Listen to the podcast version of this above.

I could have made this post a part two on Audre Lorde’s influence on why I’m moving in this direction. After all, she was the one who said our silence wouldn’t protect us.

But in meditating on said silence and learning more about my Black queer feminist foreparents, I came across a The New Yorker article from 2020 that detailed how June Jordan was a noted scholar of what she called “environmental design” despite being lauded in most writings about her as just a poet.

June Jordan, The OG Black Queer Feminist Urbanist

Recently, the Black radical publication Hammer and Hope dug even deeper into the journey of her not publishing what they and she called a “land reform” novel called “Okay Now”.

It was right on time for this Black August series.

The New Yorker article details how she reached out to Buckminster Fuller, the designer of the architectural geodesic dome, of which the most prominent example is the blue golf ball-looking building at Epcot Center, among other housing, transportation, and spiritual inventions.

She’d spent several months studying architects on the weekends at a Manhattan library and taking a trip to Greece, despite struggling to make ends meet and living in a Queens housing project. Her husband left her and her toddler during this time, and she sent her toddler to his parents because of her poverty.

However, she did have the ear of folks like Fuller and writers at publications such as Esquire and the New York Times.

But, when writing about a joint-conceived project with Fuller for “urban renewal” in Harlem for Esquire, she omitted her role in it in print. Then the editors at Esquire turned around and turned the article into the case for getting rid of the Black folks that Jordan had reached out to Fuller to create the project for.

In the Hammer and Hope article, it mentions that she visited Mississippi for the New York Times and had become a housing researcher, espousing many of Jane Jacobs’ tenets of housing and street design, helping people be better humans at the same time as Jacobs.

However, Jacobs was able to get her nonfiction urbanist manifesto published, multiple to be exact, even though she was not without criticisms of her own, just for being a woman.

While Jordan was questioned by her publishers at Knopf for her own urbanist nonfiction draft, which diverged from Jacobs’ reasoning on what was needed for a better relationship between humans and the Earth. Jordan asserted, based on her Mississippi trip, that Black Southerners held the keys for land reform, on their farms and in their towns and cities.

Jordan tried to pivot her manifesto into a novel, Okay Now, that never was completed in her lifetime and she was working on up to her death.

Fuller at least wrote her a letter or recommendation for a fellowship in Italy that allowed her to start on Okay Now; other reporters and museum retrospectives continued to allow Jordan to be erased from their Harlem project, which was never built.

And she continued to write poetry and speak up for folks in Palestine and the US South!

How I’m Changing this Narrative of No Black Woman “armchair” urbanists

Jane Jacobs is considered an expert on urbanism, despite having only some college credits from Columbia University, being married to an architect, and writing commentaries, articles, and books. She does not hold a degree, and neither did June Jordan. They both self-studied or took classes that enhanced their writings, but didn’t result in a full degree, some of which could be blamed on the sexism and racism around Barnard College and Columbia University at the time.

So how does this relate back to me.

In this current backlash against DEI and in my first ten years of running my design consultancy and practice, I’ve been met with more criticism than praise, despite holdiing a Master of Public Affairs where I concentrated on community and economic development, along with my own writings and speeches around the US and Canada.

I was used to how we as Southerners can praise and criticise and then go back to praising over a plate of barbecue and sweet tea.

June Jordan notes our vibe herself in a line from her New York Times piece on how the Mississippians of 1969 didn’t label themselves as rebels or radicals or bohemians; they just did them. There was also immense Black class solidarity.

At times I worry we are losing some of that, especially with the pressure we get to be more “Northern” in the South. Now, with the internet and cultural exchange being at the tip of search bar or prompt, I’m seeing breakthroughs in Black folks finding subcultures like goth, but making it our own. Afro-Punk is a key site of this happening, both on and offline. Some will say that hard segregation was why we were in Black class solidarity, but I would counter that even with integration, in the South, we aren’t that far apart from each other in the way we are in other regions that have better worker rights and pay equity.

And as for me and my street cred…

When I put them all together like this, erasure of my life and career is a joke.

These photos and pictures stand for myself and themselves on what my career and life have looked like over the past 16 years. I wonder what our feminist foreparents would have done with the kind of access we have! But I am determined to pick up the baton and pass the torch.

I need to finalize my The Defying Gentrification Playbook copyright registration, but I own my book, and I made it and published it myself.

I own this newsletter space. I’m working on my own political thriller romance trilogy, that I’ll design and print, and promote myself if I need to!

I journal privately daily, and I have so many ideas for this newsletter and other publications I plan to pitch.

Yes, I’m taking the book on tour.

And I’m grateful for my Buckminster Fuller figures, who have answered my letters, booked me for speeches, and given me bylines.

I will not let myself be erased, and I will not shrink myself anymore! I can open my own gates and I will press past any criticism!

AnnouncementsI am going to be traveling to Greensboro next weekend for a panel on my colleague and friend Marrianne LeGrecco’s book on food justice in Greensboro, Everybody Eats. We’ll be at Scuppernong Books on Elm Street on Sunday 8/30/2026 from 4-6 pm.

Next week’s newsletter will be a returning classic from my archives that I’m annotating live from Greensboro. Then the following week we launch our next series here. It’s the tenth anniversary month of the big cross-country move of my own volition. Get ready for me to revisit my reflections on bouncing between DC, Baltimore, and PG County, along with how I see myself as a North Carolinian and African in the diaspora.

Finally, thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural Making New Fantasies: A Defying Gentrification Workshop, which we decided to do on every third Thursday as a virtual journaling workshop around processing these kinds of things. Come join us in September if you want encouragement in writing your own stories and making your own plans to make your community better.

Until next time,

Kristen

(Listen to this post as a podcast above)

Welcome back to our Black August series. This week, I’m sharing how I know what I can and can’t control and how that (and the Defying Gentrification Manifesto) are different based on what resources we all have. Let’s tap in for the week!

Defying Gentrification would be easy if I had a magic wand.

People would have clean, reliable public transit at their door; they would have a basic, humane living situation, subsidized as needed, so that construction and operating costs are adjusted based on income.

Said incomes would be equal and equitable, inclusive of reparations for communities marginalized by slavery and other underpayment schemes.

Finally, people would love each other unconditionally, and that love would repair so many ideas about body autonomy, creativity, and freedom of movement and existence.

But we live in the world we are in.

Yet, I know that expressing these words on paper helps me visualize a better world and visualize how I can bring that better world out with both my unique gifts and despite my limitations.

Introducing again, my Defying Gentrification Manifesto.

I can have faith. I can create and cultivate. I can take care of myself. However, I need community care, infrastructure, access, and convenience to defy gentrification.

So how does this connect with the circle of control?

The circle of control has origins in several mental and emotional therapeutic practices, according to Therapist Aid.

There are two circles, one inside of the other. Inside the circle are the things you can control, and outside of the circle are the things you can’t control.

Per the manifesto, I put faith, creation and cultivation, and self-care inside the circle. Community care, access, infrastructure, and convenience are outside.

To make that determination, I used money. I need money for the things outside of the circle to defy gentrification, and I can do the things inside of the circle for free.

Each person’s circle of control is different. Just like your version of the Defying Gentrification Manifesto may be different, depending on what resources, energies, and life experiences you have. However, you should be mindful that you are listing things you do control, not bypassing things you don’t want to control.

If you are a real estate developer who wants to actually provide housing and build community, your manifesto and your circle of control will be different from mine.

You have access to capital and probably expertise in building homes, so infrastructure, access, convenience, and community care would all be inside your circle.

I can watch YouTubers who build houses. I could join a city program to teach me how to build homes. I could convince a bank to let me build an apartment building. But I haven’t done those things before, and the barrier to entry for me doing them in the midnight hour, when I am in despair about not making enough money or being the kind of person who places want to hire to do a job, is high.

However, I’m learning how to be a better prospector and resource-generator, so that I can cultivate and create those kinds of opportunities. But for right now. I can do that with yarn because I have so much of it, rather than wood or even my words.

When I’m in despair, I can drive to the Canton Waterfront Park and park, then observe the Patapsco River, much like I used to drive to the Tanger Outlets at National Harbor to have prime access to the Potomac. Or I’d walk to the older areas of the Southwest waterfront and look out to the intersecton of the Anacostia and the Potomac.

As my friend Phrie says often, water is the true gateway to our cities.

Water often reminds us that it can take over the land whenever it feels like and that we can’t always control it. When we try to control it, like what’s happening with these over-indulging data centers, it becomes scarce.

But the things we can control, and control in a way that enhances our natural spaces, then our community building, we absolutely should control.

And i realize now that I don’t need to despair when I don’t get press calls or even the money I’d like to have.

I can always type on this newsletter and send it out. I can make a portfolio website for free so you can see all that I have done. You all can go paid on said newsletter. I can make my own clothes, do my own hair, and cook my own food.

And I can have faith that one day more things will fall into my circle of control and others will recognize what they need to be controlling, for our wellbeing.

Next time, I’m going to talk about how I’m determined to continue to be visible in my work, so that folks don’t discover that I was a Black queer feminist disabled urbanist from the South after my death, the way that June Jordan’s contributions to urbanism are erased.

Before you go, make plans to join me virtually at 7:30 pm Eastern on this Thursday, August 20 for the inaugural Making New Fantasies: A Workshop in the Pursuit of Defying Gentrification. Learn more and register here! We’ll do this again, so stay tuned for more dates. And purchase a PDF copy of the full Playbook here.

Welcome back to the Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers Black August series. This month, as we honor our political prisoners and radical revolutionaries, I’m situating myself in that literary canon and providing clarity on how The Defying Gentrification Playbook can give you the inspiration for your and your community’s journey to liberation.

Today, I talk about muses and how Audre Lorde became mine in this moment of reclamation and redefinition!Make plans to join me virtually at 7:30 pm Eastern on August 21 for the inaugural Making New Fantasies: A Workshop in the Pursuit of Defying Gentrification. Learn more and register here! And purchase a PDF copy of the full Playbook here.

I was so proud on the morning of Tuesday, May 28, 2013.

I was sitting in the Harvard Club, awaiting the beginning of my very first influencer event, sponsored by Siemens for environmental influencers.

My cousin called, and I hit ignore, making a note to call him back and get a vibe check on the music scene here, since he was a budding producer at the time and he would know.

Then, his parents called, and one of my Dad’s neighbors called.

When the neighbor called, she told me Dad was hurt- murdered, actually.

My aunt and uncle confirmed the news.

The crimson red of those walls closed in on me rapidly, and I was never the same again.

Fast forward to May 25 of 2020.

We all have restrictions on how much we can go outside because the air is poisoning us in a way that can’t be controlled. And then, in the midst of all of that, somehow, a man was outside on a block in Minnesota that I’d come to love when I was representing what I thought was just my race in an urban planning room just six years earlier.

Instead of COVID killing him, the cops did.

I’m feeling even more grateful that, despite how tragic my Dad left this Earth, at least we know it was a person who did it, not the air.

And certainly not the cops, who at least in Greensboro, were doing their best not to live up to the stereotype and the system, at least when it came to taking care of my dad, despite the many times 911 was called to his home in those three years.

But, something else died that week in 2020.

And it was similar to the thing that died besides my dad in 2013.

What died, was just being a Black urbanist.

What came alive, was the notion that being queer, neurodivergent, radical, feminist and unapologetically Southern, didn’t need to hide.

In fact, it’s the fuel that’s kept me even writing on this platform.

Even through the breaks and the feelings of it not being good enough or worthy of being listened to.

And now, 13 years of my Dad being an ancestor, and six years of the response of George Floyd and COVID (and Breonna Taylor and so many others), I feel more settled in the body and platform that has emerged since then.

Radical doesn’t scare me like it used to. Being rejected doesn’t either. Being multifaceted and realizing that it’s ok to have this space as a hobby and to not know all the answers is also easier.

Now that I know that colonialism has tried and is failing to make me not love myself and my people and my ancestors.

That defying gentrification is what makes life, life for me.

And with that, next week, I’m bringing back something I started six years ago, but in a way that feels just as grounded as this space is now.

You don’t want to miss that!

Until next time,

Kristen

I was listening to Alex Elle’s most recent Insight Timer meditation series, and on day five of the series, she talked about ways of being and relationships being obsolete- not all in a bad way, but in a “ sometimes you evolve, and that makes things obsolete”.

Or maybe this was my reflection as I did said meditation, based on her new book The Company You Keep. Either way, I went down a deep dive of what it means to be obsolete or be made obsolete, especially in this current moment. And since I do care a whole lot about how gentrification has played into that feeling of being obsolete, that’s what I want to share with you this week.

I share a lot of big thoughts around people, places, and things every week, with the aim to build a culture of stewardship and community, no matter your zip code. Make sure you’re subscribed so I’m always in your inbox. And even better, help me get my last few books shipped and more ordered to be gifted by becoming a paid subscriber!

So much of the concept of obsolescence is rooted in the idea of controlled or planned obsolescence, which forces us to give up things that are actually good, but not to capitalists and oligarchs that need us spending constantly.

Reflecting back on my experience with losing jobs and contracts, which then made me too depressed to go to work, which then made so it was harder to pay our household bills, including our rent, then losing what I thought was a dream apartment, I came to the following conclusion.

Gentrification is planned obsolescence when it comes to place and culture.

Policy leaders can aid major developers in claiming that a neighborhood is a slum, then tearing it down and building over it, but only because said neighborhood has a lot of Black bodies doing well.

Some Black communities have watched lands sit vacant for up to 30-60 years, because those who decided they were unworthy to have community wanted to wait to build on it when the money is “right”.

And yes, even when someone loses access to income from a job, it’s still gentrification because often the person who is being replaced at work is Black or another undesirable person of color, disability, or gender/sexual diversity. Many companies that think like this will hire someone for said diversity, until the money gets funny because it takes time to build on that diversity, or they do the work better than expected, but jealousy builds up because the racism of expecting your non-white employees to do worse than you was exposed.

Then the company dumps everyone back out, and makes them struggle to pay their rent or mortgage; then the landlords and mortgage companies protecting their investments dump them out of their house.

And before you claim that racism isn’t always a factor, so much of our working world is built on white supremacist cishetero patriarchal capitalism. Anyone trying to contort themselves to fit that mold in the pursuit of not being obsolete, while not being fully embodied as a white cis straight racist patriarchal capitalist, is going to be obsolete, but then possibly spiritually bankrupt!

So many of us who lost our jobs in 2025, many with stellar work records and without prior warning, are really feeling this pain. Especially if for a hot minute, you did try to contort yourselves a little bit and you’re trying to regain your spirit and soul from the near purging.

I’ll admit that over the years, I had been taught certain ways of contortion, and they worked for a little while. But, later down the line, I’ve also been in situations where I’ve always done the right thing, and it still wasn’t enough. Both are painful for us as Black folks.

I wrote The Defying Gentrification Playbook especially for you, because I’m determined that none of us will be made obsolete, no matter what kinds of sacrifices we made to try to fit the mold.

Take a moment to grab your copy and support my Bookshop storefront. Or ask your favorite Black and/or queer bookstore to order The Defying Gentrification Playbook. Those who ordered way back in November, we are finally shipping and hand-delivering; your wait is almost over!

I also don’t want us to be luddites, but the way this change is happening is similar to what the original Luddites went through, and it’s tempting!

Having had this lived experience of losing my job for saying no to being complicit, especially this past year, I often feel like a luddite in the midst of this conversation around how gentrification is supposed to be a net positive.

I’ve heard for years from middle-class Black folks across the diaspora that gentrification is what we need, after we “tore up our own neighborhoods”.

Never mind that tearing up came from a rage of being made obsolete, after already having been enslaved into labor that we didn’t choose, denied reparations for how said system wreaked havoc on us across multiple continents.

And in this current moment, we are supposed to be ok with not being needed at jobs, because we don’t look or sound right or we do too much.

How the machines are supposed to do us better, at work and selling products on and offline and on music streaming sites.

And when it is a human involved, they better be as thin, light, white, and docile as possible.

Somehow I’m supposed to make enough money to pay the rent, and then eventually qualify for a mortgage in this environment.

If I do speak up for human rights, I need to do it as an ally, or I need to do it next to a white partner or with the bloodied flag of fighting for “my” country or with perfect grammar or diction. Stop stimming so much, so I don’t look like one of those people.

Or all of the above, all at once; otherwise I am obsolete.

And said obsolescence is the plan.

Again, I decided that I’m going to build my own plan as a shield. A Playbook. And even if no one else buys it, it’s at least my spiritual compass.

I’ll hold it in the fiery furnace, and neither it nor me will burn down or be put out.

We will emerge victorious, smelling nothing of smoke.

The machines and their makers will be melted and of ash beside me.

Our bellies will be full, and our heads will be sheltered, comfortably.

And everyone who refuses to conform to obsolescence and everything that makes this Earth an ecosystem without extraction will continue to thrive!

Until next time,

Kristen

I'm back going live with a visual representation of what my big theme post was this week.

I originally had an even longer post where I had even more grievances that didn't make the cut last week, but I didn't want to rage again, at least not for the email.

But here on the "talkback" I do talk about why I got to this point where I realized The Defying Gentrification Playbook is my own bible that gets me up in the morning.

I also set some goals for myself to show up more, just as mysef!

Read this week's post that I reference -- https://theblackurbanist.substack.com/p/i-wrote-myself-a-bible-to-heal-myself

Read the post where I talk about what's enraging -- https://theblackurbanist.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-my-rage-in-a-genocidal

And make sure you are following me on my new personal Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kristenejeffers/

Hey y'all! This is an update on the future of this platform. My health has dictated that instead of leading with defying gentrification, I need to lead with crafting liberation. Or in other words, I need to center my art projects and imbue them with the values about community and collectivity that I've always honored. I'm tired of being sick and broke trying to make folks listen. So this podcast will be shifting focus, but keeping the same name for now. Oh and to make it clear from what the episode title is and why, here's my final word on Black folks and gentrification:

Black folks, especially in the diaspora, but sometimes even in heavily colonized areas of our home continent, can facilitate gentrification over their own people. And of course it can happen to us. But until the day we globally admit that Black folks that aren’t named Oprah, Beyonce, Tyler Perry, and other documented Black billionaires and millionaires can’t be gentrifiers, we are done as a movement and as a people. Those people I named aren’t above being followed, sanctioned, denied financing opportunities, and the like for what they are intending to do with their work, because of global white supremacy over the financing markets and sometimes just the pettiest of racisms and other isms we do need to process as a people.

Also, I will have 15th anniversary celebration this falll, a showcase of what the future of Kristen Jeffers Media will hold.

Today I am back to meet the moment with encouragement for us to meet our fears and comfort head on, around defying and ending gentrification, so that we can beat fascism, not just at the White House, US Capitol, and Supreme Court, but in our hearts, minds, neighborhoods, and communities.

I encourage you the listener, to have faith, to ground yourself and to remember that you one, aren’t alone or powerless and two, you don’t have to stay got by the system, but you better wake up to the fact the system as it is is probably not in your favor.

People and Things I Mentioned in the Episode

The songs I played (copyrights maintained by each performer)

Kurt Carr and the Kurt Carr Singers, I Almost Let Go -

Beautiful Chorus, I Am Enough -

Toni Jones - Currensea -

The articles I mentioned in the first half

Hampton Insitute on Gentirfication as a Settler Colonial Project — makes the case for gentrification as settler-colonialism

More on Ruth Glass, the British scholar who gave us the word gentrification — s original definition of gentrification, which was more relatable to the context of London and how it had become “Americanized” (in her words)

And I don’t mention this Liberation School article directly, but it ties gentrification back to what begat it, capitalism — https://www.liberationschool.org/gentrification-a-revolutionary-understanding/

And finally, my podcast from earlier this year on building radical communities from a faith-based perspective with Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes Listen on YouTube

And of course, the full newsletter that I read from and played music from — https://theblackurbanist.substack.com/p/yes-gentrification-is-fascism-but?utm_source=activity_item

Ways to Support Me That Help Me Pay the Bills in These Times

— Become a Patreon — https://www.patreon.com/kristenejeffers

— Become a Medium Member — https://medium.com/@blackurbanist

— Go Paid on Substack —

— Shop my Store on Bookshop.org - www.bookshop.org/shop/kristenejeffers

— Shop my Kristpattern fiber arts supply shop —

https://www.kristpattern.com

— Watch the Defying Gentrification YouTube Channel —https://www.youtube.com/defyinggentrification

— Watch the Kristpattern YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/kristpattern

These are times that call on a radical belief in oneself and their community. Back in October just shortly before the US Election, I interviewed Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes about his book Plenty Good Room, which invites the Black Church to think beyond electon cycles and go to the root of how it can be a radical force in not just American politics, but the wellbeing of all of us as Earthlings.

Yeah, timely. Unfortunately, because of the recent US Election and regime change, it took me a minute to prepare this episode for you, but it’s here now and ready. Plus, my beloved partner Les Henderson joins me for a moment of reflection on faith and will be joining me in our next few episodes.

Here’s Rev. Dr. Wilkes’s bio

Reverend Andrew Wilkes, Ph.D., is a pastor, political scientist, writer, and contemplative. He is the co-lead, co-founding pastor of the Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, New York, and the former Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, a social change organization founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Wilkes is a 2022 inductee into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College and a proud alum of Hampton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, CUNY Graduate Center, and the Coro Public Affairs Fellowship. He is the author of Freedom Notes: Reflections on Faith, Justice, and the Possibility of Democracy; co-author of Psalms for Black Lives; and author of Plenty Good Room: Co-Creating an Economy of Enough for All. His writing and voice have been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Essence Magazine, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Dr. Henry Louis Gates' PBS Gospel series. Dr. Wilkes is the elated husband of Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Watch PBS's The Black Church Here

https://www.pbs.org/show/black-church/

Read my recent newsletter spelling out the seven principles of Defying Gentrification (since  i forgot to put them in the episode
https://theblackurbanist.com/this-is-my-house-and-in-it-i-get-to-defy-gentrification-my-way-all-day-every-day/

Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast! And merch and crafting classes via www.kristpattern.com

Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack , LinkedIn, Wordpress, or Pattreon

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.

Even though this was a rough week for me, I decided that I wanted to let you in a bit and drop a few moments of a chat on how gentrification compounds my grief. This is a raw edit with no full ad and no full segments, just me reflecting on how I've been grieving this week for years and how gentrification adds to that.

Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast!

Never miss an episode, subscribe to our Substack or on LinkedIn

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.