Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke | 
| Author: Dean Kuipers
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 318872
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 1596911425
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.177
EAN: 9781596911420
ASIN: 1596911425
Publication Date: June 13, 2006
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Condition: Book and Cover in Excellent Condition
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Product Description
The gripping story of two marijuana advocates gunned down by the FBI after a five-day standoff.
On a mission to build a peaceful, pot-friendly Shangri-La, Tom Crosslin and his lover Rollie Rohm founded Rainbow Farm, a well-appointed campground and concert venue tucked away in rural Southwest Michigan. The farm quickly became the center of marijuana and environmental activism in Michigan, drawing thousands of blue-collar libertarians and hippie liberals, evangelicals and militiamen to its annual hemp festivals. People came from all over the country to support Tom and Rollie’s libertarian brand of patriotism: They loved America but didn’t like the War on Drugs.
As Rainbow Farm launched a popular statewide ballot initiative to change marijuana laws, local authorities, who had scarcely tolerated Rainbow Farm in the past, began an all-out campaign to shut the place down. Finally, in May 2001, Tom and Rollie were arrested for growing marijuana. Rollie’s 11-year-old son, who grew up on Rainbow Farm, was placed in foster care – Tom would never see him again. Faced with mandatory jail terms and the loss of the farm, Tom and Rollie never showed up for their August court date. Instead, the state’s two best-known pot advocates burned Rainbow Farm to the ground in protest. County officials called the FBI, and within five days Tom and Rollie were dead. Obscured by the attacks of September 11, their stories will be told here for the first time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
One of the saddest stories I have ever read. January 26, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Thank you, Dean Kuipers, for writing "Burning Rainbow Farm". It is one of the saddest books I have ever read. I live on a small farm in Maryland, and my closest friends and I can relate to the murders of these young free men, who only wanted to be left alone to burn one, and live in peace.
Whatever happened to the American right, to left alone?
I highly recommend this book to anyone that believes freedom, is free.
Lesser-Known Abuses of Power January 4, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Most Americans know about the abuses of government power that resulted in Waco and Ruby Ridge. Most people do not get quite as excited about less drastic and dramatic abuses of power, including violations of our Bill of Rights that have become so frequent that we no longer notice them. Most Americans should know about the deaths of Rollie Rohm and Tom Crosslin at Rainbow Farm but do not because of an accident of timing; the events at Rainbow Farm unfolded just days before 9/11. Journalist Dean Kuipers examines with an insightful and critical eye the lives and motivations of hemp activist and unapologetic capitalist Tom Crosslin, his gentle lover Rollie Rohm, and their associates from many different walks of libertarian life, ranging from Tommy Chong to Merle Haggard to the Michigan Militia. Kuipers brings to life the stories of these drug reform and property rights activists who were most definitely breaking the law, but who by no stretch of the imagination were the perils to society that the law enforcement bureaucracy believed them to be.
Kuipers also applies his analytical and descriptive abilities to the Michiana Rust Belt towns and cities that Crosslin and Rohm called home, including Elkhart, Indiana, the RV Capitol of the World--the hometown of this reviewer. Kuipers' perceptions of this depressogenic area ring true in more ways than I want to count.
--Christine A. Whittington
 Buy it for the story, keep it for the writing. October 25, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The chaos and seemingly unneccessary killing of these two pot activists would've been enshrined in the pantheon of strange, over-government reactions -- think Wacco, Ruby Ridge, etc. -- had 9-11 not upturned the political landscape. Thankfully, Dean Kuipers didn't forget, and returned to his childhood area to pen a masterful, well-paced story that is not sentimental or overly judgmental but instead keenly observed with smart reportage and an almost noirish writing style.
You may not respect or even like the protagonists, and Kuipers does not
give them the kit-glove treatment as he shows they defied an insecure prosector in oh so many ways and fired shells at the SWAT folks. You do
come away scratching your head -- and this is where the book transcends its liberatarian, quasi-militia ganja promotion -- about how marijuana,
as with so numerous issues, came to be viewed so differently by the feds than from the constituency they serve.
While I wish the book would've been shorter and that the scene/fact-setting info. was better integrated into the more brisk, novelistic portrayal, overall Kuipers does what so many other non fiction writers can't: he keeps you interested, has a knack for using the right phrase to fit the genre, and leads you expertly down the farm road to an horrifically inevitable bloodbath.
Make no mistake: this is a book to curl up with, whether you believe weed is God's medication and a relaxant for overwrought world or a gateway to crack-ho death. How the gov't can make itself king and over-step the people's authority -- confiscating property, independence, your livelihood, even your soul -- is disturbingly and fascinatingly retold by a writer who has his chops down.
Highly recommend, and this isn't my normal fare.
I Couldn't Put This Book Down! August 13, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The story told within the pages of this book is one of the most compelling stories I have ever read. I could not put this book down! It reads like an episode of 48 Hours Mystery. Dean Kuipers starts off by telling you basically what happened on Labor Day weekend, 2001. Then goes back in time and not only fills you in on the history of the two main characters, Tom and Rollie, but also introduces you to a myriad of other very interesting people, all very real with their own stories to tell. Not only that, it also gives you an over view of just about every aspect of the movement to legalize cannabis, especially as it relates to the state of Michigan. His retelling of these events is exceptional, considering he culled all the information from interviews and documents collected over a 4-year period.
It is, which is obvious to people who are familiar with this story, about the rise and fall of Rainbow Farm, and the death of the two main owners and operators of the farm. For those unfamiliar with the story, Rainbow farm was a site for cannabis activism and related festivals in the latter half of the 1990's. It is about that, but also about so much more. It is about property rights, the War on Drugs, intolerance, persecution, zealous prosecution, and the mistakes that some of us make in the face of those things. It is also a window into the culture of the last 30 to 35 years and how that has changed. Mr. Kuipers manages to convey all of this, without getting bogged down with too much info on the history of the Hemp movement and all that goes with that. His style is very easy to follow and kept my interest all the way through.
This book would be a great companion to Smoke and Mirrors - The War on Drugs and The Politics of Failure by Dan Baum. That book sort of ends, where this one takes up, although I would say that this is more of a close up view whereas Baum's book is a wider angle. Both books reveal the ridiculousness of the laws in our country concerning Cannabis and how enforcement of those laws is out of control. I recommend this book to everyone, whether you are a Cannabis activist, a casual observer, or just a registered voter that would like to read a balanced view of how our tax dollars are wasted on mostly non-violent users and people who would probably like to grow a little, in the privacy of their own homes for medicinal and light recreational uses.
Martyrs Who Should Never Have Been July 17, 2006
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
It isn't explicitly in the Bill of Rights, but it ought to be: The Right to Be Let Alone. The story of two martyrs who died pursuing this right is told in _Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke_ (Bloomsbury) by Dean Kuipers. The story of Tom Crosslin and his partner Rollie Rohm never got all the attention it deserved, since the dramatic climax happened on the Labor Day weekend just before 9/11. Kuipers brings it back, a detailed and intelligent look at the way the War on Drugs has been waged within our borders. You don't have to be in favor of legalization of drugs or even decriminalization of marijuana to realize that this sad battle which reflects badly on all participants never should have happened.
Tom met Rollie, a handsome seventeen-year-old, in 1990. Rollie had been married and had a son whom he adored, but it was love at first sight when he and Tom met. With Rollie, Tom purchased 34 acres of farmland in rural southwest Michigan, and they named it Rainbow Farm. Tom's construction crew and odd-job men became a sort of commune for the farm, a place of remove, where Tom and Rollie and their work crews and friends could have cookouts and parties and not worry about bothering or being bothered by those around them. They were eager for a lot of different types of people to show up at Rainbow Farm, have fun, and be left alone. "This is a place about alternative lifestyles," Tom liked to say. "Being gay is just one of 'em. Smoking pot is just one of 'em. There's a bunch more, and this is a place where people can be free." They started having pot festivals, refusing to allow harder drugs, and refusing to let people sell pot, but encouraging sharing. The local prosecutor didn't like it, and fired with the possibility of claiming the valuable land as assets for the cops, he was eventually able to charge Tom and Rollie with manufacturing drugs. They Rollie knew that they would be losing the farm if they went to trial, and having said sad goodbyes to many who had come to hang out there over the years, they forced a last stand. Tom got assault rifles and let any potential invaders know that the farm was mined and booby trapped (but it was not). He set the buildings of the farm on fire, and fired at police. The FBI was called in, and no one found a way to break the siege, which inevitably led to Tom's and Rollie's deaths.
Tom and Rollie do not turn out to be flawless heroes; Rollie may have just been going along with Tom's plans, but Tom's plans did include the weapons, and firing at police and a helicopter. Their persecutors, however, should not have been hounding him over the years for a relatively harmless weed which drug warriors can't differentiate from truly harmful substances. Rainbow Farm sounds as if it was a happy and useful place, and the world is worse off without it. Tom and Rollie were, before the persecution took hold, philanthropists, Republicans, and prosperous businessmen. This is a story vividly told, and valuable, but sadly, this is just one of thousands of stories of wasted lives and wasted legal efforts as the persecution of marijuana users continues.
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