in my opinion March's protest was wayyy superior to this one.....

things you believe were fail:

Getting into a debate with that doorman/$cientologist dude. He wasn't gonna listen, and quite a few (including me, I shamefully add) got pulled towards it, but hey, I was curious. In hindsight, it was a waste of our public-attention-getting-superpowers, IMHO...

However, debate was epic footage to note how Scienos won't share their religion.

Double edged sword, I guess.

We were a bit split up.

Perhaps the overuse of 'This is a ____ , this is a cult'

Yeah, I saw that. We could do with more people next time so it wouldn't appear that way - one group outside the CO$ (for the lulz), the other at the junction (public education).

An intermingling of the two for Anons depending on what they feel like doing would be good, but whoever joins one site needs to be replaced to keep numbers even. The main thing is numbers. Come on, we have well over 100 members now - Make an effort in May, people!

Too much music and dancing towards the end.
I had one person go to take a leaflet, notice the dancing, shook his head, and walked off.
Another said that he thought we were "just being immature", as opposed to how we were earlier in the day - i saw this guy go past about 3 or 4 times, so he saw us at various points of the protest.

*cough* i admit getting a little carried away leafleting and at times wandering quite far from the group wihout meaning to... i'd say put me on a leash and tie me to a post or bench but its easily misconstrued...

Me andy friends were kinda migrating between the groups.
So we got mass lulz, delicious cake and decent discussions.

Yeah it wasn't much of a protest by that stage.

That doesn't really matter, my good Anon. As long as people were getting the leaflets and then seeing the signs and being educated, it's all good.

I went a good 20m from the junction at one point to had out leaflets - had a fairly good response too as I managed to get rid of loads of them. Had a couple of in depth discussions with members of the public too... :D

EDIT - Oh, I forgot. One of these discussions was with a psychologist type dude (as I'm sure you're all aware of the Scifags' view of this type of medical practice). He promised to spread the word amongst his colleagues. Win.

Yeah, I kinda did the same...

I should've brought a sign. I shall next time.
I should've talked more, but that's difficult when you're me.

You talked to me. And it was a pleasure to speak to you. :D

I can't remember what it was you said, but you made one comment which made me laugh quite a bit. Moar of that? ;)

I'd say the only fail is due to my 4 hours sleep, I slowly lost motivation more and more and more over the day as I was so tired.
Still waved those signs around a bit though!

Also the, in 4chan terms, newfags, that jumped in out of nowhere sorta pissed me off a bit, they seemed a bit "Oh my god, masks and signs, this seems different, I smell bandwagon" but it's all good.

The only fail I can think of right now was my tendency to randomly start singing, especially when voice decided to kill itself.

Agreed. Memes, lulz, etc, obviously very important but somehow the balance got messed up.

However I think overall the protest went really well (more in the win thread). I have a few fails, but bear in mind they're pretty minor points in the big scheme of things...

The above; uninformed random people joining in are great for numbers, but not when they're too disruptive, sorry.

Not having a globally common speech & line up along New Street like in March. Though not unmasking was win!

Me forgetting to take photos, again!

Me not being able to talk the scientologist well enough (more on that later, if I have time).

Arcania, your singing was win!

I personally wouldn't say it failed completely, infact if that had been our first one then I would have been very impressed, but when comparing it to the previous two it is definitely inferior. Although, considering the weather we did well, not as many as I'd have expected would have been put off and not come.

We also seemed to lack things to shout, making it silent a lot of the time.

And everyone I ended up talking to seemed to only listen to say a sentence of what I had to say then walk off.

And I was horrifically sleep deprived.

I think that comparison's a mistake. Don't compare yesterday's protest to some other protest- compare it to there being no protest and the shoppers on New Street being greeted instead by cult recruiters with clipboards.

Not every protest can be the Most Epic Protest Ever. We had fun, we crashed the cult's stats and we got a message across to the public loud and clear.

I'd go one further and say that it was better than last time. Whilst we weren't as noisy as last time, having a continued presence on New Street this time meant that more people heard our message.

Spoon, your avatar makes me LOL so f'in much!

I have no idea about previous ones as this was my first (but definately not last!) protest, but I still feel we put our message across on various occasion.

It may feel like the amount reading "Scientology" and thinking we're Sci-fags outnumbers the people who we touched with our message but I alone got more thanks for warning them than I saw complaining.

Scifags have memes now?

S'what I was thinkin'
But then again, a typical birmingham going-teenager has no idea of the internet past myspace/bebo.

Very good point.

How about "Scientology disconnects you from your friends list", then? :P

Yeah, it's a shame though.

However I believe those social networking sites have "groups" on them?

Anyone for setting up various anon accounts and making Anti-Scientology groups to spread the message to the mainstream over the net aswell as the streets?

Did I do the right thing when I explained about fair gaming and made the excitable newbies mask up? I was concerned when they started to wave banners about and hand out leaflets, but had little idea why we were wearing masks.

It has yet to be mentioned, but the cops showing up at the end and telling us to stop handing out leaflets counts as a fail for me. I thought we had full permission?

I personally failed at taking enough photos, I forgot I had my camera with me.

We don't/ shouldn't need permission.

Leafletting is banned, unless you have a licence, or it's religious/ political.

We're religious/ political

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/GenerateConte...0&MENU_ID=15271

^ See uk323's link.

There is already a project to do just this. Look it up on enturbulation.org.

It wasn't the wrong thing no, however it would be prefered if they weren't there as, it seems a bit paranoid but, they can't really be trusted to protest with us.

For instance, they give a leaflet out, someone asks and they say "I just wanted to hand leaflets out that that guy gave me".
This makes it look like we're "working for" a higher authority, the guys at the Co$ building said we were doing it for someone else and that it was US who were brainwashed. If this happens then people of the public also think this.

I'd say it's fine as long as you have someone in the know with you, or at least have them know a bit about it first.

And yeah, I'm certain handing out leaflets isn't illegal, so many people do it.
I did notice the same police officers talking to the £ci-fags at the doors just before hand. Corruption afoot?

EDIT:
MartinPoulter, thanks, I'll take a look at that.

And at the "Religious/politcal" thing. I've seen people handing out leaflets who are quite clearly, not religious, not politcal and don't seem to have the stature in their business/organisation to have a liscence.
Then again.. I suppose being a big "blockade" on new street they'd confront us and not small-name people.

To add to this:

The police's arguement was that because we were against the religion, it didn't count.

This is one reason why I am mildly against letting people just join in off the street. As they are most likely not fully clued up on why Anonymous is protesting the cult, and may be mostly attracted by the, ahem, "wacky bandwagon" (as someone else said, I think) then I don't think it's very good. To fully help a cause you need to know WHAT you're doing, yes? It's great that we have people wanting to join in, but I'd rather they were holding the sign because they believe in what's written on it, not holding a sign for the sake of standing in a crowded town centre mucking about.

</2 cents> :money:

Also, yes: what the effff?!?! Someone needs to look into this and why the fuzz have suddenly popped up waving Council fines in our faces. Without leafletting our campaign could take a major blow in getting the message out.

Yes, but as it is a political message, and as the church goes against some of the beliefs of bigger religions, we are allowed.

^ Seconded

In the IRC we'd been speculating on some potential loopholes/ways around. I'll interpret the logs and post them here in a while.

While we have done, it's a pretty good point - Why did they kick up a fuss all of a sudden, after about 16 or so hours (total) leafletting?

No worries there, I would have been happier if they hadn't joined in at all. But by the time I realised they weren't Anon, they were already running around with our signs and leaflets.


As for the police, they had turned up we had given out nearly all of the leaflets so the timing was great. If it truely was illigal, then why didn't all the other police/community officers stop us during the protest? Why wait until the end?