Source: The Boston Globe
On March 23, 2002, The Boston Globe featured an article on "the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a coalition of 98 churches, synogogues, unions, and community groups that ranks as one of the country's most successful grass-roots organizations... In its six-year history, the group has successfully lobbied the state" on a wide variety of issues including housing and education. "Since its founding in 1996, GBIO has stayed away from the pie-throwing, sit-in tactics favored by some activist groups, with an eye toward engaging an interfaith base of organizers who might have been put off by showier tactics... Fran Early, a GBIO leader [explained] 'we are grounded in faith and built on relationships so that we are able to cross all the lines that have divided us for so long in Boston, because we start out trying to get to know each other and building trust'... The GBIO model is an increasingly popular one. By some estimates there are 133 such inter-faith-based groups across the country."