The solidarity we seek the most in land stewardship is acknowledging head-on when we have been violent in its practice and steering, rather than shaming those who exhibit momentary violence in trying to survive it. Oh, and COVID denial/acceptance is also a form of violence.
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 another “Current” edition, where I connect current events with the values of Black Queer Feminist Urbanism. Plus, today I am launching a new benefit for Patreon supporters. It will feel familiar, as it’s a reboot with a brand new curriculum of my Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School. Scroll down to the Before You Go section, where I take over the entire section to explain what’s up!
So since we are digging into current events this week, let me talk about what I didn’t talk about last week, that I probably could have said something about, since I was talking about how Black men support Black women.
The intention was right, especially considering the history between all parties involved and how traditional notions of honor are enacted in the Black community, specifically the Black American community descended from the enslaved and colonized, therefore holding containers of trauma and violence, hoping they would never be triggered or needed, respectfully.
However, the action taken was incomplete.
It was a just act for the years of documented verbal mistreatment; lack of empathy for the way our physical bodies don’t always match soul consciousness, but still deserve respect, and a broken promise between what I assume were two one-time friends.
What made it incomplete was that we need more than just-violence-in-retribution to heal violent systems and violent beliefs that we the marginalized, especially Black, feminine, poor, disabled, trans nonbinary are problems.
If we are going to end violence once and for all, we have to start at its roots.
For those of us who are involved in land stewardship work in any form or fashion, that will include accepting that many of us do the work we love, on top of stolen and/or colonized land.
We need to go beyond acceptance and we need to rectify this issue.
Not just for healing of the human race, but for the surface and atmosphere of the planet Earth.
So we can have fields of plenty, air of life and abundance, with villages of fair trade and gifting of its plenty, and we as people are not driven to massive war and acts of destruction. We are in a peaceful state and that peace and abundance and prosperity is not on top or at the expense of someone else.
We may find that the pop culture, Hollywood-centric catalyst of this particular conversation of violence is irrelevant, but the violence of colonialism and stolen lands is square in our purview and must be eradicated. As well as our responsibility to continue to mitigate the spread and the negative impacts of not just COVID-19, but all of our environmental harms and diseases, and the lack of access to care for said issues.
I shared many of my current thoughts about COVID and how it appears the urbanism and urbanism adjacent professional community is handling it at the moment on my social media posts from last Wednesday:
I’m disturbed that so much of our professional lives in urbanism have returned back to in-person. No hybrid options, no (visible) masks, the expectation that everyone’s had it and everyone can easily get over it because healthcare is so great and “you’re not one of those people”.
The expectation that we all saved or made more money or that all of our jobs, family members, friends, colleagues, bodies came back exactly the same way. That we can afford exactly what we used to afford, including all these conferences, convening, and even going to the office.
But then again, this work is rooted in a delusion of white supremacy, and therefore at the end of the day, the expectation is that we wear our bodies out doing so and we go bankrupt to do it, that imperialism and everything that begets isn’t real or affecting us.
I’m sharing this because I can count on my hands, yes even in Black, feminist queer, and/or trans liberation spaces, those that acknowledge that life has changed and that even if it looks like we are going back to “normal”, it’s not quite the same.
I’m also sharing because I need to know why we think this is ok, especially those of y’all claiming to be doing this work for equity and yes even justice and not just being provocative or concerned on paper or on these platforms.
Folks that actually care — please prove me wrong and please reach out to me so we can fulfill making all of our spaces less classist and ableist.
Seriously. I want to be wrong about people I love and care about, who like myself have yet to contract COVID, getting it and it continuing to cause problems. I hope that if you had it, you continue to have a swift recovery and the energy to do all the things, because no one ever deserved to get it and our systems failed us.
I would like to know for sure that my healthcare ecosystem (which is not Les’s) would come through for me, but I can’t guarantee that.
I want to believe that all these hotel ballrooms and event spaces and even schools are implementing the kinds of ventilation that make these rooms as safe as being outdoors when it comes to lowering viral spread.
I want all of our budgets to recover, and I want all those lost family members and friends back, and if they aren’t coming back, for the grief to lessen.
However, I do want to thank everyone who continues to create outdoor dining and social spaces, protective measures, proper facility-based care, and mutual aid and encourages safe indoor gathering, above and beyond mask mandates and testing requirements.
To make my determinations of not being out of the woods yet on a professional level I go by the Johns Hopkins data site, which gives a global view of case numbers, hospitalizations, tests, and vaccinations, on a weekday basis. I also gave a shoutout to several of the people in the disability and healthcare community, many of them Black women and gender-diverse people, in my last post and specifically Dr. Uche Blackstock, who just tweeted again that we still need to be masking indoors and taking other precautions.
I also want to highlight the work of one of our renowned placemaking colleagues, Dr. Mindy Fullilove, who is a medical doctor in addition to being an activist placemaker. Read more about the People’s CDC that she and a coalition of others have formed that takes to task the (American CDC’s) current and prior handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and provides solutions and ways to get active around this.
We have to get all countries to equity when it comes to vaccines and care. We have to restore funding for the uninsured in this country to get COVID care and precautions.
We are in a better place than we were, but we aren’t ready, nor do we need to return to our old normal.
I might sound like a broken record at this point about this, but I’ll end this part of the newsletter by thanking those of you who spoke up and thanked me for sharing, for acknowledging that some of us haven’t snapped back to “normal” and that we need to be in solidarity with our planners, placemakers, and people who needed a new normal anyway.
Before You Go
In light of the new normal, the real normal, I got clarity this week on how I want to coach and mentor folks individually and collectively in more depth than this newsletter.
I’ve created a quiz around this new format of coaching and teaching, that will give you some quick answers around engaging with Black Queer Feminist Urbanism and prep you for my upcoming Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Intensive in the month of May. If you’re curious, go ahead and take the quiz and then book some(complimentary) time with me to learn more. If you are an existing Patreon subscriber, you’ll learn more about how your levels will change today and be able to go ahead and pledge support. And if you’re already eligible for the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Lounge, head over there and find all your materials. We will be doing special May check-ins, but some of your curricula is already preloaded and ready for you. Next week and for the following few weeks, I’ll be providing more details on my website and here in the newsletter about this new direction and why and how.
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Until next time,
Kristen