Australian Critics of Scientology
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Melbourne Picket 13/14 March 1998

Frank Copeland, Sun 15 Mar 1998


From: fjc@thingy.apana.org.au (Frank Copeland)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Melbourne Picket 13/14 March 1998
Date: 15 Mar 1998 09:06:29 +1100
Message-ID: <slrn6glvr4.n7d.fjc@thingy.apana.org.au>

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David Gerard and I started the ball rolling on Friday afternoon by handing
out about 180 leaflets on Swanston Walk, Melbourne's busiest street. We
started near Flinders St Station, moved up to the body router's favourite
spot at the corner of Flinders Lane, and finally ended up at the corner of
Collins St. So we moved a whole city block :-).

As it was the last time we did it, this proved a very effective way to get
rid of lots of leaflets in a short period of time. We had a few people stop
to chat, and lots of double-takes. We had a hard time getting rid of any
leaflets on the body router's corner. People must be used to just putting
their heads down and avoiding eye contact at that spot. 

Saturday morning was the picket proper at the Org in Russell St, which was a
fairly quiet affair.  There was just me, David and Cyril Vosper for most of
the time, and Barbara turned up later. We started a bit after 11, and
finished around 1pm. It was a very slow day traffic-wise, with hardly any
foot traffic, and no sign of the tourist buses that used to pull up in
droves at the Hyatt next door. For some reason the silly git in the white
hat with the *big* camera decided to be more obnoxious than usual, getting
literally right in our faces with it.  He gave me a filthy look when I asked
him if it had film in it today, after posing for him with a Xenu leaflet. 

We speculated before the picket about the possibility of having them get a
TRO against us like in the US. I also wondered if they would serve something
on David related to the web pages they've been whining about recently.
Instead, Brian Johnston (OSA ANZO) started needling David about some
irrelevant personal issue he'd dug up. All it did was piss David off and
motivate him to commit more acts of suppression.

After tying them up for a couple of hours we headed down to Swanston Walk
again and handed out the rest of the leaflets. Swanston Walk is looking good
for us, and we'll be back more regularly from now on.

- -- 
Home Page: <URL:http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/> 
Not the Scientology Home Page: <URL:http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fjc/scn/>

Keep it in Usenet. E-mail replies and 'courtesy' copies are not welcome.
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