San Francisco Picket Report, Saturday Jan 6, 2001
07 Jan 2001
realpch <realpch@aol.com>

San Francisco Picket Report, Saturday Jan 6, 2001

It was another sunny winter day in California, a good day for a picket at the San Francisco Scientology Org.

Jour and I arrived a little after 12, to find Phil already on the job. He was chatting with Jeff Quiros, SF DSA, and the chat appeared to be getting filmed by Craig, the fellow who generally handles the home pickets of the picketers of the Org. It was good to see Phil, who has lately been abstaining from picketing.

It was very quiet on the streets. Not too many pedestrians, and I noticed a lot of empty parking spaces. I think everyone may have been a little worn out from celebrating the holidays. Towards the end of the picket, it picked up a little. There were, however, quite a few Scientologists turning up at the Org. One can usually tell who they are before they go in the door, because they all carry plastic bags containing their lunch, and/or bottles of water. Thirsty work doing those courses.

The new feature of our pickets for a few months has been the flyers on Jour and I that the Scientologists hand out. This month, instead of having a flyer of each of us, we were sharing a flyer, and Bob Minton was on the back! It was a messy collage of unknown people's faces and the words "Stop the hate", a clear one of Bob, a newspaper clipping, the only words of which were legible were the headline "a 4 billion fraud", a picture of a poor Nigerian family with the caption "Nigeria's people are hostage to their country's crumbling economy", and running across the bottom of the thing "bigotwatch.net".

Craig stayed pretty close to Jour through most of the picket, within about 7 feet much of the time. He handed out the flyers about us to everyone he could who had accepted a flyer from Jour, so that it seemed as if he were one of OUR picketing party. Occasionally I would follow the people who had accepted both flyers and explain to them that Craig's flyer was an example of how Scientology attempts to discredit critics. For once he actually didn't attempt to talk to me, which was most refreshing, given his recent performances.

Midway through the picket we were joined by a local resident, who offered to carry one of my signs, and proved to be a very pleasant picket partner. He had gone into the Org once to take the Personality Test, and was off put by the hard sell and their attempts to glean a lot of personal information from him. One of the Scientologists passed by us and asked us if we were aware that we were compromising our eternal salvation, or words to that effect. Gosh! Whatever happened to "Hi, how are you doing?"

Phil did the chatting with the Scientologists at our picket. He's good at it, and he can tell them that he was a member for many years. He had an extended conversation with a man I've seen a few times, who comes in with a little boy, and who does not have a chip on his shoulder, which many of the patrons of the Org do. I wish that fellow could see the OT panel videos which are up on the LMT website. Excellent videos, by the way, if you haven't seen them, do check them out.

Phil had to leave early, then our impromptu picketer had to go, so Jour and I carried on alone (chaperoned by Craig of course) until 2pm, when we went to have coffee and chat. In the morning Jour had found one of the new flyers about us at her residence...perhaps that counted as the obligatory home picket. I have no idea if my home was picketed or not.

It was a good picket, peaceful and calm, just the way I like em.

Peach