![]() Our efforts are, naturally, met with resistance. For several years we arranged for faith communities to host the Modern Day Slavery Museum and organized groups to pressure Publix supermarkets and Wendy’s restaurants to sign the Fair Food Agreement. Since our founding, the IAIJ rapidly expanded, engaging in advocacy for the DREAM Act and persuading University of Floriday administration to support undocumented students, eliminating police harassment of worshipers at Spanish-language churches, and organizing help for families whose breadwinners were in detention awaiting a deportation hearing. Kimberly became the tireless coordinator of the IAIJ until she moved to the South Bronx to teach in a high school for recent immigrants in 2012, and I then filled her role. Our proposal was not always welcomed, but we eventually had commitments from eighteen Gainesville churches, mosques, and synagogues. ![]() Kimberly and I met with local rabbis, Christian ministers, and representatives of our two local mosques. This hit especially close to home - Haitian workers at a farm in our county had been held slaves for 18 months, and the trial in federal court had only recently concluded.Ī recent college graduate in attendance, Kimberly Hunter, came to my wife Eve, the pastor of our church, with the idea to launch a coalition of faith communities to create a broader base for action on behalf of migrants. ![]() A few months later, one of the churches hosted the Modern Day Slavery Museum from Immokalee, which documented cases of farm workers held in Involuntary servitude. A professor active for many years with National Farm Worker Ministry had alerted both congregations to the ongoing struggle by the mostly immigrant farm workers. The story begins in 2009, when two Gainesville churches - one Mennonite and one Presbyterian- invited representatives of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to share with each congregation on a Sunday morning about their efforts to improve pay and working conditions for the men and women who harvest winter tomatoes in south Florida. The story behind the IAIJ, which I now lead, shows how citizens can make an impact starting on the local level. Gainesville became a Welcoming City for immigrants in 2016, joining the Welcoming America network of cities and counties across the country that recognize the contribution newcomers from around the world bring to their communities.Ĭommunities of faith in Gainesville were already laying the groundwork f or this welcoming vision years before, when they gathered a decade ago to launch the Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice, a new initiative for inclusivity in Gainesville. City Commissioners agreed on a resolution affirming Gainesville’s intention to welcome refugees and other immigrants. Mayor Lauren Poe sent a written request to the State Department to permit Gainesville to receive refugees under the resettlement program. In November 2019, the Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice in Gainesville decided in November to enlist the City Commission in defense of refugees. Gainesville advocates mobilized to take action. Yet the story isn’t just unfolding only on the national or state level, but in cities and communities around the country, like my home of Gainesville, Florida. “This order is in effect a state-by-state, city-by-city refugee ban, and is un-American and wrong,” said Mark Hetfield of HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit group that helps refugees worldwide, in a statement. Many leaders of faith voiced their opposition to the order. But even if the deadline is no longer in effect, today marks an ongoing struggle. As the situation escalated, a judge blocked the executive order, saying it violates federal law. The order required state governors to decide whether they would request to resettle refugees into their state, or stick to the administration’s status quo and be automatically counted as refusing refugees. ![]() Today -Januwould have marked a deadline set by President Trump’s Executive Order 13888, designed to put a stop to refugee resettlement in the U.S. ![]()
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