If you haven't been following it lately, the Internet has declared war on Scientology. More specifically, a group of Internet hackers and other assorteds declaring themselves "Anonymous" have pledged to "destroy Scientology."
Over the past few months, there have been DOS (Denial of Service) attacks against major Scientology websites and hacking into those same websites to disseminate Scientology information so quickly and so widespread that the Church of Scientology would be unable to order cease and desists before the information was completely beyond their control.
And today saw multiple protests, orchestrated across the entire globe in major cities from Australia to California in front of major Scientology centers.
Living in Los Angeles, my friends and I decided to check it out...
Los Angeles, of course, is the center of Scientology, and home to many of its most famous members, and featuring the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibit and Celebrity Center as well as the Psychiatry: Industry of Death Museum.
After doing a little checking on the internet, we found the official starting point of the protest (somewhere on Sunset) and the time (1PM). So, after grabbing my video and still cameras and grabbing a DV tape from a friend, we headed down, parking nearby and walking up a block or so to the Celebrity Center to find...
...Not much. We got there around 1:30 or so and found only a few guys standing in front of the building wearing khakis, aviator sun glasses, and button up shirts. They were clearly watching the people walking around, including us, scanning for potential trouble.
But it appeared there was no trouble to be found. We walked up a block, looking futilely for protesters before turning around and starting back. Before we got back to the corner of the Scientology Center, we passed a heavily tattooed man who overheard our conversation and told us the protesters had started down Hollywood Blvd towards the Chinese Mann Theater.
We started after them. We made it a block or so before spotting a large crowd of people, almost all with faces covered in one way or another, most with Guy Fox masks, across the street headed back the other way. Quickly we backtracked and crossed the street to meet up with them, and walked with them as the walked south to Sunset Blvd to demonstrate outside the CNN building.
We talked with a few and mostly grabbed pictures and video. My roommate is editing the footage we got right now, and I've uploaded a few of the pictures I took to share here and elsewhere.
This was taken from Sunset Blvd, near Amoeba Music. The CNN building and the protesters would be off to the left of this picture about a block away.
One of the guys was slapping stickers on crosswalk signals as the crowd went on.
The stickers the guy was slapping. Upon closer inspection, I'm not actually sure what this has to do with protesting Scientology, but if you live in Los Angeles and you see one of these, now you know what the guy who put them there looks like.
The crowd in front of the CNN building.
Protesters in front of the CNN building.
One of the many Guy Fawkes among the crowd.
One of the curiouser things about the protest was that whatever amounted to "leaders" among the crowd wore full suits with bright red ties and green cloth wrapped fully around their heads. There were two or three among the crowd in front of the CNN building, which goes along with what one protester told us about this group originally being three or four that had all linked up.
Curiously, there was virtually no media coverage of the protest at all, at least while we were with it. Clearly they stood outside the CNN building in an attempt to garner some media attention and you think a protest of this size and unique visual attributes would have at least a news crew or two out there grabbing some B-roll. But besides us, grabbing what we could for our own little podcast and other personal blogging, and a couple other photographers and videographers, most of which seemed directly connected to the protesters, there was nothing. Certainly no news crews at all; not national nor local.
Which is interesting, at the very least.
Update: Video of our attempts to find the march and the march itself, shot by Teague Chrystie and Chloe Zimmerman and edited by Teague Chrystie, as part of our podcast.
(Allow me to apologize for Teague's excessive style)