The Black Urbanist Weekly for the Last Week of 2021

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 starting what Kristen is calling the Wish Journey of 2022 and she really appreciates you supporting this one, for her to start the year with annual funding for several of my major business expenses. Read on and learn more and please share!

Wishes realized are journeys undertaken, paths varied, trails blazed to get to a clear destination.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that my first wish has been a success so far. As of this morning, combined with my monthly Patreon operation fees, I’ll be able to cover my 2022 web hosting fees and keep the site running. Meanwhile, I’m still working on my PO Box and Quickbooks. If you missed last week’s newsletter with the announcement,  here’s the direct link to the fundraiser. While I am to raise by January 1, we will keep the fundraiser open and I’ll continue to provide updates as to how this particular set of funds are spent.

I want to set a tone for 2022, call this the wish journey if you will, that we can do courageous things as municipalities and jurisdictions, with citizens on our side and corporations serving customers, not us serving corporations.

Hence why unlike in previous years, I’m going to spend a good chunk of 2022 unpacking several of my wishes — showing their feasibility and promoting action steps to achieve them. It goes back to this wish from last’s year’s bulleted list, which I’ve modified to encompass what my vision is for this year:

The industry continues to do the work it promised to do to increase equity. This means being pro-Black, pro-gender/bodily non-conformity, pro-abundance despite ability and starting place, paying fees, salaries, and expenses equitably and retroactively; understanding when it’s time to pass the baton and restoring the legacies and work of those it stole or suppressed in route to catering to a white supremacist, whiteness first ideal. Oh, and those of us who are Black (Queer and Feminist)— never stop using our radical imaginations, claim our space and heal on the inside and heal our communities.

So in this email, I’m dropping four wishes that I will be taking a journey with over the next few months. In May we’ll do a mini-review, then we’ll drop another set in June and review them at the end of the year. December will bring an annual review and the launch of our next capital campaign. Those of you in the Newsletter Fan Club and Study Hall powered by Patreon will get extra, in-depth content and reports. Also, if you’re a fellow Black Queer Feminist Urbanist, head over to the rebooted Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Lounge powered by Mighty Networks for complimentary access to the content in the Patreon, plus starting next month, a new and improved private healing and strategizing space.

Additionally, on top of these realized wishes, at next year’s Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Summit, I can’t wait to share the next full draft of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Index and my next book A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future.

Once again, donate to the capital campaign so we can continue our goal of building out all those things and make a monthly pledge to get all access to all multimedia. Drum roll, please, for our first four wishes:

Making Transit Fares Obsolete

Centering the Black Press (here’s a preview of this here)

Enhancing Our Community Centers with Elements from Our Favorite Shopping Centers

Reduction of Personal Shame Around Government Failures (Lack of Transit, Lack of Covid Response, Etc.)

Come back next week as we break down how transit fares can go obsolete, no matter the budget.

Before You Go

—Doing these deep wishes means I’m digging through a lot more research and policy papers than usual. I’m enjoying going through these Transit Center equity dashboards — here’s the one from DC.

— While I’m sad to see Issa Rae’s HBOMax series Insecure come to an end, I do applaud her work to not only open up Hollywood but to continue to push back against displacement in South Los Angeles.

— “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Rest well in the ancestor plane” Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Until next time,

Kristen