Hey y’all, Kristen here and this is my monthly newsletter. I used to write longer ones, but if you’ve read any of the past few issues, you’ll know that this year has been a transitional year in my ability to write. However, I always have a story to tell and in December, I always make wishes. I made several global and personal ones this year. Make sure you’re subscribed so you never miss a note from my Black queer feminist urbanist perspective, I have a big announcement about tomorrow’s originally scheduled book launch webinar, which is now postponed until January 4.
So, what are my global wishes this year? The ones I’m spreading out to the world?
End empires and transition into land stewardship and equitable, just commerce with reparations. And yes, prison abolition.
Fund housing, healthcare, public schools, libraries, and public transportation.
Honor the best and hold space for the grief of everyone.
Quality ventilation and flexibility to continue to eradicate and reduce risks related to pandemics.
And when I turn inward, what do I really want for me?
Funding to make this newsletter a comprehensive publication focused on defying gentrification through Black Queer Feminist Accessible urbanism
Funding and successful execution for my downtown DC yarn festival in the fall of 2024.
Funding to strengthen the research and underpin the K. Jeffers Index and Center for Black Queer Accessible Feminist Urbanism
Shaking off my tax, student loan, and consumer debt
Continued stable health and love from my partner, friends, and natal family.
And finally, my biggest wish of all is for patience as I continue to work on my upcoming workbook. I’ve decided to postpone tomorrow’s book launch webinar until January 4. As much as I would have loved to launch my book on my 38th birthday and get all of your pre-orders, instead, tomorrow I’ll be waking up, doing a little bit of client work, and finishing my birthday sweater while wearing the other sweater I finished, which will be the perfect wearable blanket on a chilly December day like tomorrow here in DC.
Plus, for my astrology heads out there, you might have heard that Mercury is in Retrograde, and if you’re really deep into it, my moon is in Capricorn (in both tropical and sidereal) and of course, my sun is in Sagittarius (Scorpio)
Not that I’m superstitious, but I have felt myself slowing down and I’ve noticed a lot of glitching in my electronics and work lately, as well as my body glitching. Yes, I might be a little outside, but I’m achy already and trying to avoid one of these still circulating cases of COVID. Plus, my insurance changed and it did so before I could get a booster shot. And you see my Instagram stories. I’m doing my best to share folks on the ground in all of our war-torn areas and insist my own country step away from war as an industry and instead invest in peaceful pursuits and the wellbeing of its people.
Anyway, much like I had extended time during the Thanksgiving holiday to write, I will during the Christmas and Kwanzaa one as well, while I rest through the remainder of the Chanukah one.
Finally, If you still want to give me a birthday (or holiday) present, feel free to Venmo me at Kristen-Jeffers-3 or you can become a paid Substack subscriber! Annual subscriptions are only $60 now, and it’s a great way to keep me going.
Welcome to my monthly newsletter for November of 2023. If this is your first time here, I’m Kristen Jeffers, a Greensboro, NC-born, Southwest Washington, DC resident who is proudly Black, queer, feminist, chronically ill and an urbanist. For over 13 years I’ve brought my expertise in media, urban planning, nonprofit management, and being a decent human in urban areas to the internet, as well as in real life to universities, professional organizations, social service organizations, and community groups for over a decade and a half.
If you’ve been here before, you know that I usually chock these emails full of information. However, this week, I have a very big announcement and less information, but I’ll be back on my birthday, December 14, with more details and a proper pre-order link for my next book (register for our launch webinar) as well as my annual urbanism wish list. I’ll still be including a few things I want to make sure you pay attention to, but after a check to make sure you’re subscribed, a story and reflection on how I defy gentrification.
Storytime
When I wake up in the morning and look outside of my window at a multi-million dollar condo building, with a slither of the waterfront we face reflecting upon both of our buildings, I feel what it feels like to defy gentrification.
When I walk down on the sidewalk in the middle of the morning, fresh off of editing a batch of Breakfast Links, and head to District Doughnuts to get some actual breakfast, in my I Am a Black Urbanist sweatshirt, I feel what it feels like to defy gentrification.
Oh and let me not forget this moment of defiance. When I went to the Wharf CVS and bought the only Black Mrs. Claus and put her in our window, since we’re one, supposedly scarring some of the neighbors with our bodies (ok, maybe not us, but we did get an email telling us to close our windows even though that building has window walls around every unit), and two, we can’t hang signs. She is holding some greenery that lights up, but when people look in, they see her, with the judgiest of looks, asking them to reconsider what’s possible, not just for urbanism, but for life.
But in all of this bougieness, the reality sets in. I’m one of the estimated 82,000 housing insecure people named in this recent Urban Institute study, on housing insecurity in the District.
Let me say right now that Les is doing great. She is not struggling. She is thriving. However, if I stop getting paid, then she is struggling, because we are a unit. This is my first year making over $40,000 pre-tax. Yes, ever. And yes, I checked my Social Security records.
Because of those facts, many of y’all think that the way I should be defying gentrification is to do one of the following:
— Get a minority supplier certification, so I can be a sub (and only a sub) contractor on a project plan that may never come to fruition, leaving more people without transit and homeless, TODAY, when the rent is due and the sheriff is sitting outside of the door and the job requires you to clock in with your fingers at 8:00 am sharp, even though your bus was a ghost after all.
— Forget about said people because the Lord has blessed me to be in this home, and to be in rooms with high people, so I should close the door behind me. Note, if I had done this, you wouldn’t even know the names of some of your favorite urbanists!
— Speaking of those urbanists, we should all stop wasting time on calling out and dismantling food insecurity, homelessness, public health crises, colonialism, and warmongering, because urbanism is just transportation, luxury apartments, and fancy stores, hotels, and restaurants in mixed-use configurations.
Yeah, none of this in the least is defying gentrification. And by the way, gentrification shouldn’t exist.
And finally, after 13 years of writing through my defiance, I’m ready to share my playbook, specifically for Black women, nonbinary, and LGBTQ folks, with something for everyone who wants to ensure that nobody on this Earth is left behind and constantly fighting against the eradication of their homes and communities.
It also has wisdom for those of you who we need to help us defy and eradicate gentrification because this is a team effort.
So, this isn’t exactly the full-sized memoir-manifesto, that’s still coming. However, I’m ready to talk and train folks through these thoughts and issues. This will help me to build a more comprehensive memoir manifesto, with real examples besides myself, of how we defy and eradicate gentrification so that everyone gets a chance to live where they want to live, how they want to live, but we honor the one Earth we have.
Also, you will notice that this email is open to everyone and it’s also on LinkedIn and Medium as well. I realize that those platforms are key places where I can provide a virutal “front porch” experience to people, while I work on inviting them into the house that is what will become the K. Jeffers Center for Black Queer Feminist Accessible Urbanism.
Defying Gentrification: A Black Queer Accessible Feminist Urbanist Playbook for Ending Displacement
If you already know you want to partner with me to bring this material to your school, job, house of faith, organization, or family, go ahead and reply to this message or email me kristen@theblackurbanist.com, so we can set up bulk orders. Bookstores, likewise, this workbook will have an ISBN and that information will be released on December 14.
— I am in full support of ending imperialism and warmongering worldwide. Follow the stories of my Instagram accountwhere I regularly amplify people across the globe with the same pursuit. Also, I want to specifically amplify APA New York DivComm’s statement on Palestine, Black Feminist Future’s panel on Black feminist solidarities across the countries in the most crisis at the moment, and YK Hong’s Instagram and work on ending all empires and tech justice.
— Another dope Black DC entrepreneur defying gentrification in her own way, with coffee!
Welcome to my new front yard! Yep, almost seven years to the first time I moved to DC, I’ve returned, with Les in tow! Also, Saturday was her birthday and this was her birthday breakfast!
Welcome back to The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen (she/they), a DC-based born-and-raised North Carolinian, who’s proudly Black, Queer, Feminist, Dynamically Disabled, and Urbanist.
This is a freemium newsletter, where subscriptions open up comments and archives, delve deeper into policy descriptions, and get more information about my favorite pieces of pop culture. However, scholarships exist! Reply back to this email and I’ll send you information about how to get one if you’re eligible! This edition, because it’s special, will be open to everyone, but the next dispatch will begin our freemium model.
We start off with a reflection from me Kristen, then go into our policy prescription, my pop culture faves, and then job and opportunity announcements.
Kristen’s Reflection of the Week — Seven Years a Washingtonian(ish)
The view out of my window in Kansas City; the original floor at MCI, the original gate 41 with my plane ready to take me to DC
This was what my morning looked like exactly seven years ago. To many, it just looks like I am moving from one place to another. But this is a bigger move. Seven years ago today, I chose to move to a place not because of a person or job, but because it was a place I wanted to be and create community. How has that gone for me in the past seven years?
So, when I arrived in DC on the afternoon of September 19, 2016, it was an overcast day. The cloud of the 2016 election was looming too, but I think I was very optimistic. I was one of the first people to start crying the night of November 8, 2016, at the watch party at the neighborhood bar and all I could do on the walk home was gripe about how I needed to move out of the country and fast. Never mind I just did a major cross-country move…
I spent all of November 9 in my perfectly apportioned basement apartment. That day was cloudy and rainy too, but it didn’t matter because all I had was a tiny window. I stayed in my bed, besides going into my tiny kitchen to cook myself meals and using my bathroom. I rationalized as a not quite out Black queer person it would only be a matter of time before we were bombed and I would be trapped under the rubble or I would be saved because I was living under the ground or that the feds in this new conservative regime would be knocking on the door to take me to jail.
So, none of that actually happened. In fact, just days later, I gathered with other equity and justice-minded transportation advocates in Atlanta and while we were facing challenges, we resolved to be the solution for everyone, not just ourselves and those who have the most power.
This selfie captured just a smidgen of joy on Nedra’s special bike tour of Atlanta with my comrades! Also, happy 10th anniversary Civil Bikes!
And over the next seven years I traveled and spoke on stages all over the country.
Judgy looking professor aside, I was thrilled to address students at Columbia University earlier this year! Especially in my mask and dress I crocheted!
I’ve written this newsletter made lots of friends and strengthened a few friendships. Others fell away.
My friends in Baltimore are the best. This is Lacey’s couch and you’ve seen way too many pictures of me and Jerome, but trust and believe more are coming with me, Lacey, Jerome and of course Les.
I’ve lived in all kinds of neighborhoods throughout DC, PG County Maryland, and Baltimore. And yes, y’all know that I fell in love with a fellow Black queer feminist urbanist.
Ok, don’t cancel us for this moment during this year’s pride at this step and repeat, the masks went right back on and we tested negative and sat in the balcony with that fan! Also, shout out to Ndambi Solomon who shot us at the District of Pride celebration at Lincoln Theater.
Today, we are called to do the right thing when it comes to stewarding our Earth and creating a world that honors all of our abilities and deems all of us worthy of life. Who’s ready to come on that journey with me?
This was yesterday when I took this Lime down the street from our new apartment to meet Les for lunch in the plaza next to her work building! Yes, that was me!
So under our new freemium format, everything after this short outline of what’s next in the newsletter is behind a paywall. But today, I wanted you to get a preview of what you’ll get, so, here’s what’s coming next in the newsletter, then after the outline the full text of what’s next.
— Policy Prescription—What this section, formally known as the Principle Corner will look like in the coming weeks.
—By The Way — Still including links, namely that yes, the housing boom in DC is real and valid, plus, why I totally would have welcomed a relocation bonus, but why I haven’t taken one.
— On the Shelf, On the Playlist — The adorable queer urbanism of One Last Stop, plus how I see Veronica O. Davis’s Inclusive Transportation as continuing the charges we made at that 2016 Untokening conference.
— Before You Go — This will look like a final reminder of what we have for sale in future emails for paid subscribers, but for free subscribers, it will be as follows:
Consider this job advertisement from the University of California San Diego…Thanks again for supporting our work and thinking of us as a place to find your next set of colleagues!
UC San Diego: Assistant Professor in Urban Studies and Planning
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor working in the area of urban studies and planning, anticipated to begin July 1, 2024.
USP is a rapidly-growing department with strategic emphases on social and spatial justice; climate justice; and multinational planning. The selected candidate will be expected to contribute to our mission by building and maintaining a record of high-quality scholarship in transportation planning and/or spatial analytics; developing curriculum to meet department needs; mentoring and teaching graduate and undergraduate students, including teaching courses in quantitative methods; and engaging in university and public service to help build an equitable and diverse environment.
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $109,600-$132,200. The posted UC Academic salary scales set the minimum pay as determined by rank and/or step at appointment. See the following table(s) for the salary scale(s) for this position: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/2023-24/oct-2023-acad-salary-scales/t1.pdf. The base salary range, from the salary table(s), for this position is $74,600-$97,200. “Off-scale salaries” and other components of pay, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions, qualifications, and experience. Additional UCSD salary information can be found here: https://aps.ucsd.edu/compensation/apo-salary.html
APPLICATION WINDOW
Open date: September 14, 2023
Next review date: Saturday, Oct 14, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time) Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Sunday, Mar 31, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time) Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.
QUALIFICATIONS
Basic qualifications (required at time of application)
A Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning or a closely related field, or one who is in the all-but-dissertation stage of earning the PhD.
Additional qualifications (required at time of start)
Must hold a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning or related field by start date of appointment as Assistant Professor.
The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
And yes, that’s a brand new hoodie and there’s more new The Black Urbanist merch to come! You can find the store at www.kristpattern.com/blackurbanist.
This Week’s Policy Prescription
Yes, it makes a difference where you live. There is an urban hierarchy. I wanted to think otherwise and that’s another reason I’m re-writing and re-issuing my original book. It’s also the reason that this process has taken nearly a decade to do because I needed to live out my hypothesis. There’s only so much good that comes from hot urbanist takes and I’m ready to start writing prescriptions for what we best can do.
This week, I encourage you to examine where you live and why. Are you there by choice? Do others have similar choices? In the future, this section, which will be behind the paywall, will delve even deeper into my policy logic models, previewing several concepts that will be showing up in future master classes and my new book.
By the Way
So, if you saw my IG post before you saw this newsletter or if you read the photo captions, you’ll know that yet again, I’ve moved to a new home. Something about all my leases ending or renewing around this time of year. I have to thank the will to build more housing and to create an inclusionary zoning policy that works here in DC. A recent study that digs deeper into that.
And, so many of these relocation bonuses are so attractive, but they are often asking people, especially people from groups often discriminated against, to go into areas that may or may not accept them as new arrivals, either through these new laws criminalizing trans and queer identities or continuing to terrorize Black people of all kinds. I would love to see more of these programs consider racial and gender justice, along with disability justice, in how they administer these programs and encourage the community to welcome newcomers.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
So I very rarely have time to sit and read full books. That was part of the reason I went on this sudden sabbatical, because I missed the point of burnout. While I was resting and resetting and packing up our old apartment, Casey McQuison’s One Last Stop caught my eye. I’ll eventually read their more popular first book Red, White and Royal Blue, but the hard copy of this book that’s coming out with a bonus chapter, about a couple that’s semi-stuck on a Q train in New York City is just delightfully queer, racially diverse and yes, urbanist, feminist and size-inclusive. The first edition is It’s now in my Bookshop store and I encourage you to also read more books!
And yes, Inclusive Transportation! It’s short, it’s too the point and it goes back to what I talked about at the top of the email with the Untokening and how many of us have taken action to change our story since we all convened in 2016 that first time.
I’ve listened to so much good music over my break. Highlights have been Jon Batise’s new record, Rhiannon Giddens’ new record, and new to us but released in 2021’s Sam Sparro record. Oh and Jessie Ware came out with her new one before I went on hiatus, but it’s also a great bop!
Before You Go
Finally, the person I hired over the summer encouraged me to keep the funds for paying them and focus on fundraising. Plus, I realized just how much I needed to change neighborhoods and redirect that savings there. However, I want to thank everyone who applied for my job posting back in June. Your information is on file and trust me, when I get the funding to hire, many of you are first on the list. You wrote such thoughtful and robust cover letters and you have excellent resumes. Hopefully, you’re not still available, but if you are, I do still want to be helpful, but I want to pay fairly.
And that’s where everyone else comes in. Going paid on this newsletter for $9.99 USD monthly will help me do just that, open up doors for other talented individuals who want to work with me and the kinds of policies and research and work I’m doing to make it stronger and widespread. That’s one of my mandates, besides doing my part to save the world. Also, going paid helps me keep a decent work/life balance, one that’s not at the mercy of my client base and their funding and fiscal years. Finally, if you sign up for an annual subscription, you’ll get free access to the full masterclass, a signed copy of my book, and a merch prize pack, customized to the slogan that’s most appropriate to you of our merch over at the Kristpattern store.
You can also continue to take out classified ads, not just for jobs, but the job ads are great and will remain free.
Finally, thanks to all of you for your patience as I sorted out all of this. I thought today would be the perfect day to return because today represents to me everything that this work is all about — sharing why I as a Black queer disabled feminist continue to choose dense urban spaces and how we can tackle the problems keeping others from doing so with just and equitable solutions.
We will be resuming a regular Friday schedule again on 9/29/2023 with our partial paywall in place!
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we usually have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. You can read all archives right here, on my homepage of our normal format. We also normally drop on Fridays.
However, you might have noticed we skipped a week and a couple of days. I injured my back on Juneteenth and took this as a reminder that I need to get back on my personal Nap Ministry, especially if I want to model better systems for us.
So, I found an assistant. Thanks to everyone who applied! Several of you will be hearing from me about future opportunities as I raise money and ramp up my business activities. I’ll also share who that person is in a future email.
Second, so I can work on these special projects and create the new systems I want to create with this assistant AND REST MY BACK, we will be biweekly through July and August. We’ll be working together to pack these emails + an audio/video component, with lots of great stories from me and useful information. They’ll also help me get my book ready, so you’ll finally get that in your hands.
You can support our efforts by making a pledge on Patreon or upgrading to paid on Substack.
So, after today, I won’t see you again in my inbox until around July 28th, as we continue our summer schedule. And now, my story of the week, my principle of the week, and my favorite pop culture things of the week.
Story of the Week: I Went Home Again
Let me repeat this, I went home again.
But Kristen, weren’t you just in North Carolina?
Yes, and we do tend to clump together in a group when we see each other in the wild. The day before I got on the road, I almost tapped a Black man on his shoulder who was decked out in UNC-Chapell Hill gear on the Metro to see how well he was adjusting to DC.
However, I was running late to a meeting and I didn’t want to throw him off or assume that just because he had on his hat and lanyard, he would also want to talk trash about our opposite Tobacco Road sports teams, but also how being in DC is both a blessing and a curse, in a specific way Black millennials from NC discuss these things.
Alas, I stepped back, but in just a matter of hours, I would once again cross the threshold into the Old North State, with the goal of briefly coming out of my bunker to reconnect with family.
This was Les’s first time meeting my mom and several of my Dad’s siblings, nieces, nephews, and some folks from their church community. After my sibling-cousin’s baby shower, I had no real concrete plans, besides maybe returning to our textile-history-themed hotel that popped up since the pandemic started or taking her to our Barnes and Noble, so she could understand why it’s far less superior than Borders was.
But, my muscle memory took us from Guilford College Road to Friendly Avenue, down Friendly to the base of the now Lincoln Financial building, past the northern edge of UNCG’s campus and past the shopping center, then looping Elm Street thinking I was going to do a Battleground Avenue odyssey, but instead, I saw the open light in Gate City Yarns.
The last time I was there about a decade ago, I could barely make a crochet chain. However, they fed my soon-to-return tabletop loom habit and I wanted to see if they had changed since I’ve now become quite the yarn snob. Especially since they were open late on a Saturday! I needed to quickly find a parking space, so I could see if going to my local yarn shop again would actually be positive.
It exceeded expectations. Same with chilling inside Scuppernong Books, eating at Crafted, walking down Elm to find that most of our street mural from 2013 that was supposed to have been erased years ago was still there (it is!), seeing the new configuration of LeBauer Park and Tanger Center and stopping by my mom’s to grab a few things the next day in route back to DC.
My heart is overflowing and I can’t wait to go home again.
Plus, I learned in researching this post, that it was an editor who attached the idea of Thomas Wolfe never going home again, to his work posthumously. The real story of Thomas Wolfe is something I’ll save for another day, but I’ll end my story with a very happy ending, that in many cases, home is ready. Give it time, but in its own way, it’s ready.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
So with the flowery reflection out of the way, this wouldn’t be a post or newsletter about Greensboro, if I didn’t give y’all a little tough love on what do you need to do to make sure you stay golden for me, Les, and anyone else both visiting and living there:
— Pilot a sliding scale inclusionary zoning program city-wide, especially as you increase missing-middle housing the way you’re doing on Friendly Avenue in front of Friendly Center.
Additionally, housing should be offered based on our ACTUAL median income, not a desired median income for the pumping up of tax revenue. Plus, Greensboro is affordable now, but it won’t be for folks still making North Carolina’s pitiful minimum wage and in many ways, it isn’t affordable for those making North Carolina’s pitiful minimum wage.
Everyone deserves free, frequent bus service, not just those who have the money and time to spend at the downtown businesses. I’m also excited to hear that the Piedmont train has added headways to and from Raleigh and Charlotte. No, there’s not a lot of car traffic, but there could be even less and Greensboro could be one of the first cities of its size to reduce the need for cars to get to necessary services.
— Move social service and key survival institutions back downtown.
This would be a huge catalyst for getting us to car-lite because a good chunk of existing bus usage is to these major services that provide a safety net for those with lower incomes and less opportunities.
When I was a kid in the 1990s, I would go with my parents to the Melvin Municipal Building for a number of things, like paying the water bill or other city taxes. In addition, the health department was downtown along with a number of regional charities AND the Greensboro Record Center, where Scuppernong Books is now (they could sell more records!).
The vacated News-and-Record Building (another public service that should return downtown), could become a mid-rise complex of sliding-scale housing and 24-hour service centers for bill-paying, healthcare, and other major needs. The office complexes and hospital centers in other parts of town could still be there for specialists, but the emergency services apparatus should be connected to the central point of the public transit system. We should also not shame folks who need to use public transit to access these services. If we can go downtown for local businesses and public arts, we can go downtown for public services.
Or another option is to do as we’ve started to do in the DC region and build out multiple nodes of central resources at different price points in each quadrant of the city. We were kind of doing that along our corridors, but corridors aren’t as walkable as blocks.
I have faith that these things are doable and folks want to do those things. Outside of me encouraging everyone to continue to take COVID and their health in general seriously, let’s all keep working together to make Greensboro even better.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I have to be honest, I’m disappointed that I didn’t make it to the 100 list on Planetizen. I know, as one of my LinkedIn commenters said “It’s silly to rank people”. I know, that only 920 people voted and some votes were eliminated because of being duplicates (something that wasn’t clear in the voting process was not allowed), and Jane Jacobs has a chokehold on those 920 voters, despite all the raised awareness that she’s not the business. I also realize in the final tally there are no Black Americans in the top 25. And yes, I made it into the top 200 in the first place, only one of a handful of nonbinary folks (or am I counted under the 15 women of color, not quite sure here).
But in this capitalistic system, namely our urbanist capitalistic system, you’re only as good as your last tweet thread or these rankings. Hence one reason I’m anti-capitalist; because this isn’t fair. In the previous section, I linked to one of my five-year-old posts that’s still true. And maybe it’s too truthful because it questions capitalistic logic.
Plus, I could make a list of 200 Black Urbanists and not even scratch the surface of how many Black folks hold down their various communities all over the world. And yes, to the Instagram commenter who said that we need to make our own lists, I see you and you’re absolutely right. Plus, to everyone who holds it down on the daily, who isn’t white-adjacent and capitalistic enough to get on these lists, I see you too.
***
If I seem a little salty about myself, I’m really salty about these reports that people have been offering academic jobs, then rescinding the offers when it seems like the person is going to be too “threatening”. The most egregious example of this I saw recently was Texas A&M University having a whole signing day for Black tenured journalism professor at U-T Austin Kathleen O. McElroy, then watering down her offer, including the one she signed in public on that day, because of pressure from trustees and the recent banning of DEI programs at Texas universities. It echoed what happened in Chapel Hill with Nikole Hannah-Jones. This is another reason North Carolina and its cities have to be proactive in being progressive, despite the temptation of the conservative tide and using personal faith beliefs to govern people who have no desire or need to follow similar beliefs.
***
I’m empowered to share these reflections with this tenor because I realize I’m not alone in seeing these things and being willing to speak up about them.
I’ve dug into Inclusive Transportation by Veronica O. Davis. Veronica was one of those Black folks who was here in this space when I got here and tamika l. butler was also the same way when it came to the bike space. tamika, along with Les and Dan Reed and Jerome Horne were some of the first Black queer folks I met in this space and made it safe for me to tell you everything about me, not just that I was Black and urbanist.
I’ll admit I don’t see Veronica and tamika as much as I used to (the TRB Black Professionals mixer event in January was the first time we’d all seen each other in person in years!). I’ll also admit that I wish that we all weren’t fighting for the same projects and the same dignity and respect.
But, it was this quote in particular in tamika’s foreword of the book that struck me and made me realize I’m not the only one seeing that 2020 was a dream deferred and a promised delayed when it came to Black liberation and inclusive urbanism, not just transportation:
National planning organizations and conferences have returned to organizing events that cater to their predominately White, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, and privileged leadership and membership. Organizations that continue to tout equity, diversity, and inclusion are still hiring and voting in all-White leadership structures that fail to represent the diverse tapestry that is the backbone of the United States.
This book joins the chous of the many Black professionals who have been asking their peers to engage in new ways of thinking, listening, and governing. Most important, it does so by offering concrete advice that planners and allied professionals can take to assess their own privilege, interrogate power, and actively shift those dynamics in their work. For many of us, 2020 was just another year of injustice. We know that the anti-racist future we believe in has not arrived. This lack of progress is due, in part, to the lack of action taken by those in positions of power. Too often, those in power with an ability to bring about change cite an inability to know where to begin. I hope those leaders, as well as scholars, students, and anyone interested in justice, read [Veronica’s] manifesto for repairing divided communities.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
So, what else am I consuming that’s not urbanism-related?
I made it to Broccoli City this weekend. I will return, but I was not a fan of the extremely long walk, even with the shuttle, to the actual venue.
I also adored Survival of the Thickest on Netflix. It’s not reinventing this genre’s wheel, but in centering Blackness, queerness, and fatness, as Brooke Obie stated in her review of the show, Michelle Buteau has advanced this genre and she did it in just four hours of episodes!
The actors have said not to cancel subscriptions and streaming yet as they rightfully strike, so please go out and stream all the BlPOC and queer stuff you can, because, to me, this is the pinnacle of the battle, paying and putting on marginalized creatives fairly, and not scanning them and making robots out of them.
***
And I’m trying to finish another sweaterdress if my yarn doesn’t break first! You can always support my yarn and fiber work over at www.kristpattern.com
Before You Go
Here’s how you can keep me and this platform running, along with support some other mutual aid efforts:
I’m determined to not let what I shared above keep me from continuing to tell the truth. Our communities deserve the truth and I’m happy to be a messenger.
However, for me to continue to be a messenger and have the proper support to do so, your Substack subscriptions and your Patreon pledges are vital. With the help of my assistant, we will be launching new merchandise and research reports, along with an annotated version of my book — A Black Urbanist Journey to an Accessible Queer Feminist Future. Patreon will be your best bet to pledge if you are after merch and Substack for the annotated book and first look at research reports.
Project N95 is an amazing source of masks for everything that’s in the air that we have no business breathing and other testing and air purification equipment, at reasonable prices, that also go into helping distribute those supplies in communities that need them. Also, check into your community’s mask distribution services if you have them. I’m also adding a link for the Entertainment Community Fund and for those in WGA and SAG-AFRA to have relief while they take necessary action to get the funding they deserve for being one of the few industries that can’t be erased (at least for now).
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns, two amazing yarn stores run by Black women that are fundraising to expand their physical equipment and footprint, and Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we normally have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. You can read all archives right here, on my homepage in our normal format. We also normally drop on Fridays.
However, you might have noticed we skipped a week. It was not my intention, but when I released my last post, something shifted in my brain. A DISC ALSO SHIFTED IN MY BACK. On Juneteenth of all days. So, I started thinking hard through the pain and I came up with some ideas.
First, I’m going to use some room in my budget for July and August to hire an editorial and research assistant. If that could be you, please send over a resume and cover letter (you can reply to this email with them). I will be holding resumes for future opportunities or in case a first choice doesn’t work out. The rate is $250 weekly, paid biweekly and you’ll be a 1099 contractor. If things work out financially as a result of bringing you on, there’s a potential that this could become a more long-term contract or permanent job. More details in the Before You Go Section
Second, so I can work on these special projects and create the new systems I want to create with this assistant AND REST MY BACK, we will be going biweekly through July and August. We’ll be working together to pack these emails + an audio/video component, with lots of great stories from me and useful information. They’ll also help me get my book ready, so you’ll finally get that in your hands.
So, after today, I won’t see you again in my inbox until July 14th, as we resume our normal Friday schedule. And now, my story of the week, my principle of the week, and my favorite pop culture things of the week.
Story of the Week: Mapping to the Media
It’s a Friday evening in the fall of 2004.
We’re on the East Campus of NC State University and at 4:30 pm, we are let loose from our big lecture on the foundations of communication.
Our professor is probably about to head to his office and prepare for another Saturday afternoon or evening being the football voice of the Wolfpack at Carter-Finley Stadium.
It’s my last class of the day and the week. I’m about to make a quick trip to my dorm room in Welch Hall, drop off my books, and depending on my mood, I would be headed to one of the following:
— Clark Hall, for my meal plan dinner, and catch up on the day’s Technician, our student newspaper, which while online, was ubiquitous in print, five days a week and free.
— The campus cinema in Witherspoon Hall for a free or low-cost movie, via Talley Student Center for its on-campus (and on meal plan) Taco Bell.
— What’s now known as The Village, to use my newly minted Blockbuster card of my own
— Mission Valley Cinema, via the Wolfline, passing by the WRAL headquarters, to see the newest movies (or an even longer stretch to the Carmike Cinema, which was near our old Kmart).
— — The Record Exchange on Hillsborough Street, with their dollar DVDS, and what was then the Independent Weekly tucked under my arm, with listings of everything else I could do, as long as I had a CAT bus pass, access to a cab or a friend’s car or even Amtrak, although, at this point in my life, I wasn’t taking bus and train trips outside of the Triangle region outside of a group or family.
The throughline in all of this was despite me thinking that media was just a cute hobby (yes, I even said that about my DJ set at the college radio that’s now part of the official WKNC history books), media was always there, nudging me on, helping me to tell the first story of my being and the story I’ve been telling you on these pages.
And of course, those paper maps that my dad brought home from his night job delivering our hometown newspaper to all the truck stops so it would be fresh in the morning.
Plus my coursework in a social science-based communication and organizational behavior degree program, on the cusp of the social media revolution, on a campus with 1TB speeds of Web 1.0 internet and The Facebook as a fun gathering place and our own The Wolf Web with the real campus tea.
And now, I’m sitting here, after 15 years of doing professional digital communication work, which started in two offices in the engineering department, that had paid hours (like $15/hr type paid hours), and pretty awesome mentors who still keep up with me today (I know at least two of you are regular readers).
Being able to offer mentorship and partnership in this vision is a joy. It won’t all be perfect, but believe me, we will leverage the power of the press to continue this joy and liberation movement.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
So, yes, to come back to where it all started and represented me and my kind of urbanist (and life) media at this year’s Congress for New Urbanism, held for the first time in my home state, in our largest and most connected example of ideal, people-scaled urbanism, in Charlotte.
For those of you who know North Carolina and Charlotte, you might be scratching your head a bit, because you might think that maybe Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, Asheville, or Wilmington might have been better. However, so many folks were there from all of our towns and cities statewide, plus, lots of well-known urbanists from around the world that now believe me when I say that North Carolina does have a special sauce when it comes to urbanism.
So, take a moment and listen to our panel. Coming soon, thanks to my new hires, I’ll not only be able to send these emails a little sooner, but I’ll be able to proof them better and enhance tools like Otter.ai and Grammarly that also come in handy to help with typos.
But sit and marinate on what was said, especially those of you who share my intersections and need to use your voice to lift us through these times of great change, but needed change.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I’m pleased to see that Howard University, has taken queer life on campus seriously, especially as a historically Black university. Even though I was grazing the doors of the closet, my time at UNCG was night and day and its legacy and continued support of the queer community is a light in a space where many of us still have to conform to conservative religiosity to make it through. (yet another reason why I was in the libraries and reading papers and watching movies during my years at State, because even though I was churchy back then, the church wasn’t cutting it in a lot of ways). And of course, living with Les in this county, at this historic moment is great, but we have a lot more to do to make Prince George’s County safe for LGBTQIA+ folks (and sadly, I heard the Post editors had to cut my remarks that said as much)
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
So my Age of Pleasure CD case and T-shirt came on Juneteenth. It’s just something about the pleasure of opening a CD case, reading the liner notes, and wearing the t-shirt of a favorite artist. But then again, Janelle and I are practically the same age (they’re 14 days older), and it might just be something about being millennials marking middle-age liberation, with childhood joy!
In addition, I came out of the bunker to support our new friend Britany Daniels and her book The Journey of A Black Queer Nurse. We also had a wonderful patio dinner nearby the venue at Brookland Pint with her and Saria her wife and we are looking forward to visiting y’all when we swing out to Chicago.
And good for Big Freeda to not only be opening a hotel, but blessing us with a full-length bop for the first time in about ten years.
Before You Go
In this special edition, I’m breaking down how you can contribute financially as we move forward into this next phase of expanding our team and adding our new editorial assistant. But first, some mutual aid announcements:
So, as I said before, I’m adding to my care team, starting with an Editorial and Research Assistant. If you want to apply, please do so ASAP, as I need immediate help with these tasks and if I read your resume and everything matches up, we will get started quickly! you can reply here with your resume and a cover note in your email. Also, I’m collecting resumes for future hires, so please reach out if you want to talk about vision and direction:
Hi all. It’s time for me to grow my work in Black urbanism, so I can get to my accessible queer feminist future.
I am looking for a part-time editorial and research assistant to aid in the following:
— Proofreading my newsletters, social media posts, grant applications, and other external client work.
— Uploading my newsletter to all the social channels on our designated drop day, usually Friday.
— Assisting with helping me pull articles and stories for my upcoming book and the weekly newsletter.
— Setting up and posting a weekly video podcast and correcting the transcribed audio and captions.
I will train on all functions, but experience with WordPress, Mailchimp, Patreon, Medium, Substack, Otter.ai, StreamYard, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Illustrator, and InDesign is helpful.
The rate is $250 weekly (5 hours per week at $50/hr). This is a contract position for now and this position is funded for July and August of 2023, with possible renewal and change of rate and status depending on funding.
You can send a resume and a cover letter to kristen@theblackurbanist.com, with the subject line Editorial Assistant.
These hires will help me bring more information to you, while still serving in all the roles I’ve taken on in the past few weeks, while also maintaining my health.
Plus, if you want to help me maintain these hires past September, let’s talk about advertising or becoming a paid Substack or Patreon subscriber! I’ll also be releasing an updated capabilities deck, in case you want to peruse that to book me for one of my service offerings.
***
Mutual aid will continue to be part of any version of this platform I dream up.
Project N95 is an amazing source of masks for everything that’s in the air that we have no business breathing and other testing and air purification equipment, at reasonable prices, that also go into helping distribute those supplies in communities that need them. Also, check into your community’s free mask distribution services if you have them. I’m continuing to include a link for the Entertainment Community Fund and for those in WGA to have relief while they take necessary action to get the funding they deserve for being one of the few industries that can’t be erased (at least for now).
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns, two amazing yarn stores run by Black women that are fundraising to expand their physical equipment and footprint, and Knit the Rainbow, a group led by Black queer crafty folks that work to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we normally have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. You can read all archives right here, on my homepage in our normal format. We also normally drop on Fridays.
However, because I was on location at CNU for the first time since 2018 and in the North Carolina period for the first time since 2019, we kind of missed a week so I could recover and we can get back on my favorite drop day, which is Friday. Last week I focused on my initial thoughts and today, I’ll break down how I feel about conferences like this considering my personal limitations and then next week, I’ll have a breakdown and full audio of my CNU31 panel on media and urbanism, along with assessing what this all means for the home state I love so much to admire from afar.
Story of the Week: The Dots
I’m calling this phenomenon and story, the dots, to put a positive spin on what happened and to not re-trigger anyone who goes through this kind of bodily dysfunction.
I also want to note that what I’m about to tell you first happened in 2019. Actually twice. Just like in Charlotte for the CNU, I was on a big stage explaining my form of urbanism to sizable crowds of people in my home state.
A state that despite not always showing up for Black and queer folks on our big political stages and platforms, with people that show up consistently with laughter, joy, and plates of hot appetizing food.
However, on both of these occasions in 2019 anxiety about doing the talks culminated with the dots.
On one occasion, I made it off-stage, but Les had to guide me back to our nearby hotel. On the other, I basically did the talk high on meds because the dots came 6 hours before showtime.
Then after that last talk, the world changed and an airborne virus blew in that put my dots and anxiety and sinus inflammation on a risk list.
I’ve talked a lot about Les’s risk factors, but, I‘ve had years of fatigue, headaches, allergic reactions in and out of pollen season, and compounding complex PTSD from racist, classist, and queerphobic environments.
But, the dots faded during my virtual speeches, which I would do from a tray table laying semi-flat in bed, taking advantage of being able to rest right up to it and right after.
However, when wearing a respirator coupled with periods of meditation and rest before and after speaking seemed to be working for others, I decided to dip my toe back out again with the same plan.
Plus, I got the invites, which had been drying up again.
In February, I added a new over-the-counter medication and I consolidated my suitcases to not put pressure on my back and shoulders.
And last week, I challenged myself not to carry the entire burden of convincing my home state and the new urbanism movement that I’m worthy.
I came into the room, masked, rested and I just did me.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
So, for the record, I’m not being flippant by naming that condition as “dots”. But those of you who have those conditions know that sometimes even just reading about them or seeing pictures (or something as simple as aluminum foil that can mimic them), can trigger them.
Plus, living in the limbo that’s complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, post-viral illness, and all the other autoimmune and chronic conditions that can’t just wish or meditate themselves away can be tough.
Plus, I think I struggle the most with how quickly 2019 normal was forced on us, with the side of things being even more expensive, hectic, and orange than they were then.
Yes, I have a care team now, but I still have to wait months sometimes for appointments and hours for treatment if I do go into urgent care. I also have to drive to most of it, but that’s changing as the provider I’m currently under prioritizes care facilities near Metro stations.
Hence why I have this list below, to prepare in case I do fall ill and I’m not near my preferred care team when I do attempt to travel to a conference where I’m either the main speaker or I have a major role. In the explanations in bold, I’ve offered solutions that can go beyond me or reasons why this is a factor for me:
A day before and a day after where I travel and do nothing but travel and its associated activities. Especially when that travel day involves an airport or a long drive. Especially now that in the said airport, I may need to find an airline lounge where I can distance just enough to eat, possibly with my air purifier plugged in. I also need enough time to not struggle with my suitcases or eat things that cause me diarrhea or gas.
A day before and a day after where I do nothing of consequence. The day before is when I pack slowly and intentionally, without frenzy or panic. The day after is when I give myself time to rest and reset when my body is most telling me it’s fatigued from all the movement.
Hybrid, with the virtual option as the backbone, not the afterthought for presentations and key information-sharing — so that I can save all the presentations and look back at all the presentations, even if I did venture into the building. Yes, you can password-protect this, but please, please start prepping all conferences for this, even if it’s just to maximize networking and information-sharing before, during, and after the conference.
A quiet room on site — This is especially relevant to conferences with lots of people, but especially when I present and I have to work through those anxieties, especially in situations like last week where, despite good intentions for me to not be the “only one” any capacity, I still held it down for a couple of my marginalized identities. But, like the one I encountered at the Allied Media Projects 2018 gathering, it could be just enough stimulation and opportunity for me to meet people.
Locking in and centering accessibility, including those needs related to air quality and COVID-19, along with inclusion well in advance of the conference’s beginning. So this one has so many levels, I’m making some bullets for this one:
Checking calendars of nearby cities, especially during June and other months when there are overlapping cultural celebrations and you tend to be a mostly white, mostly cis, mostly straight, and mostly abled convening clustered in restaurants and sometimes on street corners being spectators.
Building up sponsorship so that you have a true free/low-income ticket that has a low barrier to claiming access. Yes, you can have a registration form, but the scholarship applications or showing certain IDs could just be removed.
Choosing a venue that allows you to execute b in your budget, an in being part of existing cultural and neighborhood festivals and special events, and d, which will double down on accessibility
Providing mobility devices, air purification, quiet spaces, tests, and diagnostics –why don’t we have first aid stations and medics on call at major conferences in the first place–and any other tools, methods, or means so that when I or others are in the building, the building doesn’t remind us constantly, that we are othered.
At this moment, I may have to accept that I’m just too sick to participate in certain groups and convenings, despite them being in my interest areas and identity spaces. And that conferences just may not be the focus I need right now, as no conference out there will fix my credit or cure any of our diseases.
All they can do is provide the opportunity for us to come together to tackle all those things so that being diseased and unhoused is something we treat and we care for, versus make into a moral failing.
Next time, I’ll talk about how the media, specfically urbanist media can help with filling in the gaps between in-person convening and virtual meetings. And I’m also going to wrap that up with how my home state, and its media, can be part of facilitating a better future.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I’m going to drop this article about Southeast Raleigh’s Shaw University here, for us to consider next week when I talk about both the future of the media and the future of my home state to close out this CNU-themed series. I’ll also leave all of your recaps of Charlotte, NC, and the conference for then as well, because that’s truly a whole newsletter for itself.
***
As I browsed the internet this week, I was happy to find more articles of people talking about having to slow things down for them, and that they’ve found peace doing so AND that slowing down and connecting is financially sustaining.
Then, getting encouragement in seeing how successful Block Club Chicago has been by focusing on the community and What Works’ pointed and spot-on interpretation of how being small and community focused with our media companies, specifically the audio ones, can keep us running, not chasing after VC and other equity capital that requires us to do things for them, that mess us over, and then they end up dumping us anyway to get their money back.
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
I would have been immersing myself in The Age of Pleasure even if it wasn’t coinciding with Pride in several of the metro regions I’ve lived in over my life. I would have been cheering for this evolution, part of which I called mere weeks ago in this very newsletter, that we get a present-day, vibe-check type album from then. After all, this is the dystopia, we need that record to get us through. And I love Evette Dionne’s read on it and very few others, especially not the folks who think that Janelle deserves to go back into her suit hanger and be a respectability robot.
**
And whew, The Ultimatum: Queer Love (this link is full of spoilers if you’ve streamed the show). If anything, this has me working on being a better partner. And that work honestly has been happening here as so much of the anxieties I bring into my own relationship come from overcoming my own shame in being in queerphobic, classist, and ableist environments. Plus, as much as I love my work, once it pays the bills, it needs to be making happiness and joy happen. Also, sadly, I’ve been the avoidant partner and the violent partner. But, I claim that, take responsibility for that and seek to be better. Finally, let this be your lesson if you still haven’t figured out that figuring out your sexuality and gender doesn’t make you a golden person by default, or us golden people. We still got that work to do.
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Still lifting up Southern Urbanism Quarterly. It’s yet another platform of journalism coming out of the South, showing us to be more than helpless and prejudiced.
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And this Tabitha Brown interview came right on time. So many parallels to my journey out here in the NC diaspora and coming back to my authentic self, after hiding, after a first wave of success, after so much.
Before You Go
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week. Learn more and get started with your ad!
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Mutual aid is a big part of this newsletter.
For those of you who can and I know it’s tough out here for a lot of us, like our colleague who could still use our support with her partner’s chronic health challenges and of course, Les’s as she moves into active advocacy around the intersections between endometriosis, other feminine gendered medical conditions, and LGBTQ+ but an extra $20-$50 in these accounts is takeout money, gas/transit money, a doctor’s appointment, whatever they want, which is more than they had before.
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns in addition to the spring fundraiser of Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
***
If you want me to show up on your panel, keynote, or podcast, book a complimentary consultation call. I still have open availability for 2023 and 2024.
If you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me or buy me a Ko-fi. If you become a Patreon, you can do that on a set monthly basis, along with a special thank you note each week! The GoFundMe is still alive if you want to make large donations quickly and you can subscribe on Substack but know that nothing in this newsletter is going behind a paywall, this is considered a love offering. I will be making some Patreon changes and adding a true incentive to Substack.
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I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, but all those books in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon. Use this link to purchase from my Bookshop, especially if it’s coming up as an error for you. I’m still trying to figure out why that is and how I can fix it in the future.
***
And if you need one more reminder to support my textile and fiber work, head over to www.kristpattern.com.
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we normally have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. You can read all archives right here, on my homepage in our normal format. We also normally drop on Fridays. However, because I was on location at CNU for the first time since 2018 and in North Carolina period for the first time since 2019, I am a little delayed in getting this out, and you may get another email on Friday. Today, I’m going to focus on my initial thoughts, and probably Monday of next week, since we are delayed this week, I’ll break down how I feel about conferences like this considering my personal limitations, and then hopefully that following Friday, I’ll have a breakdown and full audio of my CNU31 panel on media and urbanism.
Story of the Week: The Drive Down
I kept telling Les to get her camera ready as we drove down Wednesday afternoon because I didn’t want to miss a single bit of this moment.
Mile 28
Mile 14
Mile 12
Mile 10
Mile 3
Mile 2
Mile .5
And here we were, the North Carolina border. I stopped at the rest area and recorded this message.
And then after about 3.5 more hours, meandering through my old neighborhood in Greensboro briefly, and surviving a gas stop in a county I don’t like to be in after dark, we met Charlotte and its shockingly bright Pride lights on its skyline.
Ok, this trip might not be so bad after all.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
So to get started, those of you reading along from home are probably wondering how I’m even making this happen and as of this writing, I’m still negative and I managed to do the entire thing masked, save very brief sips of water.
Charlotte’s got some nice patio areas and I took lots of advantage of them. Also, I can see how masking is failing here, it’s super hot and humid and even in the before times, air quality hasn’t been the greatest. But I still pressed on, especially learning as I got home to DC that air quality is going into the orange and even red levels again around here.
I also loved seeing the Lynx in full effect. Yes, headways are an issue, especially without a timetable on the trains on both lines, but to see some effort at making fixed-route transit was great. Same with the Pride lights on the skyline.
However I am still concerned with affordability and seeing the teardown effect again, similar to what I saw the last time I was in Southeast Raleigh
But, now that I’ve done it one more time, especially this particular conference, in the state where not only was I born, but my work was born, if I never do this size of an event again, then I’m good.
I did a lot of short audio diaries to help me keep up with what happened and I how I felt during the weekend because I didn’t want to lose sight of this moment and I wanted to have not just images, but the sound of my voice for this trip. The video above is one that I put on video.
I took audio of the entire panel event on media which was my primary reasoning for returning, in addition to being part of something I’ve been dreaming of for my 11 years of CNU involvement and 13 years of doing urbanism on the internet — being part of a major urbanism event in my home state. Plus, being asked to talk about being an urbanist on the internet as an expert on the media was such a joy. Thanks again Payton for thinking of me, much as I thought of you on my very first panel in 2011.
After this weekend, I’m bunkering, but continuing to mask as much as possible.
Everyone I’ve talked to who’s been balancing outside work with needing to protect their health has said that lots of sleep, rest, and relaxation are how we beat it individually (in addition to all the other mitigations), and I’m going to double up on all of that while continuing to demand better mitigations. As of this writing, I’m still testing negative, but I ate too much fried food and drank too much sweet tea. Next time, I will be tapping into the modern NC palette and trying to keep my stomach from being an explosion.
Imagine though, how much more impactful this would have been if everyone was masked, tested and the air was cleaned with HEPA filters and UV lights. Imagine if we had all of the conference outside, not just our parties. It just proves yet again, that as much as CNU wants to lead, they aren’t really leading in some key areas.
However, Charlotte and the greater NC urbanism community, and the Black, Indigenous, and other folks of color — -y’all showed out and I’m proud of you. We can do better, but we are doing so much better than far too many others who think they are doing well.
To walk into those rooms and log onto the app and walk down the street and see Black folks, and other folks of color on panels, creating identity spaces, with their offices just attending the conference and of course on CNU staff, it makes a huge difference.
As I said in the intro, I will be spending my Pride month breaking down this visit and also what I think the future is of urbanist media ( my panel focus) and Southern urbanism, especially considering the very real safety threats being experienced by Black folks of all genders and gender-nonconforming and trans folks of all kinds.
But in the meantime, it was so good to see all of you, I hate that I had to make such a quick trip, but I’m so proud to be able to not just be in a supporting coupling, but support her urbanism and queer/trans peer advocacy as well.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I’m so thrilled to serve on the board of CultureHouse, a Boston- based placemaking nonprofit. So far I’ve been aiding in our equity and inclusion plans, but its chief radness officer Aaron Griener has also been a strategic adviser on the next phase of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit, and I was very pleased to see that he included a quote of me in his recent article on the APA website on Queer Urbanism, from the GGWash article Wyatt Gordon did on the same topic back in 2020. Everything I said is still true and in this Pride and Juneteenth season, we got work to do.
***
But, for those of you who are ready to take concrete action within our sector, in addition to contracting with me for your report and project branding design, workshop facilitation, Yes Segura’s business Smash the Box and Christine Edwards’s Civility Localized are also great options to support a trans person of color and another Black North Carolinian woman doing this work. Book all of us, once, twice, and on our terms, and support our young Black, queer, and trans folks coming up on staff and in school into building up and maintaining where we live.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
So the Emily Kingconcert was amazing. She probably won’t read this and I probably should have told her when I got a chance to shake her hand and shout her out for holding down our birth year on the music front, but its truly been a joy to witness your climb and watch us grow over these past 16 years. You’ve truly written the right song at the right moment for me over the years and Special Occasion continues to hit.
I also want to lift up Southern Urbanism Quarterly. It’s yet another platform of journalism coming out of the South, showing us to be more than helpless and prejudiced.
Before You Go
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week.Learn more and get started with your ad!
***
Mutual aid is a big part of this newsletter.
For those of you who can and I know it’s tough out here for a lot of us, like our colleague who could still use our support with her partner’s chronic health challenges and of course, Les’s as she continues her recovery from her endometriosis surgery, but an extra $20-$50 in these accounts is takeout money, gas/transit money, a doctor’s appointment, whatever they want, which is more than they had before.
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns in addition to the spring fundraiser ofKnit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
***
If you want me to show up on your panel, keynote, or podcast, book acomplimentary consultation call. I still have open availability for 2023 and 2024.
If you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you canVenmo me orbuy me a Ko-fi. If you become aPatreon, you can do that on a set monthly basis, along with a special thank you note each week! TheGoFundMe is still alive if you want to make large donations quickly and you can subscribe on Substack but know that nothing in this newsletter is going behind a paywall, this is considered a love offering. I will be making some Patreon changes and adding a true incentive to Substack.
***
I have created a special landing page,www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, but all those books in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon. Use this link to purchase from my Bookshop, especially if it’s coming up as an error for you. I’m still trying to figure out why that is and how I can fix it in the future.
***
And if you need one more reminder to support my textile and fiber work, head over towww.kristpattern.com.
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers for May 26, 2023, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist and Before You Go. Scroll down to get descriptions of each section. Plus, you can read all archives right here, on my homepage. Now, let’s get to our storytime.
Story of the Week: Setting Out the Chair
I want to take us back to some words I wrote in June of 2013:
What does it take to leave a legacy in a city? Is it having your name on a building that you either built or gave a lot of money to make?
Is it knowing your entire block or neighborhood?
Is it leaving behind children and grandchildren who continue on with the family cause or business?
These are questions I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m not going to go into any more details about what brought me to these questions, because there’s a lot I cannot say about why and what happened. However, the root of it all starts here, as I detailed in my About section and in my [December 14, 2010] Grist article “Does urbanism have to be black or white?”
It all started with a map on the floor. My dad and I would spend Saturday afternoons “driving” around with my toy NASCARs from my friendly neighborhood Hardees. As I got older, I became enamored of the small skyline of my hometown of Greensboro, N.C. So enamored that one day, while I was sick with the chicken pox, my dad went out and bought me a postcard with the skyline on it. It hangs in my room to this day.
When they widened the main road next to our house, I cried. I also was opposed to a hotel project near my current residence that threatened to upstage the downtown area. Mind you, I was only eight. I was an urbanist in the making, although I would have had no way of knowing there was a name for it.
Dad and I biked through our neighborhood on Saturday afternoons. Those bike rides took us through housing projects and 1940s era single-family homes until we made it to the main suburban artery. I loved my bike until I moved to a neighborhood where I was teased for just walking around. It’s taken me about 15 years to consider getting back on a bike. My dad still bikes; he’s always had a string of intermittently non-working cars, so he doesn’t think twice about it.
My dad doesn’t have any buildings named after him. I’ll probably have to sell his house. He struggled to walk down streets with no sidewalks. Then there was the bike. When he got tired of fighting our stroads with both of those, he put money into a car he could barely afford. Yet, he fixed up homes that weren’t built well in the first place. He mowed yards that others couldn’t maintain. He always had a song in his heart and brought music to any space. Finally, he made sure that I knew that people, all people, mattered. All these things are his legacy.
How can you leave a legacy in your city? DO YOU and do what your community needs. My dad did. It does not take money, a building with your name on it, or a stone edifice of your body to be someone who is never forgotten or to create an example.
In fact, if you create an example, that legacy lives on and it lives in the present.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
Ten years since he was taken. Thirteen since I first told that story in Grist on my 25th birthday. Words I thought had passed into the ether, but thankfully, they’ve been restored, so we all can see where this public urbanism journey started and some of where I want it to go.
Ten years of setting out empty chairs at my events and our family dinner tables. Ten years of time to think about ancestorship and legacy.
Next Wednesday afternoon the first time since August 2019, I will be crossing the southern border of Virginia into my home state of North Carolina. For the first time since April of 2019, I will be going through, possibly to, Greensboro. Now my ultimate destination is Charlotte to be on a CNU 31 panel, only my second in-person panel since COVID (I’ll be on the media one at 4 pm on June 1, if you’re registered, be sure to add it to your calendar). Next week I’ll have all those reflections on what actually happens there and how things have changed, not just since COVID, but in general.
But this week, I wanted to meditate on the empty chair that will be in the room no matter if it’s (a little unnervingly) packed.
While many have been mourning this year’s passing of Tina Turner and the three years since George Floyd’s untimely public execution by agents of the state, this time of the year, from May 25-June 25 is the time I mourn my dad. Yes, it also coincides with the main Pride Month in the United States and that’s come with its own form of joy and mourning as some folks have used all of the above, save Tina, to change how they feel or receive or react to me.
I’ve had my confidence shaken so many times since I wrote those words. The grief is overwhelming sometimes and it’s grown so much, especially in the last three years.
But this week, I’ll have a special, pointed opportunity to test out what it means to have a legacy and if home is really home. I’ll be holding my head higher though and I will be pushing back against the growing tide that’s trying to tell me I no longer belong there and never belonged there.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
Here’s my dad’s obituary from 2013. I really appreciated reading all the comments again, especially the person who is listed as anonymous and who knows him through me.
***
And the two most fascinating things about Tina Turner for me was that she emigrated from the United States on her own terms and made a new home for herself and that she found the faith she needed through her self-described “Baptist-Buddhism”. While those things look very similar to me, what’s most inspiring is just like her dear friend Oprah, those things were modeled for me in older Black generations, rather than being derided as something only done by “the youth”.
***
And yes, I really need and am glad to read this article on rental options. Yes, there are books and other sources on alternatives to the current housing system but having one in this source does mean something to the kinds of folks that would make these decisions.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
I’m still reading Viral Justice and it’s been a slow read, because of the allusion to the death of her father, because of stress, earlier than expected. I still want to finish, because it’s providing so much value, but I’ve had to take it slow.
Meanwhile, I downloaded the Max app, which I was already paying for in its previous form, to stream the Tina documentary, because that’s the most comprehensive way I want to remember her. Speaking of jokes, when I get home today and am done with work, we will be streaming the new Wanda Sykes standup.
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week. Learn more and get started with your ad! First, another position open with UC San Diego Labor Center, which has updated their salary requirements and due dates for advertising this position.
POSITION OVERVIEW
Position title: Program Director — UC San Diego Labor Center
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $86,000 — $106,000. Off-scale salaries, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions. The posted UC academic salary scales (https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/compensation/2022-23-academic-salary-scales.html
Next review date: Friday, May 26, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Thursday, Aug 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.
The UC San Diego Labor Center strengthens and expands the labor movement through advanced research, education, and strategic partnerships with workers, labor organizations, policymakers, tribal organizations, and the broader San Diego region. We place the wellbeing of workers, their families, and their communities at the forefront of our curricula, community engagement, public programs and publications. We focus attention on the unique socio-economic circumstances of the border region, including large binational and refugee communities and Indigenous nations in the region. Our research offers innovative policy perspectives on work and workers while our worker-centered approach advances the goals of fair working conditions, living wages, and climate, gender, and racial justice.
We seek a program director to lead the founding and growth of the center. With funding through the University of California Worker Rights Policy Initiative (WRPI), the center aims, in the next three years, to: build our capacity for research, policy analysis, education, and public-facing programming; support unions and community organizations to conduct their work more strategically by developing curricula and providing technical assistance; and develop the next generation of labor and community organizers, researchers, and leaders among undergraduate and graduate students by connecting them with labor and community organizations, and training and involving them in community-engaged action research. We work closely with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.
The program director is the senior, full-time person building and leading the center in collaboration with a faculty director and managing its dynamic and growing portfolio of research, training, programing, and community collaboration. The program director is responsible for independent development and coordination of all aspects of center operations, which includes the following core areas:
Strategic Leadership Working with the center’s Faculty Leadership Council and the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director provides strategic leadership in planning and implementing all research and programming at the center. Represent the center at annual conferences, community-sponsored events and working groups.
Research and Education Programming
Working with the Faculty Director, as well as the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director will help develop and guide the center’s research, policy analysis, graduate and undergraduate instruction, and public- facing programming. This includes overseeing and initiating, if qualified, research projects in collaboration with community partners, as well as teaching courses and workshops related to labor studies and community-based methods.
Fundraising Planning, developing, and initiating strategies for generating resources and/or revenues, including through fundraising, donor relations, and grant and contract proposals.
Public Relations Interfacing with the broader community (including the California Labor Federation, San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, unions, worker centers, and community organizations), local and state government officials, foundations, and other community partners. Overseeing all aspects of the center's communications, including web presence, report review, and external relations.
Event Development and Coordination Overseeing all center-organized and affiliated events.
Research Administration and Financial Management Overseeing and further developing the organizational structure for the center’s financial and business operations, including the generation, management and reporting of center budgets and oversight of contracts and grants.
Center Management Responsible for personnel and program management at the center, including planning and implementing strategic initiatives, supervising and mentoring staff, and ensuring HR needs are met. Unit:
QUALIFICATIONS Basic qualifications (Required at Time of Application) 1) Bachelor’s degree or higher (or an equivalent foreign degree) in social science, humanities, public administration, or related fields; AND 2) minimum of ten years' experience, with increasing levels of responsibility, in research, program development, organizing, and/or administration.
CAMPUS INFORMATION The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
***
Mutual aid will continue to be a big part of this newsletter.
For those of you who can and I know it’s tough out here for a lot of us, like our colleague who could still use our support with her partner’s chronic health challenges and of course Les’s as she recovers from her endometriosis surgery, but an extra $20-$50 in these accounts is takeout money, gas/transit money, a doctor’s appointment, whatever they want, which is more than they had before.
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns in addition to the spring fundraiser of Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
***
If you want me to show up on your panel, keynote, or podcast, book a complimentary consultation call. I still have open availability for 2023 and 2024.
If you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me or buy me a Ko-fi. If you become a Patreon, you can do that on a set monthly basis, along with a special thank you note each week! The GoFundMe is still alive if you want to make large donations quickly and you can subscribe on Substack but know that nothing in this newsletter is going behind a paywall, this is considered a love offering. I will be making some Patreon changes and adding a true incentive to Substack.
***
I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, but all those books in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon. Use this link to purchase from my Bookshop, especially if it’s coming up as an error for you. I’m still trying to figure out why that is and how I can fix it in the future.
***
And if you need one more reminder to support my textile and fiber work, head over to www.kristpattern.com.
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist, and Before You Go. Scroll down to get descriptions of each section. Plus, you can read all archives right here, on my homepage. Now, let’s get to our storytime.
Story of the Week: Transit Magic and Transit Power
We lived too close to the school for me to use it, but it used our street nonetheless.
They were built by more than people named Thomas, but they were built not far from a Thomasville.
It, was the yellow school bus.
It, watching from our front window around the age of four or five, was the beginning of my love affair for transit. It also began my transit dreaming.
***
You know I love time traveling in this newsletter these days and here we are in 2014 with me in disbelief that I’m sitting on a dais. But I was, and it was mid-afternoon and I’d just been the lone vote on a union contract that I voted against for vibes (do not recommend, please read all of your materials even if you’re on the smallest local or state committee) as one of my first and few actions of being on the Greensboro Transit Authority.
First and few, because I was on my way to Kansas City just a few moments later, but I was also shook as I’d grown up knowing the staff liaison to GTA as one of the nice younger adult men at our church Ebenezer Baptist rising up the ranks of leadership and singing in the choir next to my dad. I realized much later one of my Dad’s first cousins was a regular GTA rider and regularly outspoken at the meetings.
It was one thing to idolize the idea of public transit, but in Greensboro, I still got in my car 95% of the time, and I wasn’t dependent on our deficient system. But, at that point, at age 27, I was on this powerful board, and I was shook because I wanted to have all the answers and didn’t.
***
But I wasn’t powerless forever. But even that shook me up, because I knew I’d have folk’s life and safety in my hands and the power was overwhelming.
I was asked by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority, just months away from opening their region-changing line, to assist them, in my role as communications and membership manager at BikeWalkKC, to create some bike/ped safety materials. In addition to taking the work of the phenomenal communications team at the streetcar and adapting it to a rack card that could go out to bike shops and other community partners, I also helped test loading and unloading bikes onto the streetcar just a few weeks before it opened.
My work was enough to get me a VIP pass and ride on the special streetcar bar crawl the day it opened to the public with the directors of the agency. The next morning, I happened to be in the front row of the public opening. I wasn’t supposed to be on the first revenue train, but somehow, I was in the right eye line for then KCMO Mayor Sly James to point to me as if I was a random Kansas Citian in need of a golden ticket from the stage of that public opening.
I laughed with some of the other dignitaries who knew what was up, while also thinking that one of my colleagues, maybe not me, should have been on here anyway. But that wasn’t the first time in Kansas City that I was able to get on a major platform, on behalf of my company, ahead of my two executive directors. There were other radio interviews, TV interviews, and a little bit of side work from having run The Black Urbanist for at this time five years.
I’m still working on this report in which I’ve theorized the need for as many entrances as possible at all Metro stations, that’s been sitting on the shelf because I get scared sometimes when I dream things and do things that are powerful and uncomfortable.
But just like there’s an airport in Kansas City today that’s better that opened up just a few weeks ago, I walked off the train at Potomac Yard today and looked at not just one, but three entrance options.
I parked in front of the Barnes and Noble, right next to my Michael’s down the strip from the Target and Best Buy that are closer to the first of the three entrances.
I seem to attract the kinds of folks that love Barnes and Noble, no matter who and how I date, and Les is no question. In fact, she’s been a card-carying B&N member for a very long time and we just upgraded to premium after our train trip today.
As we would go to Barnes and Noble during all the phases of the pandemic, we’ve been watching this station go up with excitement.
She took Lyft this morning to make it to the ribbon cutting and I watched from home as I edited this morning’s GGWash Breakfast Links, as I do as a contract contributing editor, under my own consulting banner Kristen Jeffers Media.
As I got in our car and drove over to that B&N after finishing posting our editorial slate for the day, I was wishing that the proposed Metro lines near our apartment were off the drawing board as well. I drove past the Wilson Bridge Trail, wishing I’d had more stamina to also participate in Bike to Work Day.
But, I got to B&N, helped Les refuel (she’s still recovering, but very active), and then we set off to ride the train from Potomac Yard.
It was amazing.
I took lots of photos and video of the both of us and I’ll be sharing those over the next few days, but I picked one of my favorites to lead with today.
Thanks again for listening to all my stories. There’s only more to come, because if today is any indication, some of my transit stories are magic. And yes, I’m just as hype as Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson today, because I never stopped believing in this transit dream.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
But, I want to remind us that some folks having access to quality public transportation is not enough. The WMATA Metro station that opened today is in a state that needs to increase its funding allotment not just for this particular station, but for the lines that connect to it (this link is paywalled, but in it WMATA GM Randy Clarke calls for states and localities to step up when funding transit).
I want every child to have the joy of riding the yellow school bus or a subway or metro train or bus and go exactly where they want to go, without fear.
And as an adult, I’m living for this day of being able to ride a train, right by something I use in my car all the time, along with shaping policy, advocacy, and how we tell the story of transit, but on my own terms.
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
I will be making it to the Sheep to Shawl competition next year, along with the entire Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Excited to see this on NPR!
***
Honoring the (semi)retirement of Black disabled movement elder Anita Cameron. As I lean even more into disability justice, I thank her for being there even when the intersections seemed to crash right on her and I honor her for taking this next step to practice self-care.
Finally, as we honor not just the revolutionaries that were all born today, but our Asian-American and Pacific Islander native siblings and colleagues, I want to lift up the article of all the Asian Connies that came from watching Connie Chung. I included her in my pantheon of women of color coming on TV and showing me that being a professional writer and journalist was real. I am also touched that she knows this and honors the legacy that she’s left. Let us all proceed in solidarity as we march toward justice and liberation!
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
We’re still reading Viral Justice this week, and I finished chapter one and had to marinate on it. This might be a slow read just so I can process and savor it. Hence why I’m down to once-a-month book recs and we might need to do once a quarter.
Music-wise you may have seen on Les’s page that we masked up and took a huge leap of faith to sit in the ADA section and watch Anita Baker perform the entire scheduled show, on time, in Baltimore, on key, with an encore. We’ve also been watching the new Afeni and Tupac Shakur documentary Dear Mama and if you enjoyed me teaching that lesson back in the active version of my Black Queer Feminist Urbanist school, you’ll love this doc. Also, I am still working on getting the school back up and running, but I’ll not put a date on that, just know my heart is there.
Before You Go
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week. Learn more and get started with your ad! First, another position open with UC San Diego Labor Center, which has updated their salary requirements and due dates for advertising this position.
POSITION OVERVIEW
Position title: Program Director – UC San Diego Labor Center
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $86,000 – $106,000. Off-scale salaries, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions. The posted UC academic salary scales (https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/compensation/2022-23-academic-salary-scales.html
Next review date: Friday, May 26, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Thursday, Aug 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.
POSITION DESCRIPTION The UC San Diego Labor Center (https://laborcenter.ucsd.edu/) invites applications for a Program Director. The center is administratively housed within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (https://usp.ucsd.edu/).
The UC San Diego Labor Center strengthens and expands the labor movement through advanced research, education, and strategic partnerships with workers, labor organizations, policymakers, tribal organizations, and the broader San Diego region. We place the well-being of workers, their families, and their communities at the forefront of our curricula, community engagement, public programs, and publications. We focus attention on the unique socio-economic circumstances of the border region, including large binational and refugee communities and Indigenous nations in the region. Our research offers innovative policy perspectives on work and workers while our worker-centered approach advances the goals of fair working conditions, living wages, and climate, gender, and racial justice.
We seek a program director to lead the founding and growth of the center. With funding through the University of California Worker Rights Policy Initiative (WRPI), the center aims, in the next three years, to: build our capacity for research, policy analysis, education, and public-facing programming; support unions and community organizations to conduct their work more strategically by developing curricula and providing technical assistance; and develop the next generation of labor and community organizers, researchers, and leaders among undergraduate and graduate students by connecting them with labor and community organizations, and training and involving them in community-engaged action research. We work closely with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.
The program director is the senior, full-time person building and leading the center in collaboration with a faculty director and managing its dynamic and growing portfolio of research, training, programming, and community collaboration. The program director is responsible for the independent development and coordination of all aspects of center operations, which includes the following core areas:
Strategic Leadership Working with the center’s Faculty Leadership Council and the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director provides strategic leadership in planning and implementing all research and programming at the center. Represent the center at annual conferences, community-sponsored events, and working groups.
Research and Education Programming
Working with the Faculty Director, as well as the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director will help develop and guide the center’s research, policy analysis, graduate and undergraduate instruction, and public-facing programming. This includes overseeing and initiating, if qualified, research projects in collaboration with community partners, as well as teaching courses and workshops related to labor studies and community-based methods.
Fundraising Planning, developing, and initiating strategies for generating resources and/or revenues, including fundraising, donor relations, and grant and contract proposals.
Public Relations Interfacing with the broader community (including the California Labor Federation, San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, unions, worker centers, and community organizations), local and state government officials, foundations, and other community partners. Overseeing all aspects of the center's communications, including web presence, report review, and external relations.
Event Development and Coordination Overseeing all center-organized and affiliated events.
Research Administration and Financial Management Overseeing and further developing the organizational structure for the center’s financial and business operations, including the generation, management, and reporting of center budgets and oversight of contracts and grants.
Center Management Responsible for personnel and program management at the center, including planning and implementing strategic initiatives, supervising and mentoring staff, and ensuring HR needs are met.
Unit:
https://laborcenter.ucsd.edu/
QUALIFICATIONS Basic qualifications (Required at Time of Application) 1) Bachelor’s degree or higher (or an equivalent foreign degree) in social science, humanities, public administration, or related fields; AND 2) minimum of ten years' experience, with increasing levels of responsibility, in research, program development, organizing, and/or administration.
CAMPUS INFORMATION The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
***
Mutual aid will continue to be a big part of this newsletter.
For those of you who can and I know it’s tough out here for a lot of us, like our colleague who could still use our support with her partner’s chronic health challenges and of course, Les’s as she recovers at home from her endometriosis surgery, but an extra $20-$50 in these accounts is takeout money, gas/transit money, a doctor’s appointment, whatever they want, which is more than they had before.
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns in addition to the spring fundraiser of Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
***
If you want me to show up on your panel, keynote, or podcast, book a complimentary consultation call. I still have open availability for 2023 and 2024.
If you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me or buy me a Ko-fi. If you become a Patreon, you can do that on a set monthly basis, along with a special thank you note each week! The GoFundMe is still alive if you want to make large donations quickly and you can subscribe on Substack but know that nothing in this newsletter is going behind a paywall, this is considered a love offering. I will be making some Patreon changes and adding a true incentive to Substack.
***
I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, but all those books in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon. Use this link to purchase from my Bookshop, especially if it’s coming up as an error for you. I’m still trying to figure out why that is and how I can fix it in the future.
***
And if you need one more reminder to support my textile and fiber work, head over to www.kristpattern.com.
This is the May 12, 2023 edition of The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
I want to note that this week is the beginning of a few changes in the newsletter format. I’d been doing this personal comfort series, but to be honest, it’s been weighing me down. So in this newsletter, I manage to tie my three scariest/least comfortable places together. I’m still including my By the Way, On the Shelf, and Before You Go sections, but the first two sections will be reconfigured just a bit starting next week and in this week’s Principle Corner, I’ll talk more about what this exercise has brought up in me and what I want to experiment with next.
Also, I will be consolidating platforms. More info on that is to come, but you will still be getting newsletters on Fridays. Now, my combined story of the week.
Story of the Week: Cages of Healing, Cathedrals of Chains, Adorned with Terror
They told me that it was the best course for his healing. That we were halfway home when it came to him coming back to life.
But regardless, it was still my dad, in a diaper, in a playpen, behind a net, in a hospital room, while I, at age 25, in 2010, am growing up faster than I expected, despite being a young adult.
It was a soft cage, a cage for his healing, but a cage.
But of course, I was thankful it wasn’t the cage he could have been in considering the shape that he was in.
Many of those times the police were called because a neighbor had seen my dad doing something endangering to himself and others, resulting only in a ticket and a ride to the mental health department of the county. The few times he was at the county jail, it was clear that he needed to be taken to a mental health wing, not full-on prison.
But, this time, not the time I talk about this most, was the penultimate time. The damage done was irreversible and it harmed more than him, but it harmed him the most.
The fact that he even regained some kind of mobility, that he escaped that hospital play-pen style cage, then moved to the same rehab center his own dad had managed to squeeze out of almost 15 years earlier, then back to his own house.
He told me not to worry about him, to keep living my life, to continue to thrive. That’s the spirit I took with me for the three remaining “bonus” years we had left. But I watched as he began to cage himself into his home, and I begin to build a heart cage to prepare myself for the day I would get a call that my dad has left this Earth.
I was in a heart-colored, blood-colored room, living a dream at a conference of environmental influencers, the day nearly ten years ago I got that call.
About a week later, I’m standing in a church for one of the handful of times I would do so over the following ten years. I didn’t anticipate that being at the church of my baptism for my dad’s “homegoing” would be the funeral of my regular churchgoing, but in practice, it’s functioned like a wake.
I stand on the pulpit to give a small eulogy on behalf of the family before the main pastoral eulogy, but on the side, because women mostly stand to the side in this particular spiritual environment. I reach up and touch my hair, wishing there was more of it, despite the fact that I was taking the journey of making my hair the way I want it back into my hands.
And that journey had opened up the rainbow road I was almost ready to start walking down.
However, the heart cage sent me back into a panic the day of the call and I put my rainbow flag down. I would not be that kind of proud this particular June of 2013, but at least I had a family right?
But, there’s still the issue of my hair. It’s telling some kind of story and I’m in a Black Baptist church in the south where people have mastered hiding in this way in plain sight.
Salon visits of my tweens and teens were secondary spiritual spaces I witnessed so much Black American womanhood culture of all kinds, and learned what the essence of Black womanhood was, through both the magazine and through the air.
Yet that air and chatter were peppered with warnings that not enough hair or the wrong shape could make me lose membership in this particular sorority. That the worse thing you could ever do was not just look like a man, but stop loving them exclusively.
Reaching up to my hair that day shot me back in time to that one time my hair had broken off, and seemingly overnight when from super long to super short in my twelfth and thirteenth year of life. Then, I felt alright with this thing called queerness, both as an emerging sexuality and as a way of loving the things I loved and doing the things I did, despite their popularity.
But, that cage, that horrible cage.
One day, about three more years after my dad ascended to the ancestral plane, I managed to be in isolation, in a land far from my home. I was making a house cage similar to his, and sleeping in the living room the way he was sleeping in the living room.
I found my way out of the living room, off the unsteady blow-up bed, back to a land of familiarity though, without being forced out of not just it, but this section of the earth.
I thought it was just finding joy in making Pinterest boards of my own image, with my own favorite expressions of hair, clothing, craft, and gender and playing music, and figuring out my place in The West Wing TV show’s universe.
But, I was finding God in myself and they were pleased.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been ranking the spaces I feel most comfortable in, partly because it’s a good context to understand me, and two, it’s been helpful for me to have a prompt to write this newsletter regularly.
However, the further down I go on this scale, the scarier and sadder it gets. Plus, at the moment, the mission of creating a ranking scale for personal comfort isn’t really registering with what I feel I need to offer the world.
So, I decided to combine healthcare, hair salons, and churches in my story above in a way that you can feel how these things are scary, but I didn’t have to retraumatize myself.
The throughline of it all is my Dad, who we lost to violence during a home invasion in May of 2013. We buried him and held his funeral at our home church, a place that’s to my knowledge still not open and affirming of LGBTQIA+ identities. And one of the first ways I knew I was queer is that I got different euphoric feelings based on the length and shape of my hair. But, I tamped down the euphoria I was starting to feel and pushed myself back into the cage of the closet because I needed my family more than I needed to be free back then.
This has been the foundation of the feelings part of my personal comfort index, but I am ready to re-root and re-set the foundation.
Next week, I’ll tell you another story about my dad, and in this section, I’ll help you understand why the example of my Dad informs this particular newsletter work and how I want to show up in the world.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
No, I’ll admit that I’m super biased about this Department of Data story and research on who is more likely to wear glasses. And I wish that the bias against those that do, would end. I also wish that Velma would get the love and respect she deserves no matter the adaptation of her story.
Honestly, I might go to this fake beach if we get one in DC, but I might as soon go to the real beach again, especially since I really did enjoy virtual Something in the Water and I’ve really enjoyed these jaunts away to Virginia Beach through this pandemic.
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
We’re still reading Viral Justice this week, and we will be for the remainder of the month. Reading into the introduction and the first chapter last night really helped me see that writing this newsletter is one good thing. And one good thing can be enough. Even if it’s for me to center myself, for a moment, in a body that was never supposed to exist, in a world that was never supposed to exist for me. And despite all of that, I don’t have to be weathered.
Music-wise I don’t have anything super new to offer this week, as I’ve been trying to listen to quiet music at night, on my Insight Timer app.
Before You Go
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week. Learn more and get started with your ad! First, another position open with UC San Diego Labor Center, which has updated its salary requirements and due dates for advertising this position.
POSITION OVERVIEW
Position title: Program Director – UC San Diego Labor Center
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $86,000 – $106,000. Off-scale salaries, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions. The posted UC academic salary scales (https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/compensation/2022-23-academic-salary-scales.html
Next review date: Friday, May 26, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Thursday, Aug 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.
POSITION DESCRIPTION The UC San Diego Labor Center (https://laborcenter.ucsd.edu/) invites applications for a Program Director. The center is administratively housed within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (https://usp.ucsd.edu/).
The UC San Diego Labor Center strengthens and expands the labor movement through advanced research, education, and strategic partnerships with workers, labor organizations, policymakers, tribal organizations, and the broader San Diego region. We place the well-being of workers, their families, and their communities at the forefront of our curricula, community engagement, public programs, and publications. We focus attention on the unique socio-economic circumstances of the border region, including large binational and refugee communities and Indigenous nations in the region. Our research offers innovative policy perspectives on work and workers while our worker-centered approach advances the goals of fair working conditions, living wages, and climate, gender, and racial justice.
We seek a program director to lead the founding and growth of the center. With funding through the University of California Worker Rights Policy Initiative (WRPI), the center aims, in the next three years, to: build our capacity for research, policy analysis, education, and public-facing programming; support unions and community organizations to conduct their work more strategically by developing curricula and providing technical assistance; and develop the next generation of labor and community organizers, researchers, and leaders among undergraduate and graduate students by connecting them with labor and community organizations, and training and involving them in community-engaged action research. We work closely with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.
The program director is the senior, full-time person building and leading the center in collaboration with a faculty director and managing its dynamic and growing portfolio of research, training, programming, and community collaboration. The program director is responsible for the independent development and coordination of all aspects of center operations, which includes the following core areas:
Strategic Leadership Working with the center’s Faculty Leadership Council and the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director provides strategic leadership in planning and implementing all research and programming at the center. Represent the center at annual conferences, community-sponsored events, and working groups.
Research and Education Programming
Working with the Faculty Director, as well as the Labor and Community Advisory Board, the program director will help develop and guide the center’s research, policy analysis, graduate and undergraduate instruction, and public-facing programming. This includes overseeing and initiating, if qualified, research projects in collaboration with community partners, as well as teaching courses and workshops related to labor studies and community-based methods.
Fundraising Planning, developing, and initiating strategies for generating resources and/or revenues, including through fundraising, donor relations, and grant and contract proposals.
Public Relations Interfacing with the broader community (including the California Labor Federation, San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, unions, worker centers, and community organizations), local and state government officials, foundations, and other community partners. Overseeing all aspects of the center’s communications, including web presence, report review, and external relations.
Event Development and Coordination Overseeing all center-organized and affiliated events.
Research Administration and Financial Management Overseeing and further developing the organizational structure for the center’s financial and business operations, including the generation, management, and reporting of center budgets and oversight of contracts and grants.
Center Management Responsible for personnel and program management at the center, including planning and implementing strategic initiatives, supervising and mentoring staff, and ensuring HR needs are met. Unit:
https://laborcenter.ucsd.edu/
QUALIFICATIONS Basic qualifications (Required at Time of Application) 1) Bachelor’s degree or higher (or an equivalent foreign degree) in social science, humanities, public administration, or related fields; AND 2) minimum of ten years' experience, with increasing levels of responsibility, in research, program development, organizing, and/or administration.
CAMPUS INFORMATION The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.
***
Mutual aid will continue to be a big part of this newsletter.
And yes, my yarn-related fundraisers are still going strong, as they too see the value in community uplift and mutual aid. We are directly supporting LolaBean Yarn Co. and Dye Hard Yarns in addition to the spring fundraiser of Knit the Rainbow, a group that works to ensure that knitwear is donated to LGBTQIA+ youth, and raises awareness of queer/trans folks in the yarn and fiber space, is still ongoing.
This is how we as planners and makers can practice solidarity and uplift community groups. If not these campaigns, please find some that are closest to you. I also assume that you do have the financial means to do so as planners, but I know things can be tough for us. But solidarity is free and that starts with speaking up and sharing when you can.
***
If you want me to show up on your panel, keynote, or podcast, book a complimentary consultation call. I still have open availability for 2023 and 2024.
If you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me or buy me a Ko-fi. If you become aPatreon, you can do that on a set monthly basis, along with a special thank you note each week! The GoFundMe is still alive if you want to make large donations quickly and you can subscribe on Substack but know that nothing in this newsletter is going behind a paywall, this is considered a love offering. I will be making some Patreon changes and adding a true incentive to Substack.
***
I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, but all those books in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon. Use this link to purchase from my Bookshop, especially if it’s coming up as an error for you. I’m still trying to figure out why that is and how I can fix it in the future.
***
And if you need one more reminder to support my textile and fiber work, head over to www.kristpattern.com.
