So the day started out like many others: a mad scramble for most of us to get to the meet-up point on time not too late. My personal lack of preparation meant Prof had to dutifully sit and tear apart fliers due to the lack of any scissors, we had no tape to secure the signs, nor anything small enough to fit in the reset button of the MP3 player. Starting up the back-up iPod with the traditional hell march to the Org, there was a weird and wonderful collection of old raid music to come. Luck continued to elude us as the wind picked up sufficiently to blow any unsecured signs down the street, and the sport of catch-the-sign-before-it-takes-out-an-elderly-pedestrian soon got old. We resorted to that old practice of actually holding the signs (!), while others flyered both sides of the street. We were also interviewed by BBC radio, although regrettably not about the cult. I spoke to three Scientologists in all during the protest. Coincidentally, all three of them lied. Firstly there was our favourite OSA member, Sam Butler. On enquiring what Sam had been saying to one Anon who was flyering, he told me that he’d just said ‘not to stand in front of the Org’ (which is our agreed rule with the police). Not buying it, especially considering the Anon hadn't been in front of the Org when Sam spoke to him, I asked the Anon what he’d really said, and Sam had told him that he couldn’t stand in the completely permitted place that he was standing at the time. The only appropriate response was to take a wander over and spend much of the remainder of the protest there. Thanks for the inspiration, Sam! The other two Scientologists seemingly just happened to be driving by, and pulled up to wind down the window and shout ‘we’re a lovely Scientologist family!’ They had what I assume were their children in the back, and spent a good few minutes stopped at the side of the road talking to us (on double yellows, but that’s just wog law). It’s always a rare and welcome opportunity to talk to everyday Scientologists without them just shouting things and leaving, or getting dragged away from us by the Org staff. As friendly and as civil as the conversation was, it did fall into some familiar patterns – us telling them about abuses and them either ignoring them or saying ‘I doubt that’ before talking about an unrelated humanitarian thing some Scientologists they know are doing, etc. ‘Yes, that’s great, and Scientologists are generally good people with good intentions, but it doesn’t mean that abuses like-’. And so it carried on until they told us that as they couldn’t stop there any longer but would park up and come back. (Lie number two). They did mention that they had donated a million dollars to ‘humanitarian’ activities associated with CoS. And so the protest continued with the usual mix of support and bewilderment from the Mancunian public (with the occasional incomprehensible abuse shouted from a car or two) and even when the fliers ran dry and some of us had to leave, we danced on in a protest-y fashion before finally making our escape as the rain arrived. That concludes your less-entertaining-than-you-hoped post-game report with no pics. Prof seems to be taking the role of camerafag so seriously, she’s actually decided to be the new cfanon. Missed this month? Our next raid is May 11th: https://whyweprotest.net/community/threads/may-11th-manchester-uk.110589/ TL;DR: We were late and disorganised, wind was a bitch, still pulled it off in style. Come next month.
Well informed as usual mate. Great report. I think money is needed to help on fliers, so please set a template and find a quality print company and and let me know the costs to cover the next 3 protests for enough flyers. Tony and Sue. The Parents fighting the CULT.
Nice work you guys, gutted I missed it, birthday drinks the night before got a bit out of hand, I ended up missing Saturday entirely. Means I've still got a metric fuck-ton of leaflets in my bag for the next raid though. If Prof is really emulating cf, then we should get pics from this raid around September/ October time.
Forgot about them. Oops. Calm yo' tits. Strobe and I doing teenage girl Facebook poses. <3 Me cutting up fliers without scissors. The BBC guys! Manchester Anon version of Epic Walking German Anon. More here. I think.
Why thank you. ^_^ i'll assume you're talking about me because cba checking the pics in the link to see if anyone else had blue eyes
