This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week, I’m going to tell you the story of how I came to accept that I am a Black queer press and embrace my storytelling gifts and ability to own and manage this platform. Speaking of being a press, like many other media platforms, you can now advertise on this newsletter by going to www.theblackurbanist.com/advertise. Now, let’s get started.

(“The Black press matters, and it, along with the media and press of all the marginalized, will be our saving grace going forward.” – You can read more of my words from my 2022 Nieman Lab Prediction for Journalism on their site, https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/12/a-press-where-black-labors-are-not-in-vain/)

We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created. – Audre Lorde, from her book Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Which is on my Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Resource List)

One summer day in the mid-1990s, I was at a family cookout in my uncle’s Black near suburban Greensboro yard with my Dad, Mom and my Dad’s siblings and their spouses, children, grandchildren and various family friends of all shapes and sizes. 

During this era these gatherings were epic to my elementary-aged mind, with lots of food and occasionally a bouncy house or something else fun for all the kids to do. It was a twin gathering of our Thanksgiving gatherings, which were equally epic with lots of food and all the generations splitting off and bonding.

Often us kids would end up playing a lot of hide and seek and its various variations. One day, I suggested a different kind of game. 

It was seeded in the nights my parents would make sure the TV moved from Sesame Street to the WFMY News 2 6 p.m. (and later the five pm) newscast, with a sprinkling of the Andy Griffith Show between the newscasts at 5:30, and the co-anchoring on the newscasts of Black woman newscasting legend Sandra Hughes.

It was seeded with friend-of-the-platform and another Black woman local newscasting legend Carol Andrews on various other local news channels.

It was seeded at 4 pm on those days I was at my maternal grandparents house and the TV stayed on Channel 2, and Oprah, a woman we all agree is a Black woman broadcasting legend, made herself right at home on her side of the TV, but who could have very well come through the TV and be right at home in that Black rural North Carolina setting of my grandparents.

And so back to that hot summer afternoon with all my cousins and the scowls on their faces, not just from the heat, but from the idea that we would be playing “news”.

“Eww, that’s wack,”  they all said in unison and they moved on.

I, however, went home and started recording my own detective show, called “The Snooper”. I even made a theme song for it – “hey I’m the Snooper, ready to snoop around…”

My mom had this tape recorder the size of a paperback book she would often take to church to record sermons and choir anniversary concerts and rehearsals. She also recorded one of my elementary school class concerts. You know, the ones where the each grade level became a chorus or dance troupe and we all performed for our parents. Ok, maybe that was just the schools in Greensboro I went to, but definitely let me know if your elementary school had these assemblies too.

The same year as the Snooper, we learned a song called Down to the Bone. I kept the class recording. I recorded over my solo rendition of the song, which made me cringe. Yes, even more than the nasality I incorporated into my Snooper voice.

While TV broadcasting seemed elusive for someone who didn’t want to succumb to the grind of being on camera in weird, isolated (especially for person like me) places, and radio broadcasting was something my uncle did once upon a time and moved on from,  print media did not and was not.

I’d already won those writing awards for my children’s books featuring urbanists jars of strawberry jam, grape jelly and apricot preserves as an elementary student. However I wasn’t especially encouraged by my writing again until I casually joined the newspaper staff my senior year at my high school and wrote a music review of Alicia Keys’s second album that became my first journalistic byline in any kind of newspaper.

Some of my mom’s middle school students wanted to start a newspaper club at the middle school while I was doing this at the high school. I stepped in my senior year to co-advise them and I stayed tangentially involved throughout college. One of my advisees does national social media and comms for the ACLU and several others are doing equally awesome work in all kinds of fields.

Still, my communication degree in undergrad was my second choice behind graphic design and before civil engineering. I was headed to law school, until my LSAT scores told me otherwise. I tried to retroactively do more PR internships and work, but I ended up doing internal communications for two campus departments, and getting an early taste of writing news for the web and arranging print newsletters on InDesign.

I was determined to leave my graduate program as an urban planner, but you’re reading the real product of my grad school experience. Even when I do planning work, it’s on the public engagement and affairs side of the construction process. Or it’s on the stage at some of your favorite conferences or in one of my many podcasting attempts, like this one.  Once those nonprofits I needed to do a summer internship with to graduate saw that I could do social media and InDesign and work with websites, that’s what stuck. And of course all the reports and proposals that were successful at the design firm that would end up firing me. And doing so much of the comms work you saw come out of BikeWalkKC in 2015-2016.

A recent Twitter thread from a fellow Black journalist, Terrell Jermaine Starr and the article on a recently fallen, but once well-regarded Black news outlet The Root spelled out how important it is to own your work. That even if the world hasn’t caught up to its value or if you think it’s not important, and especially when corporations think they have control over it and people attempt to kill you for running your presses of Black liberation.

And yes, even when we have to demand amongst ourselves that being paid fairly and not being subject to misogynoir should be the rule, not the exception.

For those of you who are still reading/listening, know that this is exactly why I’m taking a step back to make sure that I continue to write the best Black Queer Feminist Urbanist newlsetter I know how to write. So that I can be a part of the vision that I set forth in my Nieman Lab journalism prediction for 2022 of a strong Black press. So I can thrive.

Before You Go

– I have a surprise for you. I’m actually not going on total newsletter sabbatical. I’m going to be revisiting four posts I think most speak to my own history and the collective Black history we celebrate in pursuit to Black history month. So, be sure to come back to your inboxes next week to learn what I still see as The Common Man’s Legacy in a City. When I do come back and a little bit before, we will be ad supported and I’m taking ad inquiries on my website at www.theblackubanist.com/advertise. If you support this work on Patreon, your newsletter will be ad-free, save me shouting out the advertisers on this version.

– There were times that I considered erasing my Southern accent. I’m glad I held on to it, unlike the journalist Becca Andrews, who talks about her struggle getting hers back in a recent article. And of course, I think of this in light of the recent passing of Andre Leon Talley and really loving the recent conversation between Black queer  men about his legacy and the things he felt like he had to do to fit in on the latest episode of It’s Been a Minute with Sam Saunders. 

– And I include this article on the finances of Black Lives Matter, only because it highlights that our work – whether social movement, journalistic platform, or just making sure communities can thrive with the basics and heal from injustices, need to be done with the spirit of mutual aid and art/culture creation. In other words, pay Black folks for our many labors and pay us when we must step away for our grief and our birthright of rest and healing.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week Kristen is taking us back to her very first neighborhood and the first time she met the concept of a community center.

Community centers do exist, do provide lots of needed and wanted services well, and can continue to be pillars of the community, no matter who funds them or who runs them.

I used to take lots of walks in my neighborhood with my dad when I was a kid.

If you’ve been around me long enough, on or offline, you know a version of this story but I want to tell you a slightly different version of the story you’ve heard, with a little more context.

Dad and I used to walk around the neighborhood, not just to the ballpark to our west, but sometimes to the elementary school to our east where I went to kindergarten. There was this amazing playground and of course, my school and next to this school was this building called a recreation center. It had a name I struggled to pronounce for years — Caldcleugh 

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was basically a neighborhood indoor basketball court, some exercise machines, and meeting rooms where folks of all ages could do crafts, discuss community issues and celebrate special events. 

It was and is run by the City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation.

For a long while, it was branded as a “multicultural” center and hosted things like hip-hop dance classes and language lessons, along with a branch of the city-run Drama Center.

As of last summer, it rebranded again as a teen and youth-focused safe-space, along with programs for younger children and their caretakers.

Recreation centers seem to be something that those of us who grew up in Greensboro, DC, Baltimore and other places with this concept take for granted, that the city will provide centralized locations in all neighborhoods, regardless of density, racial makeup, or age.

At least in Greensboro, not all centers had all things. Some were geared to seniors and others to teens and younger children. Some have community gardens and indoor courts. Others playgrounds and fully-outfitted production stages. Having a pool at your neighborhood “rec” was like hitting the jackpot.

And sometimes they close as we’ve seen in some of the other cities with this concept.

But they are what I envisioned being the starting place for comprehensive community service centers in incorporated municipalities when I made this wish as part of this year’s wish journey.

With the advent of technology, rec center computer labs could do more than just provide opportunities for lessons and open gyms for the neighborhood’s next basketball superstar.

They could be staffed with people who could help those without adequate access or without access to a major expensive software (Adobe, I’m looking at you), to help with managing household budgets, studying for professional exams, and incubating small, web-based businesses.

And most recently, I voted and picked up rapid Covid-19 tests at my local rec here in Prince Georges County. This facility sits on several acres of fields but still has transit access. Other recs in my current area are more walkable, and others back home similarly sat on the outskirts of town surrounded by fields and new suburban-style homes.

And I started crocheting again in the first place at library and rec center meetups in DC proper.

Other places exist that can step in as centralized community centers and fill in that “third place” gap. They can have various levels of healthcare, education, and recreational services. 

Ultimately, we should and can make them stronger so we can depend on them every day, not just in an emergency.

Before You Go

I’ll be doing my first Twitter space conversation Today (Tuesday) at 1 Eastern right here. 

I will be discussing my feature in the New York Times on people of color running restaurants in the suburbs unpacking the host of assumptions that topic creates and previewing next week’s email where I talk about how the press can better serve audiences of color and others who are marginalized. 

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we taking a breath on our first leg of what Kristen is calling the Wish Journey of 2022 and she really appreciates you supporting this one, because the year is still going and it’s not too late to fund our journey. Read on and learn more and please share!

There’s no need for transit fares, when municipalities can provide transit using taxes and subsidies. Then, if municipalities absolutely must charge individual people and low-earning businesses, base that payment on their adjusted gross income which municipalities, not those citizens, pull from their public tax records.

One of my first ever transportation wishes was for my hometown to have adequate enough transit that I could stop driving so much. If you would have told me 13 years later that I would be driving 90 percent of my time in a metro area that should have adequate transit, but is suffering major system failure, I would have laughed.

How did I get there? Well, I took for granted that everywhere in the DC metro region was well-served by transit. Well-served meaning that all the stops have coverings and seating that works. All the stops run at all hours of the day. Never mind the train not catching on fire or the bikeshare having e-assist on all bikes in a very hilly city. Plus, what I consider a safe space (not being leered at or verbally harassed), is often chalked up by others as “the price of living in a city”.

And yes this is an embarrassment, but those of us who have the ear and/or control of local governments, major foundations, and corporations need to start that course of fixing that embarrassment, rather than dusting it under the bin. Energy just moves around, it doesn’t go away and we would be better served channeling that energy in a positive direction sooner rather than later.

So many public/government entities have gotten caught up in this idea that everything they do has to balance out on the balance sheet. I agree, especially when it comes to actually charging businesses taxes, instead of assuming that they will eventually pay them or passing taxes on to people’s salaries, which may or may not actually cover cost of living. I even wrote about this for Greater Greater Washington and it was even re- posted on Strong Towns. (By the way, I’m not currently a member/active in either collective, but this was from 2018 when I was).

And it’s still true today that if corporations paid their fair share in taxes we could use that for other things, like eliminating fares for private citizens.

Or, if corporations don’t want to pay taxes, based on their size and revenue, they could pay for a certain number of days, they could advertise on vehicles and they could buy passes for their workers.

Taxes however would be easier to enforce, because everything in that last paragraph could be considered unnecessary business expenses. Taxes though…not so much. Oh, and businesses have to cary licensure. Don’t pay up (or make a plan to pay), poof goes the license.

Yes, it can be that simple, especially in major global cities with companies that make not just multiple millions, but multiple billions. Some cities are spending more policing fares and on fare gates than they are paying drivers.

This article from 2012 breaks down how Nationals Park in DC gets public money and how much public money it gets.

Those of you who are familiar with these kinds of numbers will see how similar they are to the entire operating budget of many bus-only systems like DASH in Alexandria, VA, and half, sometimes all of the fare income of other systems.

I would, however, alter the kind of gross receipts tax mentioned to be fairer to the growth of businesses, especially businesses owned by marginalized people, who may be subject to less favorable debt terms or who may struggle with cash flow.

I would also encourage cities, states, and Congress, as well as other government entities globally, to continue to do some of the new math they’ve had to do to face the pandemic and improve on their provision of public services.

I commend the estimated 100 cities globally, especially those I’ve lived in and near like Kansas City and Alexandria that have started doing the math and wrestling with the “impossibilities” of transit funding, especially when it requires municipalities to stand up to those who have extra money and those who believe that their taxes shouldn’t go to transit.

And finally, since this is a wish journey, all I need at the moment is the knowledge that several people, with means and power, are setting this as a vision and taking small steps.

In future newsletters, I’ll be digging into more of this math and on future episodes of my Patreon-powered, YouTubeseries Open Studio with Kristen Jeffers, I’ll be talking to some of the leaders in shifting transit from fare dependence to subsidies and taxes. Also, I definitely welcome all thoughts, especially those of you who have found success! And anyone who is able to make sense of NYC MTA, which is one of the largest fare-dependent systems and seems to not have any other options.

Before You Go

— If you were curious as to some of why Keisha Lance Bottoms decided to not seek re-election, this article provides some answers.

— I never realized, but it makes a lot of sense, that venues that housed punk shows in the early days of the musical movement, were by day (and sometimes upstairs while shows went on in the basement) mutual aid and civil rights agencies for marginalized groups, at least in DC.

— Interested to follow this series that centers on the economies of Native tribes across the US.

— How Black women/femmes continue to be erased from French/French-language media.

Until next time,

Kristen

P.S. What I mean when I call myself a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist.

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we taking a breath on our first leg of what Kristen is calling the Wish Journey of 2022 and she really appreciates you supporting this one, because the year is still going and it’s not too late to fund our journey. Read on and learn more and please share!

Data is facts. Love is a fact. Abundance is a fact. Liberation is a fact. Conflict is a fact. Injustice and justice are facts. And if all of the above are facts, then they can be data.

One of the first facts we face each calendar year, is that on December 31, at 11:59, within 60 seconds, it’s automatically January first. Even in a time where it feels like the same year has been going on for almost two years. Even in my own personal warp of five years of building a solo business and learning more about who I am as a person. And even if you follow a totally different set of time measures, if you even follow time at all — the circle of life does move on.

At the end of this calendar year, I intend to release one of the largest data projects I’ve undertaken — The Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Index. And as I mentioned last week, I’m tackling a few extra questions as well, but if you’ve been keeping up with my work for a long time, you know that those questions aren’t completely of track of questions I ask myself when considering whether a place is sufficient for Black Queer Feminist Urbanists like myself.

Even when you’re doing social science work, people often favor numbers and charts and maps, over actual people’s feelings. But, while not all feelings may be “true” or “correct”, they are occurring and they are someone’s fact.

I also tire of the erasure and the lack of centering that statistics have over marginalized populations. Marginalization is an idea rooted in the inability of people and communities to show up properly in data collection and analysis and that has to change.

First, We all have the capability of calculators/computers in our hands, even if our homes don’t have running water or steady electrical power, even if we are connected to tubes in a hospital bed, isolated from all that we know, unsure if we will come out of those rooms alive.

Secondly, Long before we had computers to compute these percentages and to crunch our numbers into graphics almost instantly, we had these hand-drawn, but quite detailed “infographics” of W.E.B. DuBois from over a century ago. One appears to be a spiral with different sections representing different things. Another is a histogram with the percentages clearly spread out. For the liberation of Black people globally. He would also face persecution for demanding so many things be liberated and ethical and restored when it came to Black lives.

And just before press time, I was greeted with this tweet, which was affirming especially as so many of you and others ask me why I’m adamant that I do this work, not under the auspices of an academic institution, but in fair and just partnership, with the wisdom and data analysis of our ancestors, elders and peers leading the way. Similar to Dr. Timnit Gebru and the collective of other Black-led data organizations to continue our quest for de-marginalziation and liberation.

That’s what I’m taking with me this year. Even when people try to keep us from the facts, sharing the facts, being the facts, the facts must be shared and sharing facts is an act of love.

So, in case you missed it in the last email, this year in these emails, recordings and throughout the site, I’m tackling these four questions first:

Why I Believe Transit Fares Can Be Obsolete

Why I Center the Black Press

Why I Believe Our Community Centers Can Do More

How I Intend to Heal My Personal Shame from Government/Professional Failure

I said last week that I was going to go headfirst in to the transit analysis and I originally thought that I would tackle one question a month, re assess, then do more questions. Still kinda true.

However, I decided to take time to finally learn things like R, Python and properly using things like Excel and Tableau to tell these stories and present this information. 

Unfortunately, I do have to take formal academic classes to do so, but I’m doing this in a self-paced Coursera program, where I can access all kinds of classes from all kinds of places and learn the tools I need, leave the rest and start crafting more tools. 

That way, when its time to drop the main index at the end of the year, not only can you see how existing measures and the time that it takes to go through the existing process of doing analytics/research fail Black Queer Feminist Urbanists, you can see how the measures I and others similar to me craft are bringing for the liberation and de-marginalziation needed.

Your help both in the capital campaign, which is still open and with monthly pledges has helped not only with keeping the web hosting going, keeping this email list paid and helping me with the video editing so I can consistently show up, with captions on the fast-growing video platforms, you’re also helping me better educate myself so I can make this platform what I’ve dreamed it would be, a comprehensive resource for Black urbanists though, especially at its intersection with queer/trans life and feminism.

Thank you so much for being here and Happy New Year!

Before You Go

— I’ve been feeling global solidarity with all Black/African peoples, especially those who recognize the full spectrum of gender. It’s also been illuminating to see calls for reparations globally and how other countries like Canada, that are assumed to be “innocent”, have legacies of enslavement and discrimination and displacement of their own. While I may have started my life’s journey in the United States, my ancestors and elders have a rich history worldwide.

— The grief I’ve held last year, having to attend funerals and weddings from afar, as well as having fluctuations in business and mood has been a lot. I’m just as thankful as many for nights going to bed with the Golden Girls in the background and I had to take a moment, especially now that Betty White and my grandmother will share a transition to the ancestors day, to say something about that.

— I’m reclaiming my roots, proudly, little by little and reading this piece on how Black people of marginalized gender continue to reclaim country music is uplifting.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we are starting what Kristen is calling the Wish Journey of 2022 and she really appreciates you supporting this one, for her to start the year with annual funding for several of my major business expenses. Read on and learn more and please share!

Wishes realized are journeys undertaken, paths varied, trails blazed to get to a clear destination.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that my first wish has been a success so far. As of this morning, combined with my monthly Patreon operation fees, I’ll be able to cover my 2022 web hosting fees and keep the site running. Meanwhile, I’m still working on my PO Box and Quickbooks. If you missed last week’s newsletter with the announcement,  here’s the direct link to the fundraiser. While I am to raise by January 1, we will keep the fundraiser open and I’ll continue to provide updates as to how this particular set of funds are spent.

I want to set a tone for 2022, call this the wish journey if you will, that we can do courageous things as municipalities and jurisdictions, with citizens on our side and corporations serving customers, not us serving corporations.

Hence why unlike in previous years, I’m going to spend a good chunk of 2022 unpacking several of my wishes — showing their feasibility and promoting action steps to achieve them. It goes back to this wish from last’s year’s bulleted list, which I’ve modified to encompass what my vision is for this year:

The industry continues to do the work it promised to do to increase equity. This means being pro-Black, pro-gender/bodily non-conformity, pro-abundance despite ability and starting place, paying fees, salaries, and expenses equitably and retroactively; understanding when it’s time to pass the baton and restoring the legacies and work of those it stole or suppressed in route to catering to a white supremacist, whiteness first ideal. Oh, and those of us who are Black (Queer and Feminist)— never stop using our radical imaginations, claim our space and heal on the inside and heal our communities.

So in this email, I’m dropping four wishes that I will be taking a journey with over the next few months. In May we’ll do a mini-review, then we’ll drop another set in June and review them at the end of the year. December will bring an annual review and the launch of our next capital campaign. Those of you in the Newsletter Fan Club and Study Hall powered by Patreon will get extra, in-depth content and reports. Also, if you’re a fellow Black Queer Feminist Urbanist, head over to the rebooted Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Lounge powered by Mighty Networks for complimentary access to the content in the Patreon, plus starting next month, a new and improved private healing and strategizing space.

Additionally, on top of these realized wishes, at next year’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit, I can’t wait to share the next full draft of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Index and my next book A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future.

Once again, donate to the capital campaign so we can continue our goal of building out all those things and make a monthly pledge to get all access to all multimedia. Drum roll, please, for our first four wishes:

Making Transit Fares Obsolete

Centering the Black Press (here’s a preview of this here)

Enhancing Our Community Centers with Elements from Our Favorite Shopping Centers

Reduction of Personal Shame Around Government Failures (Lack of Transit, Lack of Covid Response, Etc.)

Come back next week as we break down how transit fares can go obsolete, no matter the budget.

Before You Go

—Doing these deep wishes means I’m digging through a lot more research and policy papers than usual. I’m enjoying going through these Transit Center equity dashboards — here’s the one from DC.

— While I’m sad to see Issa Rae’s HBOMax series Insecure come to an end, I do applaud her work to not only open up Hollywood but to continue to push back against displacement in South Los Angeles.

— “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Rest well in the ancestor plane” Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we are making the first set of our annual radical wishes and dreams. Including this one, for me to start the year with annual funding for several of my major business expenses. Read on and learn more and please share!

Wishes may be wild dreams, but what we think becomes what we do and in the doing, these wild dreams become real and practical.

Wow, it’s that time again for me to rub my lamp and hope that the genie pops off and makes my wishes come true. I wanted to come to this email with the right tone and intention and hence it’s in your inbox Monday morning instead of for Sunday brunch this week.

A lot of writers/online types make annual review posts and I think this was my logic way back in 2011 when I issued my first wish post. Since then, my Wishes have been highlighted in Streetsblog and they are a long-time fan favorite. Check out previous year’s wishes and see how many have come true.

Now that we are back on a weekly schedule with this newsletter, I’m going to do something special this year and split my wishes into two. This week is a blatant call for gifts to walk into 2022 knowing that I can deliver my work on this platform. Next week’s email/message will include my community-centric wishes, as we welcome in the celebration of Kwanzaa, a holiday during December created to celebrate Black liberation in the United States and beyond.

So, let’s get to this week and my one big wish (and the smaller, but still important wishes it will unlock).

Raising $12,000 at once before January 1 to put a down payment on operating The Black Urbanist for 2022.

If you already clicked and donated above, thank you.

If not, please consider it. I was going to go into a spiel on why I need to raise this kind of money, but then I remembered that this is the wishes post. Wishes can be radical imaginations. Wishes can be wild dreams.

Being able to pay all my business subscriptions upfront for a whole year is a wild dream.

Having a profitable Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit from the community and mutual aid-minded people, with income circulating back into communities that can manage and thrive the most with it, is a wild dream.

Being able to finally onboard staffers at a living wage is a wild dream.

Getting the $30,000 of grants I’ve already written is a wild dream.

Having people who doubted me, especially in defense of institutions that fail to serve them, as both citizens and employees, circle back and affirm this work as valid is a wild dream.

Being able to call out those who continue to fail to see the error of their ways, so that those who want to do good by communities and the greater urbanism industry and/or are just coming into their own as young designers and creators can know who to avoid and who to hold most accountable, without repercussions on all of us, is a wild dream.

Building an on and off-line collective of thriving Black Queer Feminist Urbanists globally is a wild dream.

And finally, being alive is a wild dream of its own and I am reminded that breathing is enough. However, making these wild dreams and wishes a reality is always the goal. I believe in the power of writing a vision and making it plain and that’s what you see here.

Next week, I have more to say about some of these wild dreams and how I can see them manifesting across society.

Before You Go

— Fellow Black feminist urbanist Jay Pitter details the work she’s been doing to document Toronto’s Little Jamaica and how this area is a big part of the Black Canadian story.

— I’ll be listening to Danyel Smith’s Black Girl Songbook and lifting up my sisters/siblings in Black Girl Song.

— And in case you missed my live stream on honoring bell hooks and how her work intersects urbanism, you can find it here.

Until next time,

Kristen

P.S. What I mean when I call myself a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist.

Solving the joy equation is worth it. It kills the civic inferiority complex and creates lasting sustainability and equity in our practice and in our being.

How’s that joy equation going from last week? Solving for our joy X is not easy, but worth it. I said I’d share my lessons from this year this week, and honestly, this is the largest one, the most lasting one, because this starts with the root of who I am. And it goes to the roots of who you are and the places and people you care about are too.

It’s worth it when we see neighborhoods actually working for everyone and not just a few.

It’s worth it when community stakeholders are solving for so many other Xs and Ys that have been plaguing them for years because finally, the funds and the ears and the will of governments and business entities and others who claim to be “helping out” and “giving back”  operate with a mind and will for equity and justice.

It’s worth it when you finally have enough rest to create the projects you want to create and see them to fruition through all their natural ups and downs.

It’s worth it when you know who you really are and no amount of discrimination or lack of opportunities in your field can change your drive to be yourself.

It’s worth it when your firm has a surplus of funds and you have extra time you didn’t spend hiring and firing and litigating and settling because you’re actually an equitable and sustainable firm people want to build with and work on.

For many years, I spoke of a concept — killing the civic inferiority complex. I’ll be breaking this down more in my upcoming book, but the short of is that cities and municipalities (both their formal governmental entities and the quasi-governmental and stakeholder/beachhead types that see themselves as THE CITY) need to stop looking outward if they already have an economic ecosystem and a governance practice rooted in concern and care for all of its people. They absolutely don’t need to become some other town in the name of “more taxes” or “more people” and they need to stop centering whiteness in their problem-solving and service provision.

I will note here that this is an expanded definition. When I first wrote out the concept of killing the civic inferiority complex, I was thinking of Greensboro and how we were constantly chasing a new big shiny economic object, and suppressing the voices of marginalized folks, while riding on our civil rights legacies of being one of the key places in the Black civil rights movement of the mid-20th century and the 2LGBTQIA+ rights movement in the US South(east).

Yet, now, in 2021, there’s at least one big shiny new economic object, one big shiny new art object, and several more are being re-discovered as we edge into this next phase of the pandemic where we can be more mobile. This is also coupled with more visibility and amplification of Black, 2LGBTQIA+ ,disabled, and/or poor voices. This doesn’t mean the equation is solved, but I see the work. 

Similar patterns are playing out nationwide, but we still have a ways to go and we can still get stuck in an unsolvable loop if we don’t add the right factors. 

Those of you who are physics and chemistry folks know that the equation is more than just a paper exercise. Its accuracy and precision are necessary, lest we explode or crash.

And next week, when I share my wishes for 2022, let’s get our imaginations ready to make new formulas of joy and destabilize old ones of pain and anguish.

Before You Go

— Pat Flynn is a former architectural designer turned architectural media maker turned entrepreneurial coach and resource maker who has brought me much joy and motivation even when I was still writing proposals from the job that would later fire me. I don’t follow him as much as I used to, but every once in a while, he’ll pop up with a motivation that’s still very specific to his A/E/C industry past and this one is no exception, on how to transfer skills from being an employee to an entrepreneur with the kind of training many of us have.

— I don’t hate parking minimums, I just hate them when they aren’t done in tandem with increasing access to transit and neighborhood-level resources.

— I also don’t think doing nice things to my home and community, like the Little Free Libraries, is gentrification by default.  See my note above about creating institutions and continues of care in communities that don’t center, nor can be destabilized by whiteness. I also hold public libraries and governments/communities that provide oversight and funding accountable for not providing adequate services for communities of color and poor communities. Plus, here’s an article on mutual aid and how communities can be backbones for each other, across class levels.

— Tuesday, December 14, 2021 is my birthday and the best present for me would be an investment from you. Invest via Patreon on a monthly in the Open Studio+Newsletter Fan Club, Urbanist Study Hall, Fiber Art Class or the Endowment! You can also make one-time gifts via Venmo or Cash.App. Additionally, the Kristpattern shop will reopen this week, powered by Shopify. Join its email list to be the first to find out when it opens and get information on next class dates, both online and in-person.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we are challenging ourselves to properly solve the urbanist joy equation. Please support this work on Patreon and forward this to a a friend or colleague who would get value out of this email.

We have to get back to joy in our placemaking, sustaining and stewarding. That’s easy once you ground yourself and ensure that you’re in the right relationship with the environment.

I’m not just talking about the physical spaces we create and the natural resources we steward.

I’m talking about going within, to our heart center, where our emotions live and this concept of joy lives.

Joy, as defined by Merriam-Webster (and paraphrased by me) , is a feeling of great happiness or a source of great happiness. There’s also a British informal use listed that equates joy with luck.

In a lot of spiritual and faith circles I’ve encountered, the definition of joy is having peace without full understanding of all that’s going on, as well as gratitude with the notion of being alive, and using that basic gratitude to have joy during times of major sorrow or transformative change.

Additionally, in an urbanist joy context, many of you are familiar with Charles Montgomery’s work, highlighted in this review of his 2013 book Happy City from the Institute of Livable Cities.

However, this review is not equitable. Scratch equitable, it’s very colonial and racist. It fails to offer examples of any African cities, African/Black or African/Black ways of creating happy cities. It assumes that these and other “developing” countries are only practicing development at all costs and that no one in these countries feels that this kind of development as wrong.

The author even uses the word colonial in a positive light, while ignoring that there are European models that are just as destructive, and sometimes the influence for these “developing” models. Additionally, other than the author, no women are mentioned as experts or authors. We’re also left to slot in how class distinctions, gender perceptions and health and wellness abilities also factor into the happiness equation, at least if we stop with this review.

It also was written well before the inter-instituttional conflict that resulted in the creation of Placemaking X and well before conferences like The Untokening and the recent racial reckonings inside offices and firms around pay equity and positional equity prompted by the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 and many firm’s response to that incident, without addressing internal conflicts inside of their own firms.

I want to believe that Charles himself has continued to build a broad social circle. He invited me on a hike of Grouse Mountain during the Pro Walk, Pro Bike, Pro-Places 2016 summit in Vancouver and I wasn’t the only person of color (I was the only queer woman of African/Black decent though, but I was in small number even at the event itself) No, I didn’t successfully summit on foot, but someone else in the group was generous there to help me pay the fee to use the sky lift.

This might seem like a tangent, but not really considering on that trip and others. I’ve encountered and networked with all kinds of people in all kinds of spaces. On that trip in particular tour of Hogan’s Alley on that trip and connected with some activists and authors that are hoping to tell that story and the story of the adjacent Vancouver Chinatown in more spaces. Some of the most physically ugly spaces (say a McMansion basement), have been the sources of some of the largest vessels of joy in my life.

Meanwhile, I’ve been made to feel small and insignificant in some of the most beautiful convention halls around the world, sometimes just minutes after being on the stage as a globally-renowned presenter and expert.

I know I’ve been angry and sad and disgruntled, even violent in many of my recent posts and in-person interactions and of course, y’all know I don’t shy away from the loud and proud amplification of my intersections.

However, the longer I do this work, I’ve learned that I will not last as a person engaged in land use, if I don’t seek to understand what nature and the stories collected in the places you inhabit have to tell me. I also have to be at peace with my own body and how my body and its parts interact with other bodies in nature.

I can only do so much artificial and superficial work to myself and the world around me, before the world does its thing and opens up and sucks me in.

This could happen on a natural course of me returning to the land as bodily dust or it can be forced or me or forced upon others.

I know I can’t force you to ground yourself or be a certain human towards me or others.

But I can’t let 2021 end with really stating how I feel at this end of this year, this second full Covid-19 pandemic year, on the eve of my 36th earth year, manifesting and crafting the 12th year of The Black Urbanist platform and the seventh year of my Kristpattern platform.

How I believe that we restore joy and balance in our working community and our grassroots communities.

I want to ask a few more questions, in addition to last week’s questions, of all of us, based on how we do this work:

If you own or run a firm/business/think tank/nonprofit, with employees and or properties, are you actively examining pay equity, along with checking to ensure people, especially those regularly marginalized are adored and fully implemented across the board, rather than tokenized, pidgenholed, diminished or abused? Have you made peace and restitution to former employees, contractors and joint venture partners who you have wronged before you came into right relationship with this work and the people who do it? If you are a builder, are you educating the public with why your work costs as much as it does? Are you in this because it’s an “investment” or are you in it because you believe that shelter is a human right that does occasionally incur fees and provides a livelihood for yourself, but not at the inequitable expense and time of others?

If you are an individual individual employee/advocate of a firm or organization like that above (or a government entity), do you have the right tools and strategies to endure a long creation process, especially when it’s exactly what the community you’re working in needs for equilibrium? Also, as a peer, are you standing in the gap when it comes to your privilege? Are you happily being used as a token thinking that’s the only way you can get ahead? Do you think you’re not worthy enough to be seen or adored, therefore staying in a position that actively hurts you because it’s safe? Do you believe there’s room for all of us at the table and that the table can grow? Are you practicing self-care in order to properly practice community care?

If you are an elected/appointed leader, are you in the right place? Are you the right person or should you be mentoring other leaders to step into your place to serve the community with whatever is needed. Are you listening to the community and guiding them to the right place?

If you’re also a media/content makers, small shop owners and anyone else who influences how we see the cities and places that surround us — are you using the kinds of words and language that helps communities grow? Are you aware of class, ability, gender presentation and racial presentation distinctions that could be affecting how your message comes off and how effective and inclusive it is, for actual actions to happen?

Once again, I’ve been taking myself through these processes and questions where appropriate. I haven’t always answered these questions well and sometimes its even driven me to the point of violence. Also, I don’t have to speak of how conflicts of interest regularly arise even with my own home and with several of you who I consider close friends.

I want 2022 to be the year that we solve the joy equation in urbanism — not just with the spaces we physically create, but by the relationships we have with ourselves to activate and enhance and operate those spaces.

Will you join me?

Before You Go

I have updated my Patreon levelsto better match how I intend to do my work for 2022.

I will not be going away in January, but I will be spending more time in my fiber design studio, my video and media production studio and I welcome any and all compensated inquiries for keynote speeches in Covid-safe environments, facilitating workshops with people ready to make radical change, and folks who want to sponsor Open Studio with Kristen Jeffers or this year’s in-person Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit in October.

I am in conversations with a host committee and we will announce our schedule and where we will be in a few weeks.

Additionally, my book A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future is in manuscript edits and I’m still incubating the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School and Index with a goal to have all three of these projects premiere at this year’s October summit.

Finally, next week, I’ll be sharing some of my specific lessons learned, as we get to a two part 11th annual Urbanist Wishes! Also, for those of you wanting to purchase individual fiber objects, fiber lessons and some of my surface printed objects, I’ll be sharing more information on how that can happen, but if you can’t wait, feel free to pledge on Patreon at the Fiber Art Class or Endowment levels to receive singular or join access to those offerings along with Urbanist Study Hall, which is an automatic ticket to the summit and access to all prior training materials.

Until next time,

Kristen

P.S. What I mean when I call myself a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist.

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we pause to really think about what our work means for the world. Please support this work on Patreon and forward this to a a friend or colleague who would get value out of this email.

Becoming a land steward and finding a place that won’t evict in my darkest hour. Being the kind of fiber creator that builds up the community and doesn’t crash it down.

Those two sentences sum up how I feel around this weekend these days.

And I’m sure that’s you too, if you’ve been here with me long enough, especially over the last few weeks as I feel my prophetic fire rising back up around land use and stewardship, along with some of the things we extract from or on land, such as the fiber I love crafting objects out of.

This tweet, a call for mourning and celebration of overcoming what those of us who are Indigenous and Black most mourn over, is how I opened this weekend.

This email is how I’m closing it.

Everything we care about in land use and planning comes to a head this weekend.

Specifically these questions:

Why are we on this continent in the first place?

Is it because an ancestor was brought here against their will and enslaved?

Is it because an ancestor willingly brought people to colonize and/or enslave?

Is it because an elder or ancestor (or ourselves) came over for “opportunity”, in the shadows of those deprived of said “opportunity”?

Or, did they or you come over because there were truly no other choices because your home country decided you or they weren’t good enough?

Or were your ancestors here for so long, as land stewards and not as land grabbers, that there is no doubt that this is your true native land?

What is so-called America is not immune from any of these questions and those of us in the privileged positions today of being able to migrate and vacation and return to this (or any) continent is something we should use this time of year to zoom in on as land use “professionals”.

Whose land is it and how do we better steward the land that we have.

Before You Go

— On December 4th, I’ll be teaching my scarf making process at Sweat Pea Fiber in Hyattsville, Maryland. You can also catch me hanging out most Wednesdays at Sweet Pea Fiber for their craft night, happily supporting a urban craft community.

—I have finally settled on a new name for my show — Open Studio with Kristen Jeffers. Check out my latest episode with fellow Black Queer (NC Native) fiber crafter Brooke Addams as we talk being in the business and what our favorite things to craft are. This is another open episode, on the Kristpattern YouTube, and you can watch them all on Patreon, where you can support this work starting at $10 a month.

— What I mean when I call myself a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist.

Until next time,

Kristen