Hi, I'm Artemis, and I'm a psych paid to practice religious discrimination.

Well, actually I'm a computer geek. On 1997 May 10th, I joined D'artangnan and Gregg picketing the Church of Scientology, Toronto.

I did this because of the Church's actions, in particular Lisa McPherson and the following cover-up, Casey Hill's libel case, and other actions by the Co$. I wasn't exactly paid to do it, in fact I turned down some business in order to make my presence felt.

On our first, hastily organized, picket on May 10th, we had a supply of Roland's RX specials, and while I feel that this information should be commonly known, I didn't think it was good for achieving my goals for picketing

1. Informing the public why we are picketing
2. Counteracting the inevitable DA pack from the church
3. Giving evidence for the misdeeds of the church
4. Giving those interested the ability to learn more

There was lots of information available on the WWW, but it's hardly convenient to drag out a computer onto the street corner. Hey Rev Buttnor, can I borrow some electricity? Printing the web isn't ideal either, you tend to end up with a messy looking printout, which wastes a lot of paper to get across the information.

Therefore soon after our original picket, I started working on my own leaflet. My leaflet was designed to cover my goals, and to make me a better picketer.

I originally aimed to get a 4 page/2 sheet leaflet, but the wealth of information available made this grow. Eventually, on our June 7th Picket, we handed out around 240 copies of a 12 page/6 sheet leaflet, punnily called "Dyin'ethics".

The leaflet surpassed my wildest dreams, with people actually stopping on the street to read it, and coming back for a copy for their friends. Almost every time someone asked me for more information, I could say "that's covered in the leaflet".

If you're going to use mine, or build your own leaflet, here is some advice I discovered on my own.

1. Decide what sort of leaflet you wish to make. A short leaflet which is snappy or a long leaflet full of information. A compromise won't work.
2. For the information leaflet, two column format seems to work best. Single column tends to waste a lot of white space for short articles, while three column is too tight for letter format paper.
3. Include some URL's. The Internet is Scientology's worst nightmare. Someone who has read the Critic's pages has been lost to Scientology forever.
4. Remember to put the phrase "We encourage you to copy this document and distribute it to others" or something similar. The friend of a friend network can distribute it far and wide.
5. One thing which almost worked against us at the original picket was confusion in the public, both our leaflet & the scientology DA pack was a plain white sheet. By using coloured paper our leaflet was distinctive and unique (even if we didn't need this this time).
6. Be careful of staples! They're sharp!

Thanks to the original authors for granting permission to reproduce their material, and thanks to the people of Toronto, for making our information picket successful.

You can download the Zipped original in word 7 format this is actually the last copy before word crashed & trashed the file when I was trying to convert it to HTML (Grrrr), but there were only minor differences between this and the final version. If you adapt this leaflet for your own area, then there is a section "Scientology in Canada" which should be adapted to your local area, and in the "Where can I learn more" section, you should fill in the details of a local reference library, otherwise the leaflet is fairly generic.