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Upcoming Dates:
- No Studio Workshop on Mother's Day May 10th
- Braided Bridge Planning Meeting: Tuesday, May 14th at 12 noon on zoom
- Homebrige Connect Meetings: All Mondays, 6:30-8 pm on zoom. All who wish to join our work in support and advocacy for unhoused neighbors are welcome.
- Thursday Studio Workshops 12:30-3 pm at 730 29th St. #101. No fee. All are welcome. Please RSVP to Kim.
- Sunday Studio Workshops - May 17th 1-4 pm at 730 29th St. #101. No fee. All are welcome. Please RSVP to Kim. *Due to Mother's Day and other events this month, we are only holding Sunday workshop on the one day. We will resume our regular schedule of 2nd and 4th Sundays in June.
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For zoom links or to RSVP, write to kim@braidedbridge.org.
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Braided Bridge Sharing Resources
The Homebridge Connect project of Braided Bridge will be participating in the Wood Street Commons Block Party and Resource Fair, sharing resources for people who are unhoused, at the old Greyhound Bus Station parking lot in Oakland on May 29th from 1-4pm. Our table will share clothes, an art project, and information about our advocacy work and how it's integrated with restorative justice. There will also be a BBQ and live music. All are welcome to come. Stop by and say hello!
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Participants include: Punks with Lunch • HEPPAC • Love and Justice in the Streets • Self-Help Hunger Program • Food Not Bombs • Homeless Action Center • Black Organizing Project • East Bay Community Law Center • California Poor Peoples Campaign • Community Ready Corps • Seeds of Recovery • Earth Altar Scapes • Essential Food and Medicine • Safer Outside Richmond SOS • Miracle messages • Braided Bridge/Homebridge Connect • Street Spirit • Care 4 Community • Poor Magazine • Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless • HAPI Pet Services • RISE • Saint Mary’s Center • Western Regional Advocacy Project • East Bay SPCA • The League of Revolutionaries • Room to Grow • CALPEP • APTP • Oakland Public Library • Life Long Street Outreach • Alameda Alliance for Healthcare • Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
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We are also setting up one activity per month at Building Futures Navigation Center in San Leandro. This month we will host a "free store" there. In June we will be organizing a memorial for people whose lives have been lost while unhoused. In July we will be organizing an art project.
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Unhoused Harm by City of Oakland
Echos Immigrant Harm by DHS
Last month the City Council of Oakland passed the Encampment Abatement Policy, further committing its resources to actively harming the poorest of Oakland's citizens. Although policies of criminalizing and destroying people who can't afford housing make homelessness worse, Oakland and other cities carry out and toughen such policies because housed neighbors expect them to. This despite that many of the same neighbors are vehemently against behaviors exhibited by DHS agencies such as ICE and Border Patrol. Below is a graphic that draws parallels between DHS harms to immigrants and City of Oakland harms to the unhoused population. We plan to also build a section of the Braided Bridge website that elaborates on these points, and answers common misconceptions. Many of the harms described on our flyer have been happening for years, even before the EAP, and happen routinely in other cities, too. We anticipate that the EAP will greatly increase them.
Oakland says in describing its city motto: "We acknowledge that when we lead with love we are able to uplift a thriving city rooted in equity, equality, justice, inclusion, and opportunity for all. We commit to the action of "Love Life" as our motto and mantra." How does this policy have anything whatsoever to do with love or life?
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There are many ways to support better community care for people who are unhoused or experiencing poverty. If you would like to show support for housing not handcuffs, and care not sweeps, join us in supporting the lived experience voices of Homefulness at this Nowhere 2 Sleep action on May 26th at Oakland City Hall at 10:30 am.
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Active Love 2: The Law is Love
A Legal System Based in Separation
Justice only succeeds in repairing or preventing harm when the response to harm is determined with care for the life, need, and relationship to the community of each participant. Legal scholar Peter Gabel noted that our present laws generally foster separation, not community. Even our cherished human rights are designed to protect us from each other, not lead us into better relationship. In his book, Another Way of Seeing, Gabel writes,
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“…the Bill of Rights does not aspire to connect us to one another but to protect us against each other, against the community’s interfering with our right as isolated individuals to speak, to assemble (if as disconnect monads we can find anyone to assemble with), to be secure in our homes (those supposed havens in a heartless world), and even to keep others from taking away our guns. Indeed, the current preoccupation with “the right to bear arms” is an example of a highly visible appeal to the Bill of Rights…that reveals how clearly its protections equate individual freedom with fear of the other rather than connection with and love for the other.” [1]
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(...to be continued)
[1] Gabel, Peter. Another Way of Seeing: Essays on Transforming Law, Politics and Culture. Quid Pro Books, 2013.
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Studio Use
Extended studio time is available. Reply to this email to make arrangements with Kim.
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Joining and Supporting
Join us in this work! We are a 501c3 organization. We welcome donations and we welcome YOU into closer involvement with our community. In the past month, donations have been used for:
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- Helping an unhoused couple who was being targeted by law enforcement for sleeping outside to comply with a court order by temporarily putting their belongings into storage, something the TRO against them for sleeping outside made a necessity, but which they were unable to afford.
- Help with PG&E bill for formerly unhoused person who got behind in payments while transitioning into housing. Returning to housing after having been unhoused longterm is challenging for many, and in many ways. One is sometimes in managing expenses associated with housing.
- Food for distribution to local unhoused communities.
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To those who have contributed, thank you for being here. We are so grateful to you!!!
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