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Kristen's Personal Gentrification Defying Playbook
145 Plays7 months ago
Kristen spends some time this week talking about her personal needs to defy gentrification. And her hot topic is something she’s been boiling over about for decades, teen curfews.
SHOW NOTES
(Apologies for the slightly rough audio, re-recorded and then realized I was on the wrong mic!)
Hot Topic Article from NBC Washington
What’s happened since they implemented the curfew
What I said in 2013 when my hometown of Greensboro, NC faced the same issue, and what my solutions were then.
https://theblackurbanist.com/thoughts-bringing-youth-downtown/
Parameters of DC’s Summer Youth Program
https://summerjobs.dc.gov/page/faq-hsip
Sins Invalid Disability Justice Paradigm
https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/10-principles-of-disability-justice
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.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Defying Gentrification
00:00:00
Speaker
The Defying Gentrification. This is Kristen Jeffers, your lovely host, and we're at episode six. And today I'm going to have a solo show. I have a hot topic and I am going to talk about what I personally need to defy gentrification.
00:00:17
Speaker
If you've listened to episodes two and three, I talked about what society needs. And yeah, it first some of what I need into that. But specifically as a black queer feminist who is chronically ill, there's a few extra things that I need. There's a few special things that I need and things that other folks might not need. And I want us today to think about what that is. So yeah, we're going to do that today.
Teen Curfews: A Historical and Personal Perspective
00:00:42
Speaker
And I'm going to talk about the hot topic, a hot topic that's been boring and that's been
00:00:47
Speaker
hot for me for 11 years and that is the issue of teen curfews. So with that we're going to take a break. I'm going to record my ad and then we'll be back with our hot topic of teen curfews.
00:01:07
Speaker
So, I have a bookshop.org store, and that is a wonderful way to support me and support the podcast. You can find it at bookshop.org slash shop slash Kristin E. Jeffers. I'm gonna recommend a couple books later on in the next couple ad breaks, but right now, I'd love for you to just go and explore it. In fact, you can do it while you're listening to me. That's bookshop.org slash shop slash K-R-I-S-T-E-N J-E-F-F-E-R-S. And now, let's get back to the show.
00:01:39
Speaker
And we're back. And teen curfews is this week's hot topic.
00:01:44
Speaker
When I just that word, just those two words together, teen and curfew make my blood boil. And if you have been following me throughout my various projects and my collective work over the years of being a public urbanist on the internet in the world, I can take you all the way back to 2013 when this first really truly became an issue for me.
00:02:09
Speaker
But the reality is, this is named my blood boil since around 1999, 1998, when my hometown mall Four Seasons Town Center decided that they wanted to enact a teen curfew.
00:02:24
Speaker
Now, the demographics of the time at Greensboro were Four Seasons Mall or Town Center. Most of us say Four Seasons Mall, so you'll hear me interchangeably say the two. They still had a belt.
00:02:40
Speaker
They still had the Dillard's was not where Belk it where Belk was. The Dillard's was in its own place. That building was not what it is now and then JCPenney's been where it's always been. They had just remodeled the mall for the second time. They had they had taken away the underground bookstore and they had added the fountain court and so many of us were allowed to go to that mall in clusters and groups supervised to go sing for choral events. And of course,
00:03:09
Speaker
I'll have to be real, like as a feminine person who was kind of making terms with who I liked and who I didn't like and even how I felt in this body that was starting to develop, the mall felt a little uncomfortable but I still never liked the fact that the mall gave us rules about what we could and couldn't do. So here we are, let's fast forward to 2013.
Youth and Society: Reflecting on Curfews
00:03:33
Speaker
Two adult men are at a nightclub in downtown Greensboro.
00:03:38
Speaker
because we live in a world with guns those two men pull out guns and one of them is shot it's been a while ago i don't think anybody was shot dead but someone was shot it did sort of disrupt things and what did our town decide to do now
00:03:56
Speaker
I will give our mayor at the time, who is our current mayor, credit for saying that if she could have found a way in the law to ban all adult activity at 11 p.m., that's what she would have done. But however, what ended up happening was, I'm sure some business owners said, hey, you can't punish our adult population. We need that population to make money.
00:04:25
Speaker
So what we're going to do, what we would like for you to do is just ban the teenage clients. You know, ban the teenagers. You know, they fight anyway, they're annoying, they don't have money. And you know, we're such a good little Christian town. Why aren't they doing good little Christian things anyway? So.
00:04:44
Speaker
That was also reposable, because yes, we ended up having a whole teen curfew. Now at the time, this was in 2013, and I'm 38 now, so I was about 27, 28. And if you've seen me, yes, on a good day, I can look a good five to 10 years younger than I really am. And I definitely did then. I was thinner, and most of the time I alternated between wearing my hair and my curls and fro and pressing it.
00:05:09
Speaker
I was very concerned. I did not like the idea. And at the time I was living at the City View Apartments, which were, we are downtown, but we weren't, we're kind of back off of our main drag, which is called Elm Street. We don't have Main Street, we have Elm Street in Greensboro. And so that's when I spoke up. And that of course led to many, a couple of my blog posts, talking to City Lab, Sarah Goodyear, who of course is one of the co-hosts now of the War on Cars,
00:05:39
Speaker
in her previous capacities. I also spoke with, I was on HuffPost Live with her and another black gentleman who had a, from a university in New Jersey who had a very academic view over the criminality of this and the failures of this.
00:05:57
Speaker
But one of the things that happened and one of the things that was going on in the background of this second incident with hearing about teen curfews was that my dad had just passed away. And usually when I'm angry about something and when I'm ranting about something, much like I'm talking to you here on the mic, my dad was my person that I used to talk to. And sometimes when I record these, I do think about if he was still here today, how would I talk to him about this?
00:06:26
Speaker
That would kind of cool me off a little bit, but this time between living downtown myself, between looking younger and not having dad, teen curfews and having potential ID checks and thinking about kids who, and there was this really loophole that you could be working.
00:06:45
Speaker
downtown and not be a problem. So basically, in my mind, we're saying that it's okay for kids to work for us, but otherwise, being at leisure is unsafe. And then the other thing that happened in 2013, I forgot, we've actually had curfews twice. We had the adult shooting. And then that kind of primed us for the children. It was probably, I think it was really only about 10 people directly involved in the altercation.
00:07:15
Speaker
And there were about three to 400 kids who were just downtown. You know, if you've been to a playground fight before, if you've been to a playground fight in a park, which in this case it was in the Cedar City Park, kids do surround each other. They, some of them egg each other on. And yeah, it's probably because of something petty, but it just happened in public. It did not happen in somebody's backyard. It did not happen in the school yard. It happens in the public park. So let's put that context all here together because here's,
00:07:44
Speaker
Now we're looking at and now I'm getting into the article that I'm citing this week in this week's Hot Topic.
Curfews and Racial Stereotyping
00:07:51
Speaker
I'm citing the article from NBC 4 Washington and actually it's a series of articles now because they've really been following this story like back to back to back of a recent incident at Prince George's County or PG County and once again I'll use those interchangeably Prince George's and PG.
00:08:08
Speaker
PG County's National Harbor, which was effectively, is effectively downtown Oxen Hill, which is where Les lived for 12 years. And I lived with her for a good five years before we came to live here in the Wharf DC. And that area is very interesting in that it's kind of quasi private. And that's what makes it even more of an interesting case than
00:08:38
Speaker
what was going on with us in Greensboro. Downtown Greensboro is still the public realm. Yes, Center City Park is under a public-private partnership so of course you know the private means of let's remove people from the public realm which of course all of our students right now hundreds of campuses
00:08:55
Speaker
having this moment of taking over areas that even though that is their home, that is their space, but because they don't own it and the people that own this space don't like what they're saying and don't like what they're standing for. And for the record, yes, I'm here for not just Palestine, but I'm here for every country that has been ostracized, including the one that I'm sitting in right now and recording in right now. So let me make that clear.
00:09:21
Speaker
So back to our young folks at National Harbor in PG County. One other piece of context is it is prom season, it is graduation season. And remember, these kids now, and I'll even say kids because it's a lot of these teenagers
00:09:41
Speaker
If I had had a child as a teenager, yeah, they would be my kids. So I definitely feel like I'm in auntie mode right now, and I want you all to keep that in mind that I'm speaking from.
00:09:53
Speaker
millennial auntie mode and a millennial auntie who's had to unpack a lot of her own prejudices around public space what's appropriate for kids to do now yes even at age 27 I was like this doesn't feel right and I was only 10 years removed from this situation but now being 20 years removed from being a teenager I'm still just as passionate that
00:10:16
Speaker
If we're going to punish people, and of course there's an abolition argument here, but if we're going to punish people, we need to punish everybody.
00:10:25
Speaker
And I feel like the proper punishment instead of enacting a juvenile curfew, emergency juvenile curfew, and yes, that's what it's called. Yes, they refer to them as juveniles, even though most of the children are not criminals yet. Just being on the street in a visibly black appearance, just being on the street and you've got your darker skin, your fat, you have locks, you're louder and you're louder in the black way or
00:10:52
Speaker
I'll put quotes around the black way because there are times when people have been hearing me and I laugh very loudly and I have a southern accent so I get wrapped into this a lot of times too even though I have supposed privileges and yes I'm on the quote unquote better side of colorism which anyway I feel like we should have punished us adults should have taken the
00:11:23
Speaker
issue and then when you read in the article that I'm linked to and the one of the things that was brought up by the um I believe yeah district eight councilman ed burrows who full disclosure we do know and we have talked to before and they are aware maybe even listening
00:11:41
Speaker
They brought up that in the case of this situation where the environment was set for kids to be walking around and then some kids fought and then it, you know, called on video and multiple. It was, once again, if you've ever been to a playground fight, sometimes the playground fight is contagious. We love watching TV shows where violence happens like this. We love being spectators of this. But the minute it happens in real life, and then we want to ask our kids, well, where did you get that from? Where did you learn that?
00:12:11
Speaker
I'm like, I wonder where too, you know? We adults are just as big as spectators. We adults are just, we are often intoxicated just as bad, but it's easy to plant the blame on our kids. And then of course, the other favorite is, oh, where are the parents? So let me run it back. So let's remember that not every child out here has
00:12:38
Speaker
is with the parents who birthed them. Many, many, many families now at this point have step parents involved. Many of us were raised in village with aunts and uncles both, you know, directly related like within the bloodline with the same parents or the same grandparents or you know grandparents that are adjacent or just folks like me that are in this case a community auntie or uncle or
00:13:08
Speaker
Ankle the non-binary version of that relationship is a weird word to me like a lot of the non-binary words for I'll accept nibbling, but I don't really like the adult version of that word So you'll you'll hear me and I usually kind of lengthen to that but that's an aside but still as someone in this position I think we should have shut down every single bar and every single hotel bar in National Harbor and
00:13:37
Speaker
I think if they can track the rooms that these kids came over, and even if they can't, because if it's such a public issue, then why isn't National Harbor closed down? Why isn't MGM closed down?
00:13:53
Speaker
Of course, the first thing people are gonna say, now I know some people are gonna be like, yeah, Kristen, yes, right. We should close it all down, because it's just a heathen den anyway. We didn't want the casino. We didn't want all these bars. After all, this is PG County. This is the capital of black mega churches, black conservative mega churches. I've mentioned a few of them on this show before. But I think what we need to do and be mindful of is that in this particular case, here we are dealing with this again.
00:14:21
Speaker
These kids have already been under heavy restriction. Some of the caretakers of these kids thought it would be a good idea to let them hang loose. Now, as a fellow auntie, I think you need to make that choice for yourself whether or not you want to consume certain substances.
00:14:42
Speaker
Certain substances do hurt your body. And I'm just saying this as somebody who when I drink alcohol these days, even as an adult well of age, I don't wake up the same way I used to. I don't even think I was doing hangovers well back then. So that is a factor.
00:14:57
Speaker
as someone who now has like kind of autoimmune issues stemming from you know I have extreme I have allergies I have a degree of long covid like those and you know I've had other surgeries like having had health issues that's what's keeping me away that's what's and I'm so glad we also have sober culture so now we have mocktails and things of that nature so
00:15:19
Speaker
We have, we have, we have, we are starting to decriminalize a lot of substances like cannabis should have never been there. Like there's, it gets wrapped up in this morality that's very easy and it's a very slippery slope. And I've ended up recording, this is the second time I've actually recorded this segment because I wanted to make sure that I made it clear that if we're going to punish people in this way, punish everybody.
00:15:45
Speaker
if we're not going to offer things for teenagers to do, like really, there's no, it would be fun. Like there's the bubble bubble tea shop. There's the Ben and Jerry's there's, uh, the docs themselves. There's a whole trail. You know, nobody seems to be worried that white kids might be walking over from Alexandria and we need to ask ourselves why we're not worried about that. We need to ask ourselves why we're not worried about, um, why,
00:16:15
Speaker
And it kinda gets back, there was a, and I'm gonna put this in the show notes as well, there was an incident where a young child was electrocuted at the casino because her parent was inside the casino and her other parent had brought her to see said parent, because said parent was just spending all their time in the casino.
00:16:33
Speaker
And let's think about what are we as adults spending all of our time doing? We aren't paying attention to our kids and we aren't teaching good conflict resolution and we're not modeling it ourselves. So all I want to say is
00:16:48
Speaker
In an abolitionist framework, we have better conflict resolution for our children. And we don't say that the children that are working are even better. And by the way, our children, like the summer youth program that we have here, we need to go ahead and up that minimum wage. I've included in the show notes what the parameters of that are. So it's not so easy to just get a job.
Adult Responsibility in Youth Policy
00:17:10
Speaker
The young folks that have been, we've had the thefts and the car jackings and the phone thefts.
00:17:14
Speaker
they're not getting paid enough to survive. They're going they're getting paid more to take objects. So and then of course we're acting like that there's no pandemic. We're acting like that we're not bombing countries and everything. So what I want to say in this week's hot topic and kind of keep it shorter than the original version that I had.
00:17:35
Speaker
is that we have to take all of us, those of us who are adults, need to really sit hard and think about what kind of possibility and role models we are. Then when we decide to meet correction and quote unquote punishment as it were, we need to think about that in an abolitionist framework. And we need to think about that and we need to think about root causes and we need to think about are we motivated by greed?
00:18:02
Speaker
Are we motivated by public safety? Because to me, if a public safety was the real concern, considering that National Harbor is almost like a play town, as it were, there's no real grocery store in there. There is a CVS, but it closes early. If it weren't for those hotels,
00:18:21
Speaker
it really wouldn't even be anybody there and then of course you have the boat marinas and you have a few people that reside in national harbor but i'll tell you most of those folks drive to alexandria or they drive down oxen hill road and they go to that target and all those um things there this was my neighborhood i saw it for my own selves and then yeah other than the trail and even the trail you can kind of access now this will be another episode where i talk about trail accessibility that's not the hot topic of the day but
00:18:49
Speaker
To me, there's not anything really down there. It really is an adult playground. And so maybe we don't get to have our adult playground for a week.
00:18:58
Speaker
If you say that is not fair, think about what we put on our kids. And there are other options besides just allowing them to drink themselves silly. That part I am worried about because there's a reason why we don't do alcohol. Some countries don't even start alcohol before age 16.
00:19:21
Speaker
If you have fun stuff to do, you're not thinking about drinking a beverage. You might drink a soda, but even then, who introduces us to that? Cannabis is more of a medicinal thing. Who introduces us to that? What's going on? A lot of our kids are depressed. A lot of our kids haven't had an opportunity to see. Some of them aren't doing their sports anymore. Some of them have lost our grieving. So yeah.
00:19:48
Speaker
I understand the need to let loose, but I think we should have handled this situation differently. And once again, I don't want to sound like a curm dungeon and I don't want to sound like one of those aunties, but I think we should have punished all of ourselves instead of just punishing the kids, especially since we are the adults in the room.
00:20:08
Speaker
As I said in my most recent livestream, I think we need to be more of the adults in the room, and we need to keep that in mind when we're thinking about policies that are affecting our kids, especially our so-called at-risk youth, and even ones that have support systems, but this time period of pandemic and heightened racial and transphobic and homophobic activities going around.
00:20:31
Speaker
With that, I'm gonna pause again, I'm gonna take another ad break, and then I'm gonna get back, and I'm gonna talk about the things that I personally need to survive in, well actually the things that I personally need to defy gentrification. And a lot of those things I've developed by being and living in this environment of
Defying Gentrification: Personal and Community Needs
00:20:52
Speaker
gentrification.
00:20:52
Speaker
dealing with being a teenager and not having things to do and having things to do that are pain and having restrictions. So keep it out of mind. I'm going to talk about how I feel about that in the adult world. And yeah, come back after the ad. This is Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers.
00:21:12
Speaker
So my first book of the week from my bookshop.org store is We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rogers. I first spanned out about Rachel Rogers by buying her small business bodyguard digital product to help me DIY my first terms and contracts way back when I got started with the black governance and I was about two or three years in and I realized I need to have a little bit more legal protection.
00:21:40
Speaker
Of course, I have followed her journey, and now she's been a key component of the work that I'm doing, including actually this podcast. So that you can go over to my bookshop.org store, find this book. It's bookshop.org slash Kristin Jeffers. And now let's get back to the show.
00:22:03
Speaker
And welcome back to Defy Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers. I'm glad you came back. Now we're going to have a little bit more fun and we're going to talk about, and now that we're back, I want to encourage us to start thinking the way that I'm thinking in this segment about what I, I'm thinking about what I realistically need to do well in a city, to defy gentrification, to thrive and
00:22:33
Speaker
I've all even noticed this is the first time I've had this conversation in the public forum over the last five years. I've really been zeroing in on this conversation. I've been writing around this conversation and I really wanted to just take this half of the episode today to really talk about what I need in a city and why I really, really, really need for gentrification to end.
00:22:59
Speaker
I wanted to make it personal, I wanted to make it stand out, not that I didn't do that in the other episodes and not that I won't do it over and over again with all of my other guests that are coming up on the show, but I wanted to just take that time and talk about who I was as a person and how I came upon my thought process.
00:23:20
Speaker
The best place to start is we've been back in time before, but I'm going to take us back to 1985 in Greensboro, North Carolina, when my parents had me. They brought me home to a post-World War II neighborhood that was starting to make its change from white to black and folks that were from other places.
00:23:40
Speaker
North Carolina has been a destination state for many years, both for people who are moving from northern states at the time, even way back. Actually, North Carolina has always kind of been a destination state, almost no sooner than slavery. As soon as enslavement ended,
00:23:59
Speaker
Yes, we absolutely had segregation, but we also absolutely had a ripe workforce for textile mills. So we had at least two people move their textile mills from northern river towns and move them down to the state of North Carolina.
00:24:16
Speaker
So textiles has been part of bread and butter of who we are and it's been part of the family and that's why those of you who are wondering why I love craft of textiles so much it's it's really what made my city be a city so you know I was I would hear about that and when we lost textile mills in the mid late 90s
00:24:39
Speaker
that was a big blow on who we were as people. And we started to have these conversations about what do we need? You know, there were other elders of our community, former mayors, business leaders of other industries that really wanted to have a, they wanted us to have a, um, they wanted us to have a car lot. They wanted us, and now that what they settled on that, like they, and speaking of which,
00:25:14
Speaker
They wanted us to have like a car dealership, like more like car lots, like the more things going on at the airport or just some kind of business that would support what we were doing as people that would pay as much as we have been getting paid.
00:25:35
Speaker
I grew up in a Greensboro where most people grew up in subdivision like places like everybody kind of grew up in a house and there was a dichotomy between the kids who grew up in apartments and the kids who grew up in houses and then when my mom and I when my parents split we lived in an apartment
00:25:53
Speaker
That did kind of shake that up for me a little bit. I did feel a little bit out of place because I had this, you know, I spent the first eight years of my life being a kid where the kids would come to my backyard and I had, we didn't have a white picket fence, we had a chain, we had a gray chain link fence.
00:26:09
Speaker
But there was a lot of that kind of boomer fantasy. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She cooked every day. We went to the grocery store, hair seater, food lion, and sometimes the fresh market. And we would go to the malls. And I had this really idyllic childhood. My dad taught me how to ride a bike and in a trike. And we used to ride around the neighborhood.
00:26:33
Speaker
Anybody who's seen me speak pre-2019 I've talked about this ad nauseam about this I have what felt like this perfect American childhood and That made me think okay. Well if I had this perfect American childhood, and I'm a black child Maybe you know other people don't need some of the resources they need but I kind of knew something was up already because I
00:26:56
Speaker
I noticed that the people that lived down the street and what was then the Smith Homes housing project, unfortunately that's now gone and I've talked about that before. I think that was more of a hot topic than one of my newsletters. Anyway, that just kind of made me kind of sad because so many of those seniors in the senior part, they had little front porches on their little apartments. It was kind of like a little duplex housing.
00:27:18
Speaker
And they would sit out and they would look out for me riding my bike. And there was a health department division and I walked up the hill, like my mom walked me up the hill at age three, get one of my shots. I remember my legs burning. I remember I could have walked to my first elementary school. And honestly, I could have walked to the second even though the second one's more of like a 15 minute walk. The first one's more of a 10 minute, five minute walk.
00:27:44
Speaker
And that was kind of, it was so idyllic. We have, you know, Greensboro is a college town, North Carolina A&T, UNC Greensboro, Guilford College, Greensboro College. Of course now High Point University has become more of a factor in adjacent High Point. Of course the furniture industry is a big part. So there's just, there's so many things that have been swimming in my head about like what a city meant. And then of course I know the Sesame Street generation and
00:28:12
Speaker
Especially in these later years, just thinking about that my parents bought their house like they were renting it. But then the guy comes up one day says, hey, I'll sell this house to you and they purchased it. They were members of as employees of Guilford County Schools. They were employees of the state employees credit union. That was all they needed to do so.
00:28:32
Speaker
And then we had all these downtown festivals. We had, you know, the downtown Greensboro was very much still intact. I mean, it was kind of underutilized at the time. We were definitely in that era where we felt like we didn't need downtown, but we still had a good chunk of it intact. This is before the downtown stadium. This is before the apartments became luxury.
00:28:50
Speaker
So the apartment I moved into in 2013 that I mentioned earlier in the in the podcast didn't exist yet but it came back into an existence and then we had they removed our train station back downtown and now we have our performing arts center down major like our main performing arts center downtown. We still have the College Sim complex but there's a link a bus link to it there's a circulator now we do have a bus system we we have a lot of things that kind of kind of city
00:29:22
Speaker
But one other thing is I grew up in a slightly conservative environment. I did not feel safe enough to be out as a queer person, and of course I repressed that.
Gentrification and Personal Independence
00:29:33
Speaker
I also really didn't drive well. As well as I biked, I did not drive well. It's taken me years to master driving.
00:29:42
Speaker
Ironing of today is just so I could have like a quiet space. I'm actually recording in my car So as you can see, I've always been into like repurposing my if I've had a vehicle repurposing that for better use Then then driving at times but I didn't I get to take this car out and go visit so many wonderful like farms and so much of my yarn community and I made that community and so I
00:30:07
Speaker
It's been very frustrating, especially in these last period since COVID, with watching housing go up. It's really even more so than living through the 2008 and 2009 recession when, of course, I was on NC State's campus. I did everything but pledge. I was very well-liked, or at least my professors and staff members like me. And I had a few other friends on campus.
00:30:35
Speaker
I was very self-assured. I was very cocky about it. Let me be real. I was very cocky about my positionality on campus. And I was one of those people that had 10 little notes in my resume. Like, oh, it wasn't even a resume. It was my email signature. We were literally the kids of the email signature resume. Then I get back out into the non-campus world.
00:30:59
Speaker
where there's the buses aren't free anymore it's not easy for me to get a campus job you know i don't have a faculty member that's also a family member i don't have that like bubble that i was in and i get back out there and i'm like oh well the computers aren't as fast as they were on campus oh i have to start from the beginning
00:31:21
Speaker
and that's really been instrumental and even right now as I'm at a crossover career and as we're looking at okay what are we going to possibly do next of course we're having fun where we're living right now but what's going to happen so
00:31:35
Speaker
To me, I, as I've said in the other episode, and I know I mentioned some of this in the first episodes, I really have to have gentrification gone. And even before gentrification is gone, a lot of the things that I love, I need for gentrification to end so they can come back. Let me give you a few examples of what those things are.
00:32:02
Speaker
Number one is that when it's time to get my hair done, actually my hairstylist is moving to Philly. So those of you who've seen me in person over the past couple of years, you know I've been on a purple and blue tour of my hair.
00:32:19
Speaker
I don't know how long that's going to last I've got to make new plans for that because it is an expensive process but adding a train ticket to that it's going to be more expensive and she doesn't expect me to do that but at least she is on public transit at least she's it's like I could go to union station here or I could get on the metro get off at union station get on the Amtrak get off at 30th street station get on the set of the bus and then I'm right in front of her salon so that that is an option for me it's not the end of the world that I can't
00:32:47
Speaker
do that so but I just think about how I could how if everybody was trained on black hair
00:32:57
Speaker
I could just go down the street here where we live. There's like three hair salons in this complex. None of them seem to be geared towards, especially not geared towards my level of curliness. Like they look at it, they see if they're bound by the hair typing chart, they're running away from me because I'm squarely in type four. At least people think I'm in type four.
00:33:21
Speaker
There's that. There's food. Yes, we have a fish market down here and that was exciting. But it's slightly different. And even for DMV like Baltimore, Maryland, DC, Virginia, Coastal Chesapeake Bay region, Virginia standards.
00:33:43
Speaker
some of our seafood could be a lot better. And as someone who grew up on Calabash seafood, gosh, it would be nice to have like a little Calabash joint here. I mean, literally the people that built this neighborhood also have rebuilt Seaboard Station in Raleigh. Like maybe y'all could bring Mayflower here.
00:34:02
Speaker
Maybe Mayflower could replace some of the fish market. No shake. Keep the Smith Island cake. I do like those little cakes, but There's something about just that Calabash seafood and that's a me thing, you know I'm the one here that's trying to like I'm not trying to shave my head You know, that's that's not me. I like having hair and I like having my big floofy poof I like having my Calabash seafood and then you know some
00:34:30
Speaker
There are there are places of worship and like not just like Christian places of worship but Buddhist saying highs and even here we have I know of queer Muslims that have found like belonging here and just being able to like tap into my spiritual pathways tap
00:34:48
Speaker
process the kind of spirituality that I grew up in process the griefs that I have and everything having those spaces available to me and then I can just walk to them that's a that's one of those things I need um nature gosh I I spent yesterday before I taped my original take of this podcast and I was swinging out on one of the wharf swings and
00:35:11
Speaker
It took me all the way back to 807 Rocket Street in that backyard. I'm serious like it took me all the way back and I loved it and I felt so in my little inner child was filled and I saw other black seeing other black folks at leisure at that hour seeing other millennials at leisure at that hour
00:35:32
Speaker
you know I the one thing about this pandemic time period like when we had to adjust our work schedules or working in an office schedule I think we should definitely have kept a lot of those things and I and when I can I try to do that um and that gets me to when it's time for me to go to work again and
00:35:54
Speaker
Nonprofit Quarterly has a whole issue this month on Workplace and I've alluded to it before I did in my most recent live stream. I'm recording this on May 2nd. It was going to go up literally tonight at midnight.
00:36:10
Speaker
This month's nonprofit quarterly is might be healing for you. I'm in a collective that meets on Fridays now if you're if you're a black woman or black person that relates to womanhood in any way shape or form.
00:36:26
Speaker
and has been in, has previously worked in a nonprofit workplace or philanthropy workplace and needs somewhere to process all of those things that come up working in those workplaces or being put out those workplaces. Damn me! And I'll get you connected with this group. I don't want to blast open this group and I want, you know, I want this group to be sacred because yeah we
00:36:50
Speaker
I need processing spaces and that's one place what's one thing that happens with nature that I can get to easily on foot you know houses of faith that don't duplicate the same kind of corporatist mindsets that we have in kind of secular non-profits likewise with our queer support organizations our you know the groups that started out as being frontline people for
00:37:13
Speaker
HIV, AIDS, which by the way, still a factor. If you cannot get your medication, it's not working out for you. Kind of like with COVID, if you don't have mitigation, you're on the front lines. And
00:37:28
Speaker
Finally, I'm very fortunate to live here where I can go to, that I have books art ban here. We have phenomenal library systems. Of course, we have the access to the Library of Congress. I have access to the Library of Congress. I have access to DC Public Library, and we have a black feminism exhibit in there right now, or exhibition. I'm in a Smithsonian town, according to the Smithsonian's exhibitions. I'm in a,
00:37:56
Speaker
I'm in a town, I'm in a place that has all those things and I get to go and I get to see my elders reflected at the museums, at the libraries, the books, of course, mahogany books and loyalty books. I think it's loyalty books shop.
00:38:13
Speaker
mahogany books both of y'all are pretty awesome um i i use both of them interchangeably because there's some books that mahogany carries that loyalty doesn't and vice versa so and once again the young family as well as like the folks that run loyalty y'all are great and then of course i can just walk out the door to politics and prose and
00:38:35
Speaker
I walked in there the other day and a book I had wanted from the Hurston Wright Foundation. I had seen them at a panel up in Baltimore not too long ago on writing and craft of writing. They were right there. That book was right there in front of me. So just to walk in the bookstores and see myself and I don't have to worry about that being censored. And of course, Greensboro was like that when I was younger. We have one of our library system is great. Our school system was better. Like it was all these things were factors.
00:39:03
Speaker
and i want us to not be tempted to change it up and of course finally like the art spaces like that i've artists where i've healed artists where i've thrived last night i was at my craft group and it just felt good to be just kind of normal because of course the night before i was at a different event and you know that's what it is
00:39:27
Speaker
But
Systemic Solutions to Gentrification
00:39:28
Speaker
in this urbanism space, I know that I'm more radical. I know that I'm not afraid to speak out even when it's uncomfortable. And y'all know I'm not usually afraid of being broke in order to do it. I got tired a few years ago of having my spirit broken.
00:39:50
Speaker
that's one thing I want to add the original list of things I absolutely needed to thrive was just all the oh I want to eat food like I want a place I would love to walk to a restaurant that has like slaw and
00:40:05
Speaker
chili on hot dog and you know it would be nice to be able to walk into any salon and like they could do like they don't look in my hair and try to like fry it up like like it's a chicken wing and i love to be able to do more of my like i mean i i will crochet and sew anyway if i'm doing it in my apartment but
00:40:25
Speaker
I'm glad that we're doing more meetups nearby and that I can get easily get the meetups if I wanted to because there's a couple people in my meetup on Wednesday nights that take transit so they usually leave a little earlier and or they they take transit over and then somebody will like give them a lift back to the Metro station so I love that there's that mixture there and but There are absolutely none of this is none of this works for me
00:40:56
Speaker
If we don't guarantee housing, I'm just over the fact that the housing market is what it is. And even the rental market, you know, I wouldn't mind even stay in a place here, but you know, my, I need my art room. We need to spread out and thinking of thinking through that as rough thinking through, okay, what kind of job, what kind of money am I going to have to raise?
00:41:15
Speaker
I'm thankful for all of y'all who support this podcast financially, but we're just growing this little network here. Is there gonna be somebody that sees everything that I'm doing and gets scared of me? And then if I get so much that I really need to go to the hospital.
00:41:34
Speaker
We, we should have never reopened the hospitals to like disease spread. And even that, like it's, you never know what's going on with somebody. And then we're living now in a world that's just so full of cameras and surveillance. Even as I was coming down to the car to get ready to record this second round of recording, somebody now has a ring doorbell in our building. I'm like, okay, we already have a concierge.
00:42:02
Speaker
We already have, like, locked doors. What are you trying to say? And this is, you know, most of the people on your floor are going to their cars. And I'm looking around this car lot in here and I'm looking at a bunch of Audis. Like, for real. I don't know if it's because we're right by Audi Field and maybe some of the people work for Audi Field, but
00:42:23
Speaker
There's a lot of nice, expensive cars in here. We're our little fits in here, and I love our little fit, and it gets us from point A to B and has done so for five years, and when it is paid off, I will do an even bigger happy dance, because then it is an option. It might just become the podcast studio. Who knows?
00:42:43
Speaker
We we need hospitals that don't that we need like so many hospitals right now. Those of us who are black, especially black women and people who are gender marginalized. We go in those hospitals and if we don't have anybody to advocate for us, we don't know if we're coming back out. Here in DC, one of our main hospitals accepts Medicaid. Actually, two of our main hospitals are way, way away from every the side of town that most of the folks who are Medicaid dependent are living on.
00:43:13
Speaker
Now they're trying to fix that problem by adding a new hospital, adding a new emergency room, but right now in the nation's capital, some of the same disparities that were in existence like 20, 30 years ago, they're right back now. Yeah, we have.
00:43:28
Speaker
we fixed up a lot of real estate here yeah we have a full working metro system yeah we have tourists that come back and yeah you know downtown's emptied out but honestly new downtowns were created because of course you come out here where we live and it's it's a popular place in fact i'm like if you if you see me down here wave don't run up on me don't try to touch me wave nicely if i smile back and if i see you waving i'll wave back because i may be masked because
00:43:57
Speaker
There's a lot of smells and stuff in here. And of course, if I can't, I don't even know if I go to the hospital, it's going to be a good round. So of course I'm going to do it above and beyond. So I'm taking a deep breath because the two things that I talked about here today on today's episode, just the basics, like I am over it. I'm over.
00:44:23
Speaker
I've been working now, I've had a W-2 job or some kind of paid employment now for 19 years. And I started working at a little Dairy Queen when it was between my freshman and sophomore years of college. Then I worked a couple of jobs on campus and then, you know, you can put my whole resume on, you can go get out my whole resume.
00:44:45
Speaker
And yet if somebody told me that they were going to just say, hey, Kristen, we're going to just guarantee your housing, you know, housing is guaranteed. Now, if you want to add some things, if you want to like upgrade your shower or if you want to add like shelving, now you pay for that, you know.
00:45:02
Speaker
we'll give you a little ikea voucher maybe and then you can go furnish your space but we're gonna make sure you have the four walls and we're gonna make sure it's well ventilated and we're gonna here's the number all these hospitals are well staffed oh yeah you know we we have it because we know that you're gonna live in this neighborhood christen and people like you we got we ferro somebody and we're gonna subsidize that they get to like do your hair they're here to do your hair
00:45:29
Speaker
We're going to even like computer like transit. We're going to we've configured how we pay for transit. And by the way, there's a task force starting here in the DC metro region that's looking at making metro like the entirety of our transit system. And that's an exciting thing. And so.
00:45:46
Speaker
I'm really happy to hear that that's happening because we need more of those kind of task forces. Not task forces where we're like, oh no, it's mostly these young people and they're scaring us like I talked about in the first part of the show. But it's like, oh, these hospitals are terrible. We need to make sure our hospitals are better.
00:46:07
Speaker
You know, it costs us money to evict people. We need to, you know, yeah, we can have luxury apartments, so we need to build more of those. But we need to make sure all the other housing stock is working. Okay, slumlords, you're out of business. We're putting you out. You know, we would, as I mentioned an earlier part of the show, punishing the people that actually need punishing and not and punishing them in a way where it's not dire, deftly, but it's actually improving what we need to improve.
00:46:37
Speaker
and those are the those are the those things having those things would make my life feel better and those are the things that would end gentrification for me and probably a lot of other people because it's it's a known quote that um if you end gentrification if well it's not if you end gentrification so you if you put the black feminist of uh quotes from the kambahi river collective you know that
00:47:06
Speaker
idea that if we're free that everyone is free because of the multi-marginalizations and Especially those of us who are a gender non-binary trans You know that factor people who are poor and most poor being poor is a systemic issue poor health outcomes as a systemic issue all the things like
00:47:36
Speaker
having many of the things that I mentioned here today would end gentrification for me and having the little bits of them that I have right now help me defy it as I battle the bigger system so yeah you all this is this has been the episode I'm gonna take one more ad break and I'll come back and wrap us up and so technically this is
00:48:57
Speaker
Like consider consider how the world that you're in right now Could be better and likewise if we share identity markers write that switch list down please write that wish list down and please start out, you know and
00:49:13
Speaker
Flip it to your friends that have that power because we're going to advocate for ourselves. We do that anyway. You've done enough of it. Let's sit and rest and everybody else listen to this. Think about, for real, if you really want folks to be involved and really want folks to sign on to all these tenets of urbanism.
00:49:31
Speaker
building more housing, having more transit, etc. Let's think about plugging in these holes and likewise our youth. Do everything you can to support our youth and help them and be mindful that their experiences have been different but we were kids once and if you're a millennial like me it was 9-11 and all those kinds of disruptions. So let's be compassionate to each other.
00:49:54
Speaker
And with that, that's the end of our episode. And this, again, defying gentrification is a Kristen Jeffers media publication that means I'm hosting, I'm producing, I'm researching. I've included in the show notes a lot of great resources this week. And one other resource I forgot to highlight in this taping is
00:50:12
Speaker
the disability justice framework that's something good to think about as we go into our next episode in the next episode not sure I think we're gonna have some more guests and or I might be back with some more like one-on-one chats but thanks again for listening and you can find me of course on everywhere podcast or at you can subscribe to me on substag and link
00:50:32
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an opportunity to hear from me I do, you know, I do my Monday live streams and I've been so happy to have you on there. Please ask questions I'm open to a little bit of debate within reason and Rate and review on those net on those podcast networks where you can rate and review please rate and review Those things those podcast things the stars the Raiders everything and with that
00:50:59
Speaker
As I always say, do everything you can to defy and eradicate gentrification. I'll see you next time.