This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, Non-Binary Femme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This newsletter is its own metro area.

Like you, I’ve been crunching over the new Census numbers and what that means for me.

With The Villages, Florida being the largest growing metro area in the United States, it seems like conservative, small-village, but just disconnected and big boxy enough, mostly White urbanism is what people want.

Or, with more people than ever identifying as multiracial, inclusive of both Black Americans and Hispanic/Latino folks(many who are also of Black/African descent), the country as a whole is getting more diverse. Both my home state of North Carolina and my current state of Maryland (along with the adjacent District of Columbia and portions of Virginia) have never been more populous and diverse, with North Carolina growing even more and the “DMV” area leveling out a bit population-wise.

I have to stop my crunching for a moment not because we don’t need this information.

Jurisdictions redistricting their political precincts and districts for better representation; bridging the gap between the 104 million homes, 13 million vacant, for 331,449,281 million people; local governments providing social service aid for “poorer” Census tracts depend on this information and all of its fallacies and quirks.

But I have days of headaches and I lose sleep at night thinking about how I’m one tiny dot of that 331,449,281 million.

A tiny dot in Census parlance, as of April 1, 2020, lived at my current multi-family residence in one of 9 units in our building, with my same-gender partner in a domestic partnership. I am Black, from North Carolina with clear African roots and the possibility of others.

For this same reason of thinking so hard about being that dot, I have to take breaks from my Ancestry account and I still need to submit the DNA test.

But, around the beginning of 2020, I begat my own census. This census was built on this research coordinated by Junia Howell and Bloomberg CityLab on which cities in the United States are most successful for Black women, itself based on evaluating whether or not Black women can succeed in the Pittsburgh metro region.

In that study, I found surprises, like how my home metro of Greensboro is #1 for women’s health.

But I also needed more. So, I launched two separate surveys over the course of our very wacky time of pandemic + heightened interest in Black Lives Matter.

October 1st is also the launch of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Festival/Summit, which will include more virtual and in-person, activities throughout the month of October, namely:

• A Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Demonstration Tour in the DC area on October 16th
• The endoQueer Public Health Week October 11th-15th
• The relaunch of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School on Halloween night
• and I’m putting the finishing details on some other events, including a hybrid Fiber Party for my crafty people.

If you’re a Patreon supporter at the Study Hall level, all of the above is included, with only an additional cost if you want to come on the demonstration tour and/or receive swag bag I’m crafting for the demonstration tour and the fiber party.

If you are a supporter at the Public Lecture level, there’s only an additional fee to access the demonstration tour and the school.

You can also upgrade to annual rates in Patreon or if you do so on Eventbrite, you’ll get the same content delivered in a Teachable school.

Either way, you’ll be hearing a lot from me on email, on socials, and in other media as I prepare to launch out this new offering in the world over the next few weeks.

Once again, you can register here for the whole or part of the paid summit, add the launch webinar to your calendar, or pledge on Patreon to access the full summit or school.

See you soon,

Kristen

P.S. Learn more about my adventures in sustainable fashion and fiber.

This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, Non-Binary Femme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This newsletter is always proud and always free. Black is Beautiful! Queer as in Heck Yeah! Power to the People! When I write the words Black Queer Feminist Urbanist together and apply them to myself and my work, it’s the spirit of the phrases above that I bring forward. My partner’s mom once told me that they didn’t want me to put myself, my work and relationship down by calling myself queer. She equated it with going around and using another semi-reclaimed word about her own daughter. Until 2015, I could count on my hands the number of people of African descent racialized as Black, that would proudly claim being Black in the land-use policy, planning, and building world. And who hasn’t wrestled with the idea of feminine as weak, even internally. And nobody wants to admit that rural transit, villages and ecosystems exist in tandem with urban systems. And that the designation of something as a suburb is racially motivated.But I’m a queer feminist in professional spaces today (with North Carolinian and Marylander ties) because Pauli Murray was first. And I’m a proud Black Urbanist because Melvin Mitchell walked with Stokley Charmicael (Kwame Ture) as they attempted to repair the Black main streets of DC in the same years my parents were coming of age tilling farmlands of their own central North Carolina Black communities, planting the seeds of their daughter’s quest to understand how it all works, through the lenses of place, creativity and design. And it is in this spirit of pride, creativity, reverence and hope for the future, that I hope you will join me for the month of October for my inaugural Black Queer Feminist Urbanism Festival/Summit At the summit we will do the following –Launch the inaugural Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Index for Global Metro Areas on Friday October 1st in a live virtual stream. –Go on a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist themed (socially distanced with proof of vaccination required) Potomac Waterfront Boat Tour with stops at several key points in National Harbor, Alexandria and The District Wharf on Saturday, October 16th.  –Relaunch the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School on October 31st –Have some other surprise conversations both online and offline that will be fulfilling and affirming. –Challenge white-led, cishet led firms and organizations to continue the restorative and reparative processes needed to ensure Black liberation and model what multicultural solidarity looks like when it does exist to serve white supremacy or capitalism. While the livestream of the report launch is free to stream and will stream on my Youtube Channel, and I’ll share highlights and key points of the boat tour in various videos — only by registering on Eventbrite for a paid ticket will you be able to receive one or more of the following: —Professional Certification Certificates for the report launch webinar and full copies of the report+annual access to the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School at the Public Lecture annual rate. The new version of the school and archives of the report launch and boat tour will be available on Teachable, and completion of each module will generate a certificate. —An in-person boat tour ticket, which includes a treasure chest of my book, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, along with several other specially produced objects highlighting some of my favorite Black, Queer, Feminist and/or Urbanist vendors, artisans and places along the DC Area Potomac Waterfront. You’ll also get everything in the first bullet. —The treasure chest only, mailed to your home + everything in the first bullet. If you want to do this and still join us on October 16th, you’ll be on your own to visit all the sites in the boat tour and there’s no guarantee that I and some of my special guests at each stop will be there.

Register on Eventbrite

Thanks to everyone who is already a Patreon and others who have already pre-registered and agreed to contribute art, knowledge and their connections to the launch of this event. And don’t forget to register for at least the live webinar stream. If you want to upgrade your ticket for any of the other benefits, you’ll be able to do so until October 1st. Until next time,

P.S. Learn more about my adventures in sustainable fashion and fiber.

This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, Non-Binary Femme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This newsletter is happy to be unmasked, outside, in a nice park with sunshine.

I’m Kristen, and this month, of all months, I‘m proud to be one of the many Black people assigned female at birth, but living and loving beyond the binary.

For it’s this month we honor those who just learned of their emancipation from chattel slavery long after they should, because of where they lived. More on these folks in a couple of paragraphs.

This month we honor the Black woman, living and loving outside of the binary, who decided to throw the first brick at the Stonewall Inn and call up her sister siblings, many of whom had already been resisting with force against the forces that told them they had no place at all in this country, much less this earth. Now, we all get to bask underneath their rainbow, as we continue to finish the work.

And yesterday specifically, we also think of the Black people, living and loving outside of the binary, those who fought in wars for a country that thought them not human and sometimes still think them not human. And their people who first saw fit to honor them.

And 100 years ago this week, just hundreds of miles from where those people were delayed freedom, so many of their Black siblings lost the buildings and many of the people who believed that freedom and reparations had truly come.

And because we are still waiting for those things to come, I am proudly on my Black Urbanist journey to my Queer Feminist Future. And I want to help you do the same.

First of all, my book is releasing this fall and those of you on my Patreon list have first dibs. Plus, you’ll have access to my book club selections, special interviews, and lectures from me and some of my fiber and other art!

It’s so great to be here in your inbox again.

Until next time,

Kristen

This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, Non-Binary Femme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This newsletter will be in just in time for its author to get their second Covid-19 shot on the first of May, but not for us to hang out maskless at a concert of one’s choosing. I am an author. That’s probably not news to anyone reading this, because after all, you’re reading this.However, owning this part of myself has been a challenge over the years. Despite this being the 27th anniversary of my first writing contest win and the conference where I got my award, shared the book I wrote and got to meet Walter Dean Myers, the Jason Reynolds of our millennial time.  Despite having wrote a book and even doing a book signing and reading this very week in 2015. And of course, this entire platform.But today, I’m not going back.Today, if you’re a Patreon, you’re already set to receive a copy of my next book A Black Urbanist Journey. If not, join me over there and receive either an e-book or a signed hard copy, depending on what level you’re signed up at. There will also be paperback copies and an audiobook. Unlike my prior book, it will also have a proper ISBN and any bookstore that uses ISBN will be able to order it in bulk. You’ll be able to order it for your school, conference, church and other community bookstores. The manuscript is finished and I will be reaching out to folks to review, share and grow the audience of this book and this platform. If you’re interested in doing so and want to go ahead and reach out, book a time to talk about what it would take to be on my book launch and sharing team. While I couldn’t release the book on October 17, 2020, the tenth anniversary of The Black Urbanist Platform, I’m all set to do so on October 17, 2021. Plus, as we get vaccinated and events both inside and outside resume, I’m looking forward to coming to your venues and sharing this story on the keynote stages and in smaller group breakouts.Book me for a keynote, workshop or book talk. Finally, I’m excited to launch into this new normal. This time last year we didn’t know what to expect and now, I can’t wait for the future. I hope you’ll continue to join me in one or more ways above.

This is The Black Urbanist Monthly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this monthly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, CisFemme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my monthly column, the one that flaps open as you start browsing that coffee table magazine or printed alt-weekly newspaper or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This newsletter is both lamb and lion as we go from the second March of the pandemic and the second pandemic April rains on us.

Every week, I shampoo, condition and style my hair. One week out of the month, I go, fully masked, to a person in a salon suite and they do all that for me, plus, cut my hair and color it, when it needs it. 

(You can thank her for my galaxy hair I debuted during my birthday month).

She, like me, is a young Black woman with colorful hair in its natural state, that owns the means of her production. 

She and folks like us in collective beauty studios and art and design studios and kitchens and vehicles of all sizes all over the world and in individual homes are examples of how marginalized people can and do create their own economies that are fair and equitable.

I can’t completely celebrate our resilience because access and control of resources isn’t true for far too many people in the world, especially non-white people who are enslaved, underpaid, undermined and flat out colonized and stolen from, as well as maimed or killed by state-sanctioned forces, some that have no desire to even reform, much less abolish themselves and repatriate back to the natives and exploited of the land.

Sometimes those of us who have been gifted titles and authority in and over communities struggle with what would happen if our current roles become obsolete. You’ll read that paragraph above and you’ll feel guilty or angry or some other kind of in-between space that comes from having had to play the game too long.

I wanted to focus my monthly letter on this to help use center our post-pandemic shift and challenge us to take this remaining moment of pause to reflect on what’s worked and what we can do to work better and connect better.

Are we ready to help others repatriate, divest, grow? Are we ready and able to heal?

In the spirit of showing up and being there for each other, I’m going to be doing something different for April. I’m bringing back live webinars! This is my way of easing into being outside and seeing more folks.

For those of you who are active in the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School Pilot Groups, check your emails and the platforms for special messages and Doodle polls for events on either April 5th or April 7th. It’s not too late to join one of those pilot groups, you can learn more and join at www.theblackurbanist.com/school.

Many of you are curious about the survey and the initial results. Join me on April 6th to check out the results and what I hope to do with them. I’m also doing a webinar to talk about the progress of my survey on Black Queer Feminist Urbanism on April 6th. The time will be announced later this week in a separate email/social announcements/updated blog post. This webinar is free and open to all Patreon supporters, and $10 for all those who are not already Patreons.

If you haven’t had a chance to contribute to the survey, but want to, please do! This survey is open to everyone, even though it’s collecting data for a specific group of people. I’ll also be sharing some of the things I’m learning about various self-identified groups and general information I’ve collected around affordability and land-use.

Finally, be sure to follow me on Instagram @blackurbanist and @kristpattern, where I’ll be going live every once in a while documenting my various trips as I head back outside distanced and post-vaccination, as well as opportunities on the latter to connect with my journey to environmentally sustainable and fair-trade fashion.

If you’re reading this right now, this means you’re still here and I’m grateful. Hang in there and we’ll be in touch soon, on Zoom or somewhere else safe.

Kristen

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I was relatively quiet during Black History Month, because I realized I didn’t need to be as loud.

Loud about making sure Black Lives Matter and even Black history. 

You know, because we live in a world where power companies ruin lives, but have time to make Black history posts on social media.

When LinkedIN (and so many other corporate logos) were the colors of the Pan-African flag, but the actual Black and African people were routinely silenced and shadowbanned during one of the most important liberation movement moments in our lifetime.

When Audre Lorde is the Google Doodle on her birthday (that she shares with Toni Morrison and my paternal grandmother), but that same company proved her point that the masters tools can’t dismantle the masters house, when a Stanford-educated, award-winning  contemporary Black woman employee that they asked to challenge them on equity, gets fired because of a hot email. 

I think that’s exactly why I’ve been quiet this month, relatively. Because we are in need of hot, piping emails. 

Like this one.

Because I grieve and I mourn that all this equity we’ve gotten so enamored with lately, is honestly just seats at the table and check boxes, and clout chasing, and not restitution and reparations and co-conspiritorship and healing.

Because I never knew that my grandmother was born on the same day as Audre and Toni. She died in a cloud of trauma 11 years before I was born and I’ve only ever seen two pictures of her.

Yet, in those pictures, I still saw a woman who despite everything she lived though up until those points, she had a quiet dignity. 

I was told by my dad and his siblings that her table was never empty and if someone needed a bite to eat, there was always one at her house. Much like my maternal grandmother, who’s also recently set up an eternal kitchen on the other side, leaving us to the memory of the physical one that never closed and didn’t cost anything to drop in.

It’s on the strength of my grandmothers who knew how to create spaces in spite of the deepest days of segregation and Jim Crow, who broke barriers (my maternal grandmother was one of the first Black cafeteria managers in Alamance County, NC), that I have sought to make this a space where other Black womyn, and Black queer, trans and non-binary folks, can be at home, both in the active built environment and land use industry and period, in those communities that have been created by those spaces.

I want to first thank the 23 Black womyn-identified folks who took my survey last year, as well as those of you who fall under the Black womyn-identified, trans, queer and nonbinary community from this year’s survey (and especially those who took it twice). You sharing this information will make it better for all of us. I will be digging deeper into those answers, especially with the pandemic and its effects. I’ll also be reaching out to you later this year for some focus groups (that will be paid!).

Secondly, allies and accomplices who got access to the survey this year, your opinions have been especially valuable as I compare and contrast perception of what spaces are friendly to us as Black queer people, and especially those of us women/femme identified. A couple of you highlighted how as non-Black POC, there are still disparities in how you’re treated and how your neighborhoods are fairing. Plus, you helped put several metro areas higher on the list of myself and Les’s rankings of our personal happy places. Here are those metro areas listed in alphabetical order:

Atlanta

Chicago

Dallas-Fort Worth

Detroit

Los Angeles

New York (Tri-State)

Philadelphia

Piedmont Triad, NC (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point)

Pittsburgh

Research Triangle, NC (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary)

San Francisco Bay Area (Oakland, Silicon Valley)

Minneapolis/ St. Paul

Washington, DC (inclusive of Northern Virginia, and the adjacent Maryland Counties)

I know deep in my heart that this list is incomplete. These cities listed above have at least 100,000 Black woman-identified people. Several of you passed our personal likes tests, but you have less than 100,000 Black women. Know that we’ll be calling up those of you who reped and campaigned really hard for us to move to your smaller cities. And I know Baltimore, New Orleans, Charlotte and Birmingham can check all these boxes, but I only had one or none responses, so based on this very small sample of folks, this is where we are.

So head over to the main survey and  please keep sharing(or come back and finish)  because I know some of these metro areas do have those spaces and some of you who haven’t had a chance to share do have the keys to that information. Also, Black woman-identified and non-binary femme folks, the orginal survey is open and I would love to get your open-ended answers on our personal “happy place” questions and include you in that paid focus group if you’re interested.

Oh, and the contest winner has received a separate message from me, with information on how to claim their prize.

Finally, those of you who are in The Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School pilot have a new lesson from a slightly hidden, but very relevant historical figure, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. 

Plus, for those of you in the Mighty Networks pilot and who are pledged at at least the $10 level on Patreon will be treated to a conversation with the authors of Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Wilkerson, that we will be recording next week and releasing towards the middle of the month, to honor Women’s History Month and to continue our everyday celebration of Black History Month. 

Those of you subscribed at the new Public Lecture level(and who are in our special BIPOC community on Mighty Networks)  will get new interviews like this, a deep dive into my survey methodology(also coming later in March) and instant access to old podcast episodes.

You’ll also be supporting the creation of spaces where being unapologetically Black and woman-identified and/or queer, trans and nonbinary are joys and culture adds, not a nuisance.

Because we are a wildfire. Not of destruction, but of live-giving energy.

Roaring into March like the lions we are.

Thanks for being here and I’m happy I can be here for you,

Kristen