Subject: Picket report, San Diego, 6/1/99
From: Xenubat@primenet.com (Bat Child (Sue M.))
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 07:50:22 GMT

I was going to be in San Diego for a couple of days, and I remember Barb once making a post to ARS asking if anybody was interested in picketing the San Diego org some time and Conner responding to the post, so I contacted them both and asked if they were interested in picketing while I was in town, and they both said sure.

Barb and Conner both called me at my hotel to figure out what time we should go to the org; Barb said she had a friend who worked at the hotel I was staying at and said she thought about giving him a copy of the OCA Personality Test to put in my hotel room as a joke, but thought I might get freaked out and think the Scns were stalking me cross-country; I *did* think that was a pretty funny idea, though! :-) (besides, they wouldn't bother to follow a peon like me across the country, anyway!) ;-)

Conner was nice enough to pick me up at my hotel and give me a ride, seeing that I don't know my way around San Diego at all and probably would have wound up in Tijuana if I tried to drive to the org myself! ;-) We tried to call Barb again but she must have stepped out for a minute so we left a message to meet us over at the org. We arrived at the org right before 4:00 pm.

I had my flimsy without-a-handle version of my "Space Alien Scam"/"$360,000" sign with me, but it was rather squished, and Conner had some extra signs in his car which were nicer, so I used one of those instead; the one I carried said "Great lies exposed" on one side and "www.xenu.net, www.scientology-kills.net, www.entheta.net" on the other side; Conner had one that said "Scientology indicted on two counts in death of Lisa McPherson" on one side, and I forget what the other side said; he had an extra sign that Barb used that said something like "Scientology is a $360,000 space alien cult" on one side, and I think the other side was about the OT-8 cognition, "find out who you really are". Conner had some "Lisa", "Space Alien Scam" and "Insane Cult" flyers, and I also had a bunch of "Scam" and "Insane Cult" flyers as well as copies of the "Xemu" flyer. I was also wearing my "Who Is Xemu?" T-shirt (with the first page of OT-3 on the back).

Barb joined us about 5-10 minutes after we had started picketing; we gave her the extra sign and some of our flyers. She stood at the corner kitty-corner across the street from the org so that more cars could see her sign. She was saying stuff like, "Get your space cooties here! Scientology says you're covered with space cooties! It'll cost you $360,000 to get rid of them! Scientology is a scam!" and she kept that up for most of the time we were there! :-)

A few minutes after that, a Scn man wearing a white polo-type shirt (I'll refer to him from now on as "Polo Shirt") came out and asked me and Conner for copies of our flyers, asked us our names, and then started taking pictures of us; I told Polo Shirt to be sure to get a good picture of my T-shirt. :-) Then he went back inside the org. About 10 minutes or so later he comes out again and crosses the street to where Barb was and did the same thing with her; she said something like, "Oh, you're one of THEM, aren't you?" Polo Shirt came out a couple other times to take pictures I think, though I don't think he took any more of me (or I didn't really notice if he did). I saw a couple of people standing in their parking lot talking but they didn't come up to us, and I think I saw another guy come out a few times to have a cigarette, but he didn't say anything to us either (or at least not to me). There was no sign of the "Sea Witch", my nickname for the woman who snatched my Xemu flyers out of my hand when I picketed the San Diego org last year; maybe she's at CW doing her OT levels and finding out those flyers were right all along! :-)

Polo Shirt spent a good part of the time just sitting outside the org watching us. At one time Polo Shirt came over to Conner and said, "I want to ask you something", and Conner said, "Sure, go ahead"; then Polo Shirt asked, "What are your crimes?" and Conner broke up laughing!

Also, there was another passerby who was talking to Conner for a bit and gotten some of Conner's flyers, and apparently this guy worked at a radio station and wanted to have people on his show and I think he might have wanted to have a show about Scn. I know Conner told him, "Well, Sue's not local, but you might want to talk to Barb" and pointed to where Barb was; the radio station guy also talked to Polo Shirt for a while and probably got literature from him also, and he then talked to Barb for a bit, and I think gave her his business card. So who knows, San Diego might be getting a show about Scn on the radio some time soon, you never know!

At another point during the picket, a woman came over and asked us why we were picketing, and we told her about how we thought Scn was a rip-off and how they lured people into joining their cult and wasting lots of time and money on them, etc. She said, "Well, I'll tell you why I hate them" and started telling us about her encounter with the cult. She had seen their "Help Wanted" sign (or it might have been a want-ad) and went over there for an interview. She told us how they made her do the Personality Test (we told her that "Oxford Capacity Analysis" really has nothing to do with Oxford University and that they just called it that to make it sound more impressive) and she also had to fill out some other form with questions that she thought were really weird, like "Have you ever sued the Church of Scientology?". They apparently told her that when she filled out the Personality Test to try to avoid the "maybe" response to the questions and to try to use the "yes" or "no" answers as much as possible. They then scored her test and told her that generally she scored well but that she scored low on "organizational skills". The woman said, "I thought that was a load of garbage! I was an administrative secretary for the vice president of a corporation, and you can't do that type of work without having good organizational skills!" We told her that Scn tells everyone who takes the test that there's something wrong with them, and said there was a copy of the "correct" answers for the Personality Test on the web, and that even if one marked all the correct answers, then they'd be told they're living in a fantasy world (I think "theety weety" is the Scn term for it). They then told her she would have to sign up for either a 2-1/2 year or a 5-year contract to work at the org and that if she left before the time period was up, she'd have to pay them back for the cost of "training" (I think they told her it would be $1500). She thought that was totally ridiculous, saying, "Every company has to train a new employee when they first start, why should they have to *pay* the company for the training if they decide to quit?!" We then told her she most likely would have gotten a paycheck for $30 after her first two weeks, and then she said, "Oh, yeah, that was another thing! I asked them how much the salary was and they were like, 'Well, it depends on how much money the church has received over a period of time'; they wouldn't give me a straight answer at all! Every other place you work at, you know you'll be making $10/hour or whatever, but they just gave me the run-around!"

In the meantime, Polo Shirt saw this woman standing with me and Barb talking to us, and he must have thought she was another SP and went over and took her picture! She asked him, "What are you taking my picture for?" but he had already walked away. He then did the same thing a couple minutes later and then took off again right away, and I think the woman flipped him the bird afterward and said "Take a picture of this!" When he came out a third time to take her picture, she was really fed up and told him, "If you take my picture again I'm calling the police!" and he didn't try to take any more pictures of her after that. If Scn really wants to get more members they obviously need to work on their PR skills; they managed to get a person who already had a low opinion of Scn to *really* hate them after about 10 minutes! I wonder if that's what Scn means by "making the able more able"? ;-) The woman had to get going, so we gave her some of our flyers and said it was nice talking with her.

Reaction from the public was favorable; we got a number of thumbs-ups and car honks from cars going by, as well as some thumbs up from a number of passengers on the San Diego Transit buses (one bus driver also honked at us and gave us a thumbs up). Several other pedestrians said things like "I agree with you!" and I know there was one guy walking down the other side of the street who started applauding! It also looked like some people who worked at the other businesses across the street were standing outside and watching us--I guess nobody can say we aren't entertaining at least! ;-) I think I handed out maybe a dozen flyers; I'm not sure how many Conner handed out, but I think he ran out of "Lisa" flyers. I'm not sure how many flyers Barb handed out, either, but I know she had to come back twice to get more! :-)

We had originally planned to stay out for maybe an hour but we wound up staying for almost two hours! Conner suggested that Barb and I start nonchalantly walking away while he went to get his car and that he'd pick us up further down the street. Right when we started to do this, we saw that Polo Shirt has started following us! We continue walking down the block and crossed the street, and sure enough Polo Shirt also was crossing the street. Barb and I stopped; I had my cell phone out and I turned around and looked at Polo Shirt but he didn't come up to us or anything, he just stood there. Then we saw Conner standing by his car which he'd parked down the street; Polo Shirt also saw him and immediately sped over to Conner's car and started taking pictures of the car and the license plates, then sprinted off, practically running back to the org! Then as we got in the car and started to drive off, we saw another Scn driving a red Saab following our car! Conner drove around the block and cut through a pay parking lot and told the attendant that somebody was following us and could he just cut through the parking lot and drive out the other side and the attendant said to go ahead, and then the red Saab also went through the parking lot! Well, Conner then made a few Gene Hackman "French Connection"-type driving maneuvers and managed to lose the Scn! :-)

I was rather angry at first and ready to call the cops when the Scns were following us, but Conner and Barb thought it was hilarious, and actually it *is* pretty funny how the Scns are so utterly predictable; the minute they see picketers, they have to go and take pictures, then ask them the same dumb questions like "What are your crimes?" or "Who's paying you?" and then do the obligatory try-to-follow-the-picketers bit afterward! I imagine our San Diego Scns probably were on the phone to AOLA the whole time asking, "OK, what do we do now?" "Think for yourself" indeed! :-)

And you'd think if Scn did so many amazing things, why did they even have to have somebody follow Conner's car? Why couldn't some OT just use their Great Sooper Powerz to flatten his car tires or make his battery go dead or something? Maybe they're squirreling the tech nowadays? ;-)

(Also, did anybody notice that even when Scienos picket their signs usually consist of only one or two sayings? For instance, the anti-psych rally in Washington D.C.--there was a fairly large number of Scienos at the rally but I only saw two different messages on the signs: "P$ychiatry is killing your children" and "Psychiatric drugs create kid killers"; I mean, nobody could bother to make up a sign of their own saying "Electroconvulsive therapy wastes electricity" or something original like that! ;-))

Anyway, we wound up stopping by an Irish pub-type place and celebrated our Big Wins (TM) from the afternoon, making a toast to Xenu and discussing various ARSCC*-related activities, and then we eventually called it an evening, Conner gave me a ride back to my hotel and we all went on our merry way.

*--The ARSCC does not exist.

Sue, SP4(:), listed on the Scieno Sitter list 5 times! -- http://www.primenet.com/~xenubat

"It will take a *long* time to find another enemy with the combination of evil and incompetence you see in Scientology."--Keith Henson

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