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Upcoming Dates:
- Legal Clinic for People who are Unhoused and Housing Insecure:
September 19, 11am – 3pm outside the offices of the National Lawyers Guild,
558 Capp Street, San Francisco. Includes, food, clothing, and other support.
See flyer below.
- Braided Bridge Planning Meeting: Monday, Sept 14th at 10 am on zoom for Braided Bridge members. If you are interested in joining let us know.
- Homebrige Connect Meetings: All Mondays, 6:30-8 pm on zoom. All who wish to learn more about support and advocacy for unhoused neighbors are welcome.
- Thursday Studio Workshops Most Thursdays, 12:30-3 pm at 730 29th St. #101. All are welcome. Please RSVP to Kim.
- Sunday Studio Workshops - Sept 13th and Sept 27th 1-4 pm at 730 29th St. #101. Generally 2nd and 4th Sundays. All are welcome. Please RSVP to Kim.
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For zoom links or to RSVP, write to kim@braidedbridge.org.
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Up to Trouble
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Although we haven't sent out an update since May, it's not because we haven't been doing much. Quite the opposite! We've had our hands so full that it's been hard to pause long enough to write about it. Here's a recap of events we've been participating in during the past few months, in mostly chronological order:
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Wood Street Resource Faire: At the end of May, the Homebridge Connect project of Braided Bridge participated in the Wood Street Commons Block Party and Resource Fair, an event that shares resources for people who are unhoused. It was held at the old Greyhound Bus Station parking lot in Oakland. We shared clothes, an art project, and information about our advocacy work and how it integrates with restorative justice. Other groups shared food, haircuts, harm reduction, spiritual and creative activities, and many more resources. See "Art for Justice" below about the artwork we started that day. We had a wonderful time and spoke with many people!
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Wood Street Documentary Premier: Shortly after the resource fair, many Homebridge Connect participants saw the long-anticipated Bay Area premier of Wood Street, a documentary about the eviction of the Wood Street community, by Caron Creighton. One of our members lived through this as part of that community. Others began interacting with Wood Street unhoused residents during that time and have formed longterm relationships of support and friendship. Seeing the film was deeply meaningful. It has had several showings since then, and this September, can be seen at the New Parkway Theater. We highly recommend you go! Here are dates and links to showtimes and tickets:
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Three events at Building Futures: We coordinated with the Building Futures Navigation Center in San Leandro, which connects people with housing, provides about thirty transitional housing rooms, and conducts coordinated entry interviews. There we hosted a free store in May, a memorial in June, and an art project in July. Many people gathered for the food and clothing offered at the free store. The memorial was greatly needed by our own members, and together we came up with about fifty names in five minutes of lives of people we've personally encountered, lost to homelessness. Many people participated in the mandala making art event (pictured below) - some working on a community mandala and others on individual ones. Some stayed for hours and some asked if we'd be coming back soon.
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Farmer's Market Community Conversations: Also in July, we tabled at the San Leandro Farmer's Market to have conversations with community members about people's experiences of homelessness. People with lived experience of homelessness from our group answered questions and bridged divides between the general public perceptions and misinformation and actual unhoused experiences. this to insert text.
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Bishop O'Dowd Service Learning: In August, we participated in the Bishop O'Dowd Freshmen Orientation by leading two classes of about 30 students in a service learning project. The students packed 200 bags containing food and hygiene products, which were distributed at sites our team members visit in Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward, and Castro Valley. Melissa and her friend Dylan shared their lived experiences of homelessness with the students and answered questions. The students also helped us make advocacy posters which were given out with the bags. The posters read, "Everyone is Needed Everyone Belongs" and "Sweeps are Deadly Safety for All." One person receiving the posters asked if we could bring some every week. Another woman saw them and cried. Everyone agreed to walk around and post them, some even attaching them to their own dwellings. See more of the posters below.
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Art For Justice
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Michelle has continued with her immigration courtroom drawings, despite the closure of the court in San Francisco. The drawings below were done in Concord. For some hearings, there is no longer a judge physically present in in the courtroom. The judge and a person representing DHS are on a monitor mounted on the wall above the empty chairs where the judge would have been seated. There is sometimes a translator in the courtroom, meanwhile, the respondents are required to be there in person. In these drawings, the asylum seekers are under threat of "pre-termination" in which they may be sent to third countries where they have never lived before and had no contacts or resources. Below are two of her recent drawings.
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At the Wood Street Resource Fair, we began "Round About" community art pieces. In these pieces, one person begins and hands it to another, who takes their turn, and hands it off again, and again, and again. Each contributes, using their own style, color palette, and imagery. After the piece has passed through many different artists, we place it out in the community –on a fence, or along the street, where anyone can see it for free. People can even take it for free. We will make more.
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This way of working together is a little chaotic, as growing, thriving life is. The energetic, surprising, organic outcome has an unexpected aesthetic, that becomes a visual representation of what happens when we form a community together where everyone’s dignity, voice and uniqueness is supported. Working together on this art becomes both pathway and prayer, sacred envisioning together to tend communities of justice.
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Below are three round about pieces, started at the resource fair and continued afterwards. We will post them periodically as they develop and again when we put them out into the world.
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Below are mandalas that were being worked on at the Building Futures event.
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Below are some of the advocacy posters decorated by students at Bishop O'Dowd.
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Active Love 2: The Law is Love
A Legal System Based in Separation
(...continued) At present, our concept of justice is not formed for supporting relationship, community, or growth. In general, our societies do not expect it to be. Gabel further illustrates this in his description of our present court system:
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“Our legal culture declares that disputes are to be resolved through an adversary system that defines differences as antagonistic clashes of conflicting interests, fosters hostility, mutual deprecation, and lying, and rejects any moral objective that might inform the process beyond the parties’ own objectives, beyond their self-interested goals. Protection of the “rights of the individual” is thought to require that each side treat the other with skepticism and mistrust, to demean the other’s position while exaggerating the virtue of your own, to use cross-examination to undermine the testimony of even those you believe to be truthful, and to conceal any information that might be harmful to your side unless your opponent extracts it from you under the penalty of perjury…” [1]
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The court system is only one piece of one justice system that people live under. For a society to live by the law of love would mean that this, as well as most other parts of the government organized justice system, and also justice systems within schools, workplaces, families, and more will need to structurally change. It is an enormous undertaking. But if we can envision how it can pragmatically function, then we can shape and expect a different process. (...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 mother of 5 with hotel while we worked on connecting her with services who could help her family with housing
- Purchasing RV parts for repairs so that RV can be moved and isn't confiscated by the City in a sweep, leaving its owner sleeping on the sidewalk instead
- Water for distribution to local unhoused communities
- Purchasing food and hygiene supplies to work with school children on packing supply bags for unhoused neighbors
- Printing and sharing Active Love writing
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To those who have contributed, thank you for being here. We are so grateful to you!!!
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