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The Grief that Gentrification Brings
1.1k Plays6 months ago
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.
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Transcript
Introduction and Real-time Thoughts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey y'all, Kristin here, and you'll notice if you're listening in real time, this is a bonus episode of Defined Gentrification. It's really, really raw. And that's why it's a bonus episode. There's no fancy editing. There's no sections.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's just how I'm really feeling this week. And I think this is what I'm going to do in weeks where I don't have a guest. I don't have all of the materials together. And I'm just processing in real time what it means to not just defy gentrification, but to grieve what gentrification has taken.
Gentrification, Colonialism, and Legacy
00:00:36
Speaker
And when I'm talking about gentrification in this sense, I am talking about everything that colonialism
00:00:44
Speaker
and its cousins of imperialism have taken not just for myself in general, but in my peoples and in my legacy and in my ancestry. And y'all this week is a week that in the United States, it's a holiday week and we are drawn to focus on death.
00:01:09
Speaker
The last Monday of the month of May is designated as Memorial Day.
Memorial Day: Origins and Meaning
00:01:15
Speaker
And even that day is contested. People are arguing out here over whether or not it was black people after the Civil War that started or Confederate widows. But either way,
00:01:29
Speaker
This holiday, this time of mourning and reverence, here in the States, we call everything a holiday, even if it's just a time of mourning, a time of remembrance. And specifically, this particular time of remembrance speaks to those who don't come back from our schemes of war.
00:01:59
Speaker
And while some people go there, go on these front lines and these war fronts, specifically the ones like sanctioned by the US military, some of them go there choosingly and they do think that they have a sense of duty. Others, especially in the years when people were drafted, went there not because they wanted to, but because they had to. And some of those folks maybe want wanted to get a
00:02:30
Speaker
an exemption. Some of them were able to conscientiously object. Some of them were able to go to college, but many were not. And that is something to think about as we go into this week. I already knew I was going to take a lot of time. What I didn't anticipate is that I wouldn't have the space or energy to want to engage with the podcast in the way I normally do this week.
00:02:57
Speaker
There are folks I need to contact to get scheduled and I will. It's just taking me a little extra time.
00:03:05
Speaker
Of course, those of you who have been in my circle know that long before Memorial Day weekend also became associated with the uprising triggered by witnessing George Floyd's unaliving by Minneapolis police in 2020.
Environmental Influencer Event Reflection
00:03:30
Speaker
I was going to an environmental influencer thing, which now considering the pledge of solidarity I've made under the divestiture and sanctions that the Palestinian movement has asked for, I would not participate, I would have declined participation because of the sponsor of this event.
00:03:54
Speaker
the irony of that you know things time does move in circles and it moves in waves and of course being at the harvard club walls of blood red even though i was making connections and meeting people i can't tell you i can only remember a few of the people i've met that weekend and i can't tell you that i'm actually in contact with people from there usually even if it's been years and years like
00:04:21
Speaker
I'll give you an example and I'll get back to what I'm building into, which is the death of my dad on Memorial Day weekend of 2023 and finding out in this bloody room and at this event put on by these people that are enabling bloodshed. But it was an environmental event. Fancy that.
00:04:44
Speaker
I was, gosh, just even saying that I lost my thought. I was going to say something else. Once again, this is a raw and unedited bonus episode because I wanted to just talk to you about how I'm feeling this week and what's bubbling up in my brain and what's bubbling up in my head.
Impact of Father's Death and Gentrification
00:05:03
Speaker
and just that I got the news that my dad had been killed from a neighbor first. That meant well. And I want to say this on the record. I now realize which neighbor called me. I'm so sorry that I didn't recognize you. I do honor you. I honor that you made that neighborhood your own throughout all the changes.
00:05:22
Speaker
And now gentrification is knocking on y'all's door and y'all are still there and death has knocked on your door so many times. When you lost my dad, you lost one of your best friends and your best neighbors. And I want to honor that when he was taken from us, he, dad was taken. And here's the thing. The weirdest thing is I say this now.
00:05:44
Speaker
But knowing how close it was and knowing that it could have possibly been an old friend and there was beef between old friends and there was interactions with the justice system and there was false Christianity and there was all these things mixed into the stew of how dad left us.
00:06:10
Speaker
I think for the last 11 years of this, I've wanted to believe that dad gave this story, told his friend to beat him down and knock him out.
00:06:21
Speaker
because he was having such a bad day. Yeah, he might've gone to McDonald's and, you know, yeah, they had a scuffle and then dad just laid down and just say, you know what, my spirit is, I'm yielding my spirit. Take my spirit on into the ancestor portal, into the heaven that I believe in and let me be a resource in the portal and in the space of the ancestral plane.
00:06:48
Speaker
Now here's the thing, like that's a belief system I have, but it's not everybody's belief system. And here of us left on earth. And as we're seeing so many people be taken violently into the ancestral plane so quickly, as we're seeing the death of institutions, as we're seeing, as we're still recovering from
00:07:10
Speaker
the air choking us, literally choking us, the air distributing a terrible illness and choking many of us to death and in the turn leaving many of us in the state of, like,
00:07:29
Speaker
I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, but basically I learned as I keep up with other long COVID suffers and other people who are high risk who already had some degree of autoimmune and neurotypical atypical
00:07:46
Speaker
or neuro spicy. I like to say neuro spicy because you know what? Everybody got something going on. This, this earth is trying our patience real bad and everybody got a little something going on. So as I go through all of that and think through all of those things, I am. I realized that in year 11, in the wake of
00:08:12
Speaker
this airborne version of SARS that now we don't even care about tracking
COVID-19, Politics, and Trump's Verdict
00:08:18
Speaker
no more. We're hoping that
00:08:20
Speaker
the air quality is like circulating around. We're hoping that our bodies are actually rejecting it. We're hoping that when our bodies receive that virus, all of our, all of our implementations and everything are doing well. But then many of us are like, as of like, I recorded this two or three times and I'm recording it again for the third time because I have to discuss this Trump verdict and how so many people are rejoicing that he's guilty.
00:08:49
Speaker
What people don't realize is he's still on the ballot. Our Supreme Court is compromised. And yeah, we have done moral injury and damage to our reputation on the world scene. And here's the thing, take it all the way back to the ancestors and take it back to them being brought to a land that was taken from the people that were already there. They were brought here because the people that were here weren't able to be enslaved and be captured.
00:09:14
Speaker
they were mighty and they weren't able to do that and then our own people they're our battles our beefs were exploited to get to this point in the first place when i think about that and i grieve about that and this week is a brief week of grief and so that that grief cloud has been weighing on me heavy and i
00:09:40
Speaker
All I've really been able to do is just get this bonus episode together, but I really wanted to give y'all something because I appreciate y'all. I appreciate everybody that listens to these episodes. I appreciate everybody's engaging with this frame, that's engaging with this idea that we have to define in gentrification because it's cousins with the colonialism and the imperialism that we have to end.
Podcast Changes and Personal Projects
00:10:05
Speaker
The other thing that's coming up
00:10:07
Speaker
that I actually wanna celebrate is that there's gonna be some changes in the format and also the timing of the podcast as well as some of the things I've been doing this summer. I've secured another contract and that contract is outside of urbanism. And I've also really been leaning into my yarn and fiber groups and all I wanna do a lot of days is just lay in the bed and stitch. I've got one more week before I have real obligations so
00:10:38
Speaker
I'm actually recording this. You're going to get this bonus episode. You're going to get your email actually on Sunday. Those of you who are waiting for your podcast email and you're listening to this and you usually know, I usually do that boost on Sunday and I probably won't email as much, but on Sunday, um, if you're listening to this in real time on Sunday, June 2nd, you'll get an update like this. You'll get this embedded.
00:11:01
Speaker
and you'll get the Sunday emails and I think that's how I want to roll out this summer with these vignettes. I will be scheduling a few more interviews and those will be regular episodes. But I did want to put out this bonus episode, this message. This is more of a real time message but there is a lot going on about grieving and grieving how the earth
00:11:26
Speaker
The Earth is quaking. I believe Mother Earth herself is grieving, and she's trying to get our attention and call on us. And all of the manifestations of the divinity that she contains is trying to call on us.
00:11:42
Speaker
and all of our embedded life force is trying to call on us. Whether we call on them in a church, synagogue, mosque, on the yoga mat, on a temple, wherever we go to seek the face of divine, we are being called to a higher purpose.
00:12:04
Speaker
And if you are not bothered right now that so many people don't get the choices that you're getting, if you are living in America like me in a good situation, or even if you are in kind of a rough situation here in America, but nobody's bombing your house. Nobody's shooting up your house today.
Community Gratitude and Urban Planning
00:12:22
Speaker
All of those things, I'm gonna express gratitude. I'm grateful for the people, the fair and circle that I have. I'm grateful for the people that have come together and community around me. And I lived for so many years believing I needed it to come in a certain form. But right now, folks, that community lives in strip malls and historic districts that aren't as transit accessible. It lives in the car that I'm about to pay off
00:12:52
Speaker
I of course hate the traffic. I wish we, and that's it. Like so many of us are coping by getting those car notes. So many of us are coping by shopping at those cheaper stores with the quote unquote junky or food. Even though that, even that honestly, a lot of our food is compromised here in the States. Even that, that comes from the whole foods and the, and the natural food stores.
00:13:22
Speaker
I want those of you who are form-based planners, people who work so hard to plan these spaces to know that your neighbors, when they plan a cookout,
00:13:39
Speaker
When they plan a stitch meet up, when they plan even a funeral memorial celebration, when they plan these birthday parties, when they get folks together in their yards, in the middle of the burbs, on the block, on the stoop, on these areas that aren't necessarily created for community convening, when they go door to door and they deliver supplies, when they get folks together to get supplies together, when we march in parades, when we encamp,
00:14:08
Speaker
on these campuses that say that we can't speak our full truth. That is urbanism right there. And I really, and I think it's just a measure of being in D.C. and D.C. believing in its myths. So much Washington, not necessarily D.C., but Washington. And those of you who live here know it's a difference. So I'm gonna say that Washington, those of you caught up in living in Washington, and a little bit of y'all who are caught up in administering D.C.,
00:14:36
Speaker
are caught up in these myths. You're caught up in this idea that it's okay that we're losing a bus service. It's okay that we're losing pre-K.
00:14:46
Speaker
And that's how we're balancing the budget. It's okay that only some of the press got notice of these new budgets. It's okay that, it's okay to like pallet and like try things out on folks and then take it away. It's okay that only some people get affordable housing. And that measure of affordable housing is something that y'all determine, that HUD determines and not the person who's struggling, who needs a place to stay to get themselves settled.
00:15:17
Speaker
And then some of y'all are out here complaining about the people that are on the motorbikes, the door dash livers. I saw where some of them were camping. They were by a homeless shelter. They were by one of the shelters. And I saw where a group of people decided that their mutual aid was, let me help mine.
00:15:33
Speaker
Spanish only speaking people get some income and you know what all you got to do is pick up the the thing you can translate the app you can come in the store usually it's labeled by a certain number and here are these bikes and we'll deliver and you know the bikes is easy to get in and out you know New York tried to ban people using e-bikes and using motorbikes who were delivery drivers and that didn't go so well and I want to shout out Dolly and others who were
00:16:03
Speaker
part of that movement to get those people dignity.
00:16:06
Speaker
If you are not out here doing an urbanism of drive-ins and dignity, I don't know who you are. Dr. Destiny Guzman, her work of drive-ins, she does regular trainings. You might want to sign up for one of them. You might want to listen to this podcast regularly. And there's so many others. And honestly, you might want to just look around. Now, not everybody in your friend group. Think about how your friend group makes sure
00:16:35
Speaker
that you're taking care of. And if you're in a friend group that doesn't do that, then you need to leave that. Leave it right now. Throw it in the trash.
Addressing Social Inequalities in Urban Planning
00:16:44
Speaker
And yes, some of us are trying to be a friend group because we love transit and transportation. And so many of y'all don't know how to care about people
00:16:52
Speaker
if they if they show up in the wrong vehicle they're automatically demonized if they go to the wrong living space if they go to a house even if that house is full if that you come up on that house and the yard is full of people it's practically a city in itself because they know how to convene people in that yard
00:17:11
Speaker
They know how to get people where they need to go. There's a supply case. It's a native plant yard. It's a yard full of trees bearing fruit. And I know that's more of a California thing. Even though as tropical as things are getting here on the east coast, if I get my little house, my little yard, I might have to plant me a couple fruit trees and yield fruit. Shout out to my little forager on Instagram accounts.
00:17:36
Speaker
both black forager and chaotic forager. Y'all are doing the thing, teaching us the thing. Cause you know, as I always like to say, I have a lot of catch phrases on this show. One of them is that it's only one earth, so we need to be treating it well. And that, you know, this is the parable of the sower year, Octavia Butler. Anybody who's seen me, I see my water bottle.
00:17:59
Speaker
It sees that. And so right now, many of us are rejoicing that a man is guilty of being somebody we already know. We already knew the court system didn't need to tell us of that. But is this man no longer a danger to us? Is this military system no longer a danger to us? Is our healthcare system really going to take care of us?
00:18:20
Speaker
Is the urbanism that you are doing, is it instead of being about gentrification as a growth machine, is it about making sure everybody gets at least the basics? And then you get to play with like fixtures, and then you get to play with like changing your furniture or whatever. Like maybe you wanna add a second room, but those things I want us to strive towards. And so yeah, look out for your,
00:18:49
Speaker
emails on Sunday.
00:18:52
Speaker
listen to this rec, well, recording is now online. And I'm periodically, when I don't have the full spoons to do a full episode, I'm going to do these combined hot topic lectures. There'll be bonus episodes. You can kind of listen to them at any time, but note if there's like a time and date in it.
Ending Gentrification: Collective Action
00:19:10
Speaker
And then like this one, like it is probably going to be kind of timed and dated to the time that it's being released. But some other bonuses are going to be universal because
00:19:20
Speaker
Once again, we only got one hour for now. And as I always end, please do everything you can to do everything you can to end gentrification. And if you can't end it today, defy it. End it tomorrow and defy it today.
00:19:37
Speaker
Y'all, we got to do this and oh by the way, yes my bookshop is still open, you got time to read some books I got books in there that will help you sort through this.
Book Recommendation: Chocolate City
00:19:46
Speaker
If I was going to recommend the book this week I would recommend chocolate city, the chocolate city book, that's about the DC.
00:19:53
Speaker
a good place to, it's on my black, it's on both of my black urbanist book lists. So bookshop.org slash shops slash Christina Jeffers, catch up on the books this weekend as you're waiting for me to have another episode and more content. Thank y'all for listening.
Listener Support and Open-mindedness
00:20:07
Speaker
Thank y'all for those of you all who show up correctly in my life, who show up with this mindset of ending in divine gentrification. Thank you for that. For those of you who are not afraid when I say these words and I speak this truth, thank you for that.
00:20:23
Speaker
Everybody else. I just pray that your soul gets and your mind gets changed before it's too late. Until next time.