Folks, I would like to start this first public long-form update of the calendar year with a poem.

I am a ghost of lives present.

A ghost of the carceral and racist and classist urbanisms who refuses to be a token.

A ghost of a hometown that won’t let itself grow sustainably, who refuses to be a martyr.

A ghost of a university that tried, but failed to protect all of me, out of fear, that loudly declares themselves as an alumni, the gender neutral, plural spelling of the Latin, to remind those who wish I would disappear that I am still here and I am still alive.

Or am I a ghost, or a haunting ghoul.

More than alive, witchy, enchanted, and proud of my connections to my soul, roots, and ancestors.

The real spook is my grief and fear, but I will make my anger the fuel to my cauldron!

My websites are back

The book is getting to y’all if you order it in paperback on Bookshop.

I’ve blocked out the time between work, conferences, and my next book talk to record the audiobook.

I have my grant and a wonderful new studio home.

I’m well underway with a new crochet coat.

The world continues to thrash, but gentrification and all of its cousins still continue to be denied.

I’ve been writing for the past two months between the Gregorian New Year and the Lunar New Year, strictly in my journal, for myself. In this exponentially fascist time, at least in my purview, I wanted to know exactly what I was here for.

My book delay, my website shutdown, my housing shuffle, and doing the retail job all gave me different angles of how life could or couldn’t be.

In fact, when I thought my websites were completely dead and my books were never coming in any form, I started to think through what it would be like to be a ghost, to be dead. Hence the ghoulish thoughts above, straight from my journal.

As much as I think about safety and privacy, the call to bear witness, from my spiritual practice, bubbles up even more. The call to live on, screeches and is undeniable!

In this highly surveilled world, I still know I have access to spiritual guidance. Not to push down anyone’s throat, but to remind myself of my divinity and my ability to thrive.

Defying gentrification is a forward motion for me, not just some theory that never becomes praxis.

And because it’s praxis, it’s not going to always be perfect.

And, I’m going to ground into that process, lean on my people who love me in praxis, not in perfection, and I’m going to get going.

Here’s a snapshot of the past few weeks from the Kristpattern channel, as I reflect on choosing what color I want my life to be, in a world that insists on being colorless.

Here’s a clip I edited out on creating the colors for the Defying Gentrification Playbook

Until next time,

Kristen

PS: Bookshop.org and the paperback copies are the fastest, best ways to get your hands on the Playbook. There will be more to come, but for now, back to poetics.

PPS: Happy Birthday Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde. May you both continue to be consequential ancestors in my life!

In my fifth week of working in mall retail for the first time, I have learned that I am excellent at selling things. Actual things, like soap shaped like balls. And sometimes pink fairies.

But where I’ve been going wrong is selling this platform as a thing instead of sharing this platform as a movement and a flow state.

I have also learned, as I meet 40 years on Sunday, December 14, that I haven’t always had the words for what is happening to me that have value to others, but I do have those kinds of words that have value to me.

And it’s enough for it to have value for me and me alone.

This is how I want to start my transition point between two decades.

I also want to spend most of Sunday in solitude, joy, and creativity, and honestly, the universe has made sure that’s exactly what I need to do.

First, it surprised me by helping me win the art grant on my first try, solidifying that my collecting of yarn and fabric and related notions and books wasn’t a fluke.

Then it was making it so I absolutely had to let go of our DC Wharf apartment.

And then it was making it so the book wouldn’t come out on my time, but its time, due to issues with the distribution platform.

With that being said, I’m officially pushing back the celebration of my book launch to February. Outside of the special edition that many will receive soon, the paperback book launch will be what we celebrate and tour around. I’ll be doing more bookstore outreach and library outreach to ensure that the paperback is on every shelf and that it’s priced in a way that its easy to bounce into your carts, as easy as the bath bombs at work are!

So no book reception in Baltimore on my birthday, but yes to Les and me having a quiet celebration that will be everything I wanted for this day, especially as this year has tried to kill me. Queue up Luciile Clifton’s infamous poem about celebration in the face of death:

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me every everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

— — 

At 40 I am realizing I am a person who believes in flow and organic regeneration. I’m realizing that what I thought was slow living and rural backwardness was just nature building itself up.

Ecosystems are urbanism; they aren’t the things in the way of urbanism. Ecosystems don’t always go fast, but they always move forward.

And yes, when the ecosystem produces enough raw materials, we can create new things out of those and come together as a village to build and create together.

I always thought it was the rural slowness that made people hate my queerness or that made me seen as worthless when my autistic brain and its desire to create art or work on my own projects, didn’t meet the needs of farm cultivation or city industrialism.

But, in a time of fascist and carceral urbanisms, the city can and has been just as oppressive, if not more.

But I know that home calls to me, in a village of flow.

Defying Gentrification to me, means walking towards and building towards that village of flow.

— 

Finally, I’m still working on my goal for this year to consolidate all of my platforms into one, where i lead with my art practice, but I still show up as a policy advocate and movement leader who is insistent that housing is a human right and there should be freedom of movement, and that my ideas around textiles and urbanism can co-exist.

Right now, my KristPattern timeline is my favorite place to be on Meta’s internet and over on Alphabet’s, I have calibrated my main @KristenJeffers YouTube account to feed me everything I want to see and speak on.

Plus, my SEO is locked into my given name and everything I do and my brand labels are secondary.

So yes, the “rebrand” or one should say the rehumanizing continues.

Stay tuned and join me as I share even more of how I feel as a young elder!

Until next time,

Kristen

PS — These are my colors of the year, take that Pantone!

I’ve felt nothing but love. 

Love from people, especially my Carolinans in and out of the states, and the Baltimorean’s who have been here to receive me.

But, now that I’ve released this boulder of a secret I’ve been holding onto for months, I woke up early on Saturday morning, as I tend to do when I can feel the corporate, neoliberal, capitalist world slow down by a hair, with a word to share.

I remembered that get so much strength from writing these public newsletters to the world. I got caught up in them always making money, but honestly, there’s a greater currency that these emails pay me in.

I think about how we pull from James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Ursula K. Le Guin, and so many other authors and musicians and other artists who have gone on to the ancestor portal, but their words are just as loud, clear, and powerful, if not more so.

I want to make sure my words have that power too across generations, especially as I turn 40 in 14 days.

Plus, I adore that some of you are reading them in real time, with time to shift solutions. 

Please do continue to pitch a few bucks over to me each month to help me pay my hosting costs and supplement what I don’t make at Lush. And I will be adding more sustainablily produced products at the KristPattern store, namely the It’s Time To Defy Gentrification collection!

And of course this power in my words and graphic and textile designing is how I decided to create The Defying Gentrification Playbook. 

Even if it ends up on the banned bookshelf at a less rigid local library or my Lush store, someone will pick it up at just the right time.

It’s also why I am working on a paperback version that will be easy to share, purchase and donate. That version will also be updated with my thoughts on surviving soft eviction and extreme income loss, and how we can be more humane around this, especially as more college educated, middle class people, fall under similar oppressions, along with dealing with new grief and disability from COVID.

But if you order the hardcover version, and leave a review of it on your favorite review platform, you’ll still see how much people power is involved in defying gentrification right now, in this calendar year!

You will want to make the manifesto of “I can have faith, I can engage in cultivation and creativity and self-care, but I need community care, access, infrastructure, and convenience to defy gentrification” yours, especially if you’re a Black woman or gender expansive person, in the African diaspora.

I’m still honoring the paperback price for a signed hardcover on my site, but if you’re reading this version of this newsletter post, I’ve already sent out my first order f or signed copies. You should get them in the next two to four weeks, pending no other shipping delays.

And Bookshop is running its own sale and so are a lot of your favorite local bookshops throughout the holiday season. Even the big dogs can order my book by ISBN, so if you want to prove a point that a gentrification book can be sold by gentrifiers, have at it.

Finally, in a world where we think the solution to urbanist problems and affordability is to negate non-means tested vouchers and subsidies and demand more proof before we help people, unless they are developers and start-up bros, we need to get back to basics of helping people living in tents or barely making childcare, student loan and mortgage payments, by sharing our gifts and abundance. 

And you can join me in celebrating the book launch on December 14 at Red Emma’s in Baltimore from 11-1 pm! We’ll be in the Free School space so drop by and say hello! You can order the book there and participate in the first of many workshops that will help you put the methods in the book into action.

Next time, I’ll be back to have another conversation about why I’ve chosen textile art as my primary tool besides writing to promote defying and destroying gentrification, and reflect on what working in the mall on Black Friday has taught me.

Until next time,

Kristen

Pre-Order on Bookshop

First, the spectacular news. I’m a DC Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grantee for the fiscal year of 2026 (October 1, 2025- September 2026). What that means is I have $7,000 to use for whatever I want (minus taxes). Right now, that money is being earmarked towards upgrading my Singer 9200 sewing machine I got at Scrap Bmore in 2022, that only really does straight stitches, to a Bernina 590! Whatever is left is going into a GoPro or similar action camera so that I can better capture myself doing vlogs and doing things on camera.

Also, on December 14, my 40th birthday, I’m inviting those who can get to Baltimore to celebrate the launch of The Defying Gentrification Playbook with a dessert brunch and flash workshop at Red Emmas from 11-1 in the Free School Classroom. I will send out another email with more details, but for now just save the date.

Also, I’m honoring the paperback price for hardcovers on any pre-orders through Monday December 1, through my Kristpattern store. Just order the paperback, and I’ll match the rest.

Pre-Order the Signed Copy

So, that’s a great place to pivot into the terrible news.

First, the least terrible of the terrible news is that I pushed the paperback release to February 3, so that I can reconfigure it to be more budget-friendly. The audiobook will also not be released until then, because of the bigger, terrible news that I’ll get to after I finish sharing the book-related bad news.

I’m still deciding on if I want to shrink the paperback so it can stay in full color or if I want to remove some of the color and keep it at 8×10, since this is an active workbook.

Finally, IngramSpark has been great for distribution, but terrible for being able to order my books. Plus, I had to pay them to find out that somehow my original layout files were in the wrong order. Then they weren’t taking any credit cards on my account.

Now, that is on its way to being resolved, and those who order by Monday will have your book on my first run, which I hope will still be by December 16, but I’ve learned in reading online forums that Ingram often doesn’t ship fast either, even to bookstores.

Sigh. All off this was enough to be disconcerting and discouraging.

In part of my head, I know that since we had the pandemic and everything else, as long as I tell you why, you’ll forgive my mistakes, or you’ll just move on, and that both outcomes are ok.

I read advice on creating newsletters all the time that tells me consistency and honesty are key.

But, folks, I have really struggled to tell you what I’m about to tell you next, the next part of the terrible news.

Despite all of our efforts to raise money to stay, including me applying for my arts grant, we settled with our landlords to leave our apartment on November 7. While this will prevent us from having an official eviction, as that is a more robust and forgiving process in DC, we were in court in the process of eviction and were advised by Legal Aid to take this step.

Plus, I have to be honest, I haven’t wanted to show up to my work for at least two years.

I thought partnering and working with a similar organization would work, but I realized we weren’t that similar. Plus, I had to come to terms with the fact that just because our now old neighborhood was hip and had some resources, it just didn’t feel like my kind of urbanism. Hence, the nucleus of the idea of Defying Gentrification. It felt like a tourist attraction, and walking out the door was all I could do against it some days. Honestly, too many days, especially after I got acute COVID in January 2024, I stayed inside. The National Guard occupation of this year took that feeling up to ten of not wanting to be in the streets.

Workwise, after the not-quite as aligned contract wound down in May 2024, in June 2024 I was able to get a lifeboat by pivoting to similar work in a different field, which, instead of being a contract that took up too much time, was a remote W-2 job with more structure and clear beginnings and ends.

However, I started I realize that I’d pigeonholed myself into workspaces as a proofreader and copy editor.

In order to make sure Les still had a role in urban planning, especialy ones that would judge her (unfairly) based on my radical views, I stopped being the brassher badass of planning many of you have come to know and love.

In shrinking myself, I cut off so much abundance. Trying to do it the “regulated way” because I myself still felt like I was a rebel to a working system, I ended up bankrupting myself. Les’s job went away anyway in October of 2024 because it wasn’t a good fit. And my job went away in March of this year because of a three-pronged combination of AI, cutbacks in federal funding, and careless mistakes because I was bored and not concerned with making sure everything was perfect in a job that required perfection.

Les has been back working since February of this year, but it was a paycut, despite having good fringe benefits. But me losing my job in March was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course, I would learn that I am in a club of 300,000 Black women who lost their (W-2, unemployment-eligible) jobs between February and April, and we now are in a club of double that number as of today, so-called Thanksgiving.

I did nothing but sleep, eat, wallow, and maybe crochet, and I let my sewing table pile up. I squeeed out my grant application for DC Arts and Humanities and have attempted to do more YouTube. However, one morning, listening to St. Paul and the Broken Bones, the music hit my bones just right, and I finished the draft of The Defying Gentrification Playbook I started at the prompting of Regina Anaejionu and her wonderful work around being a thought leader with purpose in spite of AI and social media sites that keep changing their algorithms, in the fall of 2023.

That my friends, is my spectacular and my terrible news.

Leave me an encouraging voice message

Order my book from a Black bookstore

So what happens now?

• I am working at Lush to keep W-2 cash flow going, at least through the holiday season.
• I was approved for fiscal sponsorship at Fractured Atlas. I can receive recurring and one time tax-deductible donations, and I can do larger crowdfunding campaigns.
• Les has taken the lead in finding us new housing in DC, so I can return for at least one more year and be a DC-based artist to fulfill my grant obligation.
• We are camped out at a friend’s in Baltimore, at least through the holiday season, to rest and reassess what’s next.
• If the grant doesn’t pay out. I am paying down credit cards so I can finance the camera and sewing machine I want.
• I’m dreaming of a storefront that I can sit in the window and sew in, and then sell my wares and host workshops on Defying Gentrification and Crafting Liberation.

And yes, since it’s time for urbanist wishes, that last bullet counts, along with Louie the Skoolie, the bus I want to buy and convert into a virtual studio for myself to bring workshops to communities underserved by textile art spaces.

If you made it to the end, thank you. I wrote so many drafts of this letter, but now I hope that if you want to be of service tto my vision, we can connect deeper, that if you’ve kept me afloat in any way, I love you so much and finally, if this is all too much of a mess for your inbox and your life, please just go. It will make more room for the peace and joy that will come with you gone and my friends and family holding me down.

Until next time,

Kristen

It was prompted by a question from the crowd about what we should do in this moment. Christine Platt, whose Less is Liberation book we were celebrating, told us that the best thing we could do right now, as the ones always depended upon to fix this raggedy [so-called] country even when we didn’t break it, was to do the things I could control.

So, I went on my phone and pulled up Bookshop.org.

This is what I saw.

I nearly broke out in tears, thinking about how soon, in the midst of everything going on, it would be me having a book talk with an author I respect. 

In the meantime. I got a chance to holler at and congratulate both her and Alex Elle and tell Mahogany Books’s Ramonda Young how much their store has poured into me, too. I also shared my imminent plans to return to North Carolina, which, yes, are still on. I also got so much love and congratulations from all three of them.

Left to right, Alex Elle, Christine Platt, and Ramonda Young speak to the crowd. Christine Platt and I hug as I hold my copy of Less is Liberation she just signed!Alex Elle and I take a selfie.

I texted my wife Les, and of course, she was eager to share that on the ‘Zon and Bookshop, my book was for sale.

And yes, here are the links.

If you insist on giving Bezos money to buy my gentrification book that drags folks like him.

But I’m sure you want to double support me by buying through my own Bookshop.org storefront!

Next week, I’ll be dropping the print pre-order, and I was going to hold off on sharing that my e-book is already ready for pre-order.

But, as my mom used to say, time is of the essence.

And now is the time I take back control of my author life.

This is a book written, typeset, and designed by me.

It’s the rawest, most real thing I ever expected to write for professional consumption.

And it’s the book I’ve needed for myself as I’ve done my best to defy gentrification, that refuses to be destroyed.

So many Black folks, especially the women and other gender marginalized ones, are heads of households, but those households don’t get enough salary and benefits to really thrive.

We get called welfare queens and uppity for just wanting a decent place for us and those we care about to lay our heads.

Many of us, despite working since our teenage years, cannot afford the average market-rate apartment or home in any US city or state.

And, as someone who’s been in rooms with some of the real estate and development decision makers, many who can’t comprehend folks that can’t afford their products, I decided it was time to get real about what’s needed to make sure Black folks are housed.

And, instead of just yelling at those folks in that room, I made sure that I gave gentle advice and encouragement to my fellow sista-siblings, that we aren’t broken and we are enough.

Housing is a human right, and there’s more than enough things to use to play with money and build our wealth. Our backs, without our full consent, is not one of them.

So here I am, publishing what I think is the first self-help architecture and planning workbook for Black folks of marginalized genders (and the people that love and support them).

On December 16, 2025, two days after I turn 40, I hope you’ll accept this birthday gift from me to you.

And, if you’re paid on Patreon and Substack, the EPUB will be in each of those posts going forward, once I make a couple of tweaks to the final file to make sure it reads well on all devices.

And if not, you should go paid, because I’ll be dropping some other special surprises.

I’ll be back next week with print and audio pre-order links, and over the course of the next few weeks until December 16, I’m taking you behind the scenes on my journey to the Playbook!

Until next time,

Kristen

Well, I do have a release date, December 16, 2025, the Tuesday after my birthday.

And in my next email, you’ll be able to click on normal pre-order links for the book.

Over the weekend, I spliced together a rough digital draft of the book, soundtracked with the Beyonce self-titled album, and Lemonade while sitting by my window that looks out across the Potomac and some of the buildings that are part of the reason we are on this terrible global timeline.

All that’s left is formatting and pricing the print version for Ingram Spark, so that you can ask your favorite bookstore, library, and other retailers that order books by ISBN to order. And recording my audiobook. And getting some of y’all to read the book as beta readers and leave reviews on GoodReads and make Booktoks.

Right now, I have for you the front and back cover.

A Black, Queer, Feminist, Disabled, Urbanist Guide, Toolkit, and Companion for Modern Life on Earth from One of the World’s Most Notable Contemporary Urbanists and the Creator of the Black Urbanist Multimedia Platform.

We all know the rent is too damn high, and everything, from getting our hair done to eating our soul foods from across the African Diaspora, is increasingly out of reach and touch, despite being practices our ancestors perfected. And let’s not even get started with being surveilled, policed, incarcerated, denied, and killed just for who we are as Black folks.

But Kristen Jeffers doesn’t believe gentrification is inevitable, and they’re done with taking gentrification on the nose.

After years of trying to convince their urbanist colleagues to reform their publications, organizations,local governments, community groups, and even their own attitudes around cultural diversity, equity, inclusion, and the ills of gentrification, they stepped away from the global urbanism scene for awhille, wrote a maniefesto and started to test out how to live as much of their lives as they could, while preserving energy to clapback just in time.

Or maybe never, because as a Black autistic nonbinary person who has been socialized and perceived as a woman their entire lives, rest is resistance.

This workbook is the result of that necessary pause. It’s here for you as a fellow sista-sibling to learn how to embody rest as resistance, even if the rent is coming due. It’s built around their Defying Gentrification Manifesto mantra: “I can have faith, I can engage in cultivation and creativity and self-care, but I need community care, access, infrastructure, and convenience to defy gentrification.

Interactive, with workbook pages and stories from their years in urbanism, there’s something for everyone, but this one is especially for their sistas and siblings, because intersectionality is real and so is misogynoir and if that was stopped, the entire world would stop being trash

And if you want to beta read, fill out this form.

Apply to be a beta reader

If you become a paid Patreon or Substack member, you’ll have access to the digital and audio versions along with the Typeform and Notion pages that go along with the book, on Halloween, as my own treat!

And if you want be in that initial drop, but not give Substack money, you can do it at Ko-Fi! Either way, you’ll get that advanced access to the digital version and the audiobook.

So why am I doing it this way?

It’s because of that autism and those trust issues I mentioned in the headline.

First, let me thank my medical team for sticking with science, starting the evaluation process, and going ahead and noting how my life has been evident of these things all along in my clinical notes. While it doesn’t erase the years and pain of not knowing and having to try and make sense of it all, while others have chosen not to, at least I have an answer, and I can work to adapt and ask for more accessibility.

And if only we weren’t living in a regime that is violently pushing back against everything that I am. And a publishing world that’s scared to sign off on some things and might be too late to publish others.

Not to mention, over the last ten years since I published my first book, A Black Urbanist, I have been asked a couple of times to write for a publisher, and even though I had years of blog posts, they wanted a book proposal out of me.

Book proposals for nonfiction texts are not uncommon, but they do require a lot of intense free research and writing labor, which still may result in a no.

I don’t know if perhaps that editing team (all white) could relate to me as a now diagnosed autistic, or maybe as a queer person, or a poor/broke person. But they would not understand fully what it means to be a Black North Carolinian and how their whiteness bumps up against that. Not to say that white editor doesn’t exist, I just didn’t get that energy from this white editor and publisher. Plus, sometimes the way we do things makes us scream white supremacy culture, even if that’s not what we mean. And by we I mean any of us, because this is a system and culture, not just vibes.

That book deal would have been for $7,000+ royalties. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is more than many nonfiction books sell for, but I felt like I could get more. And I feel like my research labor alone is worth more than $7000 spread over two+ years.

Plus, so much about gentrification and urbanism is in constant flux. I myself am in constant flux. And I wanted to be able to control how I showed up and how I felt about various organizations that have been doing some repair work. I didn’t want two-year-old thoughts in this book, considering how much I’ve evolved over the last 15 years of blogging.

Also, now I realize some of my strong, debilitating feelings about writing the book were due to my sensory overload and absorbing a lot of the nightmares I’ve heard from Black and queer writers about how long it took to go through the traditional book writing and publishing process.

I do want to try my hand at some fiction, and I don’t mind putting that through a long editing process and waiting possibly two years for it to go to market with a more traditional publisher.

But for this one, one that’s casting spells and praying prayers on my behalf of my Black ancestors, I wanted to keep more of the process to the chest.

Especially being Black and stateside. Don’t get me started on living in DC in these times.

But I do want you, my Substack and Patreon audience, to witness this, and my LinkedIn one to continue to build up the courage to bear witness.

So, I’ll be back next week and every week until launch, with book updates and such.

And if you’re ready, stay tuned! Also, I’ll be doing a makeover across all my websites and web platforms so that whatever URL you type in, you come here and yes, you see the black and gold imagery.

This site will also be the homebase for all book information, because while all those other sites are nice, this one has always been my home. And one day, just like my car (as of this week) and this website (since 2010), I will own my residence outright, so I can share as I see fit.

Until next time,

Kristen

P.S. Apply to be a beta reader!

https://youtu.be/MsfnWGbPr7E

Yes, gentrification is fascism and I don’t need to cite any other sources besides my own life experience to say it.

I will include this link to the Hampton Insittute’s policy paper from 2021 that makes the case for gentrification as settler-colonialism that extends the definitions beyond Ruth Glass’s original definition of gentrification, which was more relatable to the context of London and how it had become “Americanized” (in her words). I also like this paper from Liberation School on gentrification and how even before it had a name, it had an energy in the bowels of capitalism.

At the end of the day, the g-word is just a simple way, the way the f-word is also a simple way of saying that this shit is fucked up for me trying to keep a house and a livelihood as Black, queer, feminist, suspected neurodivergent in the way that’s going to send me to the work camps, person that’s broke because I can’t figure out one, work cultures and two, I still feel like a little Bama from the South in this whole DC area stew, that’s not so focused on the federal circus.

And yes, since I have to have a job or some kind of income to have a home…

…And yes, since most cities need to control their population and make money to provide for their populations…

…And one of the best ways to do that is to tax new residential buildings with high rents and purchase prices, to provide said services…

…is gentrification…

….And both of these ways are control of how people and their cultures and spaces look, feel, and sound because unfortunately, most of our leaders do not look holistically at how their economic development ideas affect how people are allowed to express themselves, because it’s supposed to make money no matter what.

This is how gentrification ends up being fascism.

And right now, the American brand of fascism is cooking everyone, even those that were supposed to be shielded.

Like our state and local governments, economic development corridors, craft businesses, contractor businesses, white women, white men that aren’t in the current administration’s purview. The military and the entire industrial complex. Humanities and art that was already over-policed by tedious grant cyles and applications that was supposed to shield us from being cut off.

But they just cut us off anyway.

Again we in urbanism land have been acting in a scarcity mindset and enforcing respectability politics in how we plan and administer our plans and this moment just amplifies that.

But we get nowhere without properly dreaming.

And we get nowhere controling people we don’t like because we are so afraid they will cut our coins off. Or controlling ourselves because we fear the end of those coins jangling.

Because so many of you who wanted to silence and control me and others like me, are sitting at home underpaid, distraught, depressed, and distressed, looking at a loss of your home and livelihood, because of who you are. And all that control and constraint and “respect” wasn’t enough.

But, for my Black church/ gospel heads, let’s take a deep breath, and listen to this.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0orieg6PZ2I?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

For my meditators despite your belief system.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/00pHRHvbXz0?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

And for my fellow manifestors:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8ywVsAO333c?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

And now that you’ve listened to that. Let’s think about the future. Let’s talk about my Defying Gentrification framework.

When we can take care of ourselves through our faith (in ourselves first and foremost, no requirements for a higher power here, and if your higher power hates, then trash it) our creation and cultivation strategies and our basic care needs together…

…Then, as a group, we work on all those other things.

If you are one of those groups that’s struggling up above for the first time ever or the first time in a long time, you still have a little bit of your power to turn things around.

How?

Get them lawsuits drafted and that money ready to back up the people who really back you up. Take that money from the police budget. Stay out in the streets on behalf of folks like me at risk of being snatched up off them.

Because instead of controlling bodies, we are now in the business of defending the things like housing, healthcare, parks, transit, and homegrown businesses that do things that feed back into our economies and that trade willingly, freely, and fairly around the world.

You no longer care who we sleep with, what we look like, how we sound, and whether we are perfect.

The slate is wiped clean.

Because we don’t have to gentrify our spaces to have abundance in our towns and cities. And we don’t have to put the undesirables away.

But, we have to fight back and take down those who are in a prime position to break all of it down.

And I believe it’s not too late.

Will you join me?

Until next time, because there will be a next time,

Kristen

Welcome back to Defying Gentrification, Crafting Liberation — an art, design, and policy newsletter/journal of myself Kristen Jeffers, a Black queer feminist disabled millennial (US southern)urbanist. In each of these newsletters, I share a reflection on how I see one of my six principles of Defying Gentrification work in my life and I share some insights from my art practice (that’s the Crafting Liberation part). This week, I am sharing about the principle of faith and how I need more of it in myself.

My longtime followers (and family and friends) will know that I have a lot of creative ideas. But for a while, I’ve been lacking in faith that many of them will and can come to pass.

I know the prayers are coming, but I also would love some metta and good vibes too!  And just for the record, it’s not because I’m gay, broke, or disabled that I’m inherently undeserving of faith.

I hate that I have to say that in 2025, but then again, am I really alone in my feelings?

In fact, to be transparent, I made a pretty intensive video about it a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been writing status messages about it. Oh, and I made the video just over 12 hours after coming home from the hospital after being taken there in an ambulance after having a ferocious panic attack. Yeah. This is where we are.

For years, I loved my hometown, but I felt like it wasn’t good enough and a strong enough proving ground for me.

I got to DC, after declaring KC wasn’t enough either.

Then realized that my creativity was so good, that I had imagined relationships and connections that didn’t exist.

Not that that’s bad, but now, the kind of faith I need, the kind that we step out on in the Black Church, is lacking and I’m working really hard to get back.

Even as I was writing this up, I anticipated that folks would try to challenge the receipts of my 15 years of doing this work and having my faith and humanity challenged, so I googled racism in urban planning and while there were some scholarly articles, I was looking for an article by a fellow advocate, preferably a white one.

And yes, it hit everything it needed to hit, but it’s so triggering to:

1. Still be talking about racism, especially mobility and land use, and to do so divorced from all other forms of racism that play into it.
2. Read about folks who just discovered this particular flavor at the same age (this article was written in 2021 and I too had just turned 35 a few months prior).
3. And then not get a leg up in being a person who was listed as a professional who can help heal it (even though I realize that not being on this list is protection from rejection because talking about racism rips me in half).

This is why I’m so glad I had a chance to talk to a Black Christian Socialist pastor for my latest podcast episode, Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes!

You should watch the last part of the PBS Black Church documentary …

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

…to see him and his wife Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes in action, activating a welcoming on all fronts Black church service in an alley garden in Brooklyn. And after this jump for this newsletter’s Crafting Liberation moment, I’ll have a video of that episode and how in the last few days since my hospitalization, I’m going to step out on faith.

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This Crafting Liberation Art Reflection is brought to you by Bookshop.org. Purchase the books I refer to in my podcasts and emails from a company not committed to our demise. Plus I get affiliate income and can continue to pay my rent in case opportunities like paid subscriptions are out of your budget at the moment.

So let’s talk about my Kristpattern block. At first, I wasn’t trying to mirror the technique I did for the Defying Gentrification (DG) banner. I also didn’t expect to tessellate a photo of one of my motif/granny square works in progress. However, when I started playing around with those same tools I used for the DG banner, I found that I looked pretty good in green and my tiles made a fun, imperfect tesselation. I’ve loved tesselations since my fifth-grade art class introduced me to them and M.C. Esher.

When I came back to fiber arts, I first thought granny squares were one thing, but quickly learned they have lots of properties. And next week, I can’t wait to show you some of what I am working on this year to merge my twin obsessions of fiber and transit. Now, back to urbanism.

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With everything going on, now is the time for radical faith in believing in your moral compass, and to be there for others. And remember, all radical means is going back to your roots, and then growing in the most fruitful way. Here’s my full conversation with Rev. Dr. Andrew Wilkes for the Defying Gentrification podcast.

Apple Podcasts

Zencaster

Plus, I couldn’t let the first week of February pass without honoring the legacies of both the original Greensboro Four and the movement they launched, and now upon hearing the news that the Triad City Beat is shutting down, this moment in time happened.

Two of the “new four” are currently stepping up to run for Greensboro City Council, after spending the last ten years doing all kinds of necessary and needed community work. Two of us went to DC over the past decade to do our best to make a difference.

Meanwhile, I think it’s a good time to tell everyone I am absolutely ready to spin this block again. For good. We have details to work out, but if you read this far, yes it’s true, I’m coming home. You definitely want to stay tuned to the newsletter to learn more about my timeline and how that’s going to happen.

Oh, and I’ll be on the Carolina Transit Roundtable on February 4 at 1 pm, which will stream live right here on the Transit Equity Network YouTube page for Transit Equity Day.

www.youtube.com/@TransitEquityNetwork

In my next email, I’ll be back with the concept of cultivation, but in the meantime, share with me in the comments, how do you keep your faith? How are you stepping out on faith?

Until next time,

Kristen

Kristen’s Definition of Defying Gentrification:

(Action Verb): A healing practice to build oneself up to a life of affirming interdependence, despite encountering affordability challenges and other issues of false scarcitiy in urbanized areas, and at the mercy of governmental authorities.

In plainer English: overcoming the many levels of housing and transit-related isms, especially those that would make life in a body like mine (Black, agender, nonbinary, pansexual, chronically ill, and underpaid/disrespected at work) harder.

I’m extremely frustrated that I even have to explain this at all. But then I realized that frustration comes from years of rejection trauma and sensitivity, and yes, my clinical depression, anxiety and its resulting complex PTSD and religious trauma

I also didn’t want to tell you this straight up without putting a price tag on it, because I have the trauma of having to show up in a certain way just to get paid and be loved. And the deferred dreams due to not being able to afford to advance.

I often ask, where is the limit to what you all require me to do for free before I can get paid?

(You can always join me on Patreon, Substack, or Medium)

I know that government contracting and other activities require grant applications to be received and invoices to get paid. However, I feel like we can do so much better than IOUs and billable hours in what we do. I’ll apply for them and file them anyway, but the process needs improvement.

Especially since funding community initiatives and basic government services is rooted in what we think certain people and communities are worth.

Even with my educational background and access, I have fallen through so many cracks. But I’m ready to get up in 2025. But, I have to get up in a way that I can remain supported and firm.

I created the six pillars of defying gentrification to help me make sense of it all and have a framework to pinpoint myself back to when I feel discouraged.

What are those six pillars? They should be familiar to you if you’ve been following along with me for the past year. But over the past year, I’ve wanted to experiment with how they worked, before handing you that workbook I’ve been promising.

Far too many people are making promises and claiming they know all the answers. They don’t and while I have some answers, I want to make sure that they could be a good experiment for you and not cause harm.

Anyway, Stick around, after this brief interlude to squeeze in some liberation crafting, I’ll be back to tell you how I see the six pillars a year out from me creating them.

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This Crafting Liberation Art Reflection is brought to you by Bookshop.org. Purchase the books I refer to in my podcasts and emails from a company not committed to our demise. Plus I get affiliate income and can continue to pay my rent! Or, if you want to never see an ad again in my work, make sure you’re a paid member of Patreon, Medium or Substack! You’ll still get my emails but without the ads!

So the reason this email is called Defying Gentrification Crafting Liberation is because for me, it’s not just about being a healer or nurturer of folks who have been hurt by gentrification and related harms related to the environment, I have to make art as well. For long-time readers, you’re getting a sense of my new art practice in this section and for new readers, this is where I wax philosophical about my art. This week, it’s the new imagery I’ve conceived for the Defying Gentrification part of this project.

When I did the original logo, I wanted to pick colors that spoke to Black power and Black healing. Gold, which is the goddess Oshun’s color, does that for me (and Beyonce!). I chose a generic image for starters, because, no lie, this generative AI thing has scared me. However, I wanted it to be more personal over time. So I figured I’d start by taking a picture of the side of my head in the bathroom.

Then I dropped the image in Canva and ran a Duotope filter, then sharpened, contrasted, and clarified it to every inch. And then I did the magic background cleaner. Realizing my head without the background was a hard straight line, I angled it against the page, then I realized it’s got me looking forcefully at buildings. Not all of these buildings represent gentrification, but all of them were built by white men.

And while I like some of these buildings, I don’t like that I have to swallow parts of myself to be able to be the person to do the kind of work I need to live in them…

…Or so I’ve thought … I hope that by crafting liberation through my art, I can, in turn, defy gentrification. Now, back to those new principles I’ve offered to defy gentrification, but first a preview of the new imagery for my art platform, Kristpattern. I’ll break down its origins and influences in this section in my next email.

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As I mentioned before, over the past year, I’ve been writing up a workbook around the six pillars I’ve developed for Defying Gentrification and testing it out to see if there are some things I can do to help myself defy gentrification, and if some of those things could apply to others going through similar challenges.

Immediately, I realized that I needed to go deeper than just defying gentrification, I needed to do what I could to end gentrification.

But, as an individual, especially a Black and queer and disabled and feminine-appearing and broke one, I found over this past year there are hard limits as to what I can do about gentrification for myself. However, collectively and in keeping in mind our skills and power, there are things we can do.

Below, is an illustration of the framework, and a brief introduction to each principle that I’ve been testing.

If you’ve been here over the last year, a lot of this will sound familiar to you, but some of it is more refined and solidified after I stepped back and looked over what seems to be working and resonating. For the next seven emails, I’ll be sharing what I feel confident in about each principle, along with episodes of my podcast and other YouTube videos and resources and people who can be helpful with said tactic.

Then as time goes on, I will revisit each principle, adding new podcasts, videos, and resources, along with highlighting more of my artwork and other useful things.

So now, without further ado, my new framework around defying and ending gentrification in one paragraph.

First, to defy gentrification as an individual, especially if you share any of my identity markers, you need faith in yourself, and the cultivation of positive obsessions and/or hobbies. You also need to practice self-care. Doing those three things will at least make you feel less shitty about the hand life has dealt, even if you’re doing your hobbies as you live in a tent or car or a too-small apartment (shout out to my livingkitchen and my bedoffice). Then we need others, namely major institutions such as funders, houses of faith, developers, and others who seek or to be or see themselves as community leaders, to care as a community about us, and provide us adequate infrastructure and access to make our lives as convenient as possible.

Yep, it’s really that simple, but we will break it down even more.

Last email, I was beating myself up for not defying gentrification in a year. However, I am embracing this concept as a lifelong journey, one that will come with wins and losses, big steps up and steps back, but all average in a fruitful life. Now, if you community leaders step up, more of my losses can be wins, but I can only work with my own resources and power and I accept that now. And instead of feeling shame with having to revise, I can feel peace at knowing you, my readers, will be right here with me as I return to the drawing board.

And if not, that’s ok, thanks for your time on our journey, I value the lesson that you’ve given me.

Until next time,

Kristen

I haven’t felt jolly for months, years even, and all of my wishes for you this year, have been very profane and anguish-ridden. I wanted to spare y’all those, but I did let loose in a semi-private online forum. Also, my apologies for ghosting y’all here. Technical difficulties have also been the death of me this year, but there’s really more going on than that that I’m at peace with sharing here now. Oh and that opening image is one win, my crochet class for DC’s Heurich House Museum’s Maker’s Month in November!

But  I’ve felt ashamed that it seems like I’ve failed at Defying Gentrification. And I’ve failed at being able to free myself from having to wake up and go to work for someone else anyway and scrape to pay the bills.

I’ve especially felt heavy because I feel like I could have learned all of this never leaving Greensboro and still had some extra time with several relatives who have since passed on, namely my Dad. With Biscuitville and Harbor Inn in my belly, maybe even in the mountains or on the beach, natural disasters notwithstanding.

But, do I know that for sure?

At the end of the day, I take pride in knowing that I have the strength and courage to write and cultivate a platform, that says what needs to be said, even when it’s not pretty or cute.

But what I haven’t loved is that sense of loneliness I get because not enough people are reading these words in real-time and several of the ones that are, are either not in a position to help me through this particular challenge or they are actively shaming me for not fixing it in the way that they (you?) think is best.

Some of y’all might think the internet, blogs, and social media are just toys that try to mess with your head and sell you things. However, this has never been the case for me.

If I’m following you, I want to be there and I want to know more about you. I comment because I see that you’re a real person. And I share these things because I think someone can benefit from them. I also curate my feeds so I get something from them. Hence, how I managed to start crocheting and dabbling in so many other fiber arts, because I saw something I liked on the internet and cultivated it.

Plus, to those who think the media and newsletters and really well-curated YouTube and social media pages are a joke and not worth paying for, I have something to tell you.

I can pinpoint a YouTube channel, a newsletter, and not just one or two but three popular podcasts that folks happily pay for or donate to, even if they don’t necessarily like the output all the time. You might say you feel comfortable paying for them because they are consistent. I’m even a new Patreon of one, because I enjoy learning how to YouTube from them.

Well, I’m here to say that consistency is easy when you’re of the majority, preferred culture in urbanism. All of these folks, even when they have scrambled, have never had to deal with being Black. Maybe queer, chronically ill, or broke, but not Black in America with banks and landlords not caring that I’ve sat with some of you on stages across the US and Canada because that currency is just not enough.

How I hurt when I see Black folks in tents bulldozed over. Standing at the bus stop shivering in the dark because it only comes once an hour. Happy when someone gets a car because at least they can control and own that outright. My Honda Fit will be paid off in 2025. I still can’t get a mortgage because I can’t keep a job or contract long enough to pay bills on time and keep my credit score up.

I get why you don’t want to learn anything from me or pay me for this free information. Or you want me to battle through cumbersome grant and employment applications. Do all the reporting on the public engagement side of the project, but only the public engagement side, and expect to never get paid on time, or even better, cancel the project when it gets too hard to administer or too close to “woke” to fulfill.

A few of you even told me that you feel like my radicalism is what’s making me unhirable and broke. That I should be concerned about my behavior and shouldn’t be upset that others are upset and disgusted by it. But yet some of y’all buy concert tickets and partake in gallery crawls with artists that have similar, if not more radical politics.

Why should I wake up daily, as I did for two years thinking it was buying my support and honor in the DC urbanism community, and look at all these jacked-up ideas for what should make our cities and regions better, and then turn around and be more productive and put on a happy face despite some of those ideas leaving me ass out.

Oh and since I am part of the marginalized communities on the chopping block under this new US regime, obeying in advance doesn’t matter, it just makes me more complicit on the way to my punishment chamber.

I have gotten coaching. I know my NAICS codes. I have capability documents coming. I’m finishing up a new podcast episode that will debut in January and I’m doing better with my meditation and my self-care habits.

But again, how many Black women and other marginalized genders(MaGes) do you know for real? How many of my white and non-Black POC readers in the space can say that they’ve never caused workplace or community trauma, despite being well-meaning. How many of you are Glindas, even by accident?

And for those of y’all Black MaGes reading, I’m sorry I forgot to drop the trigger warning. Don’t let my backlog of posts fool you, I know what’s really up. And I know we aren’t going to survive being cooked, despite our assimilation and our status quo attempts.

I know I may never work in this industry in any capacity again because I’m being myself and I’m telling the truth about this, in an uncomfortable, but slightly less profane way, but I wanted to get out alive and the rate I was going holding all of this in (and yes, watching Les suffer through her own version of it), was going to kill us both.

I feel better now that you know where I stand. I will miss all the things I loved about having favor in this space. But, I will not stop telling the truth or releasing my grievances on my own volition.

If you don’t like it here, head back up to that paragraph with some of the other more popular independent urbanist media outlets and support them.

Or, reach out and understand how you can really support me and Les to keep going. Upgrade to paid, so instead of abetting free labor, so you can be not just equitable, but just and liberatory towards me.

Not just my work, but me.

Meanwhile, I am going to start playing with this platform a little bit. If I only have a little more time left on this Earth, let me start using it with joy and intention. I’ll see y’all in January with some of that fun!

Until next time,

Kristen