Meet Huwaida Arraf, the Palestinian-American Running for Congress
By: Omar Mansour / Arab America Contributing Writer
With a focus on class politics and social justice, Huwaida Arraf, a first-generation Palestinian-American is leading a strong congressional battle in Michigan. She is intent to run a people-centered, people-powered campaign that inspires, reminds voters that their voices matters, and that by working together, can create a government that works for all.
Arraf is a first-generation American born to a Palestinian Christian family who immigrated to Michigan in 1975. Her father comes from a Palestinian village inside 1948 palestine called Mi’ilya, and her mother is from the town of Beit Sahour near Baethlehem. At 8 or 9 months pregnant with Huwaida, her parents left Palestine due to the occupation and simply wanted their children to have more opportunities.
Born and raised in Southeastern Michigan, Huwaida learned the values of hard work, faith, and community from her working-class immigrant parents. Her father was a union employee at General Motors and small business owner, while her mother was a nurse. Arraf tells Arab America that their mother pretty much raised them and the family of 7 was supported by her father’s GM salary. The change in the quality of life in the US – a family of 7 raised on a single salary has not existed for some time – influences her politics.
Careful so as to not to romanticize this image, Huwaida states “I noticed how hard my dad worked and it bothered me”. To that end she started working herself at the age of 12. At 14 she was working full time, and even some double-shifts- during summers at Dunkin Donuts and has fond memories of her father coming in and sitting at the counter while she worked the night shift.
The International Solidarity Movement:
Huwaida’s political awakening happened early in her life during a visit to Palestine at the age of 5 when her aunt was not allowed to enter Jerusalem with Huwaida – this was Huwaida’s first exposure to Israeli apartheid policies, and to be told about American and global financing for such policies was a shock. The second such instance was the outbreak of the First Intifada, which hit close to home, literally. The exposure to such injustice is key for Arraf’s story.
Arraf graduated from Roseville High School, the University of Michigan and studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem before obtaining her law degree from American University in Washington D.C. focusing on international human rights law. After working in some NGOs and other political spaces that she deemed ultimately harmful, Arraf co-founded of the International Solidarity Movement, a global organization focused on challenging government oppression, ending human rights abuses, and standing up for the freedom and dignity of oppressed people in her parents’ homeland of Palestine and around the world.
What Can I Do?
Arraf tells Arab America about the injustice around her and her family here in the United States every day. “You really don’t have the freedom to live. When you don’t have adequate healthcare, you are not actually free. People are denied [freedom here] in so many ways that are fundamentally unjust.” The injustices that Arraf witnesses both in Michigan and in Palestine are linked, they both act to influence her and her work in a significant way. Which makes her ask herself the question, “what can I do about it?”
Before COVID, Arraf was working for a civil rights law firm in Detroit, yet with the school closures and Arraf’s children doing schooling from home, she was unable to devote the proper time to her law cases. When the schools reopened, Arraf debated going back to the law firm for work – “Is going back to the law firm the most I can do? When laws are being legislated to take us backwards instead of forward, how am i going to fight for my client’s rights if the laws are bad. There has got to be more that I can do.” To that end, Huwaida decided to get involved in her local Democratic party.
Democrats Must Do Better:
At one point it looked as if Arraf would be running for a district that covers Michigan’s Thumb region, which overwhelmingly supported former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, over the more Democratic-leaning district including parts of southwest Macomb County and eastern Oakland County. It all came down to which map would have been adopted by the independent redistricting commission. Arraf said she was expecting to campaign in the Thumb, but the mapping kept her in Macomb.
Huwaida leaned just how weak the Democrats were in her area. The state and national Democratic party has not been interested in spending money on the thumb region, dismissing it as a waste due to the majority republican support. This initially angered Huwaida and she announced that she would run in the Thumb region. She got a lot of positive feedback from people who thought she had a chance to, if anything, shake things up and move the needle.
She was positive that the Thumb was where she was going to run and she was prepared to do the work that needed to be done, and a large part of that was actually acknowledging rural, working class people )mainly republicans) who have had their lives turned upside by the effects of globalization on the national labor scene – policies pushed by democrats.
Door Knocking:
“Democrats, and the Democratic Party as a whole, need to do a little bit more investing in reaching out with our message and what we offer to people in these areas that tend to be more rural or look like they are overwhelmingly Republican.” Even though she will not be running in this majority red district this quote still stands. Huwaida is running for everyone, for everyone to have the life that her parents dreamed of for her when they left Palestine, to have a just and dignified life that they deserve for simply being alive. In her campaigning she intends to focus on kitchen-table issues like improving access to well-paying jobs, quality schools, safer neighborhoods, resilient infrastructure, clean air, safe drinking water and affordable health care.
She tells Arab America that her core strategy remains the same people-centered strategy it was before, even in her now blue district: “mainly listening, making sure we have a very strong ground game, i want to knock [on doors] and talk to as many voters as we can”. When told that congressional campaigns don’t focus as much on that kind of personal grassroots work, such as door-knocking, Huwaida responds “I don’t care, I want to make sure we talk to everyone. I don’t care if they’re Republican”.
Huwaida Arraf is running a people and working-class centered campaign, as her campaign site lays out – “Huwaida is running for Congress to fight for the rights of her community at home and to make Michigan a place where every single Michigander, not just the rich and well-connected, can not only survive but thrive”.
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