[continued from previous message]

On Aug. 30, 2014, Hoversten, in her capacity as a Ranger, was working as a “Sandman” — Burning Man terminology for the Rangers who wear heat-protective gear and ring the central effigy that is ritualistically burned
on the final Saturday night of
the festival. Sandmen constitute the last line of defense between attendees and
the raging fire that results from the burn; occasionally, a deranged or drugged
participant slips through their perimeter and perishes in the blaze, as one man
did as
recently as 2017.

On that night in 2014, Hoversten stood with her back to the burning effigy, as she had been instructed, to monitor the revelers and prevent people from getting dangerously close to the burn. The eminent danger to her health turned out not to be the fire
behind her but the lasers shone in her face by participants in front of her.

“So that is what I was doing: Standing there in the dark with the man behind me,” Hoversten explained. “With handheld lasers coming at me, before the man was finished burning I was completely blind in my left eye.”

When Hoversten realized something was wrong, she signaled her flashlight to the
ground to her partner in the department. She quickly got in an ambulance and went to the main medical center on the playa. She now knows it would not have made a difference
if she received instant medical attention, as the damage had already been done.

Eye specialists have told Hoversten that they think the damage was done by that
"a high-powered laser off an art car," meaning one of the "Mad Max"-style customized vehicles common at the festival, rather than a handheld laser. "It crossed my field of
vision and damaged my eyes, especially my left one, so bad in just that one strike that my pupil wouldn’t even sit correctly, and it still doesn’t,” she said. ”Therefore any subsequent laser that passed across my field of vision burned my retinas
more.”

Today, Hoversten is permanently blind in her left eye and has damaged vision in
her right eye that continues to deteriorate. Sandmen wear goggles at Burning Man today and handheld lasers have been banned, although lasers on top of art cars are still
allowed.

Prior to Hoversten's injury, she was an arborist and worked on her parents’ farm. Since then, she has loss her personal sense of freedom. Her future plans to take over the farm are gone.

“My mother’s exact words are ‘Burning Man ruined your life, they took your life away, you have no freedom,’” she said. “And I don’t — I can’t — you know, I was an outdoor person. I did all kinds of things I can’t do anymore.

“I can’t take myself camping by myself; I can’t get there,” she added. “I can’t go to any event by myself; I can’t get there. I want one of them
to just put a patch over one of their eyes for one day and see that every single thing you do
from cooking a meal, showering, trying to pluck your eyebrows, you cannot do any of it like you used to.”

The events that followed the accident made Hoversten’s recovery process more difficult. After being injured, Hoversten contacted the Nevada state workers’
compensation system. According to Nevada state law, volunteers are eligible to file when
injured while volunteering, though this is not the case in every state. Nevada state law also requires that when an injured worker receives workers’ compensation, he or she cannot sue the employer. Hoversten connected with an executive claims
consultant, as directed by Burning Man, who told her to file her claim in Missouri because that is was her permanent residence, advice she now says was legally incorrect. She says she was never told that there was a 90-day filing period in Nevada. By the
time she figured that out, it was too late to file a claim.

“If I would have filed in Nevada, my case would have been much stronger,” she said. “When Burning Man [tells] you that they are helping you with workers' comp, they are not.”

Six months after the accident, Hoversten’s medical bills were piling up. In March 2015, one of her friends set up a GoFundMe to try to help her cope with the cost. At that point, Burning Man management finally took notice and offered
her a $10,000
anonymous donation, attached to a nondisclosure agreement. A standard life insurance policy will generally pay $250,000 to someone who is rendered legally
blind in both eyes on the job.

Hoversten had two weeks to accept the offer, which she says turned into two weeks of harassment by an employee in the human resources department. She did not accept the offer.

During this time, she claims a Burning Man employee tried to hack into her GoFundMe account to alter the copy to specify that Burning Man was helping her out financially. “That was a flat-out lie. They had not done anything for me financially at that
point,” she explained.

Since then, Hoversten has received her workers' compensation settlement — while she cannot disclose the precise amount, she described it as insufficient to “buy a new SUV.” Hoversten was told by Burning Man that she would meet with Harley K. Dubois
— a founding member of Black Rock City LLC — once her compensation case was
settled, but the company failed to follow through. According to Hoversten, Dubois ignored her emails and calls. “Probably every three weeks, I was trying again,” she said.
“Sometimes I would shoot her an email every day for a week.”

Eventually Dubois responded, and Burning Man opted to pay for Hovensten to have
a life coach for two years.

“I want a settlement from Burning Man. I want my future to be financially secure. Because right now I have no security for my future,” Hoversten said. “I had plans to take over my parents' farm, and I can’t do that now. I can’t take care of my
parents in a way that I had planned to before. I can’t drive them to the doctor's appointment anymore. I can’t do any of those things to help them.”

Hoversten still volunteers as a ranger at Burning Man; she is likely on the playa as this article is published.

“I still believe in the [Burning Man] community and the service of the volunteers as a community,” she said, adding that there is a disconnect between upper management and those who run the festival — a gulf that appears
to be widening and might
hurt the festival in the long run. “If they don’t start caring about their volunteers and treating their volunteers like we are human beings and have worth, eventually they are going to run out, and they won’t get the people who have been
volunteering since the beginning,” she explained.

Hoversten is not the only one who still finds value in the Burning Man community. Bond, who worked at Center Camp said she wants it to be "wonderful and beautiful again," but that would require changes in upper management.

"How do you get people to not abuse their power?" Bond asked. "It feels like there needs to be a shift in the alignment of their moral fibers."

When asked about the way Hoversten’s case was handled and whether or not she was told the truth regarding how to proceed with workers’ compensation, Burning Man declined to comment. Graham, the Burning Man spokesperson, told Salon that lasers have
been banned since her injury, with a few exceptions.

“At the 2014 event, a Black Rock Ranger reported being seriously injured by exposure to a laser during the Man Burn on Saturday evening of the event,” Graham said in an email. “For the safety and security of all participants and
staff, all handheld
lasers have been banned from the event since 2015, and mounted lasers are only permitted on art pieces, Mutant Vehicles and in theme camps if they comply with
specific restrictions and pass an inspection from our Safety team.”

“All lasers are banned at the Man Burn,” he said.

Yet when watching a video of the 2017 Man Burn on YouTube, one can see lasers are still part of the show. The official Burning Man website says lasers “must be off when prior to the fire conclave entering the Great Circle” but
can be used again after
“the perimeter has been released by the Rangers.”

* * *

The late Larry Harvey, Burning Man’s co-founder, laid out his vision for Burning Man in the aforementioned document now known as the “The 10 Principles of Burning Man." In it, Harvey describes Burning Man as being guided
by a vision of "radical
inclusion," "decommodification" and “civic responsibility." “We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation,” Harvey wrote.

Burning Man is intended to be a utopian celebration, a break from the banal routine of a capitalist work culture, an event that is radically inclusive to all who desire to express an authentic part of themselves that is not accepted in what Burners call
the "default world." Ironically, and perhaps inevitably, the festival appears to have replicated the very problems it sought to transcend. Burning Man set out to burn “the man," but in many ways it has become the man.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)