Saturday, December 17

The Jaffa Conference, 2005

This wednesday the Jaffa conference on the social and community situation in Jaffa was held at the local music center.
Organised by the Mishlama (our local branch of the Tel Aviv municipality), it was supposed to function as a place for discussing the many social problems in an open forum of both municipality and mishlama representatives and us, the people of Jaffa and Jaffa's many NGO's.

Ron Huldai, the Tel Aviv (and Jaffa) major, came to say "hi", then left.
I guess that's representative of the municipality's stand towards Jaffa, saying "Hi" and leaving.
Many of the city's reps were not present. Those that were... were not too open to a real discussion.

I suppose the real talks took place during the breaks. The rest of it was not much more of a show and not a very good one at that.

If it wasn't so sad, it would have been funny: to see the Tel Aviv officials deal with the embarassing statistics and other data. Educational professionals trying to convince a 53% school drop-out rate has nothing to do with the "successful" Jaffa public schools.
The presence of the "shahaf" police on Yefet street on saturdays was denied (or rather, put in a strange perspective) by the commander of those chivalrous forces.
Sad, sad sad.

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