Hoda Katebi

Co-founder - Blue Tin Production Co-operative

.Hoda Katebi is a community organizer and founding member of Blue Tin Production, an apparel manufacturing workers cooperative run by immigrant and refugee women using a creative, arts-based approach to systems change.

Formally launched in January 2019, Blue Tin Production works to fill a major gap in sustainable and ethical production within the fashion industry while simultaneously centering the economic mobility of women of color who sit at the intersections of violence, trauma, and systemic oppression. Hoda populated Blue Tin with members ranging from domestic violence survivors from Nigeria to widows and single mothers fleeing the Syrian civil war and trained them to manage and run the cooperative independently in order to put agency and power back into the very hands of those who have been systematically disenfranchised. Hoda is also the voice behind JooJoo Azad, a creative political fashion online publication. She is an activist and community organizer and part of campaigns to end surveillance programs and police militarization.

Hoda’s work is centered on bringing an arts-based approach to systems change. She steadfastly built Blue Tin Production into a cooperative model that removes oppressive fast-fashion practices of extractive and dangerous work conditions. She created this fashion house that brings together those who have historically been most marginalized in this industry, working class women of color, to collectively profit from the work they create. In doing so, this organization shares power, agency, decision-making, and creative work. Ultimately, she works to destabilize historic notions devaluing the labor of women of color, while flipping structures of power within the fashion industry’s supply chain.