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 #31.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about how important the legal jurisdiction you legally reside in is to your life. Lo and behold we are in a global pandemic and some folks are learning for the first time how important it is to understand who will pick you up if you call 911.
Who will decide if you can take a life-saving test.
Who can arrest you for walking around too much without having something on your face.
Where your body will go if it can’t be claimed immediately.
Even before the Ahmaud Aberry tape (and the tapes and records of far too many black bodies in America) hit these social media streets.
Even before Covid-19 had us being scarce in the streets.
I have always been hyperaware of physical and spiritual space.
Even before I think of the ground and land, I think of the space that sits above it, the Z axis, the atmosphere, the universe.
I’m not alone with this emphasis on space versus place, especially as a black woman. I found this wonderful graduate thesis (and companion video) by Chandra Christmas-Rouse, Race, Space and the Poetics of Planning: Toward a Black Feminist Space-Making Practice as I was googling the other day to see what over black queer feminist urbanist voices were floating around the internet.
It’s 94 pages ring true, especially in this time we are in, and as I continue what I’ve termed my “Essential+Quarantine Revolution”. She hones in on black women in Chicago who work in creative spaces, create all kinds of space, including the architectural and land securing kinds that design professionals are used to. She also refers to space-making as many use place-making, to take the walls and the ground completely away from the concept of community gathering, resource sharing, and humanity-affirming.
I will speak for myself here that even if a building is built perfectly, dare I say designed for social impact or sustainability, but it houses a workplace that doesn’t value or exploits my ideas, a happy hour that results in me being harassed by attendees or, something that is sadly the case for too many people today, void of enough ventilators and protective equipment to keep me alive?
The building is dead.
Even before I physically or spiritually die in it, the edifice is dead and there’s nothing anyone can do, save improving the social atmosphere, and rectifying the injustice that would make me want to come back. If I ever make it out, in the case of that hospital building.
And let’s talk a little more about medical buildings and spaces. Can we not see that it’s what’s killing us the most? People who get to them and they are panicked or disbelieved or underrated or not even treated at all. Buildings that are inadequately staffed, too far away, or unable to be converted. Or they were converted, into something that while provides shelter, provides it for so little and at such a high cost.
And then there are the spaces— the parking lots, the tents, the living rooms, all the spaces that don’t seem like they could be something different, but all of a sudden, in some places, are testing sites, farmers markets, dining rooms, even emergency rooms. But not in enough places and in places of trust and high need.
And the spaces, in their normal state, that should be places of refuge, but instead are places of murder, anguish, pain, and despair— often because the current inhabitant doesn’t match or matches too well the description.
There are so many lessons about cultivating space and place we still have yet to learn. If we expect life to continue to flourish, we must learn.
And for those of us who carry those burdens, tears, pain and anguish no matter what space or place they are in, take a moment and pause on this sentence, these words, this moment and know that you are seen, loved and held by a fellow sister sibling in the struggle, victory and the joy.
Before You Go, A Few Other Things On My Mind
- I’m still running my Black Women in Metro America survey. You can answer about your life before or during Covid-19, 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 still 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 bookstores to order the print version. Also, we are hoping to have the e-book version up by the end of April.
- You can 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 programming 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). She’s putting the final touches on her latest podcast, which you will not want to miss.
- 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.
As always, 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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