In article<9p5l5u8l0gfjrdgistiqsbf1bv9nbd21ss@....> ©Anti-Cult® writes: >Xemu.
>>PICKET REPORT Sat 2002/feb/02, in Birmingham (UK).
>>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>I will be going out to this demonstration in about half and hour;
>>report follows on my return home.
>>
>
>Uhu, if you go out for that demonstration now on Friday, you will be one
>day too early Dave.

I meant to post it just before going out, but mistakenly moved it to 'post now' on the day of writing.

I had been a bit tired over the winter holiday plus had hardware problems which remained unresolved over it, so Jens organised this one.

We planned to meet at noon and start the demo at one, but the train with Jens and the sound equipment was delayed until arriving at two.

I didn't get to the rendezvous until just before one, and sat there grumbling a few minutes then vent to site.... not to worry: John, Hartley, Andy, and later Diane (not on Internet) were demonstrating away. Soon Jens arrived, and set up the sound gear with John on the mic; I did some unamplified slogan-shouting too.

The little leather jacketed creep, a sport of down-market version of Graeme Wilson aka the Snot Vampire, s feeding the cops a load of lies. Apparently we were harassing his poor paritioners trying to get to the building. "Well, this is a public thoroughfare.."

Exactly. We have a right to protest in public thoroughfares. They have a right to move freely through public thoroughfares to their building. There is a perfectly good shopping street leading to the far side of the building (the block is surrounded by streets, with shops on the ground floor on every side). If people wish to enter the building and take services I will not pursue them and, if they wish to avoid contact with me, then they need only go round the other side. "Right, we understand each other" said the cop.

 The location is like this______________________________________
    /                                                          /|
   /             .-.                                          / |
  /____________.' /|'________________________________________/  |
  |            | |  |                                        | /|
  |____________|/  _|_______SHOPPING_MALL_LEVEL______________|//
  |___________ / /|__SHOPFRONTS_(station_concourse_level)____|/                            
  :.platforms./ /.'      __________________________       ''''''''''
             / .   . - '/                         /|'''''.  . ' ''''
            / .   .    /_________________________//|   .' .'
           / .   .     |___OFFICES____<_"ClamBed ||/ .' .' 
   ______.'     '._____|__SHOPFRONTS____PizzaHut_|/.' .'...........
                                             DEMO
  ------.       ...NEW...STREET.....................................  
        .    .'
       .    .     so you can see there were plenty of other ways in.

-o0o- To give you an idea outside, Birmingham is the second city of Britain with about 1 Million people counting all the satellite towns, and a big regional airport six miles east of town. It has a reputation like Detroit or Pittsburgh: the iron and steel foundries (mostly closed) are about fifteen miles west of us, we had and still have some car-making, also motorbikes, handguns, sheet metal work, screws and bolts, enamelled badges, fine gold jewelery, et cetera. The centre has an inner ring-road too small but the centre is being redeveloped in stages. This stretch of New Street is pedestrianised: it has become as nice, and as busy, as Pool High St where we used to demonstrate given equal weather.

Poole used to be the premier Org worth about "250% of a normal Org".

When the seagulls got to Poole clambed, Birmingham became premier at about 110%. We've chipped the corners off them so they're now at about 70 or 80% of a normal Org, though still premier because the others are mostly complete rubbish. In moving here from a very out of the way corner of the city -- only perhaps 600 mtrs from this spot but nobody much goes there -- they have "brought Scientology before the public" much more; if that's what they wanted. Far more people passing by have done an introductory course or talked to to the demonstrators before (or know someone who has). They are getting a reputation, but a bad one. The Org is, in terms of disgruntled ex-members, drowning in its own shit. Given the kind of city it is, it is not particularly well-known as a tourist spot, but there is a moderate "conurbation" flow of new passers-by with people coming to shop in the big city centre now and then from towns up to 20 or 30 miles away.

-o0o- Anyway, all in all, we had a grand dau out........

                 __ 
               .'  '.       "OUR GRAND DAY OUT"
              :      :
              | _  _ |     cracking clams, grommit!
           .-.|(o)(o)|.-.        _._          _._
-- -------( ( | .--. | ) )-----.',_ '.------.' _,'.-----------
           '-/ (    ) \-'     / /' `\ \ __ / /' `\ \
            /   '--'   \     /.'     \.'  './     '.\
            \ `"===="` /     `       : _  _ :       `
             `\      /'              |(o)(o)|
               `\  /'                |      |       http://www.
               /`-.-`\_             /        \   xemu.demon.co.uk
         _..:;\._/V\_./:;.._       /   .--.   \
       .'/;:;:;\ /^\ /:;:;:\'.     |  (    )  | 
      / /;:;:;:;\| |/:;:;:;:\ \    _\  '--'  /__
_____/ /;:;:;:;:;\_/:;:;:;:;:\ \_.'  '-.__.-'   `-.__art_by_jgs.

[Dave's post missing on Newsguy, so starting from scratch] In spite of the dire predictions for weather and an average effort from the very best privatised rail "service" available in the UK, I managed to get to Birmingham for the last hour of our demo yesterday.

Four Internet kind of persons and two parent type of persons braved the wind and the slight rain and handed out some leaflets. We also made contact with the locas who were overwhelmingly supportive.

A passer-by said that the Co$ had taken her for a small amount for a course which had been absolutely no use and now she couldn't get the money back.

It was a small amount, and she had learned a valuable lesson (when a $cientologist tells you something, that something is usually an outright lie or a useless generality). Actual quote: "The always say you have got a problem when you haven't got a problem and they invent that problem for you"

A police person passed by and agtreed that as long as we didn't create a disturbance we were free to continue our protest.

As the drizzling turned a little heavier, we made for an indoors environment and called it a day. SP powers must make one clair-voyant, because 15 minutes later the skies had truly opened and outside was the place not to be.

Suppressive regards Jens - -- Key ID 0x09723C12, j.tingleff@ieee.org/jens_tingleff@yahoo.com Analogue filtering / HIPERLAN / MkLinux / odds and ends http://www.imaginet.fr/~jensting/ +44 1223 211 585 "Howdy, stranger.." "Stranger than WHAT?" 'Texarkana' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8XYSDimJs3AlyPBIRAlCTAKCkpBn8K8nP+AsdNzpKPBwxURiRKgCgpc8m 6PxaGIdofYw07xeO49u4Q9E= =VyfN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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