Welcome to The Black Urbanist Weekly.

If it’s been a while since you’ve opened this or if you’re brand new, let me re-introduce myself. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m currently producing this weekly digital newsletter on my site and via email 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 print paper’s editorial page or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox.

This is the 8th edition and this week it’s just past Halloween and I’m both spooked and hopeful.

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The Real Goblins of Our Urban Lives

I was one of those kids who grew up not being allowed to celebrate Halloween. That didn’t always mean that I was deprived of candy though. What it did mean was that I wasn’t allowed to dress up and most certainly not as anything deemed as evil or demonic. There was also no going door-to-door in any kind of candy pursuit. In fact, many of my childhood Halloweens were spent at home or with my mom at her friend’s home, with the lights out and doors locked to keep out the spirits.

Yet, this year especially, I find that the least scary thing going on with Halloween are the costumes, candy, witches, and ghosts. 

I was reading this Vox article yesterday on every city gentrifying and it summed up both in its content and also who it talked to about the content, how hopeless and fearful I am of being both erased from the cannon of work done for communities and also erased from my community period.

The main way this article was triggering was it being overwhelmingly dude-expert centric. It took 29 paragraphs for a woman to even be mentioned and even at that mention, it was the male-presenting author’s wife. No mention of if she had a job, if she was feeling any kind of crunch under gentrification and if she was, it was underneath her husband’s crunch. But, he, inaddition to being a journalist, is a small business owner, a bar to be exact, everything will be ok, right?

Then, other than Dr. Mindy Thompson Fuliliove, no other woman shows up as an expert in the copy or period. 

I laud the inclusion of two black faces and opinions. I’m glad that people in the upper classes are saying times up. Every city is gentrifying and everyone is feeling the crunch.

However, what about folks, especially our trans women losing their lives at the hands of fear. And  a number of public servants, celebrities and regular folks like my dad, and three other male cousins under 60 becoming ancestors so soon, under the stress and pain of our current world.

I thought I was special when I started doing this over a decade ago. I thought I would be able to write my way completely out of a world where women couldn’t even be full ministers in religious spaces and most certainly couldn’t fall in love with each other. I thought I’d be able to write my way out of low wages and erasure both on and off the page.

I looked forward to the day when I would be able to take the train and go downtown to see black plays and dance performances at the theater, and professional sporting events, not knowing that I did more of that at my diverse, center-city elementary school than I’ve been able to do as an adult. (Save those Mystics and Nats games, but more on that next week)

I’m clinging to the hope that the dystopian books won’t be as bad about how our society is devolving. 

I want to wake up and stop asking myself— Am I still relevant? Does anybody really care? Am I doomed to just be delivering groceries using phone apps and doing maybe two-four paid speeches a year, on something that I’m powerless to change? That’s assuming that those apps don’t shut down or in the interim snatch all my physical strength. I really had to nap to get even this email written.

But, in spite of all this terror, love never changes and never ends. 

I saw it Wednesday night for the second time in my lifetime, as the metro area I claimed as home poured into the streets to celebrate the winning of the World Series. 

I saw it last year, at my first sizable adult Halloween party, where my pink zombie of a girlfriend and my best barista buddy jammed out to 90s R&B after handing out candy to the new crop of young trick-or-treaters on the apartment building steps. 

She and I cuddled last night and watched something mildly scary, with the lights on. 

Then, as you’re reading this, I’ll be delivering groceries on someone else’s doorstep, thankful for the opportunity to make money in a way that doesn’t silence my voice in these trying times.

And, I’m thankful, as we go into this season of expressing gratitude and specifically on this day as so many around the world choose to honor and invite in the presence of their ancestors and their memories.

Things might have to crash and burn before they rise up again. But I know in the example of those ancestors and the courage of Spirit, we will continue on!

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Other Things on My Mind

Now there were a lot of mainstream and aspiring mainstream publications this week who did amplify black stories and they were the bulk of my reading.

First, KCUR, who had me on and allowed me to express how I felt disconnected from KC’s black community back in 2015, highlights how the black community in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) is changing. That link also has some great stories of how other communities are shifting along race and class lines.

Then, Zora, the new women of color Medium site featured another black KCKian and other black writers from the Midwest imploring that you don’t forget about them and how powerful their cities have been in the Black American experience.

And finally, the New York Times decided to make their way through my hometown, one other city I’ve lived in in recent years and several others I’ve visited to show black folks in black-in-white and allow us to tell our stories on what makes a black community. 

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Before you go…

—Check out the job board. I’m working on a job-board improvement survey. Look out for that soon. Also let me know if you get any of the jobs or opportunities listed on the board.

—Buy a bag or t-shirt from The Black Urbanist  store or greeting cards from Les’s Lighthouse. By the time you read this newsletter, we’ll be past Halloween. Yeah, the holidays are here, folks. And these are great black queer woman-owned gifts you can give this season!

— Let me come and talk to you about killing your civic-inferiority complex Book me for a lecture, workshop or both.  Also Les, my wonderful life partner and sales director is great at hyping you up, making you laugh and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health Book her too. 

–Finally, pledge an amount of your choice via Patreon. While this is a for-profit venture, this is a social venture and the funds go back to helping me keep my sanity, make one less grocery delivery and consume more groceries so I can continue to bring you my unique urban and place-based analysis. 

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