Dear MinKwon Community:

Please consider giving to our new Flushing Mutual Aid Fund* to support one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in NYC right now. Funds raised will help members of low-income Asian, Latinx, Black, and undocumented communities in Flushing with food, medicine, and rent assistance, and will also provide stipends to Flushing residents who take on roles in coordinating mutual aid and organizing their neighbors.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MinKwon Center has been following up with low-income and marginalized residents in Flushing, and it is clear that the neighborhood is deeply impacted:
 

• Residents are unable to work or forced to work in unsafe conditions to make rent.
   
• Immigrants and people of color are excluded from stimulus packages and face impossible barriers in applying for benefits like unemployment, including lack of computer and internet access, limited English proficiency, and nontraditional "self-employed" work statuses that disqualify them from public benefits and small business relief.
   
• Buildings are not being sanitized, and tenants have been getting sick.
   
• Residents stand in line at food pantries that stretches across several blocks, with many worried they won’t have enough food every week.

That is why we have launched our new Flushing Mutual Aid Fund* to help meet the needs of residents and raise up community leaders. We believe that this is a crucial moment for providing immediate relief and building grassroots power to demand and win long-term change.

The pandemic has transformed the daily life of the Flushing community, but it is only a symptom of the intersecting systems of oppression that our neighbors are under: low wages and labor exploitation, giveaways to private developers that have driven up rent and displacement, and the disregard for the lives of immigrants despite how essential we have always been. Please give and start your own peer-to-peer fundraiser!

We must take care of each other — we will get through this together!