January 28th Event - Presentation to Gainesville Faith Community! (7pm) 

Our group of committed members is excited to start this New Year with you in the city of Gainesville. One of our 2013 goals is to engage our faith communities and local residents on an even deeper level.

Our first step is a special event on January 28 designed to educate friends and supporters about Florida’s immigrant justice movement and how the community can become more involved. The evening will begin at 7 p.m. at the Emmanual Mennonite Church located on 236 NW 18th Avenue in Gainesville.

Highlights will include:

• "Breaking Bread, Building Bridges” potluck initiative
• Detainee visitations in local prisons
• History of migrant farmworkers in Florida
• Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ “March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food”
• National Farmworker Awareness Week
• Legislative updates at the state level
  
  
  We hope you’ll consider joining us as we discuss efforts to achieve immigrant and farmworker justice in Florida and throughout the nation. Please email us with any questions.
  

Local Residents and Clergy to Urge Gainesville Wendy’s to

Sign Fair Food Agreement

Gainesville, FL (January 18, 2013) – Members of Gainesville’s Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice (IAIJ) and local clergy will gather at the North Main Street Wendy’s on Monday, January 21 at 11:00 a.m. to encourage the fast food chain to sign the Fair Food Agreement—a contract that would guarantee fair wages and working conditions for Florida farmworkers.

Residents will present a letter to the Wendy’s manager and encourage him/her to pass it along to the chain’s corporate headquarters. They are acting in conjunction with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) of Immokalee, Florida, which partners with Florida immigrants and farmworkers to end unfair labor conditions and wages.

The CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food has resulted in Fair Food Agreements with major retailers, such as Taco Bell, McDonald's, Compass Group, Whole Foods Market, and Trader Joe's. Wendy’s is one of the last fast food chains to sign the agreement.

For more information, please contact: Richard Macmaster at (352) 371-6772 or GainesvilleIAIJ@gmail.com; or Sheila Payne at (831) 334-0117.

The Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice is a coalition of local faith communities and Gainesville residents working with farmworkers and immigrant rights leaders to support justice in their own traditions. For more information, please visit www.gainesvilleiaij.blogspot.com.

The Coalition for Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a community-based organization mainly comprised of Latino, Mayan Indian, and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. The coalition’s primary objectives are to build strength as a community on a basis of reflection and analysis, attention to coalition-building across ethnic divisions, and investment in the leadership development of members. From this foundation, CIW advocates for: a fair wage for workers; respect from supervisors and the industries in which workers are employed; higher quality and more affordable housing; improved laws and enforcement against those who violate workers’ rights; the right to organize without fear of retaliation; and an end to forced labor in the fields. To learn more about the CIW, visit www.ciw-online.org.

Gainesville Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice

Equipping faith communities with tools to live out their own tradition's call for justice

Organizing faith communities to work together towards the goal of immigrant justice

Connecting faith communities with local, state, and national immigrant rights and farm worker rights movement leaders

Saturday, November 17, 2012

We will mark CIW Thanksgiving Week of Action at the Publix supermarket at W. University Avenue and SW 34th Street in Gainesville 5-6 p.m. Monday November 18 once again calling on Publix to join other supermarket chains and fast-food corporations, tomato growers and distributors, and the workers who harvest the tomatoes in the Fair Food Agreement.

We look forward to Trader Joe's - a fair trade fair food retailer - opening their first Gainesville store at Butler Plaza December 12.

Thank you Chipotle!  We're so glad that your corporate management has agreed to sign the Fair Food Agreement and support fair wages and humane working conditions for the people who pick the tomatoes they buy.  Let's show our appreciation by visiting a nearby Chipotle where they now serve food with integrity.

Friday October 5 will be a Day of Prayer for Chipotle Mexican Grill and its personnel.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is asking Chipotle to live up to its own claims of
Food with Integrity by joining other fast food chains in signing the Fair Food Agreement
with Florida tomato growers and farm workers.

Breaking News

We invite all of our faith community allies to learn more about Gainesville IAIJ and how we can work together for social and economic justice 7:30 p.m. Monday August 13 at the Mennonite Meeting House, 1236 NW 18th Avenue in Gainesville (across NW 13th Street from Gainesville High School, NW 18th Avenue is a short street between PNC and Wells Fargo banks).