[Falun Dafa] Laura Market – Standing Up for Falun Gong

She did pop in my head and I still thought I hate you. And then I thought no, I can't do that because as a Falun Gong practitioner, I need to believe in truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Hi there. I'm Laura Market and I'm from Evansville, Indiana, and I'm a Falun Dafa practitioner. 25 years ago I started practicing Falun Dafa because I wanted to get away from negative habits. In fact, I needed to move away from Evansville, I felt at the time, to get away from these negative life patterns. And as a recreation therapist, I was looking for meditation so I could improve my mind, body and spirit. And I found Falun Dafa. It was free and open to the public. And so when I started doing the meditation, actually, I could feel through the energy channels as in Chinese medicine go through my body and I could feel it coming up through my to my forehead to the frontal lobe and turning like this light switch on for my executive function, which actually really benefited me. And then I noticed that it actually stayed even after I started doing the meditation. So not just during the meditation, but after like hours after. And that's what kind of caused me to say to myself, okay, I guess I'm going to practice this for the rest of my life. Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition. Falun Gong combines meditation and gentle exercises, similar to yoga or tai chi, with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, or in Chinese, Zhen Shan Ren. Falun Gong practitioners aspire to live by these principles in their daily lives. In traditional Chinese culture, the process of perfecting and refining the mind and body is called cultivation. Our modern language uses the word Qigong to describe this. What differentiates Falun Gong from other forms of Qigong is its emphasis on one's morality, character and the cultivation of virtue. And one of the other reasons why I left town, to be honest with you, is because right here on this riverfront, my name was written with this vulgar statement by someone who I thought was a friend of mine at the time. And so that kind of helped drive me out of town, literally. I was pretty sad about it. But after I found Falun Dafa, I just felt that I needed to take responsibility for myself, for my family, that I was raised with, and just kind of come back home, take care of things, patch my bones, if you will, and face things. And I couldn't believe it, but the riverfront was completely redone. And that really did encourage me. Years later, as I was meditating, she popped in my head, the girl that wrote my name, with a vulgar statement down here on the riverfront, which was completely cleared off, you know, with this new riverfront. But she did pop in my head, and I still thought, I hate you. And then I thought, no, I can't do that, because as a Falun Gong practitioner, I need to believe in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. So how can I forgive her in this situation? And I was able to. I was able to work myself through that process. And then later that day, I actually saw her at Walmart. She was going down the aisle one way, and I was going her direction. And as we faced each other, I just said, I forgive you. And she said, I was praying for forgiveness. And I was just blown away, because I thought, is this why she showed up in my meditation? So I thought, well, it doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you get there, right? So once I started practicing Falun Gong and being in Evansville, the persecution of Falun Gong in China had already started. 100 million people plus and their family members overnight were targeted for being eradicated. And it's only because they want to meditate in a communist nation, China. And so we needed to try to protect the image of Falun Gong in America, we felt, because over in America, the only information they got, and even worldwide, was from the Chinese Communist Party's mouth. And so we didn't really know what to do. And we thought, well, the easiest thing to do was to contact the mayor's office to ask for a Falun Gong proclamation. And that's what we did. So coming back down to this downtown riverfront, one day I saw the mayor, and he was giving a speech. And I thought, oh, yeah, I need to thank him for giving us the Falun Gong proclamation. And so I did. I came up and shook his hand and I said, thank you so much for giving Falun Gong a proclamation for Evansville Falun Gong Day. And he said, well, our office was harassed for two weeks. And to my surprise, the mayor actually started telling me how their office was harassed for two full weeks with videotapes, emails, and phone calls. And then the mayor then said I had to get on the phone himself to say, hey, stop harassing us. Leave our country alone. Our country is founded on the very basis of freedom of belief. And what happened next? I couldn't believe he said they stopped. And I think that's a very powerful lesson for us back then and especially today. So this downtown area is really special to me because of all of the experiences we've had. We've had the exercise class here. I met so many cool people down here. And then right behind me is the Four Freedoms Monument that reminds me of how precious our freedoms are. And the four freedom pillars stand for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from oppression, and freedom from fear. So these four freedoms really do stand here for me as a way to explain that we need to stand up for America as the progression of the persecution of Falun Gong goes outside of China. People are still being persecuted inside of China. But now it seems like they're not just contacting the mayor's offices with packages. They've gotten into our institutions. The CCP has long engaged in transnational repression targeting Falun Gong and a global censorship campaign to silence Shen Yun Performing Arts, an American classical Chinese dance company founded by Falun Gong practitioners. However, the aggressiveness, frequency, and violent nature of incidents has increased dramatically over the past year, especially in the United States. This shift is not accidental. In June 2024, internal party sources leaked details and instructions from Xi Jinping and other top CCP officials that outlined tactics that the regime plans to deploy. These are now manifesting in real world events. You know, I'm speaking out. That's why my friends are speaking out. That's why we're going to D.C. And we have a Senate bill that's called the Falun Gong Protection Act. It's S-817. And our senator in Indiana, Todd Young, just co-sponsored it. Although Congress has adopted multiple resolutions condemning these abuses, the Falun Gong Protection Act, S-817, if enacted, will mark the first binding U.S. legislation to hold perpetrators accountable. This bill requires the president to impose visa and property blocking sanctions on foreign persons that have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated the involuntary harvesting of organs in China. We hope that more senators can sponsor this, you know, support this bill and pass it and take it to the president. Please remember Falun Dafa Hall. Falun Dafa is good.