Challenge no.55

Hanitzotz News

labor

The Workers Advice Center prepares second May Day Conference

As religious strife erupts in Nazareth (see page 9), the Workers Advice Center (WAC) is preparing its second annual conference for the First of May. Our answer to local conflict, WAC members stress, is to build a trade union for all Arab workers, Muslims and Christians. The focus of the conference will be unemployment. Although Arabs make up a fifth of Israel's population, 70% of the localities that are hardest hit by this plague are Arab. WAC is the most active body in the Arab sector rooting out unemployment: It defends hundreds of fired workers, it scrutinzes the racist policies of the government's Employment Bureau, and it initiates public-awareness campaigns. A full report on the conference will appear in the upcoming Challenge. Readers who wish to contribute to the work of WAC and help us cover the cost of the conference ($3,500) may send a check to: Hanitzotz Publishing House/POB 41199/Jaffa 61411/Israel. Small donations are most welcome too. Help us build the first Arab Trade Union Association!

WAC Opens Mothers' School in Nazareth

The Workers Advice Center and the Arab Women Workers' Project (AWWP) have founded the first Mothers' School in Nazareth. The opening session, attended by twenty mothers, took place in WAC's offices, which are located in Nazareth's working-class neighborhood. In her opening speech, Hiam Odeh, coordinator of the AWWP, discussed the educational gap between Jewish and Arab children. "We are here to help solve this problem," she said. One of the new students, Alia Abu Kheit, a mother of five, told Challenge that she had studied only up to Grade Four. "I read about the project in a leaflet that WAC distributed in the local elementary school. I'm very excited about all this, and I'm looking forward to classes." The Mothers’ School will offer lessons in reading comprehension and mathematics.