This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week we pause to really think about what our work means for the world. Please support this work on Patreon and forward this to a a friend or colleague who would get value out of this email.
Becoming a land steward and finding a place that won’t evict in my darkest hour. Being the kind of fiber creator that builds up the community and doesn’t crash it down.
Those two sentences sum up how I feel around this weekend these days.
And I’m sure that’s you too, if you’ve been here with me long enough, especially over the last few weeks as I feel my prophetic fire rising back up around land use and stewardship, along with some of the things we extract from or on land, such as the fiber I love crafting objects out of.
This tweet, a call for mourning and celebration of overcoming what those of us who are Indigenous and Black most mourn over, is how I opened this weekend.
This email is how I’m closing it.
Everything we care about in land use and planning comes to a head this weekend.
Specifically these questions:
Why are we on this continent in the first place?
Is it because an ancestor was brought here against their will and enslaved?
Is it because an ancestor willingly brought people to colonize and/or enslave?
Is it because an elder or ancestor (or ourselves) came over for “opportunity”, in the shadows of those deprived of said “opportunity”?
Or, did they or you come over because there were truly no other choices because your home country decided you or they weren’t good enough?
Or were your ancestors here for so long, as land stewards and not as land grabbers, that there is no doubt that this is your true native land?
What is so-called America is not immune from any of these questions and those of us in the privileged positions today of being able to migrate and vacation and return to this (or any) continent is something we should use this time of year to zoom in on as land use “professionals”.
Whose land is it and how do we better steward the land that we have.
Before You Go
— On December 4th, I’ll be teaching my scarf making process at Sweat Pea Fiber in Hyattsville, Maryland. You can also catch me hanging out most Wednesdays at Sweet Pea Fiber for their craft night, happily supporting a urban craft community.
—I have finally settled on a new name for my show — Open Studio with Kristen Jeffers. Check out my latest episode with fellow Black Queer (NC Native) fiber crafter Brooke Addams as we talk being in the business and what our favorite things to craft are. This is another open episode, on the Kristpattern YouTube, and you can watch them all on Patreon, where you can support this work starting at $10 a month.
— What I mean when I call myself a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist.
Until next time,