Protest 11/8/08 on First Friday. First use of chalk.
Scientology moved into the arts district in downtown Phoenix. First
Friday is an art walk night that draws a lot of people. So we protest
that night.
We tried out chalk art last night. We drew "Danger; cult zone" at
the edges of Scientology's property, with little ufo's. We drew the
outline of a body with whyaretheydead.info inside it. And all kindsa
other huge writing. But I'm not sure how many people notice that. It
seemed most people going by didn't notice the chalk stuff.
There's a postering wall right next to the org. The anons tried
some new tech to put a reasonably indestructible poster up, but when I
drove by after food the guy was just finishing taking the poster down.
The Scientologists set up their tent and big plasma TV again,
offering free stress tests. It seemed like most people who went over
there talked to us after that it was weird and not impressive.
The Scientologists put up the notice about the Guzner Ddos guy in
big poster form and screwed it onto the 'for lease" sign in front of
the org. I don't think anybody even noticed it because it was so much
small writing.
For the first time the Scientology boss lady came over and told us
we were trespassing by being a little bit on their property. So we
scooted our signs and supplies closer to the sidewalk. No biggie, and
I kept expecting them to do that. She complained to the on-duty cop
but he never talked to us about it.
The Scientologists spent about 1/2 the time we were there handing
out dvd's and flyers again. Many people gave us their dvds saying
they really didn't want them.
They still don't have a sign on the building, which confuses some
passersby. They'd figure out we were protesting Scientology but not
realize that the building was where Scientology was.
All in all a good night. There were 10 protesters, hundreds of
contacts with the public, experiments with new protest tech (for us
anyway), and more aggressive behavior on the part of the
Scientologists. We protested from about 5-9pm when hunger seemed to
take over.
