Hi Friend,

I’m Denzel (Denz) McCampbell, and I’m Rashida Tlaib’s Communications Director. I met Rashida in 2014. Since then, I’ve worked with and locked arms with Rashida on various issues within economic, environmental, and racial justice. To be in community with Rashida gives me even more hope that transformational change is near.

Rashida’s leadership is groundbreaking and transformative, because she listens to and centers grassroots movements and historically marginalized communities. She brings our community into her policymaking, understanding from Grace Lee Boggs that transformative change doesn’t happen in the federal government, but when the people demand it. And right now, in this historic moment, we’re seeing that truth so clearly.

I’m proud to work in a team that’s heeding the people’s demands for change and partnering with Black-led movements to cement historic activism into policy. Our recent wins in Congress have been thanks to your support and advocacy, so I’m excited to tell you about what we’ve been up to at the federal level.

And stay tuned for an upcoming email about what’s been happening on the ground here in Michigan’s 13th district!

Racial justice wins in Congress:

• We introduced the Dismantle Mass Incarceration for Public Health Act, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Ayanna Pressley. It would require the release of many eligible incarcerated people during the pandemic and for a year afterward. As Rashida said, these are human beings and loved ones who have been left to die from COVID-19, which is rapidly spreading in crowded and unsanitary prisons, jails, and detention centers. COVID-19 should not be a death sentence for anyone, and that includes folks who are locked in cages. Learn more here and become a grassroots cosigner here.
• We introduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act to stop government use of racist facial recognition surveillance. Rashida introduced this bill in the House along with Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Pramila Jayapal, and Yvette Clarke. We’re lifting up the efforts of local residents and community advocates who’ve pushed the Detroit police to end their real-time facial recognition surveillance network. Rashida, along with community advocates, have long called for a ban on the racist practice, which misidentifies people of color (especially Black women) up to 100x more than white men. Just a few weeks ago, news came out about the Detroit Police Department arresting the wrong person—a Black man—due to facial recognition technology.
• We passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which includes important reforms to help address racist policing in this country. It is clear more is needed, and I know Rashida is committed to pushing for more. Answering the people’s call for bold changes to our anti-Black criminal legal system, Rashida was one of the first elected officials calling to defund the police and start investing in neighborhoods more. We're working with activists towards meaningful change that truly helps value Black lives in our country. Stay tuned!

Environmental justice wins at the federal level:

• We filed and just passed a historic amendment that would provide $22.5 billion to replace dangerous lead pipes, prioritizing communities facing environmental racism like ours. Lead-contaminated water disproportionately harms children in low-income communities and communities of color, and we must replace pipes for over nine million homes currently at risk of poisonous lead exposure. Over 100 local, regional, and national environmental groups and justice organizations supported this amendment as part of the right to clean water.
• We created a $1.5 Billion Water is a Human Right fund to protect people from water shutoffs and provide assistance for low-income families to pay water bills. It passed the House in the Heroes Act and now we’re pushing the Senate to pass it. While we work in Congress, local water activists won a moratorium on water shutoffs in Michigan, which was just extended through the end of the year. And now local activists and groups like the People’s Water Board Coalition, the ACLU of Michigan, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are suing Detroit over its racist water shutoff policy, which disproportionately impacts Black residents. Together, we’ll secure water as a human right!

• Rashida led other Congressmembers in opposing COVID bailouts for the fossil fuel industry, including writing to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Powell and to House leadership.
• We’ve called on the Trump administration to enforce important environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, which have been paused during the pandemic. As Rashida said, “This is the time we need to be watching over these corporate polluters, especially because this is a public health crisis.” Rashida represents one of the most polluted zip codes in Michigan, which is predominately Black and, as she noted, residents are “already dealing with high rates of asthma, pre-existing conditions, respiratory issues, and then here comes the pandemic, and you wonder why [Black Americans are] dying at a higher rate? Because environmental racism exists.”  
• Rashida and other House Oversight Committee members launched an investigation into local corporate polluter Marathon Oil, for its role in funding front groups and lobbying to weaken vehicles’ fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards. They undid the biggest U.S. effort yet to fight the climate crisis—President Obama’s clean car rule—which will hasten climate change and cause premature deaths through increased air pollution. Marathon’s local refinery is the largest in the country, located in Michigan’s most polluted zip code—a majority-Black community where infant mortality is twice the rate of the rest of the state, and the average life expectancy is also significantly lower.

Economic justice wins at the federal level:

• Rashida co-introduced the Uplifting Our Local Communities Act, which would expand access to CARES Act funding to state and local governments. The current aid program limits access, leaving out a whopping 97 percent of states, cities, and counties. As Rashida said: “We can’t allow our local communities to go bankrupt. Just like the Federal Reserve Bank aggressively helps bail out big banks and airlines, they must equally help our cities, townships and states thrust into survival mode by the pandemic.”
• Congress passed the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act to support small businesses, and it’s now signed into law!
• Rashida led 111 House colleagues in a historic $305 Billion funding push for K-12 schools in the wake of the pandemic, teaming up with Reps. Jahana Hayes and Ayanna Pressley. This federal support must be included in upcoming COVID response legislation in order to keep public schools afloat during a time of strained state budgets, and to prevent the pandemic from leaving a generation of children undereducated and trapped in a cycle of poverty.
• Rashida joined Rep. Debbie Dingell to request an immediate investigation into workplace safety in Amazon facilities, especially after local workers protested unsafe conditions, such as lack of social distancing and cleaning supplies, lack of notification of positive cases among the workforce, and Amazon’s refusal to implement and maintain leave policies to allow workers to stay home to avoid the spread of COVID-19. As Rashida said, workers deserve better—and Jeff Bezos can afford it!
• Rashida joined other Michigan Representatives in demanding Kroger (the nation’s largest grocery chain) maintain its extra “Hero Pay.” We’re in solidarity with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which has protested the CEO’s decision to reverse hazard pay for essential, frontline workers at its stores. COVID cases are growing around the country; we can’t go back to “normal.”

• We successfully pushed the federal government to send people COVID stimulus money via prepaid debit cards rather than checks. Because 25% of Americans who are unbanked or underbanked and thus can’t use checks, Rashida led 83 members of Congress in pushing to give Americans monthly payments on reloadable debit cards. While we still haven’t gotten everyone the monthly money they need, we have a first step: The IRS started to send people pre-paid debit cards instead of checks for the one-time $1200 stimulus payment.

• We investigated potential abuses in the Treasury Department’s Opportunity Zone Program, which was meant to help distressed communities like ours but is instead used to benefit the President's friends and wealthy developers who are exploiting cities like Detroit.

Pushing for Palestinian rights and dignity:

• Rashida joined Rep. Alan Lowenthal in writing a Washington Post op-ed demanding that the Trump administration stop withholding Congress-approved funds for humanitarian and development aid for Palestinians, especially during the pandemic.
• On May 15th, we commemorated the Nakba—Arabic for “catastrophe”—which refers to the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. About 530 Palestinian neighborhoods and villages were uprooted and destroyed, affecting over 750,000 Palestinians.
• Rashida just joined progressive members of Congress opposing Israel's plans to annex parts of the West Bank (which would violate international law and Palestinians’ human rights) and calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel if it follows through with the proposed annexation. New formal policies would deepen the country’s apartheid system, which has involved ongoing stealing of Palestinan land through illegal settlements, home demolitions, and occupation.

In addition to the work mentioned above, our team celebrated many important decisions from the Supreme Court over the past month, including protecting LGBTQ+ workers, upholding protections for undocumented DREAMers to stay in the country, striking down polluting pipelines, reaffirming reproductive rights (in some cases), recognizing treaties with indigenous nations, and holding Trump accountable by ruling that he can’t block the release of his tax returns.

Wow. Our movements have led to so much needed change in such a short time. There’s still so much work to do, but our power—and the number of people who support our progressive vision—is growing. We can achieve our dreams, and our liberation, together.

Can you donate or volunteer to phonebank or knock doors before Rashida’s August 4th primary so we can keep her in office fighting for all of us?

Thank you,
Denzel McCampbell
Communications Director, Rashida Tlaib for Congress