Anonymous had its March raid on Saturday, and those of us who came out to brave the cold and the rain had a great time protesting the Church of Scientology. It was raining on and off all day, and it was a bit cool, which makes for cold rain. It was enough to where I had to leave the Canon in the bag and shoot with Duckie all day. I had kind of figured that the Canon’s first protest would be an Anon raid (specifically, this one), but it looks like that distinction will go to a Funk the War demonstration later this week.
Nonetheless, though, for those of us who came out, we had a blast, “celebrating” L. Ron Hubbard‘s 98th birthday. And of course, we got photos…
JB got us started on the right foot, with a “Honk if you oppose Scientology” sign for MaidofWin to troll the cars with. The use of “oppose” was new this time, since consensus was that the previous “Honk if you hate Scientology” was playing too much into the Church of Scientology’s hands. We don’t hate them, after all, and we would welcome any Scientologist who escapes the cult with open arms. We oppose Scientology’s practices.
My coworker also showed up again, and struck an anonymous pose, while I smiled under my Guy Fawkes mask.
Anyman had a great outfit, featuring colors coming out of more colors. It was awesome. Too bad it was too cold to give it much airtime, though.
I took a moment to trace an Anon with chalk to go with a “Scientology kills” message that had already been chalked on the sidewalk.
Not a bad final product, no?
Then the Anonymous cake this time around was cupcakes, arranged to spell out “Happy birthday L. Ron!” with the icing.
And of course, with this being a birthday celebration, we had “fooers”. That name was a term that I inadvertently kind of coined, as I had earlier described them as, “Those things that unroll and go ‘foo’ when you blow into them.”
Meanwhile, no DC raid is complete without Scientology spokesmodel Sylvia Stanard making an appearance, and so here it is:
This time around, Sylvia was all bent out of shape about a missing cap on a pole for a fence around a tree, and trying to pin it on Anonymous. One would think that someone so important as to be their spokesmodel would find better things to do with her time than to try bother the Anons…
Then an amusing moment came when my cell phone went off mid-raid. Turns out that my sister and her fiancé Chris were going through Millennium Park in Chicago, and came across our Chicago Anon bretheren. And she sent me a photo:
She sent it to me with a message saying, “Oh, f—. The Internet is here,” based on a photo from one of the early raids in, if not mistaken, London. A number of us found that encouraging and amusing, as Chicago had nice weather for its raid, but we were dealing with less-than-optimal weather for a raid. But we made do.
And of course, there were movies, as Tastee rocked to “The Final Countdown”:
And then afterwards, we headed over to Bailey’s in Ballston, and then from there, kind of wandered around Ballston Common Mall for a bit. We went to Victoria’s Secret, where JB tried on a bunch of different fragrances, and ended up sitting on the beds at Macy’s for a while just talking about whatever. When a store employee came by to ask if we needed anything, we responded, “A couple of margaritas would be great.” Then we migrated over to a nearby arcade for a few minutes.
Then we got going. This must have been Alstom Day or something, because every train I got off the Red Line was an Alstom. Then all of what I got on the Red Line was 5000s, save for one Rohr. Go figure.
So all in all, not a bad day. See you in April…