Clearwater 99 Picket Report (LONG!)
Thursday:
I arrived at the Tampa Int. Airport in the late afternoon. A man
whose posts I've long admired, but whom I'd never met in person,
Warrior was waiting at the gate to greet me. He had arrived 10 min.
before me, and we shared a ride to the hotel in a rental car.
At the hotel, I was pleased to meet in person for the first time, Rod
Keller, Bev Rice, MadCow, Roger Gonnet, Gregg Hagglund, Gerry
Armstrong, Ed and Sally Lottick, Dave Touretsky, TFC VP, Peter, Don
Knotts, Merck, GypsyBlue. EtherCat and WhyNot, Steve Hassan. I also
had the chance to reacquaint myself with Tilman, Jeff, Grady, Keith,
Kim, Bob, Stacy, OTVIII, Bruce P., Mark B., among others (sorry if I
forgot to include your name). The group was an all-star cast of
anti-Scientology EssPees.
We walked to a nearby Tex-Mex Restaurant for dinner, and chatted
amiably into the evening, taking up the better part of one room in the
restaurant. There was much comradery and laughing. We heard details of
that day's just concluded TRO hearings that Mr. Howd brought against
Bob Minton. Most critics agreed that the ruling was basically a slap
in the face at Scientology's attempts to suppress picketing behavior
through confrontational bullbaiting. The judge ruled that Bob would
have to stay 10 ft. (3m) away from Scientology's 17 buildings for the
next 6 months (not permanently, as Scientology was requesting) but
Scientologists would have to stay 20 ft. (6m) away from Bob when he
was picketing. It makes quite a statement when the judge restricts the
petitioner with bigger sanctions than he imposes on the defendant.
The 10 ft. limit came into play in an interesting way over the next
two days. In fact, several critics had visited downtown Clearwater
following the judges ruling, and witnessed Scientologists painting 10
ft. boundary lines around all their buildings on Thursday evening.
Most of us critics at the restaurant determined that the 10 ft. line
would not apply to us, since the judge meant it only to apply to Bob
and his employees and assigns.
Friday Picketing
Many of the critics were tied up in the morning with a press
conference at the hotel on Friday morning. But the rest of us headed
for downtown Clearwater.
Hiding (-8.0) technology reaches new peaks.
We started picketing at the Fort Harrison around 10AM. Sure enough,
there where orange dotted paint lines everywhere, and the sidewalks
were all torn up on the west and north sides (the south side borders
on some Pinellas County properties), and the front, east sidewalk was
covered with 40 ft. (12m) high scaffolding which was draped with a
green nylon mesh material. You could see through the mesh to a degree,
but not very well. There was no room to walk anywhere on the sidewalk
fronting the Ft. Harrison, and there were several big holes in the
ground. Across the street to the east, the sidewalk was covered by a
scaffold tunnel, with a wooden roof, and with green mesh covering both
sides. To walk on that block, one had to enter the tunnel. However,
there was a little space on each end of the tunnel where the sidewalks
were not covered. Of course, the orange dotted line extended across
these sections, right to the streetside curb.
Off-duty cops.
Several of us wanted to picket on the two small, uncovered segments
of sidewalk across from the Ft. Harrison. There were two uniformed
cops standing there, saying we should not stand there, nor would he
even agree that we could walk through the tunnel with our picket
signs! He kept saying he had made a call and was trying to get a
ruling on whether or not the 10 ft. line applied to all picketers.
Several of us assured him that it did not, and that his preventing us
from walking on that block was a denial of our civil rights. He urged
patience, saying he should know in 20 or 30 minutes. Finally, after
about 15 minutes of discussion and waiting, we just ignored him, and
began walking through the tunnel to picket on both ends. The two cops
did nothing to stop us. What he never told us, but what I learned
later, was that both of these cops were off-duty, and were hired by
Scientology for security reasons. I came to believe that these two
cops (a man and a woman) had not ever called anyone and were simply
trying to bluff us into not picketing on that block. I hope I'm wrong,
but if they did do this, I would say it is a highly inappropriate use
of their uniforms and of their goodwill as police officers, to try and
bluff people into silence, and in furthering one group's free speech
agenda at the expense of another's.
Sidewalk destruction is extensive.
Not only were the sidewalks on the west and north sides of the Ft.
Harrison destroyed. Sidewalks are also torn up on the only two sides
of the Sandcastle hotel which have street fronts. The south sidewalk
was very long, about 500 ft. The east side was shorter, but the entire
block's sidewalk was gone. On the block to the east of the Sandcastle,
the entire west side and part of the north side walks were destroyed.
Plastic orange barricades and fencing kept people from walking were
the sidewalks used to be. Another small area around a temporary
building to the south of the ABC class room building had it's sidewalk
ripped up. For those who do not know, the Sandcastle is where one goes
in Clearwater to learn to believe they are OTs, while the Ft. Harrison
is where one goes to learn to believe they are Clear.
Orange Dots.
Don Knotts had the brilliant idea to buy some orange stick-on dots
from an office supply store, and we all wore them to indicate our
contempt for the orange lines.
An uneventful day of picketing.
We picketed mostly quietly and uneventfully from about 10AM to about
5:40 PM. At first there were only about 10 of us, and then later in
the day, I would say the numbers peaked at 25 or so picketers. As I
mentioned above, many of the EssPees had press conferences and other
meetings (the Lisa McPherson Trust held a board meeting on Friday, and
Gerry Armstrong was interviewed on PBS radio), so I don't believe that
on Friday, all the critics present in Clearwater were manning the
picket lines at any time.
Reporters.
Scientology is big news in Clearwater, the press knows what's really
happening inside Scientology, and the city is truly interested in
these pickets. There were a lot of press people there, including Lucy
Morgan and Tom Tobin of the St. Petersburg Times. Unfortunately for
them (fortunately for us), not much happened that they felt was
newsworthy. We picketers were all being so very polite and
non-violent. How can you cover an event where you see very little in
the way of fireworks. "Where were all the picketers?," they wanted to
know. Spread out all over town, I told a couple of them. There just
was no good place to be all together. They focused their stories on
the orange painted lines. The next morning's papers mentioned that
many of us wore orange dots to show our contempt for the painted
lines.
Sid Klein.
On Friday, Clearwater Police Chief Sid Klein was asked by reporters
about the painted lines. According to the next days papers, he got
quite pissed off, saying it was akin to graffiti spraying, and that
anyone caught defacing public property would be prosecuted. This
message got through to Scientologists on Friday, as I will document
later on.
Support from Clearwater residents.
I mentioned this in another post already, but it bears repeating.
Many, many cars and pedestrians offered support to the picketers,
waving from their cars, honking their horns, yelling out their
windows, quietly nodding or giving thumbs up signs. I estimate that
10-15% of the passersby on a very busy Ft.Harrison Ave. showed support
for the picketers. Sometimes there would be a real hot streak, and 5
or 6 cars in a row would start honking. It was fairly amazing, and
quite gratifying to see such signs of support. Scientology has many
problems with it's neighbors in Clearwater. Many people really do not
like this organization being in their midst.
Sidewalk Destruction Tech fails.
Since there were so few large sidewalk areas on which to picket, the
protesters just spread out across many blocks of downtown. Since the
Scientologists were being shuttled around in vans, I believe this
spreading out of the picketers created more enturbulation across a
wider area than would have otherwise been seen. The shuttle vans would
turn down side streets in order to avoid a block with a picketer on
it. We saw this over and over. For a while, Sci'ts were opening a gate
on the back side of the hotel to load and unload vans, because no
picketers were back there. This required that the Scientologists had
to cross the destroyed sidewalk area, and the orange plastic barriers
at the curb. I have some video of the trampled barrier. They stopped
unloading vans there (at least temporarily) when I walked around the
back. Many vans were dropping (adult) people off at the ABC classroom
building, one block east of the Ft. Harrison. Any time we walked down
that block, the vans would stop coming there, and in fact, one time
two vans were there, and the first had dropped off it's people, the
second had not yet done so. MadCow and I walked that way, and the
folks that had gotten off the first bus actually got back onto the
second van, only to be hurried away, thus avoiding walking around the
corner into the building, where they have had to see us. There was a
skinny guy who acted as a door guard at this location, and he waited
outside virtually all day, hurrying the students inside. He would go
back inside the door as we approached. I yelled to him to come
outside and meet us and talk to us, but he would never do it. At the
end of the day, I made a special trip to his doorway to tell him
goodnight, and to let him know that we'd see him the next day.
Croc. Dundee
Crocodile Dundee, the famous Internet video star tracked many of us
with his video camera. He stayed a respectful distance away, and held
his tongue, and in fact, I don't believe he said a word all day. I did
mention to him that he was becoming somewhat famous, due to his
appearances on www.XenuTV.com
Friday Picketing Kudos.
Roger Gonnet covered the very busy intersection of Ft. Harrison Ave,
and the U.S. 60 bypass (which goes to the beach), almost all day. His
sign, outlining LRH's criminal conviction in France, was a bit wordy,
and a bit hard to read if the traffic was moving. But since there's a
stoplight there, he always got to show his sign to a lot of stopped
traffic. He was tireless. MadCow was a delightful and tireless
picketer as well. Arnie Lerma and Don Knotts yelled NO OTs HERE, Arnie
until he was hoarse. At one point, Arnie's yelling caused a
Scientologist to come out with a jackhammer and start pounding away on
the front sidewalk (under the covered section). We note for all those
of the OSHA persuasion, that the young man operating the jackhammer
wore neither ear or eye protection. Another time when Arnie was
yelling NO OTs HERE, a Scientologist on an upper section of
scaffolding started to hammer on the metal scaffolding, for no other
purpose than to make noise to drown out Arnie. Gregg Hagglund stood
picket on the north side of the sidewalk tunnel for a long time, as
did Bev.
Saturday
Saturday was much like Friday, with a few interesting twists.
Paint Scraping Tech.
Due to Police Chief Klein's Friday statement about the painted
lines, Friday night and Saturday morning found many poor RPFers out on
the sidewalks of downtown Clearwater with wire brushes and paint
remover. They were scraping away, and on the nicer sidewalks in front
of the bank building, they did a serviceable job of removing the
orange lines. Other places, where the sidewalks weren't as pretty,
they skimmed over some areas and you could still seem remnants of the
10 ft. line. I have video of a group of paint scrapers, which I'll try
to get on-line soon.
Paddy Wagons and Cops
The message from Chief Klein was that he would tolerate NO bullshit
(not his exact words, of course) from either side. To get his message
across, when we arrived to picket on Saturday morning, there were two
paddy wagons parked near one of the prime, Ft. Harrison picket
locations. as well as lots and lots of ON-DUTY cops. There were cops
everywhere. That was fine with me and with every other picketer I
spoke to. It was much better than the two off-duty cops who were
trying to bluff us while in uniform on Friday.
U-Haul Truck Tech designed to compliment Sidewalk Destruction Tech.
Saturday morning found a new wrinkle to sidewalk destruction tech.
U-Hauls were rented overnight and parked in areas were the
Scientologists could NOT tear up the public sidewalks. There were two
U-Hauls parked to cover the west side of the parking lot one block
south of Cleveland Ave. and 5 or 6 more parked along side the
Sandcastle, on the side of the street which has a city park. The
Scientologists obviously thought to try and hide picketers from the
Sci'ts by making them picket on sidewalks which were behind lines of
U-Haul trucks.
What's new, U-Haul Truck Tech fails.
Suppressive mastery over MEST foiled their best laid plans.
Overnight on Friday, EssPees Dave Touretsky and Don Knotts parked a
rental car in the best parking spot, right across from where the
Sandcastle parking lot exits to the south. Then, Saturday morning,
they replaced the car with a pickup truck, with two large protest
signs aboard, as well as an inflatable Xenu in the bed. They manned
this post pretty much all day, requiring Sandcastle vans to drive
right past their signs. They also picketed on one tiny fragment of the
sidewalk that was not destroyed, right next to the Sandcastle
driveway. This upset the Scientologists so much that they actually
parked two more U-Haul trucks in the driveway, completely blocking it!
That didn't last too long, because the public members had no way to
enter the facility in their cars. So after about an hour, they moved
the two big trucks that were blocking their own entrance.
Sandcastle surrounded.
For about an hour, I covered the east exit of the Sandcastle hotel
with my picket sign. Vans were driving around the new construction
area there, to exit to the east, in order to avoid Don and Dave's
entheta at the main driveway. These shuttles would usually be stopped
at the stoplight with their occupants exposed to my sign (BTW, my sign
read "$cientology's biggest skill" Harassment"). One van would always
need to approach the stoplight to trigger the signaling mechanism, but
if there were two or more vans, subsequent vans would wait 100 ft or
more back from the stoplight, and then drive through quickly when the
light turned green, to minimize exposure to my sign. I thought that
was hilarious. I have this on video, too.
Allegations of dead pets.
As I was standing near the Sandcastle east exit, an elderly woman
drove up to the intersection (light was red), rolled down her window,
and thanked me for protesting against the Scientologists. I said that
Scientology was a big bully, and the way to beat bullies was to stand
up to them. I think she misunderstood my meaning, and thought I was
rebuking her and the local population for not doing more themselves,
because she replied "that's easy for you to say, you don't live here."
She went on to say "the people here are afraid that if they speak out,
their pets will be killed." I kid you not, that's what this little
sweet old lady said. I was momentarily stunned by what she had said,
and I had so many questions flooding into my brain that I wanted to
ask her. I did manage to ask her if she had any personal knowledge of
Scientologists killing people's pets. She replied that she was in a
ladies group where they had discussed several incidents of people
speaking out, and then losing their pets, mafioso style. I wanted to
get her phone number, address, anything, but the light turned green,
and she drove away. My adrenaline level was kicked up a notch or two.
I hoped that she would decide to come back and talk to me, but she did
not.
Hotline suggestion.
I respectfully suggest that as the Lisa McPherson Trust defines it's
operational parameters, that a telephone hotline be established for
citizens to call in and log harassments and suspected pet killings. If
you give the local citizenry a place to tell of such stories, and
perhaps be a force for the pursuit of official investigations into
such incidents, I think some Clearwater residents will be very
grateful.
Due to conference, morning picketing is sparsely attended.
Due to the conference that was organized at the hotel (at which
former Clearwater Mayor Gabe Cezares spoke) there were only a few of
us picketers at the Fort Harrison on Saturday morning.
Picketers numbers increase throughout the afternoon.
The peak of picketing came around 3 in the afternoon, with around 30
or more picketers, including Ed and Sally Lottick. Again, the
reporters and TV stations were out in force, but seemed disappointed
that there were not masses of picketers in one place, and that
everything was so, er, well, peaceful. Maggie C.DiPietra appeared
(she's so nice) with her kids. Whynot and Ethercat pushed a twin baby
carriage with two Xenu dolls in it. It was very cute.
Bob Minton pickets, does not violate the 10 ft. limit.
Bob showed up for a while in the afternoon to picket. He stayed on
the sidewalk in front of the church on the block to the north of the
Ft. Harrison. He got lots of verbal support from the other picketers.
Howd and Croc and Spence were nowhere to be seen.
Picketing Kudos for Saturday
Grady held down a spot near the OSA dining room, where he either got
to expose many to his message, or at least deny them their lunch. Ed
and Sally Lottick picketed briefly, she for the first time ever. All
things considered, it was a good day of picketing.
Saturday Evening, The Lisa McPherson Candlelight Vigil.
Big turnout.
Virtually all the critics, many reporters, and several townspeople
attended the Saturday evening candlelight vigil honoring the memory of
Lisa McPherson. It was a fairly large crowd, I think around 60 or so.
Six members of the McPherson family were also there. I spoke to one
Clearwater woman who had seen the news broadcast about the vigil, and
she decided to participate. Crocodile Dundee hovered with his video
camera, about 50 ft. away.
Beamed message on the wall.
OTVIII and his driver spiced things up a bit when they beamed a
slide show onto the side of the Ft. Harrison Hotel. The lighted
message, which was about 20' tall was "We Will Never Forget You Lisa."
Apparently this action really got the Scientologists upset, and police
were called over to stop the projection. The cops said that no laws
were being violated, but OTVIII did report that two cars attempted to
illegally and dangerously block his car from driving around the block
for a third pass (the message was beamed only during the period of a
red signal light at the corner of Pierce St. and Ft. Harrison Ave).
I'm not sure if the beamed message on the wall was an appropriate
thing for the vigil, but it did have certain redeeming qualities,
politically speaking. The sad irony of having the message on the wall
of the building in which she died, in spite of all the expensive
efforts that Scientology went to prevent such messages, was certainly
thought provoking, and I think the TV news teams thought it to be
newsworthy.
The vigil.
Gregg Hagglund spoke at the vigil, giving a brief Christian service.
A bagpipe player played. Then the attendees then walked around the
block to the back of the Ft. Harrison, near the room where Lisa M. was
held on the babywatch. We were told by police that we could not be in
the street, so we settled in the parking lot and sidewalk across the
street to the west of the Ft. Harrison Hotel. Greg spoke again, saying
that regardless of human justice, we would all one day face God's
judgement. There was a moment of silence. Attendees then filed past a
floral wreath and blew out their candles in what is a metaphor for the
way Lisa McPherson's life was blown out by the Introspection Rundown.
The bagpipe player played "Amazing Grace." TV news reporters were all
over blowing-out-the-candles portion of the ceremony, filming each
person as they came forward. I really didn't want to be a part of
that, so I just stood back and blew out my candle in back row.
Terrific organization.
The event was, for the most part, dignified and tasteful. Jeff J.
did a marvelous job of organization, right down to bringing a trash
bag to pick up the trash after the event ended. Well done, Jeff.
Religion and Politics
I admit that I felt a bit odd mixing the religious/spiritual
reverence and ceremony which is the stated purpose and the undeniable
reality of the Lisa McPherson vigil, with the blunt political activism
which is an unavoidable and powerful undercurrent to this event. I'm
not complaining, mind you. I knew about the nature of the event in
advance, and I had decided to participate at least once. But I was a
bit uncomfortable mixing those two things. But something happened next
which illustrated to me why we were all there and made me glad that I
had attended.
After all the speaking was over, the bagpipe was silent, with people
milling around talking quietly, Lisa McPherson's cousin (sorry, I
forget her name) went over to Ed and Sally Lottick. She had a few
tears in her eyes from what was to her, was obviously an emotional
ceremony. She hugged Sally and broke out in sobs and said "I'm so
sorry for both of you." If you didn't know, Sally and Ed's son Noah,
killed himself while a member of Scientology, back in the early
nineties. It was a very humbling, personal moment, which I don't think
most people even saw. I silently absorbed this very touching and
emotional moment, suddenly sad myself that a family like the Lottick's
had to suffer so needlessly, too, just as McPherson's family did. I
had a tinge of regret that with the Lotticks present, the ceremony
hadn't mentioned their loss as well.
Had I not attended the vigil, this one moment would have not happened,
and the personal grief of families would not seem as real for me as it
does today. I hope my description here in some way conveys to you a
fraction of how powerful and how moving was this unscripted embrace
between these family members who have lost loved ones inside
Scientology.
And at the heart of this issue, aren't we all really fighting for a
future in which families are not torn apart by awful deaths like Noah
Lottick and Lisa McPherson suffered, and for families that suffer due
to other assaults on the family, such as ordered disconnections? These
two families have suffered, continue to suffer the losses of their
children and family members. Let's all resolve to help eliminate
suffering of this kind, by any family, at the hands of controlling
cult groups. Whatever one thinks about these candlelight vigils, I
hope we can all agree on this one thing.
Dinner at Ottavios
Finally, Bob Minton generously bought dinner for about 30-35 SPs at
a wonderful Italian restaurant call Ottavios. The Lasagna Bolognese
was delicious. The owner kept the restaurant open later than his
normal closing time, but managed to wait on the entire group. Thanks,
Bob. Oh, and Bill, next time, I volunteer to do the toast, okay? ;-)
Sunday
I flew out of Clearwater early Sunday morning and did not
participate in any further picketing activities.
Michael Reuss
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mreuss@mciworld.com (Michael Reuss)
08 Dec 1999
Honorary Kid
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