Gainesville FOR

The Gainesville, Florida chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation is based at the Beltram Peace Center in Gainesville. It serves as the organizing sponsor of the the Gainesville Interfaith Peace Coalition, started in 2001 to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Since then, the coalition has met regularly to discuss how people of different faiths – especially, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – can learn and organize together for peace and understanding.

GIPC has stood with Gainesville’s local Muslim community through times of difficulty, bigotry, oppression, and Islamophobia. This has been especially important in 2009-11, since the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville – under the leadership of Terry Jones – has wrecked confusion, horror, and pain across the Muslim community with its “Islam is of the Devil” signs, threats to burn the Holy Qur’an on September 11, 2010, and actually burning it several months later.

The Gainesville FOR chapter also works actively on farmworker and immigrant rights, in partnership with the Gainesville’s Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice, a network of local synagogues, mosques, churches, fellowships, student groups, community organizations, and political and academic leaders who joined together during July 2010 to educate themselves and their community about and work towards a just solution for our local and national immigration crisis.