Vancouver, BC.
I woke up at 4 AM (PST) to get ready for my morning shift to work in the freezer (for those who are wondering, no, I don't work at the hockey rink anymore. Had to quit). Finally got to work at 5 AM and busted my butt around for 5 hours straight until I got off work at 10 AM. I took my car and drove to the closest station with a parking lot. I got into the bathroom at the station and changed into my dress shirt and suit. I pulled out an alien mask from my bag and put the mask on. Inconspicuous, in a sense. I paid for my ticket to ride the skytrain (it's an above ground subway, basically) all the way up to the Waterfront Station. A few anonymous boarded on my car and we just sat together in a group talking about random things.
We arrived at the Waterfront Station and met up with initially 25 people there before 11 AM. More people arrived shortly thereafter, however. We talked about the rules and the code of conducts that we have to follow. No fooling around, period. At noon, we walked from the Waterfront Station all the way to the Church of Scientology on Hastings Street in Vancouver.
We arrived at 1 pm and stood in front of the building, protesting and chanting several statements, and keeping it cool. The scientologists, understandably, were NOT happy with our presence there. Cameras were seen being set up in the windows of the building to record the protestors, 5 or 7 scientologists were seen walking around on the street either harassing the protestors in attempt to goad them into retaliation, taking photos of the masked protestors (I think we know why), and stalking one of our camera people in attempt to get a shot at applying the Fair Game policy on them. Four of us had to step in between the Creepy Cameraman Scientologist and one our of photographers as he was harassing her very heavily. :\
A scientologist screamed and yelled at us (no idea if we managed to tape that, but I hope we did) in an attempt to get us scared away, win an argument, or being a general jerk. We didn't yell back or harass the scientologists, we asked the fellow to take a couple of deep breaths. We proceed to explain that we had nothing against scientologists but we are protesting against the organization for their actions and their conducts. He continued to yell at us for committing a hate crime (no joke, people).
The Scientologists decided to retaliate against us by destroying our credibility (down, Falcon, down! No treats for you!) by putting up a banner declaring a charity organization. Unfortunately, we had to challenge it in order to find out if that banner was geniune or not. We raised our signs high enough to block the banner out. Within 30 minutes, they took down the banner and we were right in testing them (if it was a real charity, they would have kept it up for longer than an hour and we would have stopped blocking it as planned).
Rumours started to spread within the group that two guys just left the protest to come back with baseball bats. Two our of Anonymous decided to investigate the source of this rumour and traced back to, you guess it, another Scientologist. As you may have figured out, yes, Scientologists have attempted on numerous accounts to mingle in our group to try to start up a fight using psychological warfare tactics. Thankfully, they failed in doing so.
After 2 PM, we received an informal verbal report that we had hit about over 200 protestors at our locations (it was cramped on the street, good lord). I will say this once: Yes, we did rickroll once, no this was not planned as far as I know. However, we took enjoyment in this because it was a short brief break to just have a little de-stressing fun (since we were constantly being harassed and goaded by Scientologists) so even I welcomed it. There was one anonymous who made a sign saying, "HONK IF YOU HATE SCIENTOLOGY". We forcibly removed the sign from him as it violated a bylaw (he was not aware of it).
Crowd-wise, we were a hit with the population and they were actually in support of us. They were also very willing to take pamphlets, fliers, etc, from us. We got a lot of support from people driving by the street. If I had to give out my estimation on how many passerbys stopped and asked us more questions in regards to the situation, I would say 8 out of 10 people stopped to ask us more questions. This is HUGE, people.
At around 6 PM, the protestors started to break away to get ready at going home. For those who may be wondering, "Why so early?" Vancouver isn't a safe place to be hanging around in after sundown as the addicts, dealers, and prostitutes start coming out of the woodworks on that street, so leaving is in your best interests at that time. As the crowd broke away, the scientologists started following some people who walked alone. One of which was me I didn't go with anyone and we made it a rule not to leave or unmask with other anonymous in case if a scientologists infiltrated the group.
After leaving the protest, I walked down the street, still wearing my mask (didn't want to unmask in public). I kept checking the reflections of the windows as I kept walking around to see who's behind me and kept checking a little over my shoulders every rare opportunity I had. I kept walking for 20 minutes, making erratic left and right turns on streets until I felt confident enough that guy was definitely a scientologist.
I didn't want to take that kind of crap and the rules of the protest no longer applies to me here but I had to shake him. How? My original plan was to go into a coffee shop (set up with a bud of mine who works there LONG before the day of the protest) where I was going to duck in, go into the backroom where I can remove my outer layer of clothing, mask, and go through the backdoor to the alley where I could make a clean escape. Unfortunately, there was a change in that plan. His shift got changed. I thought fast this morning ahead of time for this kind of situation.
I walked into a building that led to a stairway to the parkade and closed the door behind me. I waited by the door at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him. The door opened, I looked at his face to quickly compare to what I saw from reflections and looking over my shoulders, confirmed it was the same person, I punched him in the guts and threw him against the wall. I quickly left the building while he was down, ran into the mall and quickly removed my mask, pulled out a shopping bag from my suit, and stuffed my dressshirt, suit, and mask into the bag and merged with the crowd as a "shopper."
After that, I got onto the skytrain station back to my car, head to Tim Hortons and rewarded myself with a nice cup of Iced Cappucino.
