Falun Gong Parade in Boston Moves Newsday Reporter

(Clearwisdom.net) The U.S. Democratic National Convention began in Boston on Monday July 26. Newsday correspondent James P. Pinkerton traveled around the city on July 25 to see the various groups demonstrating. The peaceful and beautiful Falun Gong parade was very different from other groups' protests and amazed him. He predicted that Falun Gong would win people's respect and would be remembered in Boston Common.

In his report on July 25, Pinkerton wrote, "Next, I find myself in this Starbucks. And then something surprises -- and moves -- me. It's a protest of a much different kind. No hackneyed leftists, no misplaced anger, no sexual bravura. It's a peaceful procession by the Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa. Their brothers and sisters are routinely and energetically persecuted in China by the Beijing regime. As best I can tell, Falun is a peaceful program of physical exercise, mediation and philosophy."

He said that in China, practitioners are imprisoned, tortured and killed. But here, they can protest, and they do -- in the thousands. "The procession along Boylston Street is polite, but it's so numerous that it takes half an hour to pass by, as the cops stop them every so often to let cross-traffic through. Some hold signs in Chinese and English, others hold flowers, others hold pictures of those murdered by the Chinese government. The parade even includes a gruesome float, depicting people tortured and killed; it's an image from Madame Tussaud's dungeon." He continued.

"And it hits me: if China ever becomes a free country -- free for speech, not just for big business -- then these Falun Gong people, bearing polite witness to tyranny, will deserve no small share of the credit. And so maybe, someday, the Faluns will be remembered on the Boston Common." He added, "Remembered, for upholding the liberating and self-sacrificing tradition of Shaw and the men of the 54th."

In the end, Pinkerton commented, "Souls don't get much higher than that, and neither does memory in history. If there's any inequality that's earned, it's in the aristocracy of virtue and self-sacrifice that's not dead, even if it's often martyred."

Reference: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-dncpinkertonblog,0,2168936.story

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