Quick Updates from 4/12

Hey, guys, good work today. A quick summary for those who couldn't be there:

Had some issues with nearby small businesses calling the police and claiming that Anonymous was driving away customers. A police officer stationed at the Scientology bookstore came out and talked to us about it -- he said they'd received 5-6 calls about the matter, one of which went to his personal cell phone (which he didn't know how anyone had accessed). Now, since we did have one neighboring storeowner complain last time, it's not unreasonable to think it could have happened again. We did witness a young male employee of the shop that called police last time going to other shops on the block and purportedly asking them to call the police on us, also. At least of these shop owners seems to like us and apparently told the kid to get lost. However, 5-6 calls still seems excessive, and officer mentioned that one had been directed to the mayor's hotline, which SEEMS like something the Scientologists might do, but again, that could be jumping to conclusions. Overall, though, the officer was cool and requested that we shift down the block slightly so that we only blocked a vacant building, and there were no more complaints after that.

Had a drive-by Rickroll at 11:24am. Young male in a car pulled to the side of the road, rolled down the windows, and blasted the song at us. Win. Footage here.

We were joined briefly by Chuck Beatty, ex-Sea Org member and prominent local SP, as well as another older male who said that he was once in the Sea Org as well and had been in CoS for something like twenty years. This one brought two signs and stayed all day, which was awesome. Beatty in particular, I think it was (I didn't talk to him personally as I was holding up part of our giant EXSCIENTOLOGYKIDS.COM banner at the time), had some interesting things to say about the local bookstore. Specifically, that there's really only one full-time employee there, a Russian or Ukrainian immigrant who gets paid only about $100 a week and was desperate for work and took the job.

Turnout appeared to peak at 25-30, still somewhat less than the 2/10 protest peak of 40-50, so I think that for May 10th, we really need to focus on recruiting a larger group. I did get in contact with all the major media outlets and some seemed interested over the phone, but as far as I know none of them came out this time. We did have giv3m3truth's coverage (thanks again, and I'll be looking out for your footage =]) and a local South Side paper that wants to put our pictures in their next issue. Lots of passersby were taking photos (interestingly, many had professional-looking Canon cameras) and some potential Scientologists photographing from across the street. Also, a couple people who run an about.com page on Agnosticism/Atheism were there taking pictures, and gave one of us their business card.

UPDATE: giv3m3truth's video

UPDATE: Austin Cline's About.com Coverage

UPDATE: Many Signs' photo gallery

UPDATE: Xenu's photo gallery

I will update this with any important media/etc. as it comes up. If anyone has links to photos or whatnot, post comments and I'll add them to this entry.