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Emily Rodriguez, an organizer with the Pioneer Valley Project which sponsored the two-day lobbying trip, said the 100 evacuees pressed lawmakers to support U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey’s, D-Massachusetts, bill requiring FEMA to stand up the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Disaster Housing Assistance Program.

They further urged lawmakers to pressure FEMA to activate the program on its own and to take all other actions in their power to help those impacted by the hurricane — requests which Rodriguez said appeared to garner a “positive” response.

“The people that we met, they all were down to help and to push FEMA into continuing to support these families and to open the DHAP program, which has been done before for others,” she said in an interview.

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