The Mighty Vanguard Turned 66 Yesterday
SILVER BAY, N.Y. — Vanguard Week, also called V-Week, was the annual 10-day gathering held by followers of Keith Alan Raniere, the founder of the self-help organization NXIVM, to celebrate his nativity.
Raniere, who used the title “Vanguard,” was born Aug. 26, 1960. Beginning around 2005, members paid to assemble each late August at the YMCA Silver Bay Resort, a roughly 550-acre campus on Lake George in New York’s Adirondacks. Organizers typically booked the facility and limited access to participants. The event was billed as a week but commonly ran 10 days and, in some years, as long as 12.
Attendance in peak years was reported in the hundreds, with estimates of 400 to 500 people. Participants paid about $2,000 or more for a shared room, vegetarian meals and a schedule of classes, lectures, a triathlon, talent performances and tributes to Raniere.
Raniere often did not appear before the evening of his birthday, after several days of programming focused on his teachings.
The last full gathering at Silver Bay was in 2017. After public reporting that year on DOS, a secret subgroup in which women said they were branded and required to provide collateral, attendance dropped to about 125.
Clare Bronfman, a principal NXIVM financier, underwrote the 2017 event at a net loss of more than $560,000, including about $640,000 to rent the resort.
Clare and Sara Bronfman at V-Week.
Vanguard Week 2018 was canceled. Raniere was arrested in 2018, convicted in 2019 of racketeering, sex trafficking and related charges, and sentenced in 2020 to 120 years in federal prison. He is incarcerated. No comparable public celebration has been held at Silver Bay since.
Smaller sans Raniere events have been held, with a reported 20-25 diehard followers in some years following his incarceration.
Raniere turned 66 on Aug. 26, 2026. He is now in FMF Butner serving out his 120-year sentence.
What was once a 10-day lakeside tribute is now a historical feature of NXIVM’s collapse: a paid birthday festival built around a leader later found by a jury to have run a criminal enterprise.
In tribute to Vanguard, we have this selection from Ernie Thayer, which contains in the middle a real treat, an authentic speech Vanguard made on his birthday at Vanguard Week.
By Ernie L. Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the NXIVM Six that day:
The score stood five had pleaded guilty and only Vanguard remained to stand trial.
Clare admitted harboring illegals. Allison Mack pleaded to racketeering and conspiracy.
Nancy to racketeering conspiracy and Lauren to both conspiracy and racketeering.
![Lauren Salzman [right] with her mother Nancy.
Lauren got into NXIVM thanks to her mother and at an age when she was impressionable.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.frpbn.com%2Fmedia%2F2017_08_nancy-laruen-300x349.jpg%3Ft%3D2026-04-11T02%253A12%253A48.837Z&w=3840&q=75)
And hapless Kathy Russell pleaded to almost nothing at all.
A pall-like silence fell upon the followers of V.
A straggling few got up to leave in deep despair.
The rest Eudardo, Suneel, Marc and Brian and Angelika, Esther and Jim (who has since passed) and a few others clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, "If only Vanguard could but get a chance at getting his evidence out— We'd put up all our lives with Vanguard and his genius at work.”
But Salzman turned against V, as did also Lauren and Allison Mack.
And the former testified as the star witness, and she cried, while the latter provided a tape as evidence.
So upon those stricken followers grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Vanguard winning unless he testified - and if he testified, surely he would win.
Lauren was about to unravel the whole case, but the judge stopped her testimony before, in the followers’ telling, she would free her former master.
And Daniela, the much despisèd, tore the cover off the treatment she had received and identified her underage sister Camila, who never made it to the trial at all.
And when the dust had lifted, and the jury saw what had occurred in Albany,
There was Camila raped, and Daniella, her sister, used, with a third sister standing pat at Vanguard’s side. With his baby, the avatar child.
Remember when a few years before from five hundred throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the Silver Bay YMCA campground; it rattled in the Lake George dell;
It pounded on the Adirondack mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For it was Vanguard Week, mighty Vanguard, who would appear on day 3- his birthday. August 26.
There was ease in Vanguard's manner as he stepped into his place;
At the auditorium on talent night, where they danced and acted and sang,
There was pride in Vanguard's bearing, and a smile lit his face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly bowed his head,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Vanguard being worshipped by his beloved followers.
Vanguard got on the stage.
One thousand eyes (two per follower) were on him as he rubbed his hands on his jeans.
Five hundred tongues applauded when he wiped his sweat on his shirt;
He said,
"Oh wow, it’s bright up here. Please be seated if you’re standing. I can see little heads. Hey, it's interesting what you were saying. The themes of Vanguard Week and what it’s about normally announces itself before the week. And one of the issues that have come about is our community: how valuable, how important, how meaningful do we want it to be?
"And we give things meaning. I’m not the first one to say something, for example, like justice. We like to think about justice, but justice is something we earn. Justice doesn’t fall from the sky where we are all just these passive recipients, you know, sitting on the beach with a drink or something like that, and justice is there.
"Likewise, words like honor, concepts like honor, we need to empower that with meaning. And meaning doesn’t sit there, oh yes, honor, huh?
"That’s very meaningful. The way we make things meaningful is we hurt for them. We pain for them. And the strength of a community is how much effort that community will put against adversity in any of these things.
"There have been a number of things this year that needed to be fought for to bring our community strength.
"I am very devilish. I think I am probably the worst coach in the world because I am just a demon. You know, if I am coaching you, I am going to have you do something with your left hand, your right hand, your left foot, your right foot, your head, and then I am going to ask you to, you know, just the hard thing. So I do this, and it is with a twisted sense of pleasure in some ways.
"The extra effort being able to pull effort out of others and pull effort out of myself. So here we are coming into V week….”
And when he was done, the applause was deafening; so persuasive was he.
Then just months later the prosecutors hurled their charges at his illustrious person.
Defiance flashed in Vanguard's eye, a sneer curled his lip.
And now the indictment came hurtling through the air,
And Vanguard stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur in Mexico, preparing his slaves for a group fellatio session.
Close by the sturdy female followers whetted their lips while the Mexican federal police unheeded sped—
"I’ll hide in the closet," said Vanguard. “Lauren you protect me with your body and if needs be your life and send them away.”
"Give him up or we will shoot you!" the federales said.
And she did, and they arrested our Vanguard.
From the Americas, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;
"Convict him! Convict him. End the Vanguard’s regime. End his cult!" shouted the media.
And it's likely they would convict him if Vanguard did not raise his hand and take the stand.
With a smile of ethicists’ charity great Vanguard’s visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the trial go on; More witnesses testified to his conduct.
Vanguard gave his lawyer post-it notes.
Strike one, the jury thought.
But Vanguard still ignored the evidence, and the jury thought, "Strike two!"
"Fraud!" cried the followers, "Fraud!"
But one benign look from Vanguard and his followers were awed.
They saw his face grow stern and wise, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Vanguard wouldn't let that trial go by without him testifying in his own defense.
The sneer was gone from Vanguard’s lip, his teeth clenched in sincere ethicist thought, as the women, his former slaves, branded on their groin with his initials, testified against him.
He gazed with his genius upon the witness stand he would soon be called to as the prosecution closed its case.
And now the judge turned to the defense and told them the prosecution had rested. The field was theirs.
And now the air was shattered by the force of Vanguard’s mighty genius about to flow.
The followers waited. The jury waited. Mighty Vanguard had only to rise.
The defense said it would not call the Vanguard.
The defense said it also will rest.
No case would they put on at all.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The Vanguard Week talent show is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere women are laughing, and branded and somewhere his followers shout,
But there is no joy in Clifton Park.
The jury took less than 30 minutes, then returned with a verdict.
Mighty Vanguard was convicted. Then sentenced to 120 years.
And Mighty Vanguard never took the stand.
Today, it is unknown if there is any celebration going on anywhere in the world for Vanguard Week.
How many of his followers are left is also unknown, but still there are those that recall the Halcyon Days in Silver Bay Resort when, for ten days, they all gathered, eating vegetarian food and hearing the adorable words of the mighty Vanguard.
Whether it was a woman in a cabin with Vanguard in his birthday suit, or whether he was on stage pontificating with his great flights of genius, for a time he was theirs, and they were his. Now, a shadow of a man, he rests in Butner, an aging prisoner with 95 years of sentence yet to serve.