It appears there were 22 arrests at least year’s Burning Man, which is not too shabby, in my opinion, considering how stupid people tend to get when they are intoxicated and probably dehydrated. If the cops were really trying to cause some damage, I would think there would be a LOT more arrests than 22…
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I would think you could make a pretty good case that peeing directly on a desert mesa is the least harmful way possible to dispose of human urine.
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Not when you have a ton of other people in the area taking residence on that desert mesa.
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Urinating in public is not a cool method of expressing liberating freedom. Denigrating police officers is juvenile if not infantile.
The government is oppressing BM partiers? Like the roads that carried them too the freak out party. The lights that illuminate streets and highways. Electrical grids that provide energy for those to disparage what they feel is entrapping them. Schools, library’s, grants for artists, sanitation infrastructural, public works that provide clean safe water too drink, public transit. Yeah it is easy too see how the government is so oppressing.
There is a reason sanitation is important. Live in that area for a year with no proper water system or sanitation and see how groovy the freak is getting on then.
Have fun and enjoy the scene at BM, although, try too acknowledge a lot of what the government does for the benefit of its citizens is being taken for granted by the so called anarchists and anti-establishment types.
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Hello Again, Marilove.
Given the general ignorance of Burning Man you’ve displayed elsewhere on this discussion, I am curious what constitutes your “research.”
So please allow me to help a little. The group doing the most about Burning Man’s sexual assault problem – and there is a problem – is The Bureau of Erotic Discourse. ( http://www.bureauoferoticdiscourse.org/ ) They do a helluva lot of outreach and public education. I wish they at my daughters’ highs school. Whether or not you attend a BM, you might consider working with them to help make the world a little better place.
From a social support standpoint, Black Rock City is one of the best places I have every expericenced. We all camp in close proximity, and neighbors typically are helpful out there. If you find yourself in bad situation, help is (usually) close at hand. Moreover, it’s unusual to go more than 1/2 an hour without seeing a Black Rock Ranger, and they are really good at defusing bad situations. I believe my daughter is safer from sexual assault at Burning Man than she is at her college. She certainly safer from sexual assault at BM than she would have been at my college back when I was her age.
That said, bad things do happen at Burning Man. Women (and men) are sexually victimized every year. This a problem. We need to do better. But many, many women (and men) are out there precisely because t can (generally) experiment with different identities much less threat of retaliation of “norming” than in the US as whole. That is no small thing.
We are city of 60,000+ people, so I am a little perplexed by what you mean by “at it gets larger…” We’re already one of the larger cities in Nevada.
Being a city of 60,000+ does create problems. For example, think of that one-in-a-hundred asshole. By the math, we’ve got over 600 of these problematic people roaming the playa everyday. We deal with it. I have dealt with it. Such is price of being a citizen.
Hope that helps.
Love,
Tophat
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Jumping to conclusions!
Didn’t you hear?
This year the theme is Police.
There aren’t more pigs there, it’s just that lots of people are turning up dressed as cops.
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One of the best places unless you’re raped, right? Somehow, I imagine you’re not of a demographic all that at risk of getting raped…
Basic sanitation is just one of those things you need to think about when you have tens of thousands of people into an area with limited space for any length of time. There are enough examples of disease spreading at festivals and other large gatherings to make that clear, even if the danger is lessened by the climate. It’s a bit like the fact that you wash your hands when preparing food, even if you haven’t had a salmonella outbreak at your specific restaurant.
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Vulgar people are people too!
Vulgarly.
I was asking because his supposition sounded like concern trolling in a way that I have to say, yours does too.
Have these hypothetical disasters been an actual problem at BM in the past?
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I’m just saying that whether or not a specific problem has happened in a specific location before is irrelevant; it’s happened in many other large gatherings and people going to BM would be wise to take it into account. A town of 60,000 people needs basic sanitation facilities and practices, even if it is a really, really awesome town.
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So, you support charging people at BM with sex crimes? Noted.
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The person you’re talking to seems to be trying to honestly address your points. Personal attacks are probably unnecessary.
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If they commit one, sure…
(I’m not one of those people who considers peeing on a rock to be a sex crime, BTW)
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Oh, I thought we were discussing an actual event at an actual place and time that actually happened.
How gauche of me not to have realized we were debating your ideal world all along.
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Why are you acting like this person is your enemy? I just don’t understand why this person deserves some kind of dirty low blow guilt trip over trying to do their best. Do you have a suggestion that would do more than try to spread scorn over people who are against the same thing you are?
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See, the difference between how Burners handle sexual assault vs. how everyone else deals with it is a big difference. No tourism board on the planet would say ‘hey, there’s a small problem of rape - be careful’. They’ll sugarcoat the problems, and try to hide any incidents.
We don’t. We call people out when they need to be, comfort the injured, and throw the rapists to the cops. We do massive amounts of public awareness campaigning to keep it in people’s minds. A lot of this comes from the work in active consent from the BDSM community - a lot of burners are kinksters of various stripes, but not a majority, I think. Talking about these incidents is the only way to keep miscommunication from becoming sexual assault, and keeps the system ready to deal with the rapey assholes out there.
And rape happens to every demographic. It’s not as common in the bodybuilder set, but even then, it happens. I’m glad there are some cops there - they get to deal with the rapists, the abusive partners, the drug dealers, and the toxic meatheads who can only emotionally interact with people with their fists.
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Of course I want more autonomous zones. “More autonomous zones like this”, not really. Because Burning Man isn’t created “without intermediaries”, and it’s not “without permission from the pigs”. It has been compromising itself further and further in hopes of avoiding trouble, of avoiding open conflict with authority. Only to find that keeping your head down will not keep you safe.
I don’t think that the repression itself is a good thing, but I think that it can have a positive result, in that it forces a huge subculture of smart, unconventional and mostly oblivious people to confront the reality of government/police repression in our society. And possibly, inspire those people to feel a personal stake in fighting against it.
That El Cam is the one being busted. It’s a DPW ride used by the folks who get there a month early to set it all up. See http://www.loupiote.com/photos/1520852945.shtml for a close-up of the logo on the door.
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