This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen Jeffers, internationally known urban planner, designer, analyst, keynote speaker,  media maven, and fiber artist. This week is a sample of when I turn my Black Queer Feminist Urbanst lens on a few current events at a time, with links. I’m thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from my Patreon supporters.  Scroll down to the Before You Go section to learn how you can become a sponsor/advertiser.  

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Public health is urbanism. War and abolition are urbanism. And, yes, there’s a Black queer feminist lens out here for these urbanisms.

The world, if you go by mass media, has really only been focused on two things over the past few weeks. The “end” of the pandemic at the two-year anniversary of its first wave and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Of course, there’s more than these two things going on and I’ll be using at least one email a month, what I’m calling, for now, the Black Queeer Feminist Urbanist Current, to address mass media current events from a Black queer feminist urbanist lens. This may become a daily or even premium feature, but we’ll play that by ear for now.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably got a sense of where I stand on both of these issues, but I did want to pause and break these down a bit, especially as I’ve been processing what these mean for me and in a Black queer feminist urbanist lens.

So let’s start with Covid-19. It’s not over and I’m still wearing my mask in all indoor spaces, only eating and socializing maskless outdoors or in properly ventilated spaces, and limiting my travel. 

However, I would be happy to see folks outside of being outside, with the pledge to rapid test, PCR test, and mask as much as possible, coupled with that effort for filtering and ventilation. 

You may see Les out a bit more than me, as she has work obligations. However, she still has chronic issues that I want to protect as much as possible.

We might sound selfish, we don’t take for granted that at least 9 million people are still dealing with Covid complications and several, like the two of us, have yet to contract, but still are concerned about what it could do to us because neither of us assumes that we are spring chickens and we were 100% healthy prior to the pandemic. I’ll break down our health status more on a different day and let her tell you more of her story at places like endoQueer, her organization for queer folks with endometriosis and other gynecological issues. 

I do love this photo diary I found on the ReidOut Blog on mourning all that we’ve lost over the past two years and pushing forward into our next normal, especially as Black Americans. I’m a huge fan of Dr. Uche Blackstock, specifically as a Black feminist physician and public health advocate, who is featured in this diary along with several other Black women’s voices of the pandemic. 

I also want to lift up Imani Babrin, who has been crucial to the fight to not forget our disabled, specifically our Black and otherwise marginalized and disabled/chronically ill folks. When the head of the CDC first stated that Covid was basically over if you weren’t chronically ill or disabled and that their deaths were “good”, she lifted up the #MyDisabledLifeisWorthy hashtag and continues to remind us that we can’t leave folks behind, nor are those folks we are leaving behind (which may be ourselves), worthless. 

And then to Ukraine, Russia, and everything going on in that region. This is why I call for the end of imperialism. I think of my African siblings and others from non-European/white-identifying countries, who have been tokens of battles between “the West ” and Soviet/Russian/ex-Soviet colonies/countries for decades. Today they are struggling to both leave and/or survive because they aren’t quite Ukrainian and in some cases blatantly not the right nationality or skin color.

I’m thinking of the trans folks who are struggling with their passports being accepted at border crossings on top of day-to-day discrimination. 

I’m thinking of Ukrainian nationals who aren’t racist, queer/transphobic, wealthy, or powerful, who have been under some kind of imperialist conflict for years.  

Finally, I’m thinking of WNBA star Brittney Griner, who sits at several of these intersections, in the true legal sense that Kimberlee Crenshaw has outlined over the years. 

I want to lift up at this moment around this issue, all those working to get aid to Black, Asian, LGBTQIA+ and others who are marginalized. Several of these groups are practicing mutual aid, specifically, the work of Patricia Daley, Tokunbo Koiki and Korrine Sky who set up the website and hashtag Black Women for Black Lives to coordinate fundraising, media awareness, and volunteer efforts for people of African descent who are in Ukraine, while yet fleeing the country themselves and not having met in person.

I’m ending today’s newsletter with a moment of light and hope and healing to all under everyday oppression, but now here’s global imperialism knocking on the door, insisting that it alone knows who’s most human. It doesn’t. Next week, I’ll be back to continue to outline and break down the Black queer feminist urbanist lens, specifically how allies can pick up the glasses and aid those who are born with this lens. 

Before You Go

When I write clip sheets like this, I’ll more often than not run outside ads on them, only note that this was paid for by “viewers like you”. However, weeks like this are perfect times for me to advertise your Black, queer, and/or feminist venture, run your birthday or anniversary or congratulations message, or something else that’s not job or conference or heavily design/construction/policy industry related. Even though the ads normally come with a $75/week price tag for a month-long commitment, I do have a one-off option for $155 for one week, and if you’re a Black queer feminist venture on a budget, your ad could be free. Reply back to this email if you’re ready to place an ad and learn more about advertising across this platform.

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Speaking of those outside ads, you can tell me in this survey what kind of ads you want to receive and a little more about who you are in a way that I can better write this newsletter for you. Also, you may still receive two versions of this newsletter, on Mailchimp and Substack, depending on how you subscribed and when you subscribed. If you want to unsubscribe from one or both versions, be sure to do so using the unsubscribe link provided in the emails run by the respective services. Or, you can keep deleting or ignoring the version you don’t like, lol. Remember, there will always be a free version of this newsletter, but you can scroll below for links to ways besides advertising to support this newsletter,

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The Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Lounge is open for fellow Black Queer Feminist Urbanists to walk through this world together. What you’ll see in these next few emails is how our allies should show up and work to create this space for us, but we will be digging deeper into how to create this space for ourselves and what the whys and definitions should be in the Lounge. Lounge members are eligible for scholarships for my coaching and consulting services and lounge membership is free. Also, I’ve decided to not do an in-person Black Queer Feminist Urbanist summit in 2022, but I will be adding an event calendar for Black, queer, feminist, and/or urbanist events and I’ll be announcing some digital seminar/panel style events for later this year, that you’ll be able to either watch live or listen/watch at your leisure.

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My consulting services will actually be housed at my soon-to-be-revamped personal website for anyone who needs moving, resumes, career, and other help. If you’re ready to book a season, email directly at kristen@theblackurbanist.com and request a strategy service. The first 30-minute clarity session is free, then subsequent sessions starting at $150 for one follow-up session and $75/session for a package of four.

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If you just want to support me for any reason, but don’t need anything in return, you can become a monthly Patreon supporter, or you can donate to my capital campaign, or Venmo or Cash. App me.

Until next time,

Kristen

The Black Urbanist Weekly for February 28 — March 6, 2022

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights I, Kristen Jeffers’s, Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week I’m ending  Black History Month by centering my Black Queer Feminist Urbanist  Future as I continue to combat both civic and regular inferiority complexes.  I’m also thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from Rail~volution and my Patreon supporters. You can also advertise your Black and/or queer-led business, your upcoming urbanist conference, your next job/RFP announcement, or anything nice that we agree on together that’s less than 350 words. Rates start at $75/week for a four-week commitment and there are special packages for those aforementioned Black and/or queer-led businesses. Learn more. 

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The world is different for Black Queer Feminist Urbanists. The world is different for each and every human being. Planning for and embracing those differences is a key to healing our civic and regular inferiority complexes.

If I had to craft a theme song, thesis statement, or even a mantra for the last few years of my work, this would be it. 

The work started in the Fall of 2018. Falling in love and falling in love and making the resultant life changes I did, really shook how I was doing this work.

However, as early as the Fall of 2016 I had stopped trusting institutions and specifically the greater urbanism industry to do this right. 

This in 2016 being supporting me as a Black woman in the workplace, movement spaces, and even on event stages — notwithstanding today’s this that started in the fall of 2018 of embracing my full Black non-binary femme identity, while in a committed partnership with a lovely Black masculine of center lesbian woman.

Both of us from two corners of the Upper U.S. South, but with different childhoods and workplace experiences, and queer lives.

But both important, vibrant, and worthy of amplification.

However, when we, meaning all us humans, were all, not just some, but all afraid that we could die by breathing in the outside air, having a conversation about how my Black woman/femme/queerhood was different felt frivolous.

But then some died of Covid-19, and we lived on. Well, some of us. Some of us, mostly Black, still continue to die at the hands of state-sponsored forces, sometimes police, other times lack of support or income by the government or even our jobs that should be paying us a living wage or in hospital rooms because our healthcare wasn’t adequate.

We may have survived, but so many of us were tired.

I know I was tired from May 25, 2020, until about… well, let me be real, I’m still tired. 

But, I realized that spelling out to the world why it mattered that the cities we planned and governed should consider how the world is unique and special for Black women and gender diverse/marginalized individuals is still worthy.

And not just worthy, energy-producing, and life-giving. This is how I stay woke.

I’ve broken down what I’ve come to call my Black queer feminist urbanist manifesto a couple of times. Recently in this YouTube video from November of 2021 that served as the opening of my inaugural Black Queer Feminist Urbanist summit. And to be honest, you can see the roots of what I’m talking about today in this 2011 Pecha Kutcha Raleigh talk, which sets me on this course even when I thought I was just out here proving my existence as just Black feminine urbanist.

Today, I’m back with more clarity and to track my evolution between these two talks and beyond and to tie up this series that’s leaned into our history and legacies of our ancestors, what it takes to create communities safely and how to honor the spirit of our community and its needs. This week, we end on the self and how I practice political self-care. 

Yes, this is where I define myself for myself. You can too, but first, let me break it down for you.

First of all, this framework assumes that a city already leads in Black women’s outcomes in education, employment, and healthcare. Remember that CityLab article/study on these from 2019? That’s our baseline.

And then to that, I added 8 things, in short, and in no particular order:

1. Workplaces and spaces, that pay and fund fairly; inclusive, and respectful of all genders presentations and sexualities of Black people, as well as their strength, intellect, and leadership.
2. Hair salons that love and affirm the way my hair comes out of my head and can be creative with it, priced fairly and clearly.
3. Artist, maker, creative, and hobby spaces, funding, and communities that are inclusive of Black people, respectful of our culture, and believe in fair compensation for creative works of pay.
4. A balance of comfort and sustaining food
5. Bookstores and libraries, especially with staff, titles, and events centering BIack, Queer and Feminist thought and people.
6. Indoor and outdoor recreation areas with staff and programming that is Black-friendly and LGBTQIA- affirming.
7. Houses of faith, that center Afro-Diaspora faith traditions, and other indigenous spiritual practices, that also affirm queer and trans identities, partnerships, families, participation, and leadership.
8. LGBTQIA+ spaces that aren’t white supremacist, classist, ableist, and privileging/hostile to some of the identities of the acronym over others.

And to my original 8 requirements, I want to add a 9th, adequate public transportation.

I’m shocked I left it out the first time, but that’s just how easy it takes for even someone who’s hyper-aware of challenges to take things for granted. I’ll admit here that having a personal vehicle, even one I share with another person, makes me take things for granted.

This is why this framework is something all of us should consider when we are thinking about where to live, even though it is infused by my must-haves and haves that I think of when I think of a city that makes Black women and gender-expansive/diverse feel loved and wanted, not just tolerated and needed.

Breaking down this framework is far too big for one newsletter…

…so over the next few weeks, I’m going to do what I wanted to do in the Spring and Summer of 2020 and that breaks this framework down section by section across the next few newsletters, to help us build that Black queer feminist urbanism.

Because yes, I 100% believe, as we go from Black History to Women’s History month, that the liberation of Black gender-marginalized folks (that includes my fellow non-binary and trans folks) and the creation of spaces that serve in our liberation, set us all free.

Before You Go

For those of you who are able and itching to get out to another in-person conference, Rail~Volution will be in Miami next October, and as in years past, scholarship opportunities will be available. 

Are you involved with transit, mobility, and development projects or investments? Are you dedicated to their potential to shape better places to live for everyone — to build more equitable and sustainable communities? Do you have new approaches or innovations to share?

The annual Rail~Volution transit and community development conference will be in-person in Miami, Florida, next October 30- November 2. The Call for Speakers for the conference is now open, through March 16.

As we look forward to coming together in Miami, we’re focusing both on the ways mobility and development are being transformed and on solidifying the basics. We want the 2022 conference to be a place to reinvigorate the vision for transit-oriented communities and to share nitty-gritty know-how across all aspects of the work, from community engagement to planning, policies to technology, engineering to design financing to implementation, operations to metrics, and evaluation.  

Submit a proposal and make sure your experience is in the mix! For full information and the link to submit, visit railvolution.org/callforspeakers. Scholarships are available and Covid-19 protocols will be taken. 

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I have so much more I want to say and I don’t want to get stuck with what email service to use. One thing I do want to clarify is that there will always be a free edition of this newsletter, even on Substack. However, that will come with ads, like the one above for Rail~volution. But, you can tell me in the survey what kind of ads you want to receive and a little more about who you are in a way that I can better write this newsletter for you.

Or you can advertise your Black or queer-led business,  job, RFP, conference, achievement, or even a shoutout. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment, but there are one, two, three week options available, plus opportunities to extend. Learn more about our new advertising program.

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Finally, next week, I will be re-opening the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Lounge for fellow Black Queer Feminist Urbanists to walk through this framework together. What you’ll see in these next few emails is how our allies should show up and work to create this space for us, but we will be digging deeper into how to create this space for ourselves over on Mighty Networks. Mighty Networks is also going to be where I build out my consulting services for anyone who needs moving, resume, career and other help, but you can still email me directly at kristen@theblackurbanist.com and request a strategy service, starting at $150 for one session and $75/session for a package of four. 

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights I, Kristen Jeffers’s, Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week I’m dipping into my vault of prior posts and newsletters to celebrate Black History Month. This week, I’m revisiting my May 26, 2014 post on why I love conferences + talking about why I’m building one of my own and how you can be part of its second iteration.  I’m also thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from Greater Greater Washington and many of you who are Patreon supporters. 

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First, let’s revisit my post “Why I Love Conferences”, from May 26, 2014. I wrote this on the eve of going to the Buffalo iteration of the Congress for New Urbanism, during my first PAID keynote and workshop conference season. In lieu of sharing the whole thing this week, I am going to share the parts that still speak to me, then I’ll be back just below to talk about where I’m at now and of course, a few reminders/announcements before you go.

It is that time of year again when many of us who blog and write and speak gather at industry conferences. Or is it always that time of year?

Back in the day, maybe you went to your state American Planning Association (APA) conference or the big national one.  Architects had AIA or NOMA or maybe the Congress for New Urbanism.(CNU) Transportation folks did the  Transportation Review Board Annual Meeting , the National Bike Summit, Railvolution or something else similar. Anyway, you did your one conference, got your continuing education credits and came back to the nest (or bunker) and went at it another year.

Nowadays, [there’s more]between TEDx, Pecha Kucha, and Ignite in the tech/mainstream world and Transportation Camp and similar unconferences in our world, not to mention the South By Southwests, SparkCons and Middle of the Maps that just do a lot of everything.

And I can’t get enough of these gatherings, no matter where they are and what purpose they serve. I get a thrill from presenting my thoughts as a keynote. I love bringing together my friends to have a guided conversation. And of course, there are the social activities that come from these gatherings. This is networking at its finest.

Why do I love them so much? I think it’s one thing to write in isolation, with the occasional Facebook share, comment or email to a colleague that happens with an online or even printed article. Yet, for me, as an extroverted writer and speaker, the joy that comes from gathering with my fellow urbanists or marketers, or professional black women or young women with side gigs or just chillin’ with my best friends and family is healing. It’s why so many of us when we can or on a regular basis attend worship services or fellowship meetings or yoga classes. You grow and you change and you heal from being around like minds.

An additional piece I like about conferences and convening is that when done the right way, these events change lives outside the conference hall…

…conferences that don’t have a good mix of keynotes, breakouts, formal and informal networking sessions fail. Some of the best connections and most valuable business deals happen in the exhibit hall. Another failure comes when your content isn’t compelling. I know occasionally, one has to explain the mechanics of a situation, especially in a continuing education class. Yet, we remember most the vibrant teachers, the ones who have found the human touch in the most boring of subjects.

So, we’re back in 2022 and I wanted to spend a whole section discussing where my thoughts are now.

First of all, COVID-19 has changed how we gather, when we gather, and what steps we need to take to gather. 

Secondly, even if COVID disappears overnight — racial justice, equity, and inclusion; disability and illness accommodations, economic balance, and soundness for both attendees and people running these conferences need to be centered.

One of the reasons I’ve historically centered and encouraged major conferences in my work is due to the ability to meet a variety of people from all over the world in one centralized place. Plus, I was walking in the door in a body that’s marginalized and disadvantaged more often than not, from a hometown that’s only just beginning to regain some degree of mainstream recognition. Plus, being on the internet even back in 2014, was still an exception, versus the nucleus of how we keep up with each other, especially in the greater built environment/land-use/community and economic development sector.

I needed my Black(Queer) Feminist North-Carolinian body to be in those rooms because otherwise, I was just some girl playing on the internet in her teenhood bedroom and how could I possibly know what was needed for communities to shine and thrive.

Now, I know that I can create the spaces I needed AND I should create a space that centers my identities, because they do affect how I perceive the world AND they do have buying power, in addition to humanity that needs no introduction, justification, or underscoring.

Everything I said in 2014, at least what I’ve chosen to put here is true. What’s also true is that we need to leverage technology and every corner of our networks, to strengthen our humanity.

In October, I’ll be offering that hybrid conference I promised. If you’re interested in being a local host, reply back or comment.

And next week I’ll be revisiting my call for us to end civic inferiority complexes and the last week of this month, how crafting a Black Queer Feminist Urbanism has helped me shake off my own inferiority complex.

Before You Go

One of the reasons I’m able to take this month to shift my format and re-establish how I approach all of my work is because of support from my new system for advertisements. This week, the newsletter is sponsored again by Greater Greater Washington, which is hiring a Regional Policy Director.  Is that you? The Regional Policy Director will play a lead role in shaping how GGWash’s regional policy work evolves in the coming years. Focused primarily on housing issues in Maryland, they will develop the organization’s local and state policy agenda, build and strengthen relationships with local and regional stakeholders, organize diverse people who are interested in housing issues in the region to ensure their voices are heard, and run GGWash’s regional endorsements process.

This is a full-time, salaried position with compensation from $83,000 – $93,000 per year depending on experience. Benefits include health insurance contributions, dental insurance, life insurance, transit commuter benefits, 401(k) deferral, and paid leave. GGWash is an equal opportunity employer, and encourages candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply.

Interested? Know someone who might be a good fit? Check their job post here and apply by Friday, February 18th. 

BikeWalkKC also still needs a community organizer who will focus on the Historic Northeast and East sides of Kansas City on the Missouri side, who relies on transit,biking and/or walking. Learn more and apply. 

Want to advertise your job, RFP, conference, achievement or something else? Let’s talk. Rates start at $75 a week for a four week commitment, but there are one, two, three week options available, plus opportunities to extend. Learn more about our new advertising program.

Finally, if we share identity intersections and you’re out here on the job hunt, thinking about starting a business or need a strategic plan for just getting through on this planet, hit me up. I offer this service on a sliding scale, starting at $75 per 1.5 hour session for students/recent grads and anyone else who needs a break in their budget and $250 per 1.5 hour session for those of you doing alright financially, but you need or want to switch things up. The word on the street is true about helping nudge some folks into some life-changing opportunities, I would love for that to be you too. Send me a direct email with the subject Strategy Session.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s(that’s me’s) Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week I’m dipping into my vault of prior posts and newsletters to celebrate Black History Month. Below, you’ll find my post from June 23, 2013 — The Common Man’s Legacy for a City— written just weeks after I lost my father, plus, a few of my current thoughts on this post and the message it shared.  I’m also thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from Greater Greater Washington and many of you who are Patreon supporters. 

The Common Man’s Legacy in a City (Originally Published on June 23, 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 2010  [now unlisted] 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.

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As we go into another Black History Month, I want to challenge everyone reading or consuming a version of this page, to think about your legacy. Everyone has one and you’re definitely not required to have a building, stature or some other marker this current society  has deemed “legacy” to have one.

Before You Go

One of the reasons I’m able to take this month off is because of support from my new system for advertisements. Below, is one from one of the favorite platforms I’ve written from — Greater Greater Washington , which is hiring a Regional Policy Director. Is that you? The Regional Policy Director will play a lead role in shaping how GGWash’s regional policy work evolves in the coming years. Focused primarily on housing issues in Maryland, they will develop the organization’s local and state policy agenda, build and strengthen relationships with local and regional stakeholders, organize diverse people who are interested in housing issues in the region to ensure their voices are heard, and run GGWash’s regional endorsements process.

This is a full-time, salaried position with compensation from $83,000 – $93,000 per year depending on experience. Benefits include health insurance contributions, dental insurance, life insurance, transit commuter benefits, 401(k) deferral, and paid leave. GGWash is an equal opportunity employer, and encourages candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply.

Interested? Know someone who might be a good fit? Check their job post here and apply by Friday, February 18th. 

Also, I found out one of my other prior organizations, BikeWalkKC, needs a community organizer who will focus on the Historic Northeast and East sides of Kansas City on the Missouri side, who relies on transit,biking and/or walking. Learn more and apply. 

Want to advertise your job, RFP, conference, achievement or something else? Let’s talk. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment, but there are one, two, three week options available, plus opportunities to extend. Learn more about our new advertising program.

And if you want to get help with resumes, cover letters or make plans to change jobs, start a business, relocate, or all of the above, especially if we share the intersections of being Black, Queer and (US) Southern, let’s talk. I’ll talk to you for an hour and review one resume and cover letter for $150USD. Additional sessions are $75/session. Send me a note if you’re interested and we can get you on schedule!

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Finally,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before You Go

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

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

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

Until next time,

Kristen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before You Go

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

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

Until next time,

Kristen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before You Go

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

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

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

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

Until next time,

Kristen

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