(Clearwisdom.net) On January 19, 2004, Falun Gong practitioners from Houston and Dallas participated in the 10th annual parade on Martin Luther King Day, which attracted five hundred organizations and forty thousand people.
The Falun Gong parade procession was composed of a dance team, a float and an exercise demo team. Three Falun Gong practitioners holding a banner saying "Falun Dafa ¨C Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" led the procession. Following them were six female practitioners performing a dance "Falun Dafa Is Great." The float was well decorated with lotuses and banners. Two practitioners demonstrated the exercises on the float. The last group of practitioners held banners saying "SOS: Stop the Persecution of Falun Gong" and pictures of persecution victims in China. Some other practitioners distributed truth-clarification flyers to parade viewers.
The Falun Gong procession was received with waves of warm applause throughout the parade. Many people copied the exercise movements and pressed their palms together to practitioners. Their applauses and eyes told how much they had been looking forward to Dafa.
Banners and flyers introduced the goodness and wide-spread of Dafa, exposed the cruel persecution of Falun Gong by Jiang's regime and revealed the practitioners' peaceful and rational spirit.
Like Dr. Martin Luther King, who devoted his life to freedom and human rights, Falun Gong practitioners, facing atrocities in the past four years, have been openly calling for basic rights from the Chinese government and for help from the international community in a peaceful, rational and non-violent manner.
