Welcome back to The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m currently producing this weekly digital newsletter on my site, via email and various other places, to share my thoughts, my Black, Spiritual, Southern, Working-Class, Educated, Queer, Femme 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 edition #22 and I’m back this week on the day of love, with my love theme—To City, With Love (Again). This is still Black History Month and I’ll be sharing and tweeting various historical things. However, the way I really wanted to celebrate this month was to dig into what I love about cities, but centered on my identities as a black woman (last week) queer woman (this week) and a woman entrepreneur on a budget(next week).
The title of the series comes from an edition of a prior iteration of my newsletter from 2014. Hence the again, as I’m revisiting the idea of dedicating myself to a city with love.
Before we dig into this week’s edition, just a reminder on how to contact and support me:
- Send all emails related to myself or The Black Urbanist to theblackurbanist@gmail.com.
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Rail~Volution 2020 has a very special announcement below, before you go. You can join them in advertising your company, organization event, school or initiative by emailing theblackurbanist@gmail.com as well.
Finally, if you aren’t already, you can support the platform financially on a monthly basis using Patreon or one-time using Venmo.
And now, to city, with love, as a (black) queer woman.
To City, With Love (Again) Part 2: What I Love About the City As a (Black) Queer Woman
So last week, I talked about what gets me head over heels for a city from just my black ciswoman perspective. However, this week, I’m stacking a layer on top, my sexual orientation. I’m a pansexual cis gender-conforming woman in a lesbian relationship with a black lesbian cis, but gender non-conforming woman.
(A content note here— this is how we choose to identify. Note that another member of the LGBTQIA+ community may identify differently and chose different words. However, everyone is valid and it’s best to ask before assuming.)
We are millennials. We are not native Washingtonians, but we are Southerners. We are college graduates, but we also have working-class roots and understandings. We have an entrepreneurial spirit. We are very political, almost to the point of being left-radical, having both been involved in direct actions and political strategizing over the years. We are of faith, and yes, a faith that has adherents that don’t always accept all of our identities. Yes, even the Southerness, which might surprise some of you.
And so a city that makes me fall in love with it, also have to fall in love with us and what makes us us.
So what three things are those? Here they are from my perspective.
A community that honestly shrugs us off at worst and adores us at best.
We can go to Target without issues, no matter what corner of the community we are in racially and financially.
Our first date was at one of those breweries that throws picnic tables out front and just enough of a bar in the middle to call itself a neighborhood bar. (Oh and it was in a poorly planned strip mall in the middle of DC, that’s been reclaimed for a post office, a used bookstore, and a storytelling center). We walked to my porch untouched, we had our first kiss un-interrupted.
We’ve both lived and now live together in an all-black and Latinx neighborhood, and what we haven’t found is people harassing us for who we are and how we love.
A faith community that prays with us, not just for us
I was raised as a combination of Southern Baptist, National/Missionary Baptist, United Methodist and African Methodist Episcopal. The preaching talk radio and the gospel station alternated, with a small slither of the hip-hop station, the R&B station and the country station when my Dad really wanted to be cool. I went to church regularly until my teen years and quarterly throughout high school.
During my undergraduate years at N.C. State, I still held onto a lot of my conservative social views, but I was absolutely a political liberal. My roommate from freshman year will tell you that I made a big deal about her organic food, and her lack of support for my Kerry/Lieberman poster, but we put that aside to go to events at the design school and to gatherings from a neo-Pentecostal church. I would occasionally attend the black church style service at the African-American Cultural Center and another mostly white Evangelical campus gathering in my Botany classroom.
Then in 2007, I would leave that group and begin the journey over the last 13 years that led me to my current state not just as an out member of the LGBTQIA+ community, but as a progressive Christian, with a sprinkle of Buddhist Meditative practice (shoutout to our LGBTQIA Sangha meetup) and new agey manifestation and intention-setting. I would attend a very LGBTQIA-friendly United Church of Christ congregation when I was in Kansas City and later join a historic UCC congregation inn Downtown DC that would later close. And Les and I have had the privilege of worshiping at her home church, Metropolitan Community Church- DC (MCC-DC).
Those of you who watched the recent L Word, will recognize that as the church the “priest” character presided over, and the denomination itself was started as a gay-friendly denomination back in 1968 in Los Angeles. Here in DC, they’ve hosted several recent Trans Nights of Remembrance.
But one of the things that stick out for me, is that at the end of every service, we take communion and we are prayed over, together, by a fellow queer elder.
And if something ever happened to MCC-DC, there are so many congregations of all faith and spirit traditions, that see us as human beings worthy of being vessels of spirit.
And in cities that have always been havens for LGBTQIA folks, but barely guarantee shelter, employment, food, and even clothing, it’s good to know there’s at least somewhere to go, in addition to the library, that affirms our soul.
Celebrations that honor us, make us proud and expand our political position and civil rights.
For those of you not in the LGBTQIA+ community, or who don’t have a friend or loved one or colleague in the community (and of course, it’s becoming rarer for someone to even say this), the annual Pride Parade and Festival in each area is one of the key, positive ways members of the LGBTQIA+ community are seen and presented.
And for many of us in the community, it serves as a homecoming and a place to organize around issues we need to address. However, these celebrations can err too much on the corporate side, without honoring the history and the work that needs to be done to ensure full civil rights for our community.
I met Les doing transportation-related political work. However, I crushed on her after seeing her march with her church during the 2017 Capital Pride Parade. I’d just left a brunch after meeting a couple of new acquaintances, a brunch that advertised being acceptable to all the other alphabet letters along with L and G. While those acquaintances didn’t stick with me, she did.
Now, even though we have yet to get to our first Pride together, we are looking forward to the celebration this coming year even as we acknowledge that Capital Pride has issues. There is no excuse for the shooting inspired by homo and transphobia that happened at last year’s Pride. Yet, we understood why the 2018 parade was blocked by those who feel the main Pride Parade and Festival, by allowing in institutions that on other days, actively discriminate, disenfranchise and diminish our quality of life. Which is why we were excited to see the return of a counter political march in 2019.
The securing of basic civil rights goes beyond the festival and march days. Much like I mentioned above, where does one go in the other months, weeks, weekends and days of the year to feel loved and accepted.
This is why it was so overdue that my hometown of Greensboro just opened a centrally-located LGBTQIA+ center. The DC Center has been a huge presence and help for me right here in the DMV. Plus so many other organizations exist here and in larger cities that cover various portions of the spectrum, such as Casa Ruby, that centers trans women and other women-identified members of our community. All places, city, suburban and rural, need safe spaces for all those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
We can celebrate, but we have must be human-first and not just a commodity.
Those things, on top of what I talked about last week, are pillars of my love for a city. Next week, I’ll add the layer of being an entrepreneur on a startup budget.
Other Things On My Mind
- We feel this black homewownership crunch in DC too, and as renters and entrepreneurs who aren’t as politically tied as we once were, we do wonder if there’s still room, outside of the faith community, for us in DC. We also sympathize with a story in the same publication that zeroed in on a black Millennial woman renter.
- I hope we never become homeless in this area (or anywhere), because clearly, we wouldn’t be citizens and we would be a danger to children.
- And finally, I haven’t endorsed yet, but if you want to know where I’m at with the presidential race, this is where I am + this article that considers the extra burdens carried by women of color in political work.
Before You Go
- Two of these three job opportunities close in the next 48 hours. Submit your jobs with this online form for free for a limited time.
- Rail~Volution 2020 is coming up and they’ve reached out to me to let you know that they are looking for speakers for this year. If you live in or plan on being in Miami September 20-23 and want to share a transit or community development-related project, head to https://railvolution.org/the-conference/conference-information/call-for-speakers/. The call for speakers ends on February 28th. There are also scholarships available.
- Check out Kristpattern on Instagram and DM me if you’re interested in anything for sale over there. It’s not too late to get one of the cards from the Les’s Lighthouse collection and they’re great for helping you or a friend turn your wishes into reality in 2020.
- Book me— on your media platform, as a keynote/lecturer, for one of my workshops or as a panel participant.
- Les, that wonderful life partner and sales advisor you learned so much about above, is great at hyping you up, making you laugh and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health. Join the email list for her company Les’s Lighthouse and lookout for a special announcement from her on March 1. In the meantime, you can listen to her podcast.
- Don’t forget to check out my mentee’s Rashida Green’s podcast which also discusses environmental issues from a black woman’s perspective. You can listen to me talk about some of North Carolina’s more notorious environmental issues and the political culture on this episode.
- You too can sponsor The Black Urbanist platform as a company, nonprofit organization, conference or event, institution or agency. Email us at theblackurbanist@gmail.com and we can schedule a call to discuss email, and social sponsorship options. Or, become an individual monthly supporter via Patreon or send me a one-time Venmo.