Chicago: Clarifying the Facts at a Congressional Town Hall Meeting (Photos)

Practitioners from Mid-United States

(Clearwisdom.net June 12, 2003) People elect U. S. Congressmen. Each congressman represents the people of his district. Congressmen have offices both in Washington DC and in their local districts. In Washington DC, Congressmen have very tight agendas. They have countless meetings to attend and it is usually hard to meet them in person when visiting their offices. However, in their local districts, Congressmen often hold Town Hall meetings to hear their electorate's requests and opinions. Usually, Congressmen personally attend town hall meetings. Therefore, this provides a very good opportunity to explain the facts about Falun Gong to both Congressmen and their electorates. The following are some Chicago practitioners' experiences in attending a Town Hall meeting.

On June 8, three Chicago Congressmen, Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson, and Danny K. Davis jointly held a Town Hall meeting. They also invited Congressman Elijah Cummings from Maryland and Congressman John Conyers Jr. from Michigan to attend the meeting.

A practitioner expresses her appreciation to the Congressmen for their support	Presenting an acknowledgement certificate to Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush	Clarifying the facts to Michigan Congressman John Conyers Jr.

Clarifying the facts to Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings	Presenting an acknowledgement certificate to Chicago Congressman Danny K. Davis

We prepared our materials before the meeting and arrived at the meeting place one hour ahead of schedule. We asked general information about the meeting and asked if the organizers could arrange time for us to give a speech and have a chance to talk with the Congressmen. Three Congressmen needed to leave in the middle of the meeting due to some last minute business, so we directly explained the facts about Falun Gong to them shortly before they had to leave. They all accepted our truth-clarifying materials and expressed that they would read them. We also met with another Congressman after the event.

A number of media came to cover the event. When one Congressman was being interviewed, practitioners utilized the opportunity to give a brief introduction of Falun Gong and presented related documents to him. The subject of the Town Hall meeting was health care. Before the meeting concluded, there was a chance to ask questions. One practitioner went up to the microphone and expressed our gratitude to the Congressmen for their previous support to us. She also briefly introduced what Falun Gong was and the health improvement it brought to people. She also introduced Jiang's human rights violation against Falun Gong practitioners. After the meeting, many attendees left with Falun Gong truth-clarifying video CDs to further learn about Falun Gong.

Attending this Town Hall meeting, we clarified the facts face to face to five Congressmen and presented them truth-clarifying materials. We also introduced the facts about Falun Gong to all attendees.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2003/6/12/52028.html

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