Gainesville’s victory over bigotry

MORE THAN 300 Gainesville, Fla., residents came out to protest the Dove World Outreach Center's (DWOC) planned "International Burn a Koran Day" in an overwhelming show of resistance against Islamophobia on September 11.

Terry Jones, the pastor of the DWOC and the man in the spotlight of this spectacle, had claimed days earlier that he was in direct negotiations with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf--a leader of the planned Park51 Islamic community center in lower Manhattan--over the location of the building.

Despite the confusion in the mainstream media, members of the Gainesville International Socialist Organization (ISO), one of the sponsors of the planned protest against DWOC, were able to confirm that there was no such negotiations before the full story even came out on the news.

Though Jones eventually "suspended" his planned burning of the Koran, activists continued to argue that the DWOC is still a hate group and not welcome in the city of Gainesville for its years of homophobic and Islamophobic actions--and the community agreed.

Although nobody from the DWOC showed up on September 11 outside of the group's church, members of Students for Justice in Palestine, Stand Up Florida, Amnesty International, Gainesville Students for a Democratic Society and the Gainesville ISO turned out to make sure that the whole world would see what the city thinks about Terry Jones and his followers.

Protesters met at Possum Creek Park for an evening rally featuring speakers from Gainesville and across Florida. The speakers connected the issue in Gainesville with national and international cases of the right using Islamophobia as a political platform to support and justify the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The overwhelming message and mood of the crowd was that Florida will not stand idly by as hatred towards Muslims is being propagated.

Protesters carried signs saying "Fight Islamophobia" and "DWOC is not welcome in Gainesville" as we marched on the church for the protest. We then stood across from the church, chanting, "Hey Terry Jones, Islamophobia has got to go" and other slogans for several hours before many protesters left to join the Gainesville Muslim Initiative across town for a candlelight vigil.

Protester Albert Meyer, who was at the World Trade Center when it was attacked on September 11, 2001, attended with his wife and daughter, 8-year-old Rebecca, who carried a white cutout of the word "peace" during the demonstration. "We picked Gainesville specifically because of its religious and ethnic tolerance. What's happening now is not Gainesville," Meyer told the Independent Florida Alligator.

"After 9/11, people of all religions banded together," Meyer added. "People who didn't talk for 25 years hugged. Everyone helped each other. It was solidarity. That is the spirit of 9/11. What Mr. Jones is doing is just the opposite."

The decision by Terry Jones not to burn the Koran was a victory for Gainesville and all those standing up against Islamophobia across the country. It was due to direct pressure that he decided not to go through with this hateful event, and the DWOC is now almost universally despised for its actions.

The claim that Jones made--essentially that Imam Rauf had caved in to right-wing extremism and agreed to move the community center--was an atrocious lie and proved ineffective in giving him a way of backing out of the event without losing face.

National and international news media saw exactly what Gainesville has to say about the DWOC and Islamophobia on September 11. If Terry Jones decides at any point in the future to lift his "suspension" of the event and go forward with burning the Koran, we'll be there.