From: hendersn@zeta.org.au (Zed) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Picket report: Sydney, 7th Dec Date: Fri, 06 Dec 1996 23:14:52 GMT Message-ID: <58bg62$897@phaedrus.kralizec.net.au> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Five people this time: me, Tony, David Bromage and two others who didn't want to be identified. Roughly 13 Scientologists - 9 adults and 4 children - staged a counter-picket. I briefly saw the same distractions that were at the September picket - - "Don't Raise the Titanic" and "the World Ends at 9:45" - but they didn't last very long this time. The anti-Cultaware theme was very aggressively put forward, with three different leaflets being handed out(which I'll be posting). The credit for ensuring that Tony's leaflets were handed out to people despite the attempt at "overwhelm" by the Church goes largely to a woman who was picketing with us. Upon seeing someone who already had a $cientology leaflet, she would - all in the space of about two seconds - - say "you've got for, this is against, best to get both sides", and hand them her leaflet. It was so incredibly simple, but so incredibly effective - people who'd taken a $cientology leaflet or three almost invariably took one of hers. Superb. Pleasingly, the Scientologists didn't seem particularly happy to have to be out there, and packed up immediately when 1pm came around. It was quite a circus for a while, but we managed to hand out plenty of leaflets regardless. Attempts at bull-baiting were made as usual, along with attempts to lure picketers into conversation, keeping them from handing out leaflets. Fortunately, Sydney appears to have developed a good "take no bullshit" ad-hoc picketing team, and there was always at least one person with a leaflet ready. I didn't get tagged with "Bruce the Pomeranian" even once - he appeared uncharacteristically subdued. Tony had also prepared some leaflets with Internet addresses on them. Unfortunately none of them were handed out because one Scientologist girl snatched the whole lot and ran away with them. I will now claim the dubious honour of being the picketer harassed the most by the Co$ picketers. Tony might have got more, but it certainly felt like I was getting the brunt of the attention. I had the crack troops on my case: three pre-adolescent girls. I had prepared about 60 floppy disks for the occasion with various files on them which I was offering to various people. I only got a few out, but I've asked people to duplicate the contents of the disk and pass it on to others if they think it's worth it. Of course, the $cientologists didn't like me handing them out. For what seemed like hours I was face-to-face with a group of schoolkids asking for a disk, pleading for a disk, cajoling me for a disk, and demanding me for a disk. I gave them one, but of course they demanded another one. There's no doubt in my mind that the only reason they were asking was to try and prevent them being handed out to other people. Suggestions that I had stolen the disks, that the disks had a virus and that the disks contained copyrighted material were all spouted at anyone I offered a disk to. A woman was holding a tape recorder as close to me as she could without me immediately noticing it while this was going on. Later she claimed that it wasn't turned on(although how a tape can come to the end of a side when it isn't running is beyond me). I'll be interested in what they intend to do with the tape. But the real kicker came when a Scientologist who I later learned was named Sandra(the surname could be "Hutchence", but I'm not sure) attacked my disks directly. I was carrying the disks in a plastic bag. While I was talking to someone else, Sandra was apparently tearing a whole in the plastic in order to get at them. I first noticed it when the disks fell in pile on the ground. Before I could pick them up, Sarah kicked them all over the place(I later learned that she kicked them twice - I was too busy scrambling to pick them up to notice). I recovered most of them, but Sandra managed to purloin one pack of ten disks. My next reaction resulted more from anger than anything else, and was possibly more extreme than was necessary. I tried to pull the disks out of Sandra's hands. She wouldn't let go, and tried to stop me from getting my hands on them. Tony also tried to take them back, while David Bromage kindly suggested that it was a bad idea to steal someone else's property. She eventually returned them when told to by Henry Bartnik himself. Thankyou, Henry - take appropriate measures for Sandra's unethical behaviour and we can both forget about the matter. I called the police to file a complaint. They said they would send a patrol car around to look at the situation. It never turned up. One comment as I was trying to take the disks back: "that'll look good in a photo!" Next time I bring a camera - a photo of a Scientologist kicking someone else's disks all over the place is NOT good PR. Sandra then shadowed me for most of the rest of the picket, noting that there was no sign of the police, and perhaps they agreed with Scientology rather than me. No matter. Standard operating procedure now requires a Scientologist to claim that I have lied disgracefully about the above events, and in reality it was me picking on the poor Scientologist victim. Who will oblige? I would rate the overall effectiveness of the picket as "good, but could be much better". Next picket: March, 1997. Zed PGP key on Request ****PGP is obviously a good idea - look at who objects to it**** Resources for Ex-Scientologists: http://www.zeta.org.au/~hendersn/ "This program will handle everything you said you wanted handled. All it will cost you is $2,500." I asked, "Is that ALL everything here will cost me?" She replied in a very definitive voice, "YES, that's all." -- conversation between Wayne Whitney and a Scn recruiter. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: cp850 iQEVAwUBMqkmkysxIzhyTOOxAQGnGgf/by46li9nOp/fzi7yk9LWy+8W7ZYW1YBn 0jspjleD5fGAFhHzBYkg9Gon8c96ean3SCU10v931CLQ0b5e46h+V+M7+TUDNjvL cEtvTSeYymcdemz2v+7CGAhCJ8xENVcGFNWLL+WLgCtABPdP8sEO8iRxJIBz4k9c AUjZdc3kFYFhhQGaioH31YcfWK9TgdnfDB6d6msdQHSI5gwAZkN643U6fhz0AXoy /ZC4sq2662L9Jz0HSxSilUd+jG43q1X3tW5i/osHeXcWIN4xXyeZsuN37GZKoSK8 MT2bInFUyg6RNFIzoVGpwyUNdAaTrfmd0SPZM1sk5q8Y/WaEeS/StQ== =DTXt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----