Milan Italy – Public Demonstration against ostracism practiced by the Watchtower.

by Nick! 37 Replies latest jw friends

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  Phizzy

  Well done to you all !

  and love to all our Italian XTJ's !
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  carla
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  AndersonsInfo

  We are delighted to see the results of what many XJWs can accomplish when they team up and protest against the injustice of ostracism (shunning). In this day and age it is outrageous Watch Tower adherents can practice ostracism and that democratic governments are tolerant of such an infringement of human rights.

  If we don’t speak up or demonstrate that we have had enough of this intrusion into our civil right to exit a religion without being penalized in a most injurious way, nothing will change and we will only have ourselves to blame.

  Factual information to the public will eventually win out against JWs dishonest arguments that they have a God-given right to shun. In reality, shunning amounts to intolerance of others who disagree and this indeed is a human rights issue

  Thanks Nick for your report and please extend our greetings to all your associates who turned out for the public demonstration. Wish we had been there with you and the others. We're sure that many government officials took notice of the protest as they are taking notice of the abusive practices of JWs in Australia, France, Belgium, the UK, the US, and other countries.

  Barbara and Joe
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  DaCheech

  I almost misread the title as "austerity" stuff, but good job!!!

  we need more people like you!
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  ziddina

  Bump!!
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  Scott77
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  ziddina

  In the past, certain ex-JWs who organize demonstrations have come onto this board and urged their fellow expatriates to join in demonstrating at Jehovah's Witness assemblies.

  Threads on the topic have gone back and forth, but one aspect of that sort of demonstration always stuck in my mind...

  The active Jehovah's Witnesses attending assemblies are so deeply invested in the Watchtower Society [for the most part] that they are unlikely to consider the information put forth by "apostates" - on placards and so forth.

  But informing the general public - that's cutting off one of their sources for new converts. You know the saying - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

  Zid
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  flipper

  Well done!

  I agree with Ziddina. It is much more productive to demonstrate to the general public to warn them. So many people have no idea how destructive the watchtower is. And I have heard from 3 different people that JW's said "Oh, no - that's not true - we don't shun people!" They outright lied about it when questioned.

  I recently told someone that if anyone they know was to consider becoming a witness to chain them up in a basemnt until they come to their senses. It would be doing them a great favor. Kidding, of course. But definitely educate them. Mrs. F
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  cobaltcupcake

  Well done!!

  It truly is evil to tear families apart. I'm being shunned by my mother and brother. I have to keep checking the SSI "death list" for her name to make sure she's still alive.

  Of course, they'd say that's my choice, but my choice is not to be a JW. It's their choice to shun me.
• 

  Vidiot

  ziddina - "But informing the general public - that's cutting off one of their sources for new converts."

  The importance of this fact simply cannot be underestimated.

  I tend to laugh at myself; when I first started fading, this never occurred to me. The only way I thought the WTS would crumble would be if something caused the R&F to lose all confidence in it, but I immediately realized that WT ideology had too few loopholes to allow something like that to happen.

  It made me depressed at the time...

  ...until I realized that, while the WTS was good at winning short-term battles, it was pretty lousy at long-term campaigning, in no small part due to the fact that the very nature of any apocalyptic millennialist group severely handicaps that ability; the End is Nigh, so planning too far ahead seems pointless and they never get any practice at it. Therefore, there'd be no mass Exodus; nothing could cause the Tower to come crashing down spectacularly, and I also concluded that - similarly - old-school "apostate" demonstrators (the guys with with signs and bullhorns) would never have any significant measure of success, either.

  However, once I got my head around the idea that unlike the WT, XJWs have plenty of time on their hands and more importantly, know it (time to conduct a successful long-term campaign designed to target weak spots like the vital need for a steady influx of new members and revenue flow, for example), and that the WTS had purged virtually all the really smart, creative, outside-the-box thinkers who - by and large - are now happy to put their intelligence and skills to use on behalf of the "enemy", well...

  ...the WTS's slow death by a thousand cuts seemed almost inevitable to me.