Defying Gentrification – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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

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

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

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

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

People and Things I Mentioned in the Episode

The songs I played (copyrights maintained by each performer)

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

Beautiful Chorus, I Am Enough -

Toni Jones - Currensea -

The articles I mentioned in the first half

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Go Paid on Substack —

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

— Shop my Kristpattern fiber arts supply shop —

https://www.kristpattern.com

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

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

This week on Defying Gentrification, I, your host Kristen Jeffers, talks to our first guest, Derek Moore, who came by to talk about their experiences with land use and gentrification. Stay tuned to the end to hear what I did after having this conversation! Plus our hot topic this week is how the remaining residents of Chinatown who are Chinese have to take a long bus ride to a grocery store that truly services them. I recorded that part at a store that serves the same role for me and reflect a bit on how that’s affected me over the years, as well as issue a call-to-action for the news site that it came from, as I usually do.

About our guest!

Derek Moore (he/they) is a Central West Baltimore-based Urban Planner and Non-Profit Development professional. He grew up in an Army family and has since lived in many cities across North America. Derek is a transportation advocate - co-founder of local urbanist group Friends of the Underground, Greening chair of Madison Park Improvement Association, and City and Regional Planning master’s student at Morgan State University.

Our hot topic reference article for this week — https://wamu.org/story/24/04/16/dc-chinatown-chinese-residents-leave-city-grocery-shop/

The WAMU takedown that I somewhat reference — https://www.washingtonian.com/2024/04/19/why-did-wamu-close-dcist/

An analysis and webinar on the lack of grocery stores in Black neighborhoods, focused on the Washington region (DMV) — https://ggwash.org/view/89226/premium-grocery-stores-are-missing-from-the-regions-high-income-black-neighborhoods

Learn more about Eden Center — https://edencenter.com/stores/

(Note, they do NOT have an H Mart, but there is one nearby in Fairfax County, VA)

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.

On this episode of Defying Gentrification, I spend my homeroom time clarifying that gentrification is not a remedy for urban renewal, it’s the continuation of urban renewal, land theft and seizure, forced assimilation, and redlining.

And on my street corner this week, I urge Black women to answer the call for liberation, especially when we are given positions of power, and to do our best to not let it kill us, and honor the memories of those that we have lost to the system despite being in its power structure.

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Here are some of the things I referenced on the episode:

The Assembly   article on Yolanda Hill shuttering her organization helping childcare facilities to receive federal funds so her husband could look more Republican as he runs to be the first Black governor of North Carolina.

Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s full remarks at Spelman College

ABC News report on the legacy and the tragedy of Dr. Antoinette Bonnie Candia-Bailey

My tweet on the depression that comes from reading bad news for a living, even when you have supportive people helping you do so.

The full article from the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook on urban renewal

History of the Warnersville neighborhood

The Amendment Podcast episode on Representation for the Cherokee Nation in the US Congress

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Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store and support the podcast! Also, the Rothstein’s book is called Just Action, not Just Law.

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.

On the third episode of the Defying Gentrification podcast, your host Kristen Jeffers (she/they), spells out why we need to treat gentrification like a disease and eradicate it.

But first, on our street corner, the hot topic is the need to call in our Black siblings who think that verbal transit and street harassment, especially the queer antagonistic kind, is ok, the need to care for our communities over policing them when they err in this manner, and why we should continue to support public transit and increase access to it.

Here's the news article about the incident. 

Read my tweet about this situation. (CW: The recording of the incident discussed is in this tweet, which I quote tweeted)

(Also I misstated in the audio that the couple who intervened was heading from Silver Spring, they were heading from Dupont Circle, one of our legacy gayborhoods, to Silver Spring, Maryland)

Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store.

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.

In this episode, Kristen takes us to school and breaks down who gets to defy gentrification. Spoiler alert, It is those who have been colonized, which generally are indigenous populations of color.

Also, on the Street Corner, the hot topic is both the Kansas City and Washington DC stadium/arena deals and how they are different.

Read the Kansas City Defender article on the stadium vote.

Read the KCUR article and see the poster.

Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store.

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern

Join the Defying Gentrification Fellowship powered by Podia.

On this inaugural episode of the Defying Gentrification podcast, your host Kristen Jeffers (she/they), takes you to school in our homeroom to learn exactly what is gentrification, and why should it be defied and eradicated.

But first, on our street corner, the hot topic is how not to leave Baltimoreans of color behind in the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge tragedy, as well as honor their competence in leadership during disaster situations.

Read our street corner hot topic article from Capital B.

Read the Curbed article referenced in our homeroom section.

Purchase from Kristen's Bookshop.org store.

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.

Join the Defying Gentrification Fellowship powered by Podia

Kristen Jeffers, a Black Queer Feminist Disabled person from North Carolina living in the Baltimore-DC metro region ("the DMV") loves cities. But, she's tired of the rent being too high, transit being nonexistent and Black lives not mattering at all in most cities, even though we created many of the arts and cultural institutions in them. Learn more about how she will be using this podcast to discuss hot topics and resources to help defy AND eradicate gentrification.

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

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

Here’s Rev. Dr. Wilkes’s bio

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

Watch PBS's The Black Church Here

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

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

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

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.

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

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

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

You can also find Kristen @blackurbanist or @kristpattern.