July 25, 1998 - Artemis

We've been picketing in Toronto since May 97, and in all those pickets, there have been two constants. Myself and Gregg. Today Gregg had to work, so I became the nominal 'responsible person' for our second picket in July.

We started with Gregg, myself & Wulfen, but Gregg was only there long enough to drop off picket signs, meet the (Org hired) cop, and go over our procedures with her, and wish us luck. I was giving out the July issue of "Dyn'Ethics", and Wulfen was giving out Xenu, Lisa McPherson, and ScienoSitter leaflets. The Org was giving out vouchers for "Orientation", and they had a table set up for "stress testing". Unlike the last few months, they've apparently found a working Mark VII e-meter, in a putrid purple case.

Relativly quickly we were joined by Android Cat, then DW. Unfortunatly as Gregg had left, we couldn't get any more picket signs, so Wulfen & myself surrendered our signs and concentrated on leafleting - I found it harder to leaflet without a picket sign, as it's not obvious I'm a picketer and not a body router. Also, many of my 'regular' readers of Dyn'Ethics had already got this issue two weeks ago, so in the three hours of the morning picket, I only handed out about 20 leaflets in the morning, I did have some interesting conversations with passers by.

The morning shift was incident free, and after lunch Android Cat had to go, and in the afternoon, I retreived my sign from Android, this made leafleting much easier, and I handed out the remainder of the Dyn'ethics leaflets in the afternoon. This is a total of 400 copies of 7 pages of concentrated entheta distributed in 2 weeks in Toronto.

I was struck with just how far we've come in informing. There were several people who had heard of the Lisa McPherson case on the TV, and I referred several to www.lisamcpherson.org or www.xenu.net for more information.

In the afternoon I had a very long chat with a man who was public at the Toronto Org in the early 70s, and he had many interesting stories, including the incident that made him leave. He was being auditted, and the auditer was in his words "bloody awful", and had to be sent back for retraining. When this man tried to ask for his money back or free repair auditting, and was refused, he blew. Looks like foot bullets are not a new factor.

We did use the hired cop once. There was a drunk who was getting a little threatening, so I asked her to warn him off. Apart from that, most of her time was taken up giving directions to people. Of course, she made no difference to our behaviour - we obey the law and don't harrass people at any time regardless of who's watching.

In the afternoon, a new body router turned up, however his appearence was notable. He was wearing worn work boots, and very dirty jeans. Remember this if any of the rondroids comment on the picketer's atire.

Near the end, we did a quick survey of the org's external condition.

There are now several broken windows, many on the East side 2nd floor, some on the 5th floor north side, and of course the 1st floor West side - this last one has been broken for at least a year. The north elevator is still broken, has been for at least a year, and there is the remains of a pot lamp above the door of the bookstore. The building is visibly crumbling.

Now for my big wins!

Last May, I took a 38" in pants. I'm now down to a 34", with the only change to my lifestyle being regular excercise, and the next day, for the first time after an all day picket, my muscles are not aching. The ARSCC weight reduction & general fitness plan!

See you next month.