A SURPRISE PICKET

Picketing the Church of Scientology© since May 10, 1997, for Objectionable Management Practises.

Toronto Ontario Canada. June 7, 1997.

On Saturday June 7, 1997 from 2pm to 5pm an Information Picket
was held at the Toronto Org of the Co$ on Yonge St.

The Picket came as a total surprise to the Org.

Subject: Toronto Picket Report
by 'Artemis'.

Part Three:

At about this time, our police escort left, as they were needed for crowd control at a fire, and our 5th protester, Slippery Jim DiGriz arrived. He acquired Gregg's sign, and a supply of RX's. and we were at our highest strength of the day.

At this point the Co$ put operation FB into full automatic.

The Sea Orger who was photographing the critics realized that he was behind, and tried to capture the two late arriving protesters, and he photographed Slippery Jim, and tried to photograph Miss U and Duke the dog.

Now Miss U is shy, she doesn't want anyone photographing her, regardless of their Orgness, and she covers her face with the orange leaflet, and generally tries to prevent photography.

Gregg is running a full commentry at the top of his voice and attracting a huge crowd, most of whom take a leaflet to find out what it's all about.

Gregg estimates that he gave out 50 leaflets in that short spell.

Our SO type doesn't give up, and even though we try covering her up with our picket signs and moving her around as required, the sea org type might have gotten a picture of her.

This frightens Miss U and she feels that she has to leave now. I escort her away from the org, well out of camera range.

Miss U was a visitor to Toronto, visiting from her native Winnipeg, and probably won't get a chance to attend another picket.

We'll miss you Miss U.

Eventually all good things come to an end, and at 5pm I have precisely 5 copies of the orange leaflet left. Four in orange and the original. I give each of the picketers their copy, and keep one copy and the original for myself. Gregg has approx. 150 left of the RX special, and I've given out my copies of the autopsy report and some of the French & German Xemu's.

We head off in the direction of the car park, and we have a tail, our Sea Orger wants to see where we parked. Sheesh! If you're going to tail someone, make yourself inconspicuous, wearing an ugly uniform and with a camera around your neck doesn't qualify.

We retire to a bar for post picket refreshments, and discuss our reactions, and one by one we head home. I was the last to leave, and as I was going, I overhead a conversation. It seems that a guy had driven past the org, saw us, stopped and parked, but by the time he got back, we'd gone. He was in luck! I gave him my copy of the leaflet.

All in all, a successful day.

A very distressed lady came up asking for help, apparently her 15 year old son had done the OCA test, and since then she'd been getting harassed, the phone was ringing many times a day. We direct her to the Rev Buttnor, and we hope she got success.

One time they tried to get their numbers up for those seeing the orientation film.

They announced it's starting, it's about to start, it's just started, any second now. As far as I can work out, it actually started at about 3:45, or 45 minutes late if you take their 'on the hour' schedule seriously.

They have the table display of Dianetics in a number of languages. Notably absent is French.

Wake up guys! This is Canada, we're a bilingual country!

One body router takes the predictable attack route, we're psychs, we're paid to be here. D'art engages him in conversation, and the Rev Al. takes him off into the Org. We hope that we didn't get the poor guy into RPF.

As we're leaving, being tailed by the Sea Orger, we pass by their chapel.

This room has about 6 pews, a Crowley, sorry Scientology cross on the wall, and absolutely no signs of use. I work out that it's approx. 0.5% of the floor space.

As always, I'd like to thank the Metro Toronto Police, their presence was and is, very much appreciated.

Artemis,
Toronto, Ontario.