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 is the one that will transition us from November to December of 2020.

When I originally sat down to write this letter, I couldn’t think of a single thing to be thankful for. After all, this year continues to be this year. 

But, when I look back over this year, I can honestly say I achieved exactly the intention I set for this year — to amplify the voices, work and and witness of Black women-identified & queer folks in the greater urbanism world. 

Did it happen exactly as I spelled out in my goals newsletter back in early January? No, but 2020 didn’t go as planned, period.

Yet, I’ve heard from so many of you that despite the calamities of this year, there was a lot of awesome and extraordinary. Same with me!

You’ve invited me to keynote and share thought leadership on several wonderful industry panels, podcasts and at virtual design days and class meetings across the world.

You’ve allowed me to mentor you as you create planning and urbanism platforms of your own and helped me curate one of many safe spaces for us as non-white urbanists on and off the internet.

Black women specifically — you gave such excellent feedback in my survey on your experiences in various metro areas and work various elements of place and urbanism (and it’s not too late to share or amend your thoughts!)

And I’m in the early stages of creating the educational media platform of my dreams, thanks to those of you on Patreon who donate at any level, and especially those of you who are receiving the Book Club/School videos directly. 

All those other goals are coming, but need a little more time to incubate. This year could be its own chapter in my book. However I’m so happy I got done what I got done and thus far have been relatively healthy. 

And of course, I’m still here period. We’ve lost so many folks to COVID-19 complications and other sicknesses and sudden deaths. 

I can’t end this without thinking about how Octavia Butler, who many of us have drawn wisdom from this year and I see as one of our great Black woman urbanists, set a goal to be a bestseller.

She wasn’t a New York Times bestseller until recently, but she sold enough in her lifetime to attract the attention of the MacArthur Foundation, who gave her one of their “genius” grants. The grants vary in amount, but their purpose is to make sure you don’t have to worry about expenses.

To me, that counts and I believe she believed it counted too. You can see the words straight out of her journal and check out the bus route and library where she wrote several of those bestsellers in this wonderful interactive map the Los Angeles Times put together of her writing world in the  Los Angeles Metro region. 

Let’s let her intuition and grit and flexibility around her intention, my gratitude towards you and the fact you survived to this point of the year, ignite your radical imagination as placemakers, policy builders, mentors, makers and designers to continue to improve our world.

After all, we had an election miracle. And a Black woman vice-president elect. Don’t tell me what’s impossible.

See you back here on New Year’s Eve with my annual dose of urbanist wishes and goals!

P.S. : As a gift to you, I’m opening up and sharing this video of the Black Queer Femnist Urbanist Book Club/School, on the Black maps created by the scholar authors of Chocolate Cities: A Black Map of American Life. Existing Patreons and folks in the Mighty Networks group, you have a new chapter upload and more to come very soon! Purchase the book via my Bookshop.org store and support the site and get free shipping until the end of today (11/30/2020).

(Image: Me on the National Mall on a nice quiet Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. Les did a great job taking this picture).