This is The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this ideally weekly but realistically monthlyish 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 weekly column, sitting on your proverbial print paper’s editorial page or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox. This is the 34th regular edition.

Your timeline is probably full of black and white images just like the one I decided to lead this newsletter with, that uplift women and continue to keep our eyes on how women and non-binary folks, as well as trans folk, are still not heard, seen and even erased from these movements.

However, I’m highly doubtful that you’re witnessing an eviction of a neighbor right outside the doors and windows of your apartment building.

In fact, its the unit above us and the last I saw of that neighbor, they were working an “essential” job at the drugstore. However, like so many people, it was already barely enough to live on and now that we are back to “normal”, so many other things are too.

I’m grateful for a partner who still has a job, but her hours were cut back, just because she decided that her safety and well-being were more important during this once in a lifetime medical pandemic, that compounds all other pandemics and chronic illnesses, including the one she’s raising money for, to advocate for queer-centric care in, full-time.

We went to IKEA over the weekend, and we did a distanced porch visit, via the car we can still pay for and that can get us out and around, without transit and having to incur that risk. We’ve both done grocery shopping and haircuts, fully masked and shielded on all fronts.

But we we rarely both go inside a building. I still prefer grocery and other curbside pickups and deliveries. 

And of course, when it comes to white supremacy, racism, all the other isms and issues and their role in general society and specifically how the greater urbanism world have shaped and produced them.

I’ve already known.

In 2012. In 2013. In 2013 again, reflecting back on 2004-2012 when I was doing my undergrad and graduate studies.

I’m in deep solidarity with this recent piece  and I hope this isn’t the last time this magazine is this Black and I can’t wait to share an all Black Queer Womxn conversation we did last night that touches on all these things and more.

And in my book clubs, I first get to encourage my Black and Other folks of color, free-of-charge, through yet another round of this violence and marginalization, so we can find and cultivate our own safety, transformation and joy.

Secondly, White allies can start the process of coming off the sidelines, andpractice both small-scale reparations to Black-led scholarship and camaraderie and center Black queer feminist urbanist thought as they reshape how they approach life going forward. And yes, life, not just urbanism. In fact, here’s how one person has already shifted perspective and just in the first few chapters of our first book.

If you want to get in on these experiences, it’s not too late and everything is recorded so you can go back and watch as much as you want and at your leisure. You can get signed up over here.

And finally, while I tend to be quieter than I used to be and my soul feels weary and I grieve and sometimes I lash out and freak out, the spirit and witness of my Black queer elders keeps me going and I heal. 

(And keep working on my book, which is still forthcoming, because I still do have a lot to say).

Until next time,

Kristen

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