From Jens Tingleff
Five protesters braved the weather forecast and descended on the Birmingham
shop of the criminal cult known as the "church"
We were expecting a nice, normal, demo with the usual lack of confront from
the clams; little did we know that within minutes we were being called to
order by the police and required not to cause any "distress" to members of
the $cientology religion.
Well, now, would we do that??
Why don't you judge for yourself..
In fact, we strove to comply with the requirements of the police as quickly
as new demands were made of us - quite a whirlwind tour of policing
reacting to new and more offended clams by the minute ;-)
In the end, we were moved away from the $cientology recruiting field, down
to saying "Protesting *AGAINST* scientology" - having had the C word banned
- - and had stopped distributing the XENU leaflet ) after police demands.
But I'm jumping ahead.
Five of us, Dave Bird, John Ritson, Neal Clark and New Protester converged
on Birmingham in order to protest against the offences brought by the
criminal organisation known as the "church"
We met late because of various traffic related problems and other symptoms
of the chronic lack of organisation which is the cunning way in which the
A.R.S.C.C. (wdne) disguises its tight control over our every move. There
had been a fairly heavy shower half an hour before we met (at one point I
drove through a puddle and got splash across the entire width of the front
of the car - pretty good going since the front wheels are a good way back).
The rain stopped completely after that (whew!) and we had a pleasant day
out from then on.
We rambled into our usual position on the high street on the corner of their
shop, and got going with the leaflets and the sound-system, John rolling
into action with his normal "protesting *AGAINST* the Barmy UFO Cult of
$cientology!" and the related shpiel. Leaflets were being handed out and no
clams had shown up. We had declined to bring our ever popular range off
free XENU LOVES YOU balloons so as to keep everything light and easy to
handle. So far, so normal.
Then the police showed up and, indeed , turned out to be in our honour (and
not the much bigger and louder something Palestine something demo on the
next corner). Before the demo, we had - as usual - agreed with the police
to play nice. It turned out that "play nice" included not offending any
religious people, the "Religiously Aggravated Harassment" rules being
specifically cited.
Hmmm.
As we *do* want to "play nice" (yes, really, we do!!), we agreed to not have
the word "Cult" and the word "Barmy" on the loudhailer. We went on
"protesting *AGAINST* the $cientology organisation" and handing out
leaflets.
After some time, we were informed that we were not welcome within earshot of
the $cientology shop. We hmm'ed and haw'ed and ambled a few hundred yards
up to the big square and got ourselves a nice spot (by the Iron Man) where
passers-by were stopping to look at the "pictures of the world" display.
Nice, but not our first choice of location... We continued, going back to
"protesting *AGAINST* the cult of $cientology" and handing out leaflets.
After some time (not so much), a man in a suit was engaging in conversation
with our two kindly police protectors ,
(you do need protection by the police
when protesting asgainst the $cientology cult),
and we were informned that using the word "cult" was not allowed in public,
in case a member of the cult in question walked by and took offence. Or, as
in our case, followed us around, taking offence. Guess what? We were
required to stop with the C-word on the loudhailer.
So, at the end, we were down to lecturing about the human right abuses by
the criminal organisation known as the "church"
We knocked off after the two hours we'd agreed with the police, and went for
a light refreshment and a confab. While OSA had achieved more of their
goals than we had of our goals, the new focus of the law on our activities
could well be good in the long term in getting us thinking harder about
what we do, when we do it and where we do it.
So, a different day out was had by all and things won't be the same again...
[Back to John's Homepage]
[Back to British BodyThetan Shows page] [no BodyThetans were harmed in the making of this page]
[Back to British BodyThetan Society Homepage]