Save the Date

Save the Date

Saturday September 19, 2015  University of Florida

IAIJ will host a gathering of individuals and organizations working together for justice for farm workers and reform of our broken immigration system.

A full program will be posted soon.

The Fair Food Campaign with Publix Begins Again 

A delegation from Gainesville Interfaith Alliance for Interfaith Justice, ACTION Network, Emmanuel Mennonite Church, Gainesville Friends Meeting, and Westminster Presbyterian Church visited the management at the Westgate Publix store at  University Avenue and SW 34th Street at noon on Tuesday, October 7 to request a meeting to discuss our concerns.  The manager promised to forward our letter to corporate headquarters, but declined our invitation for a personal conversation.

The campaign has only just begun.

Unaccompanied Children on the Border

A Plea for Local Action


The United Methodist Church proposed an interfaith weekend of prayer July 18-20 for the children and teenagers who have come across the border seeking asylum from violence at home.

Will you invite your church, mosque or synagogue to share in prayer for a just solution to this problem, one that protects these youngsters from violence and exploitation?

Here in Gainesville we can target next weekend July 25-27 giving us more time to reach out to local faith communities.

We can do it, but only with your help.

This weekend a large number of local protests are being held by anti-immigrant groups.  None of them north of Orlando.

Let's combine an interfaith weekend of prayer next weekend (July 25-27) with a public service in behalf of these children.  Sunday afternoon July 27?

A Call to Prayer and Action

Thanks to Bishop Carcano and Bill Mefford from the United Methodist Church for taking the lead on the Interfaith Weekend of Compassion and Prayer for Unaccompanied Migrant Children, July 18-20, 2014.

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Civil and Human Rights

Protect the Children! Join Bishop Carcaño in Praying and Acting to Protect Unaccompanied Children As the President and Congress try to deport the immigrant children let's ensure their rights are protected! Your church can pray for the protection of the children this weekend, July 18-20. The undocumented minors who have travelled hundreds of miles to escape the violence in their home countries need your prayers and support! The California-Pacific Conference has created some really valuable resources. Join us in prayer and action! I'm Going to Pray! July 15, 2014 There are several things you and your congregation can do: Your church can pray for the protection of the children, who have travelled hundreds of miles to escape the violence in their home countries. This weekend, July 18-20, join the California-Pacific Conference in prayer and action. Cal-Pac has created some really valuable resources for you to download and don't forget to register so we know who is participating! You and your church can — no SHOULD — call your members of Congress and urge them NOT to repeal the provisions in the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). This bill was unanimously agreed to by ALLmembers of Congress. It would not return vulnerable migrants to danger and it would reduce the likelihood that the U.S. would deport children back into the hands of traffickers and others who would exploit them. Proposed changes to the TVPRA mean that children would not have a meaningful opportunity to have their story heard, apply for asylum, or be cared for humanely by child-welfare personnel. The children would be deported to potentially life-threatening situations. Congress should NOT rescind this bipartisan law at precisely the time when more children are in need of these protections. Call 1-888-427-0530 and ask for both your Senators and your Representative and say, "As a United Methodist, please protect unaccompanied children and don't repeal the TVPRA!" (You can find out the names of your Senators and Representative here!) Support the work of Justice for Our Neighbors, a United Methodist Ministry, as it serves unaccompanied children. This is probably one of the most practical things you can do! You can give to support the work of JFON or, even better, you can volunteer and serve your immigrant sisters and brothers directly! Or you can do both!! Lastly, come to Washington, .DC., on Thursday, July 31, to tell the President to stop ALL deportations! Over 2 million deportations and now the President and Congress want to repeal provisions in an existing law — the TVPRA — so they can deport more! For years we have been hearing that what is needed is to simply "enforce the law." Now, we have a law in place that protects vulnerable migrants, and sadly there is agreement by both Democrats and Republicans to repeal it! This shows us that immigration policy in the United States has very little to do with reasonable policy. Rather, it is rooted in isolationism, protectionism, and detachment: all of which are antithetical to our call as Christians to love and provide hospitality for the most vulnerable. I urge you to let me know ASAP if you can join people of faith from all over to sacrificially engage in civil disobedience in front of the White House on July 31 and urge President Obama to stop ALL deportations, whether the person is 5 years old or 105. Let's stop the repression. In Christ, Bill Mefford Director, Civil and Human Rights

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Farm Workers, Mennonites and Justice

New post on Mennonite Church USA

Farm Workers, Mennonites and Justice by Joanna Shenk Richard MacMaster, speaking here at a rally, is chair of the Southeast Mennonite Conference Task Force on Farmworker Justice. He is a retired history professor and a member of Emmanuel Mennonite Church, Gainesville, Florida. By Richard MacMaster Last month Ervin Stutzman as executive director of Mennonite Church USA joined other religious leaders calling Wendy’s restaurants to sign the Fair Food Agreement with other major tomato buyers, 95% of growers, and theCoalition of Immokalee Workers, to assure fair wages and decent working conditions for farm labor. The men, women and children who harvest the vegetables and fruits we eat are invisible to most Americans. We Mennonites may be familiar with migrant farm workers, but how many of us have heard their stories and know what life is really like for them? For our congregation, Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Gainesville, Florida, a Sunday morning sharing time with workers from the tomato fields of Immokalee in 2009 was an eye opener. We learned about difficult working conditions, the impossible number of huge buckets of tomatoes needed to earn close to minimum wage, the prevalence of sexual harassment, and what farm workers themselves are doing to change this. We invited the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to bring their Modern-Day Slavery Museum to our new meeting house. When they came, our local newspaper was running stories about an unscrupulous Haitian labor contractor who recruited laborers in Haiti. These laborers agreed to pay him large sums for a legal job in Florida. They then worked eighteen months on a farm a few miles from Gainesville while the contractor pocketed their wages to pay the debt. We learned that this kind of servitude is commonplace in Florida. Farm workers found allies in churches and on campuses. In 2010 Kimberly Hunter asked Eve MacMaster, her pastor at Emmanuel Mennonite, to help organize the churches of Gainesville. Kimberly drew up a statement for the initial meeting, showing that the call for justice was a Biblical imperative rooted in the prophets and the words of Jesus. Our congregation was the first to join the Gainesville Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IAIJ) , which is now a coalition of a dozen faith communities. With our partners we’ve been working ever since to implement that Biblical vision. Berea Mennonite Church (Atlanta, Ga.) had a similar experience hosting the Immokalee workers when they came to Metro Atlanta. Pastor John Wierwille and his congregation reached out to other Atlanta churches and to our own conference to enlist their support for farm workers. Fast forward to 2014. In January the Leadership Board of Southeast Mennonite Conference created a Task Force on Farm Worker Justice. We on the task force are committed to helping congregations Southeast Conference and Mennonite Church USA connect with farm workers and support their efforts to improve their living and working conditions. We expect to soon have curriculum and study group resources. We hope to bring our concerns to the conference assembly this year and to Kansas City next summer. Meanwhile, if you would like to bring a speaker to your church or want more information about the Fair Food Campaign, contact Claire Comiskey atClaire@interfaithact.org. To learn more about our Task Force or our community efforts e-mail me at gainesvilleiaij@gmail.com Joanna Shenk | June 18, 2014 at 10:44 am | Categories: Holistic Witness, Immigration, Menno Snapshots | URL: http://wp.me/p3cxoO-45f

34 Days to End the 34,000 Immigrant Detention Quota June 9 to July 12

The next 34 days are critical in our collective efforts to end the 34,000 immigrant detention quota. Sign-up today to get involved during the 34 Days to End The Quota.  During the month of June, the House of Representatives will be voting on the Fiscal Year 2015 appropriations bill, which includes the detention bed quota. In the meantime, 34,000 immigrants continue to be locked-up at any given time in detention and thousands of families and communities continue to be torn apart. Now is the time to ADVOCATE, EDUCATE and ORGANIZE to #EndTheQuota. From watching and sharing the End The Quota video, and signing-up to host an event or action in your community, to calling and meeting with your members of Congress, we need all hands on deck! Now is the time to act and stop the arbitrary quota that keeps thousands of immigrants behind jail walls.

Here are 6 things you can do to End The Quota:  1 Join DWN's End The Quota webinar, this Thursday, June 12th at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Register here. 2 Hold educational events, community forums or teach-ins about the immigration detention system and the impact of the 34,000 detention bed quota on our communities. For educational materials and resources go here. 3 Call and/or visit your members of Congress and ask them to eliminate the immigration detention bed quota from the FY 2015 appropriations bill.  Ask your Representative to vote for the Deutch-Foster amendment that strikes the quota language from the bill. For advocacy materials go here. 4 Organize an action, or vigil outside a detention center, ICE office or congressional member’s office. Contact Catalina Nieto cnieto@detentionwatchnetwork.org for support. 5 Write an op-ed or letter to the editor about the impact of the quota in your community. For sample talking points go here. 6 Share End The Quota action alerts, videos, infographics, posters, and fact sheets viaFacebook, Twitter, e-mail, and blogs. For additional resources go here.  For more info or to get involved contact Catalina Nieto at cnieto@detentionwatchnetwork.org

Governor Scott Signs Tuition Bill

Passage of the bill to allow children of undocument immigrants who otherwise qualify to pay in-state tuition was achieved by the hard work of many Florida undividuals and groups over several years.  It was the first issue that Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice worked in 2010 as part of our DREAM Act campaign.