United States: Telling People About Falun Gong on New York's Wall Street

Falun Gong practitioners went to Manhattan's Wall Street to introduce Falun Gong and explain the facts of the persecution, adding a unique scene to the usual businesslike atmosphere on Wall Street.

Wall Street, located in south Manhattan, is a narrow street less than one mile long. The stock exchange, a great number of investment banks, trust companies and headquarters of all kinds of enterprises and insurance companies fill the buildings and skyscrapers on both sides of the narrow street. This makes Wall Street the financial centre of the Western world, where it plays a major role in the world's economy.

The crowds of people on Wall Street include stockbrokers with knitted brows and imposing expressions, tourists from all over the world and those white-collar professionals who work in the skyscrapers. Especially at the end of the workday, people stream out of the buildings and the entire street is crowded with people.

A corner of Wall Street	Crowds on Wall Street

A group of Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated the smooth and elegant exercises, some politely distributed truth-clarifying materials to passers-by, and some held banners or posters showing the persecution suffered by practitioners in China.

A gentleman who carefully read the information about Falun Gong was very interested in the practice. Unfortunately, the leaflets with information about local practice sites and schedules had all been distributed. A practitioner therefore had to recommend that he look up the information on the Internet. The man said that practitioners should bring Dafa books with them, but now he knew that he could either buy the books over the Internet or download them for free.

A clerk who works nearby saw some practitioners continuously doing the exercises and distributing flyers at the subway entrance. He asked the practitioners in the afternoon, "You are still here! Have you had your lunch? Please take a break!" In the evening, he saw one of the practitioners again and asked him whether he had gotten a chance to take a break.

One gentleman told practitioners that he had carefully read the Dafa newsletters and learned about the persecution, especially the information about how Jiang's regime forces Falun Gong practitioners to produce cheap products for export. He said that unfortunately most people here (on Wall Street) were not clear about this and he hoped that practitioners could let more people know about it.

A practitioner clarifying the truth to a passer-by	Practitioners distributing Falun Gong truth-clarifying newsletters
Passers-by read the posters	Passers-by read the posters

Several tourists from Paris were very happy to see Falun Gong on Wall Street. They said that there are also many Falun Gong practitioners in France. A New Yorker suggested that practitioners to go to the United Nations to call for an end to the persecution.

A western practitioner stood there holding a banner for quite a long time. This reporter asked her whether she was tired or not, and she said she was fine. She had come from Germany and because her English was not that good, she decided to hold the banner so that other practitioners who speak fluent English could talk to people and explain the facts to them. Another German practitioner said, "In order to allow people from this economic and financial centre to learn about Falun Gong, several practitioners from Germany came to New York from different cities as if they had a prior agreement. They only got to know each other in New York. Two practitioners, a married couple from Texas, also persistently explained the facts to people from morning until late evening. Several elderly practitioners from the West Coast voluntarily took the responsibility of delivering truth-clarifying materials to the practitioners. Because they did not have vehicles, they took the subway back and forth to move those materials. Young practitioners sacrificed their vacations to come to New York."