When we spoke to Phil Jones last night, he had just arrived back home in Canada after his flight from Los Angeles, and he sounded tired and a bit bewildered by what he’d been through over the last few days.
“It’s been crazy. And I’m in my 70s. This would be difficult if I was in my 20s,” he said with a laugh.
We asked him to recount what he’d been through after announcing his triumph Monday morning here at the Underground Bunker of his new billboard outside Scientology headquarters, and then learning that it had been taken down only a couple of days later.
“Where we put up that billboard, I could look up and see my daughter’s window. At least, where she told me she was living the last time I talked to her,” he said, referring to his daughter Emily Jones, who remains in Scientology’s Sea Org and hasn’t spoken to her parents in years. “You have to understand, part of why I’m doing this is personal.”
Start at the beginning, we asked him.
Phil reminded us that at the end of 2023 he and his wife Willie had taken a trip to Florida, and they had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Mike Rinder. It was at that party, he says, that Aftermath Foundation board member Claire Headley asked him about doing a billboard for the foundation.
Phil and Willie had put up three previous billboards asking Scientology Sea Org members to call their families, so he was very familiar with the process.
“I knew how to do it. We just went through the same steps like we did with the other ones,” he says. “I put together a bunch of different messages, and sent them over to Kernan Coleman (the graphic artist), and then narrowed it down. We ended up with three or four different designs before we ended up with the last one.”
And they had found a great location, visible from Scientology’s Big Blue headquarters in Los Angeles, so Sea Org members couldn’t miss it.
Phil flew into Los Angeles on Sunday night, determined to be there when the billboard was installed Monday morning.
“I wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any Scientology interference.”
His flight was delayed, so he didn’t get into his hotel room until 2:30 in the morning, and he had to be at the billboard site at 4 am. They had signed a one-year contract with ClearChannel, which had given them a window of 4 am to 8 am for the installation. He met Rachael Hastings there, who began filming.
“The installers arrived at 10 minutes to 8, and we had been sitting there for hours,” Phil says. “Scientology security knew we were there right away. Every 20 minutes one of their bicycle guards came by to check us out.”
But when the installers arrived and put up the billboard, the Scientology security guards didn’t try to interfere.
“They had it up in 20 minutes. They were really fast,” Phil says.
Phil spoke to his rep at ClearChannel, to thank him.
“He said, you know the whole office really likes it, they’re really behind you guys.”
But later, after Scientology had put up a cherry picker to block the billboard, Phil says the rep asked him to get on the phone with his manager, who suddenly didn’t sound so supportive.
“She said they are not controversial, they are not a news organization,” Phil says. “They offered to up a billboard for us in another location.”
Phil said he’d look at the new locations, and spent some time driving around to look at them. But they weren’t anywhere near where Scientology Sea Org members might see them.
“I went out and spent hours driving and looking at these locations. None of them worked. But I just told them I had forwarded all the information to the board. They were really pressuring me at that point.”
Scientology, meanwhile, had moved a scissor lift to block the view of the billboard, and Phil says the ClearChannel rep told him there was nothing they could do about it except to move the billboard somewhere else.
On Wednesday, the Aftermath Board had its attorney, Ray Jeffrey, send ClearChannel a letter that said there was nothing controversial about the billboard, that the board had spent months fundraising for it, and asking ClearChannel to submit in writing the reasons for moving it.
“We didn’t get any response,” says board member Claire Headley.
And then, by Thursday morning, the billboard was gone.
When we spoke to Claire last night by phone, she said it still wasn’t apparent who had actually taken the billboard down, and ClearChannel wasn’t answering any of the board’s messages.
“It’s been complete radio silence,” she said.
After we spoke to Claire last night, the board issued a statement, which we’re posting here in full…
In November 2023, The Aftermath Foundation devised a new strategy to reach the estimated 4,000 Scientologists who suffer indentured servitude by virtue of their service in Scientology’s Sea Organization. These members work 16 (or more) hours daily, seven days a week. They have no guarantee of either medical or dental care. They are isolated from the outside world and cut off from their family members and former friends. Scientology controls what they see and hear. They have no access to information readily available to others on the internet or TV. They are denied basic resources and freedoms that most Americans take for granted.
As a result of extreme isolation and control, these people are trapped in a slave-like existence. The Aftermath Foundation exists to help them escape and start new lives.
In December 2023, we approached former Scientologist Phil Jones because of his successful 2016 Call Me billboard campaign that exposed Scientology’s destructive practice of “disconnection”, which tears families apart. Disconnection is the forced separation of a current Scientologist from anyone (including immediate family) who has been declared an enemy of Scientology.
Phil and his wife, Willie, suffered through disconnection when their adult children, Mike and Emily Jones, refused to communicate with them in any way after being ordered to cut off all contact by Scientology. Phil Jones joined the board of The Aftermath Foundation in March 2024.
We located the perfect billboard site close to and visible from Scientology’s buildings in Los Angeles and signed a one-year contract with Clear Channel Outdoor, including the First Right of Refusal at the end of the contract term. We developed a simple billboard design with our message and established a toll-free 24/7 helpline: 888-FREE-002.
The billboard was installed on March 11, 2024 at 9:00 AM.
Initially, Clear Channel Outdoor was very supportive of our campaign. The manager told us that their office staff thought we were doing a great thing.
By 10:00 AM, Scientology had erected a cherry picker in front of the billboard, intending to block our toll-free helpline from the view of their members. By that afternoon, they had also erected a scissor lift.
The next day, March 12, we were contacted by our Clear Channel Outdoor account representative, who told us they were under extreme pressure to remove the billboard and relocate it because Scientology claimed the message was “controversial”.
Today, Clear Channel Outdoor removed the billboard. We learned of this news when a supporter sent us a photo; we did not receive a notification from Clear Channel Outdoor in advance.
Scientology claims on its website that members are “free to leave” if they choose. Their extreme reaction to this simple billboard tells a different story.
If people are free to leave, why are they worried about a phone number that gives those wanting to leave a place to reach out to? Scientology has proven once again that they’re not the freedom of speech-loving humanitarians that they claim to be, but are instead a high-control organization that seeks to bully anyone it fears will expose its abuses. Scientology has proven that they are scared this message will be seen — because they know, just as we do, that it will be effective in helping the indentured servants escape its draconian control.
There is no better measure of the vital importance of this campaign than the drastic, over-the-top, and frantic efforts by Scientology to try to stop it.
While Clear Channel Outdoor may have folded in the face of Scientology’s bullying, we certainly will not.
We will redouble our efforts to release the four thousand slaves of Scientology’s mind control and already have alternate plans in the works to get our message heard by them.
We deeply appreciate the many people who have supported this effort.
Our phone contacts have tripled in the last three days. If you want to see more actions taken along this line, you can support our efforts by making a tax-deductible donation here.
Phil Jones may have sounded fatigued last night, but he also sounded determined.
“I don’t know where ClearChannel stands on this, and I don’t know where this is going to go from here,” he said. But he wasn’t going to give up, and he was already seeing a silver lining to what had happened.
“The billboard being taken down, that seems to have gotten it even more attention,” he said hopefully.
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Phil, Willie and the Aftermath Foundation, we've got your backs! Phil, you are a superstar! ❤️
What the eff ClearChanne?
Isn’t this the exact thing that CO$ is stating in Leah’s lawsuit? Freedom of speech? They can say and post anything? What a double standard! 😡