(Clearwisdom.net) Santa Cruz is a nice resort town on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. Through Falun Gong practitioners' truth clarifying efforts in the past two weeks, Santa Cruz now has practitioners who live there. Together with local practitioners, Falun Gong practitioners from San Francisco recently clarified the truth to the public in downtown Santa Cruz.

There are mostly Westerners living in Santa Cruz, and many there are quite wealthy. Even though practitioners from the Bay Area have held workshops in Santa Cruz (sometimes on a weekly basis), this is the first joint effort with local practitioners to clarify the truth and let more people know about Falun Dafa. 

Practitioners arrived around 12:00 noon and went to downtown's main street where there are lots of people walking around. The weather was supposed to have rained for the whole week, however, it didn't rain at all when practitioners were there, and the sun even came out for a couple of hours. Practitioners had a setup on the street, with a nice banner that said "Falun Dafa," several kinds of flyers, including one with the location of the practice site in Santa Cruz (located at a beautiful beach cliff area), music CDs, CDs with the True Story of Falun Dafa, magazines, etc. 

A few practitioners did the exercises while others passed out flyers to people walking by. There were many people walking by, and some of the comments of those ordinary people who had not heard of Falun Dafa before were quite amazing. Below is a conversation between a practitioner and someone walking by:

passerby: What is this?
practitioner: Falun Dafa, a meditation practice.
passerby: Looks good, relaxing?
practitioner: Yes, it is.  The people who practice this in China are persecuted, beaten, and arrested.
passerby: They [the Jiang regime] are evil! All evil will soon be eliminated.

Later on practitioners decided to move to another spot in order to reach other people as well. When they were just about to leave, one person came and said: "You guys should continue practicing here. It is good for this area." Then he invited practitioners to come on Wednesday nights when there are booths around downtown.

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. One person was involved with an organization that focuses on petitions, and he spent quite a bit of time with practitioners asking questions and listening.

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