Attendees: Myself, Arnie, Elizabeth, and Duncan.

This was my first picket, and I wanted to make sure it went well, so I showed up early. REALLY early. I walked past to Org on the way to the meeting place and was offered a Personality test, which I gladly declined.

I didn't need to be routed. After waiting for a couple hours, I met with Arnie, who informed me the others would be a while.

We went about 10 minutes undisturbed until me and Arnie got our pictures taken. But I thought that might have been the extent of it all until about 5 minutes later, out of nowhere came "Grumpy" and "No Name", our handlers.

I guess since I was the new guy, the figured they'd break me in. The guys go in my face asking me what it was all about, and I didn't get that they were my handlers until "Grumpy" called me a bigot. And they started using their blocking tech to keep me from picketing. That failed shortly with Arnie coming by and drawing "No Name" away from me. "Grumpy" wasn't able to block me, but he kept up the questioning and name-calling. I quickly dispatched him with a calm, "On the other side of town, there is a man waving a picket sign, protesting the abuses of the Catholic Church. Is he a bigot?". He disappeared after that and reappeared after a while, but he didn't bother me for the rest of the picket.

"No name" handled Arnie, but noone can truly handle Arnie. He basically tried to incite an incedent, but I think the only incident he incited will be an earlier simliar incident during his next auditing session. There was a sign outside, offering counseling for those upset by the 9/11 disaster.

And they were also going to hold an open service for it, too. It really disgusted me that they'd take the incedent to their corporate gain.

They often pointed to the sign when they were handling us all asking us why we'd picket a "church" that was offering help for September 11th. That we were wrong for critiquing a church after 9/11. Like 9/11 was a message from terrorists that we should allow the Co$ to trample over individual freedoms.

We had a short break and after a while, returned to picketing with the "Evil Cult Zone" sign which REALLY moved fliers quickly. We cycled between sitting and picketing a few times. It was pretty cool how many people agreed about Scn being a greedy cult.

But just before we left, the guys sent out a nice young girl named Donya to take more pictures and after she was done, she started chatting and playing "Flirty Fishing" with me. She attempted to inform me about how bad Arnie was and about how little I know about Scn. However, I only had two objectives for our conversation: Get her to admit to the Xenu story in OT3, and the Google debacle.

Unfortunately, she knew nothing about the Google story, but she did admit that Xenu was in OT3, though not directly. I forced her to reconcile the two conflicting messages Scn feeds her: "Arnie Lerma is a copyright pirate" and "Xenu is not really what OT3 is". Of course, attempting to do so causes cognitive dissonance, for which Scn is legendary. But she admitted to the fact that Arnie couldn't be lying about OT3, if the church sued him over the materials.

Overall, it was very enjoyable for me, and I think the others had a good time. We let out about 150+ entheta fliers.

PSn, Signing Off.

From: Ted Mayett <ted-mayett@skylink.net>
Subject: Re: DC ORG PICKET REPORT 9-14-02
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 07:02:39 -0700
Message-ID: <is29ou4c0k7o0gu51mo5brc31ueaq2afne@4ax.com>

On Sat, 14 Sep 2002 20:42:11 -0400, "PSn" <benalishsiward@hotmail.com>

wrote:

> There was
>a sign outside, offering counseling for those upset by the 9/11 disaster.

OK then, this and that mention in a newspaper so far. It had occurred to me to wait until after 9/11 had passed for making that post about phone call results. But I was curious if I could force them into action by posting. I believe I did.

This is the org that had done a good job of faking it when I asked them for the address of the 'assist center' that will be set-up in Washington DC. On the day I called, I believe 9/9, nobody there knew anything about an 'assist center'.

Now that post I made contained information nobody here seemed to grasp. Although I suspect that some of the intelligent life on this NG would have caught what I typed, and just didn't mention it. Which was good at the time.

But me, I believe that my phone call(s), and my post, are what put that sign in the street in front of this org.

If the author of this post, or anyone at that picket is reading this, I would like to know about this sign. Specifically: How big was it?

How many colors were used? What words were used? How was the sign supported? (tripod, staples in a wall), and most importantly, was it professionally made or was it made by hand? And also, what was the material used? Cardboard, metal, plastic?

They read what we type people, and they act on it, make no mistake about this. We should always choose our words carefully. If something is broken, make no mention of it and leave it broken.

There is more to this 9/11-scientology-2002 story, this is not over yet. I'm sorry if my posts seem to reduce 9/11 to a banality.

But it happened, the tragedy happened, and we should record what we can of how this particular cult sought to exploit the situation.

History will appreciate our efforts of Today.

From: alerma@nospam.bellatlantic.net (arnie lerma - www.lermanet.com)
Subject: First Time Picketing end notes
Organization: CitizensAgainstCorruption
Message-ID: <3d83f020.104323073@news.verizon.net>
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 02:26:28 GMT

"Psn" did his first picket of Scientology in DC today.... so I asked him:

<NoOTsThere> PSn do you feel like your expereince made everything you { have ] learned [ about scientology ] on line, true?

<PSn> YES, ARNIE.

<PSn> EVERYTHING I've heard from you guys has been proven true today.

<PSn> I had doubts about the handlers and photographers and stuff.

I'd been reserving a 5% doubt in my mind about it, that "there's a small possibility all the videos on XenuTV are staged."...

<wasmom> You should have spent last summer here PSn { refering to Henson in Riverside Ca.. )

<PSn> But no, 100% truth now.

<yduzitmatter> hard to imagine this is a "church" spit

<PSn> [ Handler said ]"You're apparently at the lower end of the intellegencia." [Psn replied : ] "Well, that's funny because I ranked pretty high on your personality test."

[ End of excerpt posted with permission of all involved... ] Ferengi + Borg = Scientology I'd prefer to die speaking my mind than live fearing to speak.

Lost a loved one to Scientology? tell your story to http://www.lermanet.com

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