GAINESVILLE - Sunday afternoon downtown on Jesse Jewell Parkway near the Engine 209 historic locomotive display you may have noticed around a dozen people along the sidewalk holding picket signs.



It was part of a global march against what they called 'Chemtrails and Geoengineering' according to protest leader Tim Pierce, and Gainesville was the only location in Georgia for the demonstration.



"I live in Gainesville," Pierce explained. "I was hoping that there would be more but this is the only one."



According to the Global March Against Chemtrails and Geoengineering.com web site, it's been known "for some time that the UV levels were getting rapidly worse due to the ongoing atmospheric spraying. Anyone that is even slightly awake and aware has noticed that the sun feels incredibly intense on the skin. Most varieties of plant life are showing at least some signs of stress in most areas. In many regions, whole forests are in steep decline. And it's getting worse by the day."



"A chemtrail is a mixture of chemicals that are being sprayed from military planes; a lot of different poisons that are being sprayed to manipulate the weather," Pierce said.



Pierce said there's a difference between an ordinary vapor trail or contrail from a high altitude jet aircraft and a chemtrail, so what appears to be an innocent white streak in the sky is not so innocent.



That's according to Tom Sitton, who traveled all the way from Walhalla, South Carolina to carry a picket sign.



"I flew from Greenville Airport to Orlando at 36,000 feet and the chemtrails were above us, Sitton said. So it has to be in military lanes, there are no commercial airplanes up there."



Sitton said he was at the Gainesville protest to hand out literature about chemtrails; some people are not convinced, but others are.



"There's a lot of people who are getting turned on to what's going on," Sitton added. "It's definitely happening."



According to one protest handout titled the "Independent Thinkers Chemtrails Fact Sheet", no government or official agency is willing to discuss it, U.S. Senate Bills seek to engineer weather modification, and these programs are operating without the public's informed consent with an agenda for "total control of biology, ecology and the earth."



"The evidence is there if everybody would just look up and pay attention to the sky," Pierce said. "Just pay attention to what we're breathing in."