November 20, 1998
Picket report; Atlanta, Georgia
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Cow's picket report, Atlanta, 11/20/98
From: mad_bovine@my-dejanews.com
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 03:57:57 GMT
Message-ID: 735dnt$u3q$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com
The weather today was wet and gloomy for a picket of the Atlanta Borg today,
but this turned out to be the most successful picket so far this year.
It didn't start out that way, though. First, I was 25 minutes late arriving
at Wynot's dungeon. Then we had to go to the local office supply store to
make copies of our new Lisa flyer; the copies I originally made would smudge
when you ran your finger over them. Old inkjet ink, i suppose. While at the
office place, I bought some more foam poster board and made Wynot a
"Scientology INDICTED" sign.
One note of interest. The lady making the copies stopped dead in her tracks
when she realized what the flyer said. She got the first copy. Next, out in
the parking lot we created Wynot's sign with my trusty giant marker pens.
Then it started to ran. Rats.
We killed time while waiting for the rain to quit, which took about 20-30
minutes. We found a parking spot almost directly under the Borg's nose,
jumped out, grabbed our picketing stuff (camera, tape recorder, flyers,
signs) and began the Enturbulation Two-Step. Oh yea, my signs were the
tried-and-proven "Scientology is a SCAM" and "Scientology HURTS People"
signs.
The first 30 minutes were spent on our usual beat, across the street from the
Borg. During this time I noticed Wynot was having way more success than I was
handing out the flyers. So I handed my share of the flyers to him, then
crossed the street to picket in front of the Borg itself.
Car traffic was heavy. I can't tell you how many honks, thumbs-up, and verbal
acks we got from passers-by. Wynot told me that people were craning their
heads around trying to read both sides of my signs as they drove by. I made
sure the SCAM sign was facing the oncoming traffic most of the time. Those 8
inch letters are easy to read from a freakin' long way off (by design). Wynot
was able to pass out all of our flyers (only 20, but foot traffic around the
Borg is never heavy). The cool part is that several people *asked* for flyers
outright, without Wynot having to offer them.
The reaction from the Borg was mostly very non-confront. Of the maybe dozen
folks that vomited forth, most were in their early 20s. They would come out
the front door, see my signs, then duck around the corner of the building so
as not to be exposed to the nasty evil suppressive and his signs. Our
ever-lovely Susan Webb (remember her? DSA pre-clear. Can you say down-stat
org?) popped out to get a drink from the bagel shop down the street. I hope
she doesn't jaywalk like that *all* the time. She did smile and wave to me,
making me momentarily weak-kneed (hubba hubba).
Then there was Mr. TR Stare! About 15 minutes into the Borg-side picket, this
guy comes out to smoke a cigarette. When he sees me, he moves around the
corner of the building to finish his smoke. 30 seconds later he is back still
smoking, giving me the TR death stare. I'm sorry ya'll, I tried to give him
the stare back, but after 15 seconds I started laughing and had to turn and
go back the other way. He immediately stomped back inside. It was just too
funny. Later we noticed he was standing at one of the upper windows, doing
the Death Stare again. I started to giggle again, so I just waved and
snickered and kept walking. The rest of my time in front of the Borg was
spent with my extendable picket sign at full length (9 feet), which put my
"HURTS People" sign right at upper-window level.
Not long after that, a man tried to quickly herd his two children into the
Borg without them seeing me. It didn't work, thanks to the mostly glass front
of the entry staircase. I made sure they saw my "HURTS People" sign. I
suppose Daddy had some fast explaining to do later.
So in slightly over one and a half hours, our flyers were gone, our feet were
tired, and we decided to call it a day. I recrossed the street, we quickly
dumped the picket stuff into the back of the car, and zoomed away without
notice from the clams.
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