Weekly Newsletter

The Black Urbanist Weekly #27– Get Us Home and Protect Us Until We Can Get There

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this weekly 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 edition #27 and folks, we’re still not out of the woods yet. In fact, as I write this, there’s a tweet floating around saying that we’re not even in the woods yet.

The work I do on a regular basis comes at so many intersections. First, the intersections of governance, education, design, and culture. Then, there are all those intersections I mention in the first paragraph every week.  Intersections by their very nature make us pause, look around and see if we have safe passage, otherwise, the danger can literally run into us and knock us off our feet. But, this time, with this crisis, the danger is airborne. And that’s why my main message this week is:

We need to get people home as soon as possible.

Every jurisdiction that hasn’t already issued a stay-at-home order, should. That way, any company that’s on the fence on teleworking, that already performs most or all of their duties on computers and doesn’t need to have human contact to do their job, can be at home.

Everyone else, we need to get personal protective equipment to them, starting with all of our health facilities at the front lines of this crisis. 

Those of us who are just sitting at home right now, bored, need to consider our consumption habits and if they support reduced store hours and people in the stores having to do more work lifting and climbing and making.

We still need to do some things, but we could all be sick (and some of us are already dead) and what have we been told when we are sick? Stay home. 

Unless of course, you work somewhere without vacation or sick pay or hourly or you own your own business or you’re a contractor. Basically, everyone can stay home, unless you are providing a service for someone else or you can’t pay your bills.

So about those bills. Let’s kill them. Everyone should be issuing immediate moratoriums and suspensions on utility shutoff, rent payments, mortgage payments or anything else that people would go to work to earn money to do right now. And even with those bill suspensions, we all need savings accounts or some other way to have a universal basic income. The government stimulus still creates that, even if there’s nothing to buy, we can save and build up our own stockpiles. Or spend on other things, like new ventures and things we said we could never do. But we need to do, because this is is a new world.

Yes, folks who are landlords,I feel like you’re my first “but Kristen” in this situation especially the small developer crew, you should be on the phone too begging for forgiveness for your mortgage if you still or ever had one. And, if you own the building outright and you don’t depend on it for primary income, please consider rent suspension. Same with all other smaller businesses, we should all reconsider our relationships with those who provide services. And that leads us to our children, elders and others we teach just as much as we serve.

We need to give all of our students grace, grace in grades, attendance, martriculations, learnings. 

When we do get back to full employment, we need to start giving people grace when it comes to learning jobs and being willing to be trained for jobs.  

Again, we should be doing as much as possible remotely, so we can be ready for not just this crisis, but the next natural disaster or disease pandemic.

Finally, we need to get homes for those who were already on the streets, for the ones where their house is not a home and being locked inside with abusive partners, queer-phobic parents or shady roommates, for the incarcerated and institutionalized who need a rehabilitation plan, not a death sentence.

Then, we can get to that point where some of us can start bragging about our homeschool, our productivity, our creativity. We can all be dancing to that D-Nice mixtape. 

Or, we can keep from being sick. 

Heal from being sick

Morn those we are losing as best we can.

Or even better, just be. No bragging. No showing off. No value of life based on the product of your hands. 

Just being alive.

Before You Go, A Few Other Things On My Mind

  • I’m taking my time of slowness in productivity to revise a lot of things, namely the job board. Look for a new one soon with new functionality. In the meantime, if you don’t need to work right now, don’t work, rest!
  • However, I’m still running my Black Women in Metro America survey. You can answer about your life before or during this crisis, as it will give me guidance going forward in how fellow sisters are interacting with the things I want to do and know. Here’s where to fill it out.
  • Meanwhile, I’m working with esteemed Black architect Mel Mitchell, FAIA, NOMA, over the next few months to get the word out about his newest book of Black architectural history and commentary African-American Architects: Embracing Culture and Building Urban Communities. Follow the Instagram page we set up, order the book from Amazon and until we can get the book in more bookstores, we do have an ISBN number (978-1734496000) and you can ask your local bookstore to order it and support them as well.
  • I’ll be dabbling more with Kristpattern label. Check out its Instagram and follow along with said crafty dabbles.
  • Book me— on your media platform, as a keynote/lecturer, for one of my workshops or as a panel participant. I can do virtual delivery of all of my programs and we can go ahead and start booking programing for late 2020 and 2021. Also, If you are a member of the press and you would love to get my expert commentary on deadline, you can reach me at (301) 578-6278.
  • Les, that wonderful life partner and sales advisor of mine, 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 for periodic motivational updates. Also, if you need some laughter and motivation right now, check out some of her prior performances and motivational talks on YouTube. (Heads up, there’s saucy language, but hearty messages).

I hope to hear that you’re still here the next time we talk via email or social media. And that you’re at peace and at rest. Thanks to all of you for continuing to open this email and likewise, hope to still be here doing the same.

Love, 

Kristen

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