-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 A warm(ish) Easter Saturday in Tottenham Court Road. The 'org' was offering FREE stress testing at tables outside their windows so no doubt they were overjoyed when eight suppressives turned up with boombox and Xenu leaflets to increase their stress levels. After a short time the police asked us to move the boombox to the opposite side of the street, which was to our advantage because we could turn up the volume while continuing to leaflet on both sides of the street. We handed out several hundred leaflets, got a lot of support from passers-by and called it a day after a couple of hours. - -- John Ritson *** "I've seen other planets go nutty, but only when they were in external stress of great magnitude, otherwise they were rather peaceful. The days before the Helatrobus Implants on some of the planets attacked by those people, you couldn't maintain a government. It was everything going to pieces all the time." L. Ron Hubbard - 'Between-Lives Implants' *** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk 2.0.5 iQA/AwUBQkWpS1CD9Dt1KmxLEQJG3gCgulT0thw8J5L0GMtpjd2sCmhIGX0An1A4 HPClbdUtxdoGI9Ro10nMXNoH =9D4K -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
We assembled a little late, picketing from around 13.15 to 15.30. It was a pleasant spring afternoon, the first decent weekend of the year for getting out in the garden (which I did the following day).
The shop had small tables outside piled with 'Dianetics', but if anyone was taking advantage of the 'Free Stress Test' offer they must have done so inside. A Jive Aces tape was playing continuously, which I'd have thought a bit distracting for students.
The police were in smaller numbers and less proactive than on our previous picket. We were asked as before to station the 'boom box' amp and microphone on the opposite side of the road, but picketers with placards and leaflets (and voices) were allowed to remain in front of the shop. The staff had several long discussions with the police; if they were asking for further restrictions they didn't get them.
We handed out around 400 leaflets, our previous 'Cult of Greed and Power' and a new one about Xenu extracted from Wikipedia, the full version is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu Incidentally this is a 'featured article' on Wikipedia, the discussion on this is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Xenu
Those passersby who responded were as always appreciative of our efforts.
Photos by Jens already posted to ABS; Arcady's picturephone snaps may appear later.
After a refreshing pint at the local pub we headed for our respective railway stations. A cracking day out!
-- ARSCC Demographics Department Still looking for 8,900,000 Scientologists (TM) http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk/stolgy_0.htm
On a delightful warm spring Saturday, five to six veteran protesters and two new protesters descended on the Tottenham Crt Rd $cientology shop.
We timed our arrival to coincide with the police and set up in front of the shop. John started up on the microphone and we started handing out "Thriving cult of greed and power" and the new "Who is XENU" leaflet (a precis of the Wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu).
The policepeople on the scene were approaching our demo with an open mind and not taking any hysterical whinging from the clams too seriously. We were requested to move the boombox across the road so as not to disturb classes which were rumoured to be ongoing on the upper floors of the shop (that would be upper levels training, I suppose :-) ). Since the request was reasonable on the face of it, we acquiesced and moves the boombox across the road, turning it up slightly. During the demo, the clams did have a boombox of their own in their doorway which was heard as loudly as our boombox on the clam side of the street. <shrug>.
The two new protesters acquitted themselves well, handing out loads of leaflets and fending off the attempted handling of the woman who was probably the DSA. The father of one of the new protesters showed up and attempted to engage the DSA in iontelligent conversation but drew a kind of short straw. He had to tell her that "what is true for you is true for you" is an attitude very typical of teenagers. (He should know, he's a psychologist...)
The passers-by either assumed we were clams or supported our demo. One young guy who was waiting for his friend (inside to check out the org) did ask why we were doing it and why we weren't out in front of other religions, etc. A splendid occansion to reiterate what the differences between the criminal organisation known as the "church" <spit> of $cientology and a religious organisation are. Another couple had their child just miss out on the cult experience and were pleased about that. A local resident reminisced about how the local authorities had had occasion to require the clams to curb their enthusiasm in trying to drag people off the street.
The police were friendly and coped well with having their ears bent by the clams. They read both our leaflets and never indicated to us that there might be an issue with either of them.
The "personality test" handed out was the standard OCA, with small print beginning "(c) 2005 Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc. A non-profit association incorporated in South Austrlia..." Funny that, I thought that the rights to the OCA were now owned by Tom Voltz :-)
At the end of our pre-arranged time, we had handed out something like 100 "Thriving cult of greed and power" and 300 "Who is XENU" leaflets. We thanked the police for turning up and looking after us, and repaired to the pub for some well earned refreshments.
All in all, a grand day out, pleasantly uneventful.
Best Regards
Jens
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