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Mobile Popup Unhoused Legal Clinic This Sunday
We're in the final stages of preparations for the mobile legal clinic for unhoused neighbors, taking place this Sunday, October 19th, from 1-4 near the intersection of Poplar and 18th St. in Oakland.
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Can you help us by bringing a dish to share? or a food or drink donation that people can take with them for later in the week? Please contact Kim to arrange, or just drop in to the outreach site on Sunday.
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The flyer below can be shared with unhoused neighbors or potential volunteers.
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What's Been Happening?
Below is a short update of things people in the Braided Bridge community have been doing. If you'd like to share a project or happening please reach out!
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Welcome to Aili, our newest Braided Bridge member! They are student at San Jose State studying math. They've frequently been a sounding board for Kim with the Active Love writing, helping to tease out inconsistencies and consider a variety of angles and insights.
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Melissa, Dee, Barbara and Jared participated in the Wood Street Commons bike ride to Sacramento this past weekend. Jared is also a former resident of 1707 Wood St. The bike ride was reported on last weekend by KQED. We'll post about it more here in our next community mailing.
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Bill is sharing this video, "Criminal," by Robe Imbriano, a musical documentary about the harm intentionally built into our cash bail system.
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Michelle has continued to attend immigration court and make drawings of the proceedings. One is directly below. More are at the bottom of this email.
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Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence
Last week, Faces Not Forgotten, a nonprofit founded by Christine, who is part of our Braided Bridge Community, partnered with the St. Louis Black Repertory Company in presenting six plays performed by local youth from the Grand Center Arts Academy. They performed the winning scripts of this year's national biannual competition sponsored by Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence. The plays were written by other students who appeared in Atlanta at the key note event for the competition last week. As the youth implored viewers to “do something!” to end gun violence, the 88 quilted portraits of St. Louis children looked on from the Faces Not Forgotten project, a memorial to children whose lives were taken by guns. If you have access to facebook, you can see a short reel of the event.
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In a grim ending to the evening, participants and viewers soon learned that even as the youth were presenting, a 17-year-old was killed just around the corner in yet another gun violence incident. The following Monday, at a balloon release for that same 17-year-old, another shooting took place injuring four and killing one more.
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The soul crushing relentlessness is difficult to bear. and follows cuts in federal gun violence prevention funding to programs that had been successful in violence interruption.
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Recently, the Center for Action and Contemplation offered this meditation about Fr. Greg Boyle’s experiences in addressing gun violence through his work in Homeboy Industries. According to Boyle, love and community are not at all a weak, naïve approach, but in his view, they are the only thing that truly works. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/love-in-healing-doses/
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To all reading, please join us in community, in caring for each other. This is how we make space for safety and thriving in the face of all of the many ways the violence presents itself around us.
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The Testimony Project is a series of very short stories, describing what has been witnessed by people offering support and advocacy for houseless people, or by the people themselves who have been unhoused.
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No Safety if You're Poor
Article 1 Section 1 of the California State Constitution was recently brought to my attention. It reads: "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy."
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When delivering water last week, we were excited to bring a bike procured for someone in need of one. When we found him, we saw his tent and belongings had been burned entirely by another person. When the fire trucks came the night before, he and his neighbor told me, no one talked to them. No one asked if anyone was inside the burning tent. No one asked if anyone was hurt. No one offered them services. No one asked how it started. It's likely they will be swept soon, because of the fire, which will further add to their loss, and the instability of their existence, their ability to survive. They had recently been to a transitional housing site nearby asking for help, but were denied. The program was full.
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We were trying to stretch the ten cases of water further that day, for another community who was badly in need of it. But the person whose tent had burned pleaded for one more case than I had given. "Please! We just lost everything!" I gave him the additional water.
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As we made our way through our deliveries, we came to the site where we had found people who were very, very thirsty. We brought the cases we had been able to set aside for them, along with some food donations. A clearly inhabited RV that had been there the week before was gone, and large logs had been laid down in its place to prevent anyone else from parking there. The week before, two people with disabilities were sheltering under a canopy attached to the RV. One of them said he was on dialysis. Like the RV, they too were gone. More structures and vehicles lined the other parts of the street, and we dropped the food and water off with the people who had gathered around the giant log.
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Usually when I hear housed neighbors, and people in government, talk about "safety" it's in terms of harming the poor so that better off people feel less fearful. It does not appear to matter what survival supplies are lost, what pain is inflicted, so long as the poor become invisible, and do not trouble people who own property with the consequences of their own policies and practices. Where is this right to pursue and obtain safety, if you're poor?
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Active Love: The Law Is Love
Guiding Principles 1-3
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The practice of active love flows from the core principle that “The Law is Love.”
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In a legal context, a law is a rule or set of rules that provides the fundamental framework for addressing or preventing harm. It defines what constitutes harm, what obligations parties have in avoiding harm, and what response is made when harm happens. In science, a law describes attributes of the way the universe functions, as in the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. Spiritual laws prescribe what is right or moral. People often believe them to be associated with their specific religious beliefs, yet there are many consistencies across the boundaries of different faiths. The statement, “the law is love,” works on all of these planes: legal, scientific, and spiritual.
(...to be continued)
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Studio Use, Joining In, Supporting
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Studio rental time is available. Reply to this email to make arrangements. If you'd like to join our work, reply to this email to let us know. If you'd like to contribute financially to keeping this work going, you can use the button below. We are a 501c3 organization and are deeply grateful for your support.
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If you are on this list and didn't want to be, please do feel welcome to unsubscribe and accept my sincere apologies. –Kim
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