United States: Clarifying the Truth in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is a pleasant resort town on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. Through the truth clarifying efforts of San Franciscan Falun Gong practitioners' in downtown Santa Cruz, in the past two weeks, it now has its own practitioners.
The greater part of Santa Cruz residents are westerners, with many being quite wealthy. Even though practitioners from the Bay Area have held workshops in Santa Cruz (sometimes on a weekly basis), this is their first joint effort with the San Franciscan practitioners, to clarify the truth, and let more people know about Falun Dafa.

Practitioners arrived around noon at the busy downtown main street. The weather forecast predicted rain for the whole week, but it didn't rain at all when the practitioners were present, and the sun even came out for a few hours. There was a stand with a Falun Dafa banner, giving away music CDs, VCDs with the True Story of Falun Dafa, magazines, and several different flyers, including one with the location of the beautiful Santa Cruz cliff top Falun Dafa practice site.

A few practitioners did the exercises while others gave out flyers. Many members of the public previously unaware of Falun Dafa approached the stand, and some of their comments were quite amazing. Below is a conversation between a practitioner and a passer-by.

passer-by: What is this?
practitioner: Falun Dafa, a meditation practice.
passer-by: Looks good, relaxing?
practitioner: Yeah, the people who practice this in China are persecuted, beaten, and arrested.
passer-by: They [the Jiang regime] are evil!

Later on practitioners decided to move to another spot in order to reach more people. When they were packing up to leave, a local man came and said: "You guys should keep practicing here. It’s good for this area." He then invited practitioners to return regularly on Wednesday nights, when there are booths in the area.

Practitioners talked to many other people. Several were interested in coming to the practice site. Many wanted to help and asked what they could do. A man involved with an organisation that focuses on petitions spent quite a lot of time with the practitioners, asking questions about the persecution in China.

Practitioners from the Bay Area will continue to support the Santa Cruz practitioners and help clarify the truth and raise awareness of the persecution.