12 Jun 2000

Keith Henson <hkhenson@netcom3.netcom.com>

It was a *four* org kind of day. (note, upstat)

Last week I noted an astounding number of cars in the San Jose parking lot at 11 am. Not one to let an opportunity go by and being very up over Bruce Pettycoat and company's fine work in Hemet, I decide to give them a serious picket this morning.

Got there at 9:35 17 cars
9:45 18 cars
9:46 19 cars
10:30 24 cars
11:00 36 cars
11:10 43 cars

Not much activity. I bought one of the street people a bagel, he picketed while I went and got it. Offered to buy him lunch and dinner if he wanted to keep picketing, but it was too weird for him when nice Mark came out with a camcorder and taped him.

Only other thing of note was that "blue shirt" came out and wanted to know if my taping crew was there. Since I would not say if they were watching he was moderately abusive verbally, but refrained again from nazi salutes.

They did call the San Jose police. The officer who came by could find nothing amiss with me picketing from the sidewalk, and took away a copy of the newspaper story on Ashlee Shaner.

After that I gave the San Jose mission, Los Gatos, and the new Mt. View locations token ten minute pickets. Mt. View has done nothing to block the windows. I also went by the Palo Alto org, but it was entirely shut down today.

There didn't seem to be any new people in any of the places I picketed, i.e., they are all people I have seen before.

And the count of Indians (from India) seems to be way down. Perhaps my attempts to get a warning into that community has been effective.

Incidentally, the south bay has about 1% of the US population. If they really have 45,000 paying members, then there should be about 450 of them here. I doubt there are that many here. There are ways we could count them.

Keith Henson