Our immigrant communities have powered our economy, provided essential services during the pandemic, and were even our first responders during natural disasters. However, our communities struggle to access critical social and health services because of Harris County’s lack of language access.

This year, our themes for the communities of Austin and Houston were the same. We invited people from the community to table their organizations. Providing free resources to community members. We had terrific speakers, singers, and poets who filled the night with art and words of affirmation. 

The undersigned organizations jointly urge the city to continue its commitment to AFSCME (4%) in the baseline and invest in the following priorities in community health, housing, affordability, sustainability and safety for FY24 totaling $79.548 million or 5.7% of this year’s roughly $1.4 billion General Revenue budget.