GHOST PICKETS

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

Picket Reports on or by Artemis.
Saturday, June 28, 1997.
And
Saturday July 5, 1997.

Saturday, June 28, 1997.

Artemis:
Unfortunately the Toronto Chapter of the ARSCC* couldn't manage a picket of the Toronto Org today, too many commitments and not enough time to organize one, but I did spare some time to see what was happening at 696-700 Yonge.

I arrived at 2:30ish, which is about our start time for the two previous pickets of this building, and discovered it was the busiest I've EVER seen it.

No, not the public section silly! That was as deserted as always, I'm talking about the side of the building where the chapel is. I've lived in this area for a few years now, and this is only the second time I've ever seen the chapel in any sort of use. This is markedly different to any other chapel I've seen, eg when my sister got married she had to book six months in advance.

Now you can call me suspcious, but perhaps they organized a wedding this weekend to make any 'Fortune' picketers look bad. Well better luck next time guys!

I wonder who was conducting the ceremony, as the only two people I've ever seen in clerical uniform (Rev. Buttnor & Rev. Mustache) were in plain clothes and doing their regular tasks (litter collection and aimless wandering respectively).

Just before 3 the wedding party drove off. The bride looked quite attractive in her traditional white dress, but most of the rest of the wedding party were nondescript at best.

I stayed within sight of the org. for about an hour, and while they had the regular tables outside the public section, they didn't successfully route anyone. I saw only two possibles, one guy wearing biker leathers had to stand looking in the window for ages before "Yuk Yuk" aproached him. Yuk Yuk apparently either sold him, or tried to sell him, a MSMH, but Mr Biker got away without even setting foot in the org. The other bite was apparently a young family, and while the husband talked to Yuk Yuk for ages, they got away without even a book.

Rev. Buttnor was taking pictures today. Now colour me stupid, but when I'm at weddings I take pictures of the Bride & Groom, various family members etc, but Rev. Buttnor seems more interested in taking pictures of apparently random parts of the street. I think he saw me and was trying to identify other possible picketers.
Well I was totally alone today Rev.

Their table display is getting pretty pathetic. One table I'll call international had 8 variously tatty MSMH's, in various langugages. I recognized Greek, prehaps returned when they were thrown out of Greece? Toronto has a reasonably large Greek sector, so that makes sense. There was (amazing enough) one in French too! The rest of the languages I didn't recognize.

The other table has only English copies, about 20 of them. At least 1/2 are all discoloured from too long out in the sun. I guess they don't move too fast.

At around 3:10 the Lesbian March went past, part of Toronto's GLB Pride Week. I counted 2 churches represented by banners, but strangely enough, not none from the Co$.
The Brothers, which you may remember is in the middle of the ground floor of the org, had a nice big poster

The Brothers
Restaurant Taven
Welcome

- ---------------

Share
your
pride

- ---------------

open
to
serve
you

together with a rainbow motif down one side. Many of the businesses (& others) around here also sport rainbows at this time of the year. The Co$ (Needless to say) do not.

The Lesbians took around 15 minutes to walk past, filling both lanes of one side of the street, and had coverage from at least channel 10 (That's the community channel, public access) and CITY (Toronto's independent station with youngest demographics), maybe others I missed or didn't cover this part of the march. I'd estimate around 350-400 marchers, and a minimum of 3 times that non-marching observers. Every one of whom was there totally voluntarily. Contrast that to the turn out at the Co$'s _must attend_ flop for the 47th Anniversary of Dianetics.

As I head back to home to do some real work, I happen to catch Rev. Buttnor's eye. He's having a coffee in a local donut shop. I wonder if I ruined his plans for the day.

Gregg about Artemis:

The next Saturday the Toronto Org decided to send out their kids on a frying hot day. The kids brigade set up a tired 'Anti-Drug' display featuring as 'special awards' some of those dime a dozen Mayoralty Recognition Letters. This was just before our usual start time and at the hottest part of the day.

Artemis spoke with these youngsters briefly and found them to be polite if a bit uncomfortable.

Sensibly, Artemis only visited with these child-victims of the Co$ for a few moments, just long enough to catch their photos.