This last week, while working on our film "The Profit," Patricia Greenway and I picketed both the Toronto, Canada and Los Angeles Scientology facilities.
As some of you may know, I am the Director and Patricia is the Producer of "The Profit," a film about a cult leader, which has been relentlessly attacked by the Scientologists.
About ten days ago we received a call from the film's music composer, a young lady who lives alone. She reported that a neighbor had caught a person stealing the composer's trash about 5:30AM. She was frightened by the thought of a strange man prowling around her house in the pre-dawn hours, so Patricia and I decided to picket Scientology as kind of a "payback."
In Toronto, we hooked up with Greg Hagglund and the local activists, and picketed the Toronto Org for three hours last Sunday.
The Org was unprepared for our arrival. At first, a little fellow named Mario came out to greet the seven or eight protesters. He seemed quite frightened (God only knows why) and so I apologized for scaring him, but he remained upset, and after a time went back inside the Org.
Then, a more mature crew came out to "handle" us, and pass out counter picket fliers.
Some of these people were the usual brainwashed robots, but several of these Scientologists were actually able to carry on rational conversations. Patricia engaged a lady named Val Hill in a long conversation. Val wanted to know why we were picketing. Patricia told her about our music composer's scare. Val, being a good Scientologist, said that she was sure there was a way to handle our complaints if we just went up lines and communicated to management our problem.
I thought to myself, "This is what my ex-wife and Greg and Debbie Barnes, and all the other loyal Scientologists used to do. They'd just "write up" a problem and send it "up lines," certain that Scientology was run by logical, upstanding individuals who would right any wrongs."
Of course, these write ups were never acted upon (except to "Sec Check" the person doing the write up) because the truth is that the higher up one gets in Scientology, the crazier and more evil one becomes, and the less likely one is to right any wrongs. Val Hill doesn't currently understand this, but in time, like all public Scientologists…she will. That's something to think about, isn't it Mr. Miscavige? Think about it: the more you reveal yourself, the faster the public will blow and the faster Scientology will shrink.
I had to break away from the (actually intelligent) discussion between Val and Patricia because Peter Ramsey, another Scientologist, was following Greg Hagglund around, frightening him. Greg was visibly upset by Peter's pursuit, and as he tried to call the police to assist him, he actually backed out into traffic to avoid Peter.
After the police came, Patricia and I talked with Peter Ramsey, and two other Scientologists, Doug Stone, and Brian McPherson. At first, Peter and Brian made the kind of silly, disparaging remarks toward the protesters that we have come to know and 'love' from Scientologists.
However, Patricia has communication skills superior to those learned in Scientology, and was able to get them to stop being foolish and actually communicate. I related the story of why I had left Scientology and what had caused me to start protesting against it. Brian felt that I had not acted like a good Scientologist and that rather than protesting, I should have tried to 'handle' the problems I'd encountered at Flag.
Again, I detected the same lack of knowledge about the reality of Flag and anything connected with Scientology upper management that Val had displayed. I thought, "These people don't know that Scientology isn't practiced at Flag.
There isn't any way to "handle" the screw ups, cover ups, incompetence and chaos that result from a close connection to insane upper management. Telling these people about the sneaky, unethical, lying conduct of RTC management is like telling a good German during World War II about the Death Camps. They would have said, "Well, you must tell Hitler about this. Hitler would never allow it!""
They didn't understand that the very person they relied upon to correct wrongs and evil was actually the one responsible for the evil. So it was with Hitler, so it is with Miscavige, and so it will always be with all petty dictators of totalitarian organizations.
I recognized, though, that the public Scientologists of Toronto were much more rational than the robotic "OT Committee" members of Clearwater. The Toronto "public" were actually able to carry on a discussion, as opposed to Dennis Clark or Mary DeMoss down in Florida, who could only mouth programmed misinformation, or spew irrational hate.
Again, it seems that the farther one is away from the source of the evil-the top of Scientology-the less the evil clouds one's thinking.
One interesting thing I heard about up in Toronto was about "Black NOTS." One of the other protesters, Mike, told me that it was standard practice for OSA (the Scientology Secret Police) to do Clay Table Mockups of people they were trying to destroy, demonstrating in clay how the person they hated would meet some horrible fate. If true, this is quite interesting because it is a direct lift from Aleister Crowley's Satanic OTO Cult, and something akin to voodoo. I became familiar with these practices while researching cults for "The Profit"
movie, and found that the similarities between these various mind control practices are quite pronounced.
In any event, we left Toronto having somehow survived whatever "Black NOTS"
voodoo was done to us, and actually communicating a small portion of the truth about Scientology to the Scientologists who came out to "stop" us.
In closing, I hope you'll all support our film, "The Profit," that Scientology is trying to shut down.
For news about the LA picket, please refer to Patricia Greenway's post "Picket Report LA."
Peter N. Alexander
Director
The Profit