San Diego, CA

So the last one was a success, but now we have to put a spin on our efforts. Since this is based on Operation Reconnection, we need to think of ways to incorporate that plan into our usual efforts. If anyone knows someone who knows some one in the church, maybe you could ask them to write a letter for their loved ones and such. Also, thanks to the party van anons.

I think at this point it is somewhat difficult to pursue that. (If only we got that nice couples number)

I suggest a hand delivered letter with assistance from the SDPD. Or at least a computer printed letter that is sent without return address. If any of us are capable, I think we could follow through like that, but I suggest a simple letter printed at kinkos.

The Radar magazine piece made mention of a woman in San Diego that left the church because of the disconnection policy. If someone could track her down maybe she'd want to speak.

How about putting an ad in the paper in the days leading up to April 12th? That way we can get more people to the cause who normally aren't in down town or something. What do you think?

Originally Posted by uhnonamus

The Radar magazine piece made mention of a woman in San Diego that left the church because of the disconnection policy. If someone could track her down maybe she'd want to speak.

Originally Posted by Shinizak

How about putting an ad in the paper in the days leading up to April 12th? That way we can get more people to the cause who normally aren't in down town or something. What do you think?

I think the problem is that fingerprints will get on the stationary.
If OSA is about as smart as we all think it is, they can lift finger prints from paper, no doubt it was a certain method in how they where abel to get bomb threats against themselves.

I think an email would be safer with a throwaway account.

Oh... crap... See the problem is, I threw away my sign in a garbage bin when I left the protest... I really hope that doesn't come back to bite me...

@_@

Originally Posted by uhnonamus

The Radar magazine piece made mention of a woman in San Diego that left the church because of the disconnection policy. If someone could track her down maybe she'd want to speak.

The woman you're thinking of is Jenna Hill (formerly Miscaviage), Dave Miscaviage's niece. She also runs ESK (ExScientologyKids.org or .com or whatever).

I personally think that ESK would be a great source of people who've had to deal with disconnection... but Jenna has known about Anon for a long time now, and for her own reasons, hasn't been associating herself with us. I respect her right to do so... but I'm sure she wouldn't mind if we pulled on her web community for some names of people in the San Diego church who've disconnected.

In terms of mailing them a letter - I don't think the SDPD would think too highly of being used as a courier service. Any other means of mailing a letter to the CoS would likely result in their typical cries of "SAVE ME FROM THE MASKED HORDES!" when they call the bomb squad and try to claim that it's another bomb threat. I think that we should try to minimize any direct interaction with the church - so far, all they've done is play victim and tried to spin any and all communications attempts as terrorist threats (remember the valentine that someone left them?)

My personal thoughts on this, and I'm sure these aren't perfect, are that we start now compiling a list of names (and pictures, if possible) of San Diego scientologists who've disconnected from their families. We can then pass out fliers with their family's story... or make posters with their picture saying, "Jane: Your mom misses you. Please call her." Or something along those lines. Even if we can't get specific names, we can keep it generic: "You mom/husband/daughter/brother misses you. Please call them so they know you're okay."

In terms of fliers - a brief description of the disconnection policy, along with first-hand accounts (again, pulled from ESK), would be very effective.

If we can't get the names of disconnected San Diego scientologists, we could instead just treat this as a purely PR campaign - we can take names and stories of known disconnections from other cities and make them known.

We've had a few stories and interviews that have taken place involving families who don't even know where their loved ones are. Missing persons posters, detailing their story, would be very effective in hilighting the disconnection policy to the public.

Also - Jenna Hill has an incredible story, full of great quotes, that we could turn into posters and fliers.

In short: Lets try to reconnect families if we can find ones to focus on, but if we can't, we can instead just protest around Horton and the gaslamp, and do our best to educate the public on Scientology's disconnection policy, and how it's destroying families.

On an unrelated note - please post an offsite means of contact. I suggest a fake email address that you use specifically for Anon stuff. Gmail is a great provider of these. That way, if Enturb encounters turbulence, we can still communicate. To be safe, only email other anons with this account. If it's compromised somehow, all they'll have is email addresses that are already available on these boards. Would someone please update the first post with this info.

Mine: crashthrowaway@gmail.com

Originally Posted by Shinizak

How about putting an ad in the paper in the days leading up to April 12th? That way we can get more people to the cause who normally aren't in down town or something. What do you think?

This doesn't seem like a bad idea, if it can be done anonymously. It might be worth looking into.

If we could do this while remaining completely anonymous, and the cost wasn't prohibitive, I think it would be a great idea.

In the same vein, we should probably start notifying news outlets early that Anonymous is trying to reconnect disconnected scientologists with their families. Once we have specific stories, this should be easier.

In the meantime, I would encourage those who have time to go looking around ESK, alt.religion.scientology, and operation clambake for stories of disconnected scientologiests.

Also - there has been some discussion on SA about setting up a 'reconnection' web site. If I hear more, I'll be sure to post it here.

Those are good ideas, but fuck Gmail because they don't mask IP addresses. If any scilons ingratiate themselves into Anon you could be communicating more than you think using Gmail. I've been looking into anonymous email providers, this one looks good to me.
https://www.anonymousspeech.com/defa...linkinfo=viaMT

Originally Posted by uhnonamus

Those are good ideas, but fuck Gmail because they don't mask IP addresses. If any scilons ingratiate themselves into Anon you could be communicating more than you think using Gmail. I've been looking into anonymous email providers, this one looks good to me.
https://www.anonymousspeech.com/defa...linkinfo=viaMT

Hmm... I didn't know about that. Maybe I need a new one, even though most of my traffic is sent using a neighbor's IP address.

I think it's been said a number of times that resolving an IP address to an individual is a difficult process (usually requires a supoena to the ISP). That being said, the RIAA does it all the time, and the CoS has plenty of lawyering power to do the same... though they'd have to come up with evidence that we're violating their copyright somehow. I've yet to see them actually succeed at this.

All that being said, I'll be looking for a new anon mail provider later today. In the meantime, I can still RECEIVE email at the posted gmail account. I won't respond until I find a better host, at which point I'll edit my first post and provide the new address.

Thanks for the heads up.

RE: Press, I wouldn't be surprised if interest could be drummed up at either the Reader or City Beat. City Beat likes sticking it to the man, Reader is run by serious Catholic guy who probably doesn't like anything not Jebus-y.

moar email providers

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec...crypted_Email/

For Operation: Reconnect I plan on building something along the lines of this.

Anyone have any ideas on what to put on the banner?

Here are my less-than-important thoughts on the matter, based on what I saw on 3-15 and my own intelligentsia take on our war here. Realize that all this is my opinion and take all imperative statements with a grain of salt.

1. We do need to have an actual physical-presence protest of some sort. If we show up every month, we stay in the eyes of the public. Very few people knew about the protests if I didn't tell them about it; we were right outside NBC and all we got was a thirty-second blurb on the news at 11. Continued presence means continued dedication means a greater impact on the mindspace of the public.

2. We probably need to tone down the aggressive rhetoric for this one. As the theme is Reconnection, rather than the crimes of the Church, we need to establish our audiences: first, the general public (as they are more likely to listen), using an appeal to emotion and comparison with other cults that practice similar disconnection policies. Play off the breaking-family-ties angles and leave the other crimes to pamphlets and personal research. Second, the average Scientologist, especially those disconnected from their "SP" families. Even thought they're being thought-reformed, they're still human and will still respond somewhere. At 3-15 I had a double-sided sign with the intent of two different messages, one towards average folk ("AUDIT $CIENTOLOGY") and one more towards Scientologists ("Co$ CARES ABOUT YOUR WALLET, NOT YOUR ETERNITY"). It may be worthwhile to adopt that more widely.

3. Goldenrod. If possible, we should make our banners and signs and other materials this color--it's the color that SP orders are printed on. Scientologists will naturally react to the yellow color, and if we put bold, simple messages on them, they'll be ingrained in their memories: "YOUR FAMILY STILL LOVES YOU" "WHERE'S THE LOVE IN Co$" "FAMILIES ARE NOT SUPPRESSIVE" "LOVE IS NOT OUT-ETHICS" and stuff like that. Yellow signs are also distinctive and will attract the average joe's attention as well.

4. The SDPD would rightfully be annoyed if they were used as a courier service. This is what real courier services are for. Have someone go into one, explain what's going on, have them witness the putting of the letter sheets into the courier package (no tricks) so they can sign off that this isn't ZOMG TERRORISM, and leave. If the Church freaks out about it, it makes them look highly irrational, especially after this group it's calling a bunch of terrorists have made every effort--save namefagging--to be transparent. This is also where connections could be useful.

5. Ads in print and online media would be EXCELLENT, especially if we can reach out to local disconnected families. If they join us for the protest, that would be epic win beyond belief.

6. Lulz. Lulz are important; they maintain morale, motivate us, and demotivate the enemy. Scientology has no place for love, and it has no place for a sense of humor. It has no idea what to do when it's being taken not as serious business, but as SRS BIZNSS. Lulzy possibilities are sappy love songs (of course the now-ubiquitous rickrolling qualifies), your typical love ballad affairs, and making the message just goofy enough. The aim is to still be silly and have fun, but in an essentially harmless way. For example, if we emphasize the love aspect, well, the Internet is full of love. How could something that's 70% pornography and 25% talking about pornography not be filled with love?

7. My banner idea: "WHERE'S THE LOVE, Co$?"

I don't know if our arrangement with the SDPD allows for it, but this (tl;dr "small groups of 4-10 are effective") seems a great idea. After the protest and I was wandering around alone (like an idiot) following the track to the Fifth Street station, people actually came up to me and asked what was going on.

More particularly in our case: mass protest to get visible. March around the gaslamp, again for visibility's sake. Break off into "task forces" wandering about high-traffic areas just hitting the grass-roots.

Issue: command, control, communications. Perhaps each group should have a designated 'radioman' who checks in with the partyvan at determined intervals via texting? Risks namefagging, especially should cel phone contact lists get out, but would prevent the main group from moving on and leaving task forces out in the cold.

Issue: bullbaiting. Smaller groups may invite this tactic to actually be used. Four to ten people are still capable of self-regulation, however, and if we're being decent and the skin jobs are being assholes... well... yet another point to us. Non-issue.

Issue: SDPD not being able to keep an eye on all of us at all times. Safety argument: if they're watching the main group of people with masks, that protects us from Scientology using all the masks it bought up to rob liquor stores throughout the area as we're disassociated from such pettifoggery. Possible dealbreaker--but could be ameliorated by using predetermined routes/areas of operation that we share openly with the SDPD, along with the Air Raid/Duck And Cover protocol.

Originally Posted by A Noun? A Miss!

I don't know if our arrangement with the SDPD allows for it, but this (tl;dr "small groups of 4-10 are effective") seems a great idea. After the protest and I was wandering around alone (like an idiot) following the track to the Fifth Street station, people actually came up to me and asked what was going on.

More particularly in our case: mass protest to get visible. March around the gaslamp, again for visibility's sake. Break off into "task forces" wandering about high-traffic areas just hitting the grass-roots.

Issue: command, control, communications. Perhaps each group should have a designated 'radioman' who checks in with the partyvan at determined intervals via texting? Risks namefagging, especially should cel phone contact lists get out, but would prevent the main group from moving on and leaving task forces out in the cold.

Issue: bullbaiting. Smaller groups may invite this tactic to actually be used. Four to ten people are still capable of self-regulation, however, and if we're being decent and the skin jobs are being assholes... well... yet another point to us. Non-issue.

Issue: SDPD not being able to keep an eye on all of us at all times. Safety argument: if they're watching the main group of people with masks, that protects us from Scientology using all the masks it bought up to rob liquor stores throughout the area as we're disassociated from such pettifoggery. Possible dealbreaker--but could be ameliorated by using predetermined routes/areas of operation that we share openly with the SDPD, along with the Air Raid/Duck And Cover protocol.

Wow - two great posts with lots of constructive ideas. THIS is why COS will fall.

My personal opinion is that we have safety in numbers. We absolutely dominated in flyer distribution when we paraded around 4th street, but we sacrificed one-on-one discussion with curious parties.

If I were Dave, I'd recommend we refrain from doing anything that would take us out of sight from each other. When we're in a group, we benefit from each others knowledge and skills greatly, and different people are looking out for different things. For example, the old guy wearing the photographer's vest but using a crappy digital camera. I'm not going to witch-hunt and call him a scieno, but he was taking an awful lot of pictures, he wasn't wearing a mask, and he was specifically looking for distinctive markings. The instance that comes to mind is when he was taking a picture of an Anon, who was holding a flier... and he told the anon to lower the flier so he could get his 'street fighter' sweatshirt. That request seemed odd to me (though not to the anon being photographed), so I called it quits and blocked the shirt logo.

In short - though collective groups on the internet seem to make you stupid, collective groups IRL would appear to make us smarter.

Reasons I would not want to split up:
1. More difficult police monitoring (already mentioned), they may get uncomfortable
2. Breaks up our party atmosphere, lowering morale
3. Makes less of an impact (75 people holding signs and wearing masks, dancing, covering the entire front of Horton is impossible to miss. 4 people in masks looks like a bank robber about to happen)
4. Lessens the number of people around to keep an eye out
5. Lessens our ability to police ourselves (4 people could get into group-think, and think a bad idea is a reasonable one)
6. Risks of being left behind/split up (already mentioned).

Again, if I were Dave, I would probably spread out even less than we were on 3/15. Limiting it to 4 corners seems to be a good approach (even if it's 2 corners of 2 intersections... like covering both 3rd and 4th streets, but not crossing the street.

In my opinion, I think we made a bigger impact with the public while we were at Horton. The Hubbard center gets the minimal of foot traffic, so we're stuck relying on cars driving by, which severely limits how much information we can get across. However, in the spirit of Reconnect, making signs with messages FOR the scientologists is probably really important. I fully agree with the idea of using goldenrod for our messages to them, though that might be difficult to find in posterboard. I'll definitely do what I can to look for it.

I would say that the use of cell phones has an unacceptably high risk of namefagging. I also would prefer we not rely on any leadership structure, as it increases our succeptibility to attack. We still need to operate under the assumption that everyone we don't know is a plant. Using cell phones to communicate, it wouldn't be hard to get a plant into that role, thus 1. exposing everyone's phone numbers, and 2. opening us up to misinformation. How difficult would it be for someone to simply send a message saying "Protest is off. Cops broke it up. Disperse now." If we're all separate, we'll follow the orders. If we're in a close group, and we rely on vocal communication, we will likely be able to SEE if the cops say anything to us (remember how I say we should remain in view of eachother), and we will much more easily be able to disseminate good information, and weed out bad information. Of course, that being said, I fully expect each and every one of you to evaluate every one of my ideas, to make sure they're actually in the best interest of the group. I could be a Scieno. I could be a dumbass. I'm definitely an asshole. I won't take offense to any contrary points (and none of us should) as long as they're made with the intent to make our protest as effective and fun as possible.

Case in point: on Feb 10, we were able to relocate quickly and easily. When we were at horton, and someone decided to move at 3.30 to the hubbard center again, all we had to do was to run around 4 corners and tell people. On 3.15, the same task was a bit more difficult, as I had to run around 8 corners, hitting all of the people in between.

As I write this, I'm thinking things out, and the more I think about it, the more i think we really should try to stay together as much as reasonable. Definitely not more than a block away. I'm questioning whether even spanning more than one intersection would be wise. This doesn't mean that we can't be diffused within that limited space. On Feb 10, we had people on 4 corners, but at each of those locations we had people flyering, people holding signs, and people answering questions. We also spread out quite a bit in the area beneath the NBC building. Keeping ourselves loosely grouped, but within a smaller area (as opposed to sending strike teams around downtown and out of view), will likely make us more approachable, while simultaneously not hurting our ability to communicate quickly and police ourselves.

Other points: I 100% agree with toning down the aggression for this. Our last protest was a birthday party, and we partied. This protest is about reconnecting families, and is a much more serious topic. I definitely don't want to kill the fun and levity, since that makes our day more enjoyable, in addition to bringing attention... but this is definitely a more serious topic.

I agree with and encourage the goldenrod wherever possible, especially when creating signs directed at the scientologists.

I like the idea of print ads, with the caveat that we need to be SURE that the paper doesn't know our name. We need to be able to write the ad, place it, and pay them 100% in cash, and with minimal risk of being in public unmasked. Something makes me think that this might be difficult.
What might be easier, however, is writing to a journalist from CityBeat or the Reader, and telling them about the protests. They might be interested. 50 internetz if you're a college student, and you get your campus paper to do an article (kudos to USD anons for that win).

I still think using a courier service would be bad. At best, they'll just throw it away. At worst, they'll claim it's harassment or they'll arrest the courier... that is, assuming we can find a courier who will deliver something from somebody whose name they don't know. Plus it's expensive.
Any form of direct contact with CoS should be done during the protest, when the cameras are rolling and we're all visible. Doing things in any other way will only result in CoS playing victim... and it could result in a legitimate injunction.

I was personally considering writing a message on cue cards and showing them at the window (ever see Love Actually? Kinda like what that dude does when he's trying to nail his friend's fiance). This way, I can communicate a message to them in a reasonable manner, in a way that is clearly visible on film (and I plan on having SOMEBODY film the process at an angle that shows what my message is... to be sure that they can't say it's a threat.) We know they're watching... we know they're videotaping. Now we can see if they're actually paying attention.
Again, all my votes go against trying to interact with them outside of a very public protest, with police presence. I also plan on making sure the police have seen my cards prior to showing them to the Scieno's, to make sure they agree with it.

What wouldn't be a bad idea, IMO, is if everybody did this. We could, one at a time, walk up to the window and show our message (this MUST be done one at a time, and MUST be filmed. Also, I'd want to clear this idea with the PD beforehand, and clear each message before it is shown.) Having each one of their "masked aggressors" giving a very serious, sincere, and welcoming message could really do a lot to contradict the training that they've received about us. I'm thinking of something like the following:

Dear Scientologists, I know that you've been told that I am a criminal. I know that you probably don't believe me, but today we are here to reconnect you with your family. I do not hate you. I do not think less of you because of your believes. I am here because I am concerned for your well being. I am here because many of your loved ones miss you, and want to talk to you. Please call them. They won't be mad at you for believing what you do. They just want to know that you're okay. They still love you."

Something like that... probably with one sentence per card. That is, IF the PD will be okay with it. If not... I dunno. Maybe I can get enough people to hold up big versions of the cards from across the street.