Hug Haifa
After moving to Haifa in 2006 I became active with a local group that supported Ami Aylon. Ami decided to join the Labor party and after some thought I decided to join this party as well and support him. I meet other people in Haifa who were his supporters... this group latter on transposed into what is known as Hug Hafia (or the Haifa Group). It was lead by Nurit Pagi, who managed to create a diverse group of caring people who wanted something different from the politicians in Israel and wanted to be political active.
The principles of the hug are as follows:
- Decreasing the social and financial polarization and promoting social democratic agendas.
- Going against privatization and the denial of the country to its social commitments.
- Putting education and teaching, including higher education, as a major issues to keep the quality edge and equal opportunity.
- Enhancing ethical and moral education for citizenship involvement in the public agenda, while fighting corruption and indifference.
- Increasing the enforcement of green environment and social wealth.
- Treating youth violence and violence in general.
- Increasing the security and the activity centers of the aging community.
- Encouraging political environment of younger adults and supporting any project that helps keep young adults in Haifa.
- Recruiting members to ongoing political activity from the belief that only this kind of activity can bring a change in the way the party operates.
- Any other topics that will be brought up in a democratic way in the future of "hug haifa".
- The members of the Hug support an active striving for peace agreements, the establishment of a Palestinian state along side Israel, and the removal of illegal settlements.
The hug developed and created its own website http://hughaifa.wordpress.com/ which I volunteer to help manage. Moreover the hug developed and was active in various local and national events and activities that have occurred throughout the years. Important one's include running for political positions in the Labor party (where I got elected as a delegate to the Party's "center") and helping out with local town elections. The hug has invited many guests to come to speak at their meetings including the author Abraham B. Jehoshua, Shelly Yechimovitz, Itan Cabel, Ofir Pines-Paz, Isaac Herzog and more. It showed support to workers going to the factory of "of haemk" when they were on strike and supporting the lecturers strike of the open university. Had a lecture series on "social democracy" with the help of the Social Economic College.
In 2009, I was elected as one of the board members of the group and shortly after Nurit Pagi, the chairman of the Hug appointed me as a temporary replacement as she went aboard for education.
The hug is developing slowly and has made some impact on the labor party locally and nationally... I can only hope that it would grow both in numbers and influence.
