May 22, 1999
Picket report; Atlanta, Georgia
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: 5/23/99 Altanta Picket Report, or, Attack of the Giant Clams
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 02:55:25 GMT
From: mad_bovine@my-dejanews.com
Message-ID: <7iaf2t$6bs$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Wynot, Ethercat, and myself began picketing the Atlanta Borg at 5 PM.
Susan Webb arrived shortly after we did and immediately started snapping
our pictures. I wasn't really in the mood to be friendly with her this
time, so I asked "Got any new lies? We've heard all the old ones." Of
course she didn't like that (which was why I said it), so she retorted
with "What are your crimes, Mad Cow?" My response was to recite the Xenu
story to her. At first she turned to go inside, then decided to practice
her tone 40 at me with "What are your crimes What are your crimes What
are your crimes ...." ad nauseum, as if it were some sort of verbal
talisman to protect her preclear ears from the effects of the evil Xenu
story. During the rest of the three hour picket, most of what Susan said
was "What are your crimes?", "Oh Mad Cow, get a life.", and the
ever-popular "Whateverrrrrrr". Apparently a teenage female BT has
invaded the speech center of her brain (what's left of it). I did,
however, remind her that we, the picketers, were in charge. Being DSA
PRO, she had to be there whenever a picket was in progress. Had to make
the public scientologists feel reassured that the picketers were being
handled, you see. But something must be wrong, because the pickets keep
reappearing like clockwork.
Of course the cops showed up, gave us the standard rules about
picketing, then left. Susan gave them the usual crap-laden earful.
They ignored her since they've been briefed before about their lies.
After an hour, a scientologist came out to handle Wynot. I shall refer
to this jerk as Wacko John. This idiot walked beside Wynot and
attempted to provoke an incident by yelling at Wynot about his crimes,
what drugs he was on, and more yelling about Wynot's crimes. During all
this, Wynot said not a word until Wacko John started to bump into him
while calling him an asshole. Wynot immediately turned to EtherCat, who
was videotaping this event, and asked her to call the police. She
already had :) Wacko heard this and left to "get a drink of water".
Several minutes later he returned to his task of attempted provocation,
when the cops showed up. They asked if Wynot wanted to press charges,
but Wynot just wanted Wacko to leave him alone. So the cops puffed up
their authoritarian chests and said any more physical exchanges will get
everyone arrested. I thought this was rather fascist, but it had the
desired effect on Wacko, so I kept my mouth shut. After the cops left I
noticed the steam was out of Wacko's step, as he turned his attention to
EtherCat. EtherCat told him to leave her alone, and I reminded him
what the cops said. No more problems from Wacko John.
The small parking lot began to fill as scientologists arrived for the
evening's event. A husband/wife OT team confronted me with the same old
stuff we've all heard before: "What are your crimes?", "How can you
criticize it if you've never tried it?", "What psych drugs are you on?".
Anything I responded with, they would try to invalidate. To them,
anything that is not scientology is valueless.
Eventually I said "Look, your both OT right? Okay, postulate me away.
As-is me. Come on, let's see it. If you can postulate me to the other
side of the street, I will put down this sign, and join your
organization." Well of course they couldn't do it, because there is no
friggin' thing as OT powers. I told them THIS was why I was picketing,
because this was a SCAM and I considered them victims.
After that, any time I was confronted by an OT, I would give them the
"OT challenge". When nothing happened, I would say it was a scam, and
that they should get a refund. I got yer invalidation right here boyz
and girlz. Strike one.
After 2 hours, "Mea Culpa" and "S" joined our picket, livening things up
quite a bit. My extra signs were distributed to them. Let's see now, 5
pickets, 10 scientologists, and they still couldn't handle us. What's
wrong with this picture?
At 7:30 PM the Dianetics self-congradulatory event began, and most of
the scientologists went inside. I did notice the only two scientologists
in Alabama arrived 5 minutes late. My guess is that maybe 40 people
attended. But Atlanta is such a big city, where are the other
scientologists? What? There are NO other scientologists in Atlanta? Oh,
what a shame. Strike two.
During the 3 hour picket, we tried in earnest to count all the honks,
waves, thumps-ups, and other such positive acknowledgements. We got at
least 72 such acks. Several people stopped at the gas station next door
to thank us for picketing. The St. Louis Bread Company, on the other
side of the borg, gave us free bread. Two high school girls, stopped by
to ask about the picket. One of the scientologist gave them a What is
Scientology book and told them to go make an informed decision about it.
I agreed that they should read the book AND read what the internet
contained concerning scientology. Apparently the girls already knew the
clams were a cult, having studied them in school. Oops, strike three,
scientology. Yer out!
So at 8 PM, we called it a night. After an adventure navigating the
streets of Atlanta, I was able to rejoin everyone at EtherCat's estate,
where we went for some extremely yummy pizza. Then the long drive home
back to the deep, dark jungles of Alabama.
PS. To Susan Webb: Next time we picket, would you please see what you
can do about getting us some REAL OT's to play with. Those non-OTs were
boring us. All they could do was quote Source. Booooooring.
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