December 7, 2005

A little bit before 3 p.m. Monday, after most of the people who had packed City Council chambers to watch Jerry Sanders get sworn in as mayor had shuffled out of the room, City Councilmember Donna Frye read aloud a resolution proclaiming Dec. 5, 2005, to be "Falun Dafa Day" in San Diego and presented a plaque to an emotional representative of local practitioners of Falun Dafa, a Chinese spiritual discipline of exercise and meditation also known as Falun Gong.

The resolution sheds light on Yantai, San Diego's sister city in China, as a ground zero of sorts for the Chinese government's brutal, at times deadly, persecution of Falun Dafa followers. Local practitioners had been begging the City Council for nearly three years to formally urge Yantai to do something about the senseless brutality. [...]

At the end of her reading of the resolution, which the City Council passed with a 7-0 vote, Frye made a point of thanking Sanders in particular. Later, CityBeat called Frye and asked her why she thanked the newly seated mayor. "He signed the resolution," she said simply.

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