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Announcements:

Next Studio Time, Sunday February 8th

Join us 2nd and 4th Sundays from 1-4 pm for studio time. Come with your creative project, ideas, or just come to play. There is no fee for studio time. 730 29th St. in Oakland. When you arrive, call 510-593-4221 to be let in. RSVP and questions to kim@braidedbridge.org.

Join Us for Winter Tea, Saturday February 28th

Winter Tea was once an annual tradition of Kim's letterpress studio, Painted Tongue Press. It was set aside after Kim had her third child, and later took needed time to restructure her life around a new way of working, centering justice and spirituality. Now, it's time to revive the tradition within the new framework, Braided Bridge. Join us for this time to gather and share. Everyone is welcome! Bring a dish to share if it suits you, but above all, bring yourself! 730 29th St. in Oakland. When you arrive, call 510-593-4221 to be let in. RSVP and questions to kim@braidedbridge.org.

From Exile to Cooperation:

How Eritrean Diaspora Is Building a
Transnational Cooperative With Malawi at its Heart

Our member, Philipos, introduces his recently launched initiative in Malawi. This may seem very far reaching for followers of Braided Bridge. It is! Take in what Philipos is sharing now, and we'll be explaining and sharing more, along with continuing our other work, in upcoming posts. There is room in Braided Bridge for people to work in community, creativity, and justice in many parts of the world and from many perspectives. Philipos writes:
In an era marked by tightening global immigration policies in the United States and Europe, many diaspora communities are being forced to rethink not only where they live, but how they belong. For the Eritrean diaspora, this question carries an added weight. Decades of totalitarian rule have made return impossible for many, leaving a generation suspended between exile and responsibility.

Out of this condition, a new experiment is taking shape.
In November 2025, Meadi Cooperative, Inc. was formally incorporated in the State of California as a democratically governed consumer cooperative. Headquartered in the U.S., Meadi Coop is designed as a transnational cooperative platform—linking Eritrean diaspora communities with partners in Malawi, and a greenhouse pilot laboratory in Canada, to build sustainable, ethical, and community-owned agricultural systems.

Why Malawi?

Unable to return to Eritrea, Eritrean diaspora organizers [including Philipos] began looking south—to countries with democratic governance, agricultural potential, and trusted moral institutions. Malawi emerged as a natural partner. Central to this partnership is collaboration with the Catholic Church in Malawi, particularly the Catholic Diocese of Mangochi, which offers long-term land stewardship, institutional continuity, and community legitimacy beyond political cycles. This partnership reflects a deliberate choice: development rooted in trust, not extraction.

Three Anchors, One Cooperative Vision

Meadi Coop’s structure integrates three interconnected operations:
  1. Malawi – Community Agriculture & Food Security
    In partnership with the Catholic Diocese of Mangochi and the Capuchin Sisters, Meadi Coop is preparing long-term agricultural projects focused on food security, employment, and cooperative ownership. (Capuchin Sisters refers to a Catholic order of nuns centered around the spirituality of St. Francis and St. Clare.)
  2. Malawi – Land Partnership with Fr. Raphael Mkuzi
    Through land access facilitated by Fr. Dr. Raphael Dickson Mkuzi, a theologian trained at Berkeley Theological Union, the cooperative grounds its work in both physical land and ethical clarity. This partnership reflects a covenantal approach rather than transactional development.     (Philipos explains that “covenant” in his native Tigrinian language, is “kidan” which means clothing. It means you are covered, cared for, protected in an interconnected way. I cannot survive without you and you can’t survive without me.)
  3. Canada – Greenhouse Pilot Lab (Alberta)
    In Sturgeon County, Edmonton, Alberta, Meadi Coop is launching a greenhouse agriculture pilot lab, using land purchased by Teklu, a Meadi Cooperative organizer who is likewise part of the Eritrean diaspora. Lessons learned in Canada will directly inform scaling efforts in Malawi.This controlled environment will test:
    • Year-round vegetable production (tomatoes, peppers, leafy greens)
    • Solar-powered, water-efficient drip irrigation
    • Seedling nurseries
    • Cooperative management and governance models

A Cooperative, Not a Charity

Meadi Coop operates under California’s Consumer Cooperative Corporation Law, with one-member, one-vote governance, limited dividends, and surplus distribution based on participation—not capital. Community members are envisioned not as beneficiaries, but as co-owners and partners. Meadi organizers are hoping for future engagement with international cooperative networks such as the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), Mondragón, and DGRV, in order to join Meadi Coop to the global cooperative ecosystem.

Drinking from Our Own Wells

The spiritual and intellectual inspiration behind Meadi Coop draws deeply from Gustavo Gutiérrez and his seminal 1984 work, We Drink from Our Own Wells. Fr. Raphael Mkuzi’s doctoral formation at Berkeley in liberation theology directly informs the cooperative’s ethos: authentic development flows from the lived experience, dignity, and spirituality of the people themselves. Meadi Coop embodies this insight practically—building economic structures that are spiritually grounded, locally accountable, and resilient over time.

A New Cooperative Geography

With California as its cooperative headquarters, Canada as its innovation lab, and Malawi as its community heart, Meadi Cooperative represents a new form of diaspora engagement—one that transforms exile into responsibility, and displacement into shared stewardship. This is not a return to the past. It is a forward movement—from survival to solidarity, from charity to cooperation, and from exile to shared future.

Someone So Beautiful

We were at the second to last stop of our weekly water distribution and I was counting the cases left for the last group. A woman stood beside me, wondering if we could offer a little more water or fruit. I mentioned the group ahead of us and how much they had grown recently, as I figured out how to separate the last of what remained in the trunk. "Someone died there yesterday," she said. My stomach clenched, "Who?!" I asked.

My mind flashed to the face of the person at that site that we knew best, someone who exuded joy, in defiance of her grim surroundings. She uplifted us whenever we spoke with her. We had been bringing her water since we started, which she shared with those around her. She kept the area near her tent astoundingly clean. I learned that she brought all the trash that was used or dumped near her to a site across the street and then she would call the City to come and pick it up, in hopes that the cleanliness around her space would prevent them from sweeping her away, again. She had been swept already earlier in the year, and lost many of her belongings, including her art supplies. I had offered many times that she come to my studio to create, and we kept trying to set it up. Just two days ago, it had fallen through again...But there were many people at that site now. If there was a death, most likely, it was someone new that I didn't know yet. No less awful, but at least less personal.

It wasn't someone else. It was her. Three people standing around the car confirmed it. It had happened just a day ago. We left in shock and headed to the last site with a sense of disbelief and horror. We delivered the water and fruit, and made our way to the candle memorial placed against the cement wall beside her tent. We spoke with her neighbors and signed the card on the wall.

Members of our group who support people who are unhoused see so many deaths –every month it seems, sometimes even more. Why? Because we don't have enough housing nor the will to build it. Because people say "not in my back yard!" Because the costs of building are high, though we spend plenty on other things. Because too many of us blame people who are unhoused for their condition rather than point the finger back on ourselves for making policy choices that create a shortage of a basic need. Because a better off person's fear of the poor routinely destroys the actual safety of someone who is poor. Because too many who are housed separate our existence from those we've unhoused. Housed friends, know your unhoused neighbors. Know their names and voices, the way they talk and move, just as you do with any friend. When we know our neighbors, we can stop being afraid, can see how sacred the life before us is. We need to be together as a community to make choices that end this.

We lost someone so beautiful, and we didn't need to.

You Do to Me

The piece below was created in 2018 during the previous round of family separations at the border. It is resonant now as well, and has been updated to reflect recent events. We invite you to download this image for your own advocacy for immigrants and refugees. You will find an 11x17" poster version, an 8.5x11" flyer version, and a smaller file for online media sharing on the Creativity Page of the Braided Bridge website.

Active Love: Harm Damages Relationship

(...continued excerpt from Active Love 2: The Law Is Love)
Whether criminal, civil, or social, harm damages or destroys the ability to be in open, safe, or productive relationships with others. This concept can be applied at an individual level, to social groups, and on a macro level to nations and the largest conflicts in our world.
On an individual level, an injured person’s pain and disability change their role and relationships in the home, workplace and community. On a larger scale, a group targeted by hate is cut off from a relationship of dignity and respect with others in the society. Economic injustice causes refugees to separate from their homelands, and move to a new place or culture where they may live in tension with their new neighbors and have to build all new relationships.
An individual causing harm often acts out of trauma from prior relationships that have not healed. Peoples engaged in war, genocide, hate, terrorism are severed from their enemies, and the trauma from historical experiences contributes heavily to the violence in present ones.
A contract dispute is a disagreement about a specifically defined relationship, whether it is a service agreement between businesses, or a treaty between nations. To ‘make someone whole’ is not really to supply them with monetary compensation, as many lawsuits seek, but to either restore prior relationships or support new transformational ones.
(...to be continued)
To read more about Active Love, visit: https://braidedbridge.org/active-love-writing/

Please Help Replace Melissa's Car

Melissa's car was destroyed in an accident during the bad weather on Christmas Day as she was going to see her grandchildren. Her car is essential to carrying on the daily outreach she does for people who are unhoused. If you can contribute to her gofundme campaign, it will help not just her, but many, many more. Here is the link.

Studio Use

Extended studio time is available. Reply to this email to make arrangements with Kim.

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. This month, donations have been used for:
  1. Returning someone stranded, unsheltered, in the frigid Midwest temperatures and snow storm to the Bay Area after an attempted family reunification went poorly.
  2. Survival support for a family experiencing domestic violence who was recently evicted by the abuser and left without housing.
  3. Regular purchases of water for distribution to local unhoused communities.
To those who have contributed, please receive our deep gratitude. People die on the streets all the time. Even something as basic as water, or respite for two nights to give someone a chance to heal instead of get worse, these help people to survive. And when you help people dedicated to outreach who are themselves living in poverty... you often can't see the ways that bit of help not just ripples, but magnifies, in care for others. Care for others who sometimes then are able to find safer ground and return to help more. We personally witness this from our work in the group all the time. So please know that you contribute to saving lives. Thank you for being here.
Braided Bridge 730 29th St. Unit 101 Oakland CA 94609