Dan, Thank you for adding to this discussion. I agree with you, completely about the exemplary job that the Burning Man organization has done as an anchor for San Francisco arts, as a benefactor to the small town of Gerlach, as a platform supporting the arts, and in holding space for this event as it grows. I am very close to the ORG and have been recruited twice to work there. I was the co-founder of three legacy theme camps -- including one voted "Best Camp" and recipient, twice of the Golden Spike award. Many of the quotes in this article are from camp leaders and artists who feel excluded by the billionaire takeover of Burning Man. This isn't just my view -- it is shared by thousands of people who dropped out of producing art and theme camps for Burning Man because we could no longer reliably get enough tickets far enough in advance to plan anything. I know that they laid the groundwork for this "People's Burn" to happen, and that they will benefit from its success. The point in the story is with modern technology, we don't actually need as much big government or bureaucracy anymore because new techniques, new technologies, enable leaner organizations to do things more democratically. That's not to criticize BMORG -- it's advice that maybe they should use those new tools to become a leaner organization, or maybe they need to find innovative new ways to be more inclusive with the community in their decision making process. What we saw in the People's Burn is that more can be done with less. @@@@@@ What does this year's ritual mean, for the people, for the world? What the people were saying in the ritual this year is: "We want OUR event back. And "We want our Earth back." It's a metaphor for the entire Earth -- not just the Burn. We co-created this Burn/Earth. And it's unfair that it was taken away from us and turned into a billionaire's playground, for profit, and we want our Burning Man/Planet back. So, in this ritual, we took it back. Burning Man is not a logo. It doesn't belong to anyone. It's a movement -- and the movement, this year, said it wants to be free.
