sure that's what the American people want."

If Kuipers had to point at anything that caused the conflict to spiral out of control, it would be the Michigan Militia connection -- even though that seems to have been more glancing than substantive. Nonetheless, it formed part of Crosslin's retort to Teter, and may well have laid the groundwork for all that followed.

Says Kuipers, "That really put the prosecutor and local police on a kind of war footing."

Whether it was out-of-control rebels or heavy-handed government that created the final conflagration, for Jimmy, it all comes down to wasteful deaths in the end.

"My brother never did harm anybody," he says. "He just had his festivals and did what he could for the town."

Rainbow Farm Timeline

1993: Tom Crosslin buys the property for Rainbow Farm in Vandalia, Mich. The farm begins holding annual "hemp festivals."

1996: Scott Teter is elected Cass County prosecutor.

1999-2000: Rainbow Farm campaigns for the Personal Responsibility Amendment, a failed measure that sought to legalize private use of marijuana.

May 2001: Crosslin and his lover, Rolland Rohm, are arrested for growing marijuana in their house. Rohm's son, Robert, is placed in foster care.

August 2001: Crosslin and Rohm skip their court date and begin systematically setting fire to Rainbow Farm.

September 2001: Crosslin is killed by FBI sharpshooters on Sept. 3; Rohm is shot the next morning.

Note: Deadly ending at pot haven remains mysterious 5 years later.

Contact: letters@detnews.com * Website

Tom and Rollie Memorial Page
Book Focus on 2001 Rainbow Farm Shooting
Family Files Lawsuit in Rainbow Death
We Will Not Forget, Rainbow Farm Supporters



Metrotimes: Shot Down on The Farm
June 21, 2006
Tom Crosslin was a lot of things. A brawler with a mean streak, a charmer, a bully, a civic do-gooder, a pothead, a don't-tread-on-me rebel, a dreamer and a doer. He was Mr. Party and Mr. Charity and a hustler who envisioned Rainbow Farm, the campground and concert venue he established in western Michigan, as a "company town" for hemp festivals and endless festivities, not to mention a base for pushing a referendum to change state marijuana laws.
Complete Article: metrotimes/editorial//9348



Thank God for Hippies
Drug War Travesties
The Drug War Refugees
Dissenters From the Drug War

look at how it all works
posted by Sam Adams on June 20, 2006



Death of a Toker’s Utopia By Steven Wishnia
CN Source: In These Times July 18, 2006 Michigan

The motto of Rainbow Farm in Vandalia, Mich., could have been “A Working-Class Hippie Is Something to Be.” On Memorial and Labor Day weekends from 1996 to 2000, a few thousand amplifier-factory workers, hippie girls and truckers’ wives-turned-political-activists camped out there to smoke weed, listen to rock ‘n’ roll, hear pro-legalization speeches and commune with the land and each other.

A 34-acre campground owned by a gay couple named Tom Crosslin and Rolland Rohm, Rainbow Farm was located in a hardcore Republican part of southwest Michigan.

The county’s prosecutor, Scott Teter, believed he was “guided by the Lord” and crusaded against abortion and drugs. After several attempts to squelch the festivals, Teter succeeded in May 2001, when a police raid, ostensibly for tax evasion, nailed Crosslin and Rohm for growing marijuana in their basement. Then the government kidnapped Rohm’s son out of middle school—Rohm found out when the boy didn’t get off the bus that afternoon—and put him in foster care. Teter filed papers to seize the land as property used in a drug crime.

At the end of August, the couple gave away their possessions, torched the farm buildings and holed up on the land with rifles. The FBI shot Crosslin on Labor Day. Michigan state police gunned Rohm down the next morning.

Dean Kuipers’ Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke is a detailed account of the farm’s story, weaving in the couple’s biographies and drug-war history. Kuipers has unearthed an impressive amount of background material—I covered Rainbow Farm for High Times, and I learned a lot—though it’s occasionally marred by minor errors (misspelling Harry Anslinger’s name, garbling what I told him about Rainbow Farm’s ticket prices). Generally, however, he gets the flow of events right and tells the tale well.

Tom Crosslin grew up in a brawling hillbilly family in Elkhart, Ind., reaching adolescence as the weed culture of the ’60s was filtering into the factory town. After a stint as a trucker, he built a construction and real-estate business, living as a discreetly out gay man and hard-partying godfather to his crew. Rollie Rohm was a rock-fan stoner and troubled teenage father who joined the crew in 1990.

Sixties counterculture was a strong force in the industrial Midwest, from MC5’s rabble-rousing rock to the 1972 strike by longhaired workers at the GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Though gone from most cities by the ’80s, hippie culture survived in rural America. By 1990, “hemp festivals”—micro-Woodstocks with a pot-legalization agenda—had sprung up in places like Logansport, Ind., and Black River Falls, Wis. These provided the template for the “Hemp Aid” and “Roach Roast” events at Rainbow Farm.

The dominant atmosphere there was, as Kuipers puts it, “a cross between Woodstock and a union picnic”—people with a strong naïve sense of justice, enraged when they had to pee in jars to keep their jobs and wondering why their peaceful party rite brought down such violent repression. I connected to it immediately when I went to Hemp Aid in 1999. Coming from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I recognized a fellow low-rent counterculture community, a blessed find when my own was being crushed by a ruthless real-estate market and paramilitary evictions. Marijuana was central, but passing the spliff was often more about bonding than intoxication. Being able to burn one openly was liberating (especially coming from Rudy Giuliani’s New York, which led the nation in petty pot busts), but once you left the gates, the descending paranoia was palpable.

Some in this rural-stoner world had odd hippie-rightist libertarian politics. Among the characters involved in Rainbow Farm’s early days were an Indiana pot activist who opposed Social Security (while collecting SSI disability payments) and a Michigan Militia leader who claimed Biblical justification for herb. And while urban blacks would cite Amadou Diallo and Rodney King as examples of police violence, Crosslin was one of the many rural whites who would talk about Waco and Ruby Ridge. And his beliefs were strongly motivated by property rights, the idea that people could do whatever they wanted on his land. Rainbow Farm hired the Michigan Militia as unarmed security one year, but rejected their path in favor of nonviolence and electoral activism, trying to get a marijuana-legalization initiative on the state ballot in 2000 and 2001.

“We are pacifists,” Crosslin wrote Teter in March 1999, but he also warned that “we are all prepared to die on this land before we allow it to be stolen from us.”
The confrontation gradually intensified. In 2000, Crosslin rented an expensive stage setup, enabling him to bring in national acts like Merle Haggard and partial reunions of the Byrds and Big Brother and the Holding Company. (For Kuipers, the Haggard show was totemic, with people waving joints in the air when the singer stretched out the word “marijuana” to twist his 1969 anti-hippie anthem “Okie from Muskogee.”) But police checkpoints on the road in scared off hundreds of people, and the core crew disintegrated in financial acrimony. When the farm was raided the next spring, the die was cast.

Kuipers is telling an important story here. There has been a cultural war going on in America since the late ’60s: a war between the spiritual freedom symbolized by hippiedom and open homosexuality and the spiritual lockdown ordained by Mammonite fundamentalism, that rapacious hybrid of imperialist capitalism and dominionist Christianity that has become America’s state church. That war—in which one side controls the violence of state power—put Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm in a position where their defiance—mixed with mistakes and rage—would get them slaughtered.

It’s a story that should be remembered, not least because it was quickly obscured by another religious war. Rollie Rohm’s funeral took place on September 11, 2001.
One wonders how many Rainbow Farms loom in the future, in a country whose rulers denounce critics of their militaristic crusades as traitorous faggots. Or how many Rainbow Farms will find room to be born in a land where every physical and cultural corner is colonized by corporate greed.

Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke
By Dean Kuipers Bloomsbury USA · $24.95

Contact * Website

Book Offer: Burning Rainbow Farm 6/2/06
How a Stoner Utopia Went up in Smoke



Tom and Rollie Memorial Page

Ashes At The End of Rainbow Farm

Book Focus on 2001 Rainbow Farm Shooting

US MI: Column: Book Review: Rainbows End


Rainbow Farm campground
(courtesy rainbowfarmcamp.com)