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 are focusing on the healthcare woes and triumphs of Black gender marginalized folks
Thank y’all for reading the emails last week. I really did enjoy writing the first couple. Then, it hit me. There’s so much about this I’m still processing myself and I don’ want this to turn into my daily diary.
At least not yet.
This writing is in the backdrop of so many personal tragedies, traumas and wounds. Ijeoma Oluo said it best in one of her recent newsletters that the kind of writing we do isn’t therapy, it’s writing for our people so that our collective voices get amplified.
I want to take it a step further and say that I don’t use this platform for my own joy — I use it to demand that you do more than just read, but you ensure that the changes our places need actually happen. I’m tired of being on design teams and panels where we discuss the needs for systemic change. I need systemic change to happen.
In the meantime, the therapy comes for me through both talking to a trained professional and crafting.
But, like my writing, I really do think that my approach to crafting, like everything else I do, will continue to advance my new Black Queer Feminist Urbanist centered vision, to challenge our different world through the creation of community and self joy.
And that’s why I have two conversations scheduled and an in-person and virtual crochet demonstration class scheduled over the next few weeks.
That’s why there’s a Kristpattern email list and Patreon level, so you can be at the front seat of this. And that’s really why this email’s going to weekly, because I think dipping into the art will help fund the movement work needed to truly advance a Black Queer Feminist Urbanist vision and for Black Queer Feminist Urbanists to find themselves and their allies to support them in the best way.
But, tomorrow night, come by all of my social platforms as I join forces with m partner in love and life Les Henderson as we highlight a subset of folks you may not realize exist, or you may relate to, but never thought would be highlighted on an urban planning platform — Black gender-nonconforming women and trans men who have been pregnant. We are proud to share that part of their story and they are a part of a larger thread on trauma and triumph around Black birthing in the DC Metro Area
This documentary is part of a special health and urbanism series I asked Les to curate under her endoQueer banner and it won’t be the last time we bring the public health of Black gender-marginalized folks to our table, which has mostly been transportation-centric over the years.
Make sure you are subscribed to either The Black Urbanist YouTube, or following me on Twitter so you don’t miss this powerful film and talkback — The Dominance of Motherhood. Unlike the rest of our content, we will only be playing this once, to allow our filmmakers to do as many major film festival showings as possible.
And I’ll be back in your email next week with more details on the Kristpattern Craft Week, the last week of our Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit/Festival programming.
Before you go
— If you want to see the return of daily emails, I need your help to get to a minimum of $2,000 monthly income on Patreon. You can do so starting with a $10 Public Lecture pledge and join the 47 other folks that have access to my exclusive interview with Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson on the past, present, and future of Retrofitting Suburbia and designing from a feminist perspective. If 50 of you pledge (or return to pledge) at the $50 level, I’ll be at that number even faster and I’ll be able to add paid team support. Plus, you’ll be the first to receive our new courses of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist School when they reboot in January.
— I made this its own bullet because it’s very important — If we don’t reach $2,000 by January, I’ve made a personal decision to shut down The Black Urbanist platform and solely focus on Kristpattern, using it to build up the kind of venture that can support a social good like The Black Urbanist without having to worry about the waves and flows of outside support and without me having to bear the trauma of producing movement work like this alone. Once again, if you don’t want another gap in this work, please pledge. If you are interested in other ways of donating, please reply back to this email and we can talk about invoicing and other one-time grant options.
— Please follow The Black Urbanist YouTube page and check out The Inaugural Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit Opening Keynote where I establish on video how I built up to this point and what I want my Black Queer Feminist Urbanist future to look like.
—Black LGBTQIA+ Siblings — let’s talk one-on-one about life, urbanism and thriving. Reply to this email and we can set up a time. Also, I’ve lifted the all-access fee for the summit, thanks to more generous donors!
To all of you who are still here, thank you for being here and take action, even if it’s something small, to help us have a different world centered in joy.
Coming next Sunday — it’s Craft Week!