Arnie Lerma, Duncan Pierce and I decided to protest the Washington, DC org yesterday. We put in two hours despite the burning sun of the south, and I think it was very successful. Arnie was carrying his "Danger: Greedy Cult Zone" sign, Duncan had the "Scientology: the Church with a Body Count sign," and I had my "Stop Hurting Families, Scientology" sign.

A couple incidents are worth mentioning. We had a very slow and methodical sidewalk cleaning with a hose for most of the protest. It didn't stop us from going back and forth as we pleased. I felt bad for the woman assigned to do it, since she took an hour and a half to clean 30 feet of sidewalk, and didn't even finish the job. It must be demoralizing to know your time has such low value in the eyes of your employer.

I had my usual "Why I Protest" flyers, of which I distributed about 300.

After a half hour or so, a young woman came running back for another flyer, reporting that a Scientologist was standing down the block and took her flyer. I gave her another, and asked how he was doing this. She said he would walk up to people and say "Wow, that looks interesting, can I have that?" After that I told everybody headed in that direction to "Make sure the Scientologist in the yellow shirt doesn't take your flyer. He doesn't want you to read this." Arnie was on the triangle across the street, and reported that they guy didn't get any more flyers after that.

He gave up after 45 minutes with no flyers, muttering with disappointment.

I bet they got about 10 out of 300. About five people came back for a second flyer, with a personal reason to try to understand a group that would pull such a stunt.

We had a couple of interesting passers-by. A couple told Arnie that they knew all about how bad Scientology is. Arnie asked how they came to know that. "I grew up in Clearwater, Florida" was the answer. We also had a young man tell us he worked in the org for three weeks. "They had me talking to doll babies, so I quit." The look on his face was hysterical.

Handlers were Thierry Duchanac, who came out with a camera, Sylvia Stanard who came to heckle, and the woman with the hose. Sylvia was primarily concerned with the number of protesters, being three and not a thousand I guess. Duncan had the line of the day, "How many does it take to make a statement?"

Photos will be available this week.

--
Rod Keller/ Irresponsible Publisher/ Black Hat #1/ OSA Patsy/ Killer Rod
Expert of the Toilet/ CWPD Mouthpiece/ Shelly Thompson in Drag
The Lerma Apologist/ Merchant of Chaos/ Socio-Political Censor
Bigot of Mystery/ Quasi-Scieno/ Mental Bully/ Vision of Destruction

Go Back