Another Peaceful Picket in Atlanta
08 Dec 2001
ethercat <ethercat@arscc-atl.com>

Cars: 14-16

Wynot and I arrived about noon and received an ack before we had even taken our positions in front of the org. I had the Scientology Lies sign, backed with Who is Xenu? (including URLs for both); Wynot carried the Scientology Killed Lisa McPherson sign, backed with Scientology is a Bait and Switch Scam. We had the video-cam just in case we needed it, but it turned out that we didn't. We picketed for just over an hour, and received 30 acks, some boisterous, some timid. One car went by with a guy yelling "Abortion, yeah!" I don't know, had he heard about the Sea Org, or were pro-life pickets the only other pickets he'd ever seen? Either way, in his mind, somehow the org in Dunwoody is associated with abortions. Go figure. Lots of cars slowed noticeably to read our signs.

The first thing we noticed was that they have a new door with stained glass windows, no doubt donated as a tax deduction by Artistic Glass of Atlanta, a long-time WISE company. The main sign out front no longer has the "double cross" on it. There's a new sign under the Hubbard Dianetics Center sign and the Scientology sign - the new sign attempts to exploit the Sept. 11 tragedy, and does have the "double cross" - how appropriate. The building was decorated for Christmas, and the little info box by the sidewalk contained a few brochures for Sunday Services. They appeared to have been in the box for some time, because they had prominent curves in the paper where they had slumped against the sides of the box.

Contact with scientologists was minimal. A young light-skinned black male with very short hair approached slowly to laugh half-heartedly at us, but returned to the building when I smiled and said "Hi."

A thirty-something lady came from the org to her SUV, and asked me how much we were getting paid. I told her we weren't getting paid, we do this because we believe in it. I wanted to tell her if we were getting paid, we'd be out here every day, but she was already in her vehicle. As she began to pull left out of the driveway, she made hand gestures at wynot, as if he were blocking her sight. He wasn't - we always step back on the sidewalk to allow people pulling out to see, and are very careful.not to block cars leaving or pulling in. We wouldn't want to be responsible for an accident.

She appeared to be very enturbulated about something (us?), and once she was in the street, she tried to make a u-turn, and blocked the oncoming traffic by backing up perpendicular to the lane to make her turn. MEST seemed to be making her life difficult today. She returned to the org, still irritated, parked close to the door, and went in. I had the thought that perhaps we'd be getting a visit from the friendly DeKalb Co. police soon, based on a false complaint, but we didn't. No police came today. Nor did Susan, the DSA. She soon left again, repeating the hand gesturing scene from before as she pulled out.

A nice lady, Linda (though not the same nice Linda we met before), came up and asked me my name. I told her that they knew my name inside, to ask them, but she asked again so nicely that I decided to go ahead and tell her. She said her name was Linda, which I could see she had printed on the shirt she was wearing, along with a business name. She suggested that I study scientology before I criticized it, and I replied that I had read quite a bit of it, and that it just wasn't true for me.

She wanted to know why I was picketing, and I flipped the sign around, showing her the xenu.net URL, and told her it was all on the site, to look it up. She told me that she she was OT5 and had not encountered Xenu in her studies. I thought that was interesting, and told her that I knew people who had studied under Ron and that they had encountered Xenu, and that if she hadn't, perhaps she was getting squirrelled materials.

Side note: Atlanta has lost several people that we know of in the last year or so, the Lazarnics, and the Cooks, though none of these were our doing. As I understand it, they didn't like the squirrelling when they found out.

She told me I could come anytime and take a course or avail myself of the library, something X-Friend had also told me before he disconnected. I thanked her, and told her it was nice talking to her. I was eager to get back to picketing, since I suspected she might be trying to Dev-T me, and block my sign.

A moment later, she came back and told me scientology had saved her life, that she had been in a wheelchair due to a car accident when she started 11 years ago, and they were responsible for her being able to walk today. Just to make sure I was hearing her right, I asked her if she creditied scientology for getting her out of her wheelchair, and she said yes. I told her I was glad she could walk again, and that others hadn't been so lucky. (It was a Lisa McPherson Memorial picket, after all.) I guess they're still trying to practice medicine without a license.

Not long afterwards, an upwardly-mobile looking couple passed by and spoke. I said hello back to them, then they went into the org, with the man stopping briefly to talk to another man outside. I believe they may have been talking about wynot and me, as I saw him gesture toward us, but I really don't know for sure.

Soon after that we left, feeling we'd informed enough people for today. The Atlanta org remains well-behaved, and I commend them for that. I am really glad it was peaceful - it was a beautiful breezy day, sunny and upper 60s.

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