Friend,

This pandemic is exposing and exacerbating our country’s broken systems. One-third of Americans couldn’t pay their rent this month, and next month’s rent is due again in a few days.

Meanwhile, billionaires’ wealth has dramatically increased and corporate polluters keep getting bailouts, while polluting predominantly Black neighborhoods— worsening public health risks like respiratory diseases, which makes people more susceptible to COVID-19— as I discussed with MSNBC’s Joy Reid:

People desperately need a bold, transformative approach to politics that’s big enough for this unprecedented moment, with comprehensive solutions that actually address people’s urgent needs.

Over the past month, our team has been working hard to save lives and secure the resources our communities need to get through this crisis.

I want to make sure you stay informed about what we’ve been up to this past month, so this email includes updates, along with opportunities to plug into the work if you’re able. These are extremely difficult times, but we’ll only get through this by sticking together.

On a federal level, we’ve introduced landmark legislation to secure:

• Access to water, through the Emergency Water is a Human Right Act. Water is a human right, and handwashing is essential to preventing the spread of COVID-19. If passed, the bill would prohibit water and utility shutoffs and reconnect water and energy services for millions of Americans. You can help by signing and sharing this petition to lawmakers demanding an end to water shutoffs.

• Recurring payments for every single American— including undocumented people and people who don’t earn enough to file taxes— through the Automatic Boost to Communities (ABC) Act. One-time payments are not enough: People need immediate, lasting relief. The ABC Act would provide a direct payment of $ 2,000 per month to each person during the crisis, then $ 1,000 per month to each person for a year after the crisis is over, a transformative approach that now has strong bipartisan support. It would help our neighbors who lack bank accounts, through debit cards that automatically reload each month. To ensure people actually get the cards, the bill would set up a civilian “Emergency First Responder Corps” to conduct wellness checks on our most vulnerable communities, including elderly people, unhoused people, and people without phones or internet access. We’d pay for it through a simple, creative plan known as #MintTheCoin, where the Treasury Secretary would mint and issue multiple $ 1 trillion platinum coins to cover emergency relief programs without triggering any additional public debt.

• Bailing out local communities instead of corporations, through the Federal Reserve Helping Municipalities Act. Local governments are too important to fail: They touch the lives of every single American and have sprung into action, responding to this crisis. While the Federal Reserve keeps bailing out big banks, including through purchasing their debt, it’s time for the Federal Reserve to help financially struggling cities, which they did during the Great Depression.

• Serving especially-vulnerable homeless communities and workers who serve them through the Public Health Emergency Shelter Act.

Our team has also taken advantage of the “power of the pen,” writing to key decisionmakers without having to wait for federal action, including:

• Calling on Trump’s EPA to reverse rollbacks of environmental protections that are a free pass to pollute our communities.

• Asking FEMA to fund efforts for clean water and basic sanitization, and to waive cost-sharing requirements for communities that need to hire more first responders and cover their overtime pay and protective supplies.

• Urging a local hospital to reopen and provide healthcare. In one of the hardest-hit counties in the country, where we’ve been building field hospitals to supplement our already-overwhelmed hospitals, Beaumont Wayne hospital shut down in secret, laying off thousands of employees. That’s unacceptable.

• Demanding Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos comply with CDC guidelines and protect MI workers.

• Requesting that Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s TSA Administrator increase safety and protections for workers, who were denied access to N95 masks.

• Calling on federal financial regulators and big banks to address banking disparities experienced by Arab and Muslim people, businesses, and nonprofits— known as “banking while Muslim.” For example, this discrimination has hurt a crowdfunding platform, which the Muslim community recently used to raise and disperse over $ 500,000 in COVID relief funds. More than ever, Muslim and Arab Americans need unhindered access to financial services, during the pandemic and this month of Ramadan, when Muslims are encouraged to practice acts of generosity and donate to charity (known as Zakat).

• Urging credit reporting agencies to stop reporting adverse events during the pandemic, so people don’t get punished for missed medical bills like from hospital visits, missed credit card payments, or missed rent or mortgage payments.

• Demanding the Federal Bureau of Prisons take care of incarcerated people, who are especially vulnerable in confinement.

And finally, this month, with gloves on my hands and a mask on my face, I raised my right hand as I filed my affidavit to become a candidate for re-election to continue to serve the residents of Michigan’s 13th district.

Thank you to all of the amazing volunteers who helped make this a reality! Through a robust volunteer operation starting before the pandemic hit, our campaign collected well over the required number of signatures needed to be placed on the ballot.

These are uncertain times and our lives have been turned upside down. More than ever, we need truth-tellers in Congress who won't back down to bullies or corporate greed. We need representation that will fight to support people every single day.

If you’re able to contribute, please chip into my re-election campaign so we can continue to make our voices heard.

Always serving you,

Rashida

P.S. If you’d like to stay updated in between our email newsletters, you can follow our campaign on Facebook and Twitter.