Friend,

Today is my birthday!

Here’s a photo of me as a child with some of my siblings outside the house I grew up in:

We grew up in Southwest Detroit, an area heavily polluted by the nearby Marathon Oil refinery and other industrial facilities.

In the past few weeks, many residents in this predominantly-Latinx/Latines neighborhood have faced major home damage with heavy rainfall, power outages, and widespread flooding. Some people have had sewage come up in their basements, and others living in basement apartments have lost everything and been displaced.

The local organization Urban Neighborhood Initiatives (UNI) serves Southwest Detroit, and they’ve been busy supporting families with emergency needs. They’ve been able to help some families with food, clothing, and cleaning supplies, but they’ve been overwhelmed with requests and don’t have enough funding to help with other needs like appliances.

And with more flooding already underway, UNI and the people they serve urgently need more financial support.

For my birthday, can you donate to Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, which serves residents of the neighborhood I grew up in, so they can help people overcome recent flooding disasters? And, if you can, can you donate $24, since my birthday’s on the 24th? Thank you!

Now that President Joe Biden issued a disaster declaration for our county, many of our district’s residents can apply for FEMA support in rebuilding. UNI has helped people with the application process, including with translation support.

But undocumented residents can’t access federal government resources through FEMA, so they especially need direct support from UNI.

Some residents were without power for several days, so UNI supplied them with food gift cards to a local grocery store. And since the floods, UNI’s regular food distribution events have seen a significant increase of residents attending.

UNI has also been hard at work in the last year and a half to ensure that the community has access to COVID-19 testing, translated informational materials about COVID, free vaccine events, and more assistance. And as part of a community coalition, they host weekly town halls providing residents with up-to-date information on issues such as flooding and COVID. I’m grateful for their work!

Could you help me celebrate my birthday by helping give back to the community that raised me? Please chip in $24, or whatever you can afford, to support Urban Neighborhood Initiatives now.

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Thank you so much. Stay tuned for more about our work to address the climate crisis and to ensure that communities like ours are prepared for upcoming disasters.

Thank you,

Rashida

P.S. If you live in Michigan’s 13th District and need support with the recent floods, please call our office at 313-694-3606 so we can help connect you with resources.