Kristen Jeffers has always been interested in how cities work. She’s also always loved writing things. She went off to a major state university, got a communication degree and then started a more professional Blogger site. Then, in her graduate seminar on urban politics, along with browsing the urbanist blogosphere, she realized that her ideas should have a stronger, clearer voice, one that reflects her identity as a Black southern woman. And with that The Black Urbanist blog was born. Seven years, one Twitter account, one self-published book, two podcasts and a litany of speeches and urban planning projects later, here we are.
Welcome to my Sunday newsletter! I call it the gentrification-defying front porch because this is my note where I share pictures and talk about my art projects and activities. It’s also a bit more stream-of-consciousness, and hopefully a lot of fun! If you want more art all the time, follow me at @kristpattern.
This week I’ve had to learn that it’s time to take up space and there’s a good way to be a queen bee, like, Yimbee! Yimbee made her debut at the Greater Greater Washington Spring Soree and she was a delightful surprise to everyone in attendance.
I was a little sad because in two weeks I will be an editor emeritus (for now), but I couldn’t help but see signs of my need to start taking up space and to own my Queen Bee status and be ok with being a blue chair in a brutalist space.
Being that blue chair in the past is what has allowed me to afford a life where I can swing on an adult-sized swing on the Wharf recreation pier in the middle of the day.
It’s helped me find a person who’s a bigger bookstore nerd than me.
And to rediscover textiles and fiber and to see the inspiration for my next chapter in lots of spaces
So I’m gathering my works in progress (WIP) and learning how to start smart.
I spent some time this week on a solo episode talking about my personal needs to defy gentrification. My hot topic is something I’ve been boiling over for decades, teen curfews.
Also, I apologize for the rough audio, I had to do another take and didn’t realize my mic wasn’t working well.
But, I figured out how to upload the main episode feed here with a transcript! However, I would love it if you still streamed on Apple and Spotify, to continue to grow my numbers and catch up on any episodes you may have missed! We are at 500 downloads and counting with a month into being back on the podcast mic! Also, please rate and review at those platforms as well.
Finally, if you want to upload the raw RSS feed into your favorite podcast player, you can do so as well.
Even though this was a rough week for me, I decided that I wanted to let you in a bit and drop a few moments of a chat on how gentrification compounds my grief. This is a raw edit with no full ad and no full segments, just me reflecting on how I've been grieving this week for years and how gentrification adds to that.Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast!Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack or on LinkedInYou can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.
Happy Sunday, y’all. It’s another fun time with me at the front porch, which is what I’m calling my essay posts these days, which you’ll see on Sundays. I started this email as a voice memo, which you can listen to below, and then afterward, read my more edited thoughts!
I took a moment to record the audio version after I’d just gotten done Instacarting. For those of you who were wondering well, how does the sausage get made over here at Kristen Jeffers Media these days?
I Instacart when I don’t have any big contracts, especially since the big contract’s moving away. But I would like to try to figure out how to exhibit more of my graphic design and art. I don’t think I have it in me to crochet for people, but I would like to one day have art in a gallery. More on that in a moment.
So I was having so much fun at the Frederick Fiber Festival on Saturday, April 27th. I forgot to take pictures of me having fun with everybody, but it was really good to see of course the Hayes’s and their booth and then meet the family of Black Purl Magic and of course see the lovely Cesium Yarn truck that I haven’t included a picture of here.
I stuck to a strict budget. So I picked up a little gauge winder off the Cesium truck, and then I picked up a mystery skein from Wool and Vinyl, which I’ve walked past every Frederick Fiber, but never stopped in.
I was just really impressed and really thrilled there were more food vendors this time around and a whole demonstration tent. I think I technically snuck into the festival. I mean, you know, it is what it is, uh, but as usual, Frederick Fiber making that drive even though it was pouring rain and it was cloudy and I wasn’t feeling myself, it was a good day.
But let me talk about a really good day. And that was Friday, which is where the photo opening this week’s post comes from.
I knew as soon as I saw Joyce Scott’s picture pop up at the March Creative Mornings, Baltimore, that I would be getting back in the car again, waking up early again, and driving up for this lecture in April, which was yesterday. And it was just a bearing of witness. I really did think looking at her, I saw myself in 30 years after I figured out my visual and performing art, after I figure out my body of work.
It was just delightful to get an opportunity to take this picture with her. She is a daughter of the great migration of Carolinians that moved North in the thirties. I moved myself North from North Carolina in 2015. Mask down on request in an empty room but for a good reason. To compare noses and see just how related we might be. But also another great opportunity to get more into the Baltimore creative scene, and see if it will in fact become home again.
Finally, Les and her brand new mint green sewing machine Janome Arctic Crystal are doing well. I’m really glad pillows will become her craft thing. And that we could easily pick up this machine from the Seven Corners JoAnn in Falls Church as soon as we got back from Frederick. It has a walking foot in the box. It has a buttonhole in the box. It has 15 stitches as well. It has a 25-year warranty.
Um, if something breaks on this thing, it’s either going back to Janome, or it’s going back to JoAnn. And then I’ll just play with my little Singer. Which is still a good machine, but I no longer feel that pressure for my machine to work perfectly.
And finally, finally, this week on the podcast, I had a wonderful time talking to Derek Moore and comparing my own notes about developing an urbanism interest while starting as community development and communication majors. And I scorched DC Chinatown and the fact that its actual Chinese folks have no grocery store and barely any restaurants left that speak to and truly honor the Asian community. Listen below on your favorite podcast platform.
On this episode of Defying Gentrification, I, your host Kristen Jeffers, talk to our first guest, Derek Moore, who came by to talk about their experiences with land use and gentrification. Stay tuned to the end to hear what I did after having this conversation! Plus our hot topic this week is how the remaining residents of Chinatown who are Chinese have to take a long bus ride to a grocery store that truly services them. I recorded that part at a store that serves the same role for me and reflect a bit on how that’s affected me over the years, as well as issue a call-to-action for the news site that it came from, as I usually do.
About our guest!
Derek Moore (he/they) is a Central West Baltimore-based Urban Planner and Non-Profit Development professional. He grew up in an Army family and has since lived in many cities across North America. Derek is a transportation advocate – co-founder of local urbanist group Friends of the Underground, Greening chair of Madison Park Improvement Association, and City and Regional Planning master’s student at Morgan State University.
Even though this was a rough week for me, I decided that I wanted to let you in a bit and drop a few moments of a chat on how gentrification compounds my grief. This is a raw edit with no full ad and no full segments, just me reflecting on how I've been grieving this week for years and how gentrification adds to that.Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast!Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack or on LinkedInYou can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.
Welcome to Kristen’s Gentrification Defying Front Porch (KGDFP)! On Sunday afternoons/evenings, you’ll find this essay of the week, my art/fiberworks in progress, and some of my other favorite things, distinct from my Ask Kristen Anything reminders/recaps on Monday and podcast release announcements on Friday, but I’ll do a little bit of that at the bottom of this email to make sure you’re caught up. The idea is that we’re sitting on my front porch and I’m telling you a story, plus sharing my studio progress, similar to how we do at a craft/makers night.
The LinkedIn and my website versions are always free, but if you believe in supporting marginalized creators working against erasure or you just want to buy me a monthly coffee, upgrading to paid here on Substack, and Patreon are great places to do that. Plus, my Bookshop store is always open and I get affiliate income from there.
And now our story of the week:
This sweater that I’m delighted to wear above was about to get frogged. For those of you unfamiliar with the fibercraft terminology, frogging is taking apart your knitted, woven, or crocheted object. When you pull out the stitch, to some, it makes a rumbling noise, not unlike a frog’s ribbet/croaking sound.
As y’all know, I’ve been feeling especially croaky lately. The day I caught COVID, January 19, I learned a major, much-coveted contract was ending.
Now things were getting rough, as I realized what my strengths are and aren’t when it comes to writing and editing. But I’ve welcomed the increased financial stability. Without that stability, I would not be standing where I am above. Well, maybe we would have come down there to visit, but it certainly wouldn’t have been my front yard!
Nearly a year ago, after coming home from seeing our current apartment for the first time, I conceived of this sweater, the Dreamcoat.
I would finish my coat, then stand exactly where I’m standing above in said Dreamcoat, defying gentrification and everything else that said that I couldn’t possibly be standing on that spot and that spot being my front yard.
The Washington Monument would poke out behind my head, as judgy as its namesake would be disgusted, by the idea that I would be far more than a slave wench. The waters would be cool and calm just to my left, the spirits of ancestors who couldn’t successfully make it to freedom on them, rising up and whispering congratulations to me on my little piece of liberation.
However, both of these yarns can be very difficult to crochet with, especially the Hometown. While I had the body of what you see above done, I was disappointed that there wasn’t enough green and enough length, along with having changed the shape of the coat too many times to count.
Not only was my Dreamcoat deferred, but my time thus far back in DC was also becoming a deferred dream. Yes, we got the apartment, but then the invoices fell. Getting paid to read the news couldn’t prevent me from absorbing how bad and challenging most of it was. My maker’s energy declined. Then my bodily energy.
A couple of trips here and there up to Baltimore and down to Greensboro and Durham would juice it up, but I was just down bad.
~
I’ve been a fan of Regina Anaejionu’s work for years and had signed up for her thought leadership class in early 2023, but I didn’t attend live. Later on in the fall, I decided to dust off my book proposal idea for a book on my changing urbanist theories, and when her self-publishing class for thought leaders popped up in November, I quickly put money down for it.
What resulted was the realization that I needed to embrace the most searchable, most “explain like I’m five” part of my urbanism work — the concept of gentrification.
I’ve always wanted gentrification to not be true or be totally defyable, but that’s not the case whatsoever.
As I’ve prepared my workbook, then course, then podcast, it’s become even more clear that gentrification needs to be defied and eradicated.
In addition, I had so much idle time as I recovered from acute COVID through January and February, to really think about my next financial steps, while living in one of the largest examples of urban renewal(which often begets gentrification) in the United States.
The brutalist, “urban renewed” part of the Southwest waterfront that we don’t hang out in, but it was once residences. For what it’s worth, An inline McDonald’s is behind me, but not much else that’s consistently vibrant.
And with the advent of this podcast, things have started to bloom out of the darkness.
Yep, literally blooming in the dark on the Wharf!
Podcasting has always been a good medium for me, but needing to process writing the news every morning has kept me from dabbling the way I want to and caused me to pause a couple of attempts over the past few years.
Plus, the AI that’s going into podcasting is working in my favor so far, by helping me edit faster, and not lose audio or forget to post on a particular network.
Another turning point was a couple of Fridays ago when I met an old friend from NC for morning tea. I was able to be transparent to someone who thankfully is in another sector of this kind of work here in DC and one that doesn’t fear it or question my approaches to my work.
Then, I came home and changed clothes because it got suddenly sunny and warmer and I decided to try on the sweater again.
All of that healing energy of the day gave me just enough spoons to attach the button on the same night I bought it! Then after taking this picture above, I went out the next day and got a taller ironing board after going to one Walmart and two Targets. I traced this pattern piece onto parchment after cutting most of the main tissue paper!:
This dress is going to be red and black in honor of my Wolfpack. I am due back on campus soon to meet alumni, and this will be a perfect strutting around Raleigh as a future Distinguished Alumnae.
——
All of this, plus the eclipse and being in eyesight of it, has me reflecting on how I really was out suppressing my professional voice but now, this podcast is bringing it back in a very special way, along with getting back to not just fibercraft, but drawing my book characters from elementary school, and reaching out to others in the business of defying and eradicating gentrification boldly.
I’m thankful I yielded to my inner calling to lean into my art — all of it, accumulated over my nearly 38 years of crafting and shaping.
So, this week on the podcast, I’m talking about the pipeline from urban renewal to gentrification and highlighting an article from The Assembly on how the current lieutenant governor’s wife has given up her job and money and help to lots of needy families, to make herself look more Republican. I tie that into how Black women shouldn’t be giving up their dignity and lives for the will of a state that will never take care of them.
Shop in my Bookshop to support the show and consider becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon or Substack!
And join me at noon eastern every Monday for Ask Kristen Anything About Gentrification, my live stream where I answer your questions. Feel free to reply back with your questions or register below at the StreamYard link so I can put the question right on the screen.
The live stream will be live on all of my social media accounts that allow me to stream and if you miss it live, don’t worry, I’ll email you on Monday afternoons with the stream recap.
On this episode of Defying Gentrification, I, your host Kristen Jeffers (she/they) clarify that gentrification is not a remedy for urban renewal, it’s the continuation of urban renewal, land theft and seizure, forced assimilation, and redlining.
And on my street corner this week, I urge Black women to answer the call for liberation, especially when we are given positions of power, and to do our best to not let it kill us, and honor the memories of those that we have lost to the system despite being in its power structure.
The full article from the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook on urban renewal — https://inclusivehistorian.com/urban-renewal/#:~:text=Urban%20renewal%20is%20the%20process,HUD)%20grant%20and%20loan%20program
On the third episode of the Defying Gentrification podcast, I, your host Kristen Jeffers (she/they), spell out why we need to treat gentrification like a disease and eradicate it.
But first, on our street corner, the hot topic is the need to call in our Black siblings who think that verbal transit and street harassment, especially the queer antagonistic kind is ok, the need to care for our communities over policing them when they err in this manner and why we should continue to support public transportation, not eradicate it in these moments.
don’t forget to rate and review, and join me live on all social media streaming platforms at noon on Mondays to ask me anything about the episode and anything gentrification-related!
Read my tweet about this situation. (CW: The recording incident discussed is in this tweet, which I quote tweeted)
More police won't prevent this. We need to have a real conversation about queerphobia and how intersects with racism and classism in the Black community. https://t.co/LeE7ylfvgd
— Kristen Jeffers, MPA ✊🏽🌈 (she/they) (@blackurbanist) April 8, 2024
(Also I misstated in the audio that the couple who intervened was heading from Silver Spring, they were heading from Dupont Circle, one of our legacy gayborhoods, to Silver Spring, Maryland)
Welcome to Defying Gentrification, Crafting Liberation, the newsletter of me, Kristen Jeffers. A Black, queer, feminist, disabled, urbanist elder millennial (born 1985) from Greensboro, North Carolina USA, who lives in Southwest Washington, DC.
This newsletter is my personal letter opening you up to how I crusade for a better living environment and my love for fiber craft. This week, I’m proud to present the return of my podcasting career, Defying Gentrification. And yes, I had some time to do some crafting this week, but we’ll get to that at the end of this email.
The first time I ever created an audio project, was with my parent’s sliver cassette tape recorder and a blank cassette tape.
Theirs looked enough like the Talkboy recorder from Home Alone that even though I didn’t have one of my own, I relished being able to use theirs when they weren’t using it to tape me at elementary school concerts and their sermons at church.
I was a huge fan of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Lynne Thigpen’s Chief character. I took all that to create a character I called the Snooper.
I basically sang a couple of songs and solved a couple of mysteries with my stuffed animals in a nasally voice. As a child (and sometimes when I feel down), I hated my nose, but it came in handy with my Snooper character, since I needed to sniff out crime.
Yes, this was also the era of Urkel and that’s also what it sounded like.
Fast forward and I’ve managed to casually find my way to WKNC-FM 88.1 through the legacy of an uncle who was one of the first Black DJs on the station and an ex who loved smooth jazz just as much as me. The fact that I’m in the WKNC history books is just icing on the cake, especially as I watch my Wolfpack basketball teams take on the Final Four for the first time ever together and the first time in at least 25-41 years.
And of course, many of you remember and loved The Black Urbanist Radio Show and Third Wave Urbanism. Me too, but technology and conflicts were a barrier.
But now I bring you Defying Gentrification. Technology has caught up with me, and I realized you still deserved and wanted to hear my voice despite a couple of glitches in these first two episodes:
On this inaugural episode of the Defying Gentrification podcast, take you to school in our homeroom to learn exactly what is gentrification, and why should it be defied and eradicated.
But first, on our street corner, the hot topic is how not to leave Baltimoreans of color behind in the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge tragedy, as well as honor their competence in leadership during disaster situations.
In this episode, Kristen takes us to school and breaks down who gets to defy gentrification. Spoiler alert, It is those who have been colonized, which generally are indigenous populations of color.
Also, on the Street Corner, the hot topic is both the Kansas City and Washington DC stadium/arena deals and how they are different.
Do you want to be a guest on Defying Gentrification? Fill out this form and it will get you scheduled on my recording calendar. I’ll then send the details you need to get set up to record.
Finally, the Defying Gentrification Fellowship doors open this Monday and paid subscribers on this platform and Patreon will get those materials here. You can also join on its main platform at Podia, where podcast archives will also live. I’ll also be including a special Monday note for folks, along with this Friday podcast launch note.
And one more thing. In honor of that cute photo of me above and the Men’s and Women’s Final Four, here’s a playlist of my favorite songs of my undergraduate years (2004-2007), which I’m continuing to update throughout the weekend.
The state of my union is good, but it could be great.
Welcome to Defying Gentrification, Crafting Liberation, the newsletter of me, Kristen Jeffers. A Black, queer, feminist, disabled, urbanist elder millennial (born 1985) from Greensboro, North Carolina USA, who lives in Southwest Washington, DC.
This newsletter is my personal letter opening you up to how I crusade for a better living environment and my love for fiber craft. This week, I am using the US President’s annual State of the Union speech to reflect on my own state AND invite you to join my new initiatives, which are now open for registration. And yes, I had some time to do some crafting this week, but we’ll get to that in the middle this email.
So what is the state of my union, my life, my body in these times?
This week, it’s grief. And yes, all of the stages are a circle, a sphere even.
My dad would have been 64 today. For 11 years, he hasn’t been here to celebrate me or himself. He was proud of being born in the year of the Greensboro Woolworth Sit-in. We had a regular booth at the Stamey’s on High Point Road (now Gate City Boulevard) next to the Greensboro Coliseum, where we would discuss local and state politics the way many are discussing last night’s State of the Union and all the responses.
If he were here today, I would be at home this week, sitting in that booth, or maybe outside on our porch with takeout because like many Southern fast-food establishments, you’re eating in places that wouldn’t have let you sit in them because of your Blackness many years ago and others that wish you would take your trans, queer, and dare I say feminism outside today.
And don’t get me started on air purification. You definitely smelled the pig smoker and the cigarette smoke from the smoking section in that Stamey’s then and the windows open would just kill any attempts to mitigate our southern humidity and blankets of yellow pollen indoors.
But wherever we would be sitting, I would be bringing up the fact that Biden had a few sick burns (give this man all of his potato chips!). But, Palestine and all the unnamed countries that are under genocide, many because of our military and economic interests, were not adequately mentioned or honored.
COVID is not over. My stomach and eye twitch, for which I have to take an antacid and an allergy pill at night to keep at bay, would like to have a word with the president. I know Biden would be angry if I told him he was an overgrown bag of malarkey because he was coughing and stuttering through his speech. But, I feel like he would call me a bag of malarkey because I still mask and I am asking that everyone remember all forms of mitigation, especially air purification and testing if they aren’t going to cover their faces.
Oh, and I don’t remember hearing a thing about student loan forgiveness and a true Medicaid for All.
But then, I would turn my phone to Dad, show him this Instagram post:
It’s been long enough ago that I can’t say what he would say, but his spirit and ancestry that runs through me radicalized at losing him the way we did, tells me that I need to do everything I can.
And, I would tell him that picture of the Waffle House in Home Depot is real, somewhere ;).
All jokes aside, it’s my great pleasure to open up the registration for the Defying Gentrification Fellowship
The fellowship will entail:
One week of lunchtime ( 11 am – 1 pm Eastern Daylight Time) lecture sessions and Q&A on the three key ways to defy gentrification from April 1-5 2024. These will be recorded and available to you in our Podia portal.
Exercises to help you craft your plan to defy gentrification
Reading materials to help you understand what gentrification really is and why we must defy, then eradicate it for all humans to thrive on the Earth.
One post-lecture 90-minute strategy session
Ongoing alumni group virtual and possibly in-person meetups, to aid in your quest for success in defying gentrification and see if you’re ready to move into our ambassadorship program, where you will have even more time with me to eradicate gentrification. I didn’t want to put that on you just yet, because I know you do a lot of this work already, but you don’t always have space to process.
This fellowship is for:
People of the African diaspora, namely those who have been a victim of gentrification-related displacement, harassment, and cultural erasure who need a place to process and heal.
People of the global majority (non-white folks) who have been roped into gentrification schemes, but want to do right by their communities. However, this first cohort will focus specifically on the experiences of those in the African Diaspora in the (so-called) Americas and other English-speaking countries and you may want to wait for a future cohort where we focus more on your experiences and have mentors and leaders with that lived experience. However, I’d love to have you too, to help us shape a lot of the decolonial topics and praxis we will be shaping together, but you may not feel like you learned anything. You will get one-on-one time with me and a network of like-minded peers, so do consider joining us.
Investment in yourself and our journey: Each course is $695 for the inaugural section with an optional 12-month payment plan of $59. If you pay in full before April 1, you will receive a bonus one-on-one planning session with Kristen, in addition to your post-launch week strategy session.
We will have a formal scholarship plan in future cohorts and we will open them up to more people, but for now, I’m aiming for 10 people who can make this kind of investment with me, so I can see what it would take to make this kind of training, not only sustainable but a very competitive and affirming alternative to some of our professional certifications and training courses, as well as college curriculums. Register here:
(You can also add yourself to our waitlist if slots are already full at the link above)
Feel free to comment or reply back if you have any questions. Next week, I’ll be back in your inbox with details about our Eradicating Gentrification Ambassadorship. Yes, I’ve shifted focus on that one a little bit, because I believe in us and what we are capable of doing.
Now, before you go, some pictures of my craftiness this week.
I bought this last Friday night when JoAnn had all the McCalls pattern on sale for 1.99. I had plans to whip up a velvet remnant, but don’t give up on me yet. I got some mechanical pencils so I can trace patterns properly and I’m doing a spreadsheet to inventory my patterns while the numbers are small. Oh, and I went to a new craft night, but forgot to take a picture there!
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