I’m going home next week. He won’t be there, though. | The Black Urbanist
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly with Kristen Jeffers for May 26, 2023, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen E. Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email.
If you’re new here, we have six sections: Story of the Week; The Principle Corner; By the Way; On the Shelf, On the Playlist and Before You Go. Scroll down to get descriptions of each section. Plus, you can read all archives right here, on my homepage. Now, let’s get to our storytime.
Story of the Week: Setting Out the Chair
I want to take us back to some words I wrote in June of 2013:
What does it take to leave a legacy in a city? Is it having your name on a building that you either built or gave a lot of money to make?
Is it knowing your entire block or neighborhood?
Is it leaving behind children and grandchildren who continue on with the family cause or business?
These are questions I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m not going to go into any more details about what brought me to these questions, because there’s a lot I cannot say about why and what happened. However, the root of it all starts here, as I detailed in my About section and in my [December 14, 2010] Grist article “Does urbanism have to be black or white?”
It all started with a map on the floor. My dad and I would spend Saturday afternoons “driving” around with my toy NASCARs from my friendly neighborhood Hardees. As I got older, I became enamored of the small skyline of my hometown of Greensboro, N.C. So enamored that one day, while I was sick with the chicken pox, my dad went out and bought me a postcard with the skyline on it. It hangs in my room to this day.
When they widened the main road next to our house, I cried. I also was opposed to a hotel project near my current residence that threatened to upstage the downtown area. Mind you, I was only eight. I was an urbanist in the making, although I would have had no way of knowing there was a name for it.
Dad and I biked through our neighborhood on Saturday afternoons. Those bike rides took us through housing projects and 1940s era single-family homes until we made it to the main suburban artery. I loved my bike until I moved to a neighborhood where I was teased for just walking around. It’s taken me about 15 years to consider getting back on a bike. My dad still bikes; he’s always had a string of intermittently non-working cars, so he doesn’t think twice about it.
My dad doesn’t have any buildings named after him. I’ll probably have to sell his house. He struggled to walk down streets with no sidewalks. Then there was the bike. When he got tired of fighting our stroads with both of those, he put money into a car he could barely afford. Yet, he fixed up homes that weren’t built well in the first place. He mowed yards that others couldn’t maintain. He always had a song in his heart and brought music to any space. Finally, he made sure that I knew that people, all people, mattered. All these things are his legacy.
How can you leave a legacy in your city? DO YOU and do what your community needs. My dad did. It does not take money, a building with your name on it, or a stone edifice of your body to be someone who is never forgotten or to create an example.
In fact, if you create an example, that legacy lives on and it lives in the present.
The Principle Corner
In this section, we step away from the literary expression that opens this newsletter and into the “practical”.
Ten years since he was taken. Thirteen since I first told that story in Grist on my 25th birthday. Words I thought had passed into the ether, but thankfully, they’ve been restored, so we all can see where this public urbanism journey started and some of where I want it to go.
Ten years of setting out empty chairs at my events and our family dinner tables. Ten years of time to think about ancestorship and legacy.
Next Wednesday afternoon the first time since August 2019, I will be crossing the southern border of Virginia into my home state of North Carolina. For the first time since April of 2019, I will be going through, possibly to, Greensboro. Now my ultimate destination is Charlotte to be on a CNU 31 panel, only my second in-person panel since COVID (I’ll be on the media one at 4 pm on June 1, if you’re registered, be sure to add it to your calendar). Next week I’ll have all those reflections on what actually happens there and how things have changed, not just since COVID, but in general.
But this week, I wanted to meditate on the empty chair that will be in the room no matter if it’s (a little unnervingly) packed.
While many have been mourning this year’s passing of Tina Turner and the three years since George Floyd’s untimely public execution by agents of the state, this time of the year, from May 25-June 25 is the time I mourn my dad. Yes, it also coincides with the main Pride Month in the United States and that’s come with its own form of joy and mourning as some folks have used all of the above, save Tina, to change how they feel or receive or react to me.
I’ve had my confidence shaken so many times since I wrote those words. The grief is overwhelming sometimes and it’s grown so much, especially in the last three years.
But this week, I’ll have a special, pointed opportunity to test out what it means to have a legacy and if home is really home. I’ll be holding my head higher though and I will be pushing back against the growing tide that’s trying to tell me I no longer belong there and never belonged there.
By the Way
Here’s where I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.
Here’s my dad’s obituary from 2013. I really appreciated reading all the comments again, especially the person who is listed as anonymous and who knows him through me.
***
And the two most fascinating things about Tina Turner for me was that she emigrated from the United States on her own terms and made a new home for herself and that she found the faith she needed through her self-described “Baptist-Buddhism”. While those things look very similar to me, what’s most inspiring is just like her dear friend Oprah, those things were modeled for me in older Black generations, rather than being derided as something only done by “the youth”.
***
And yes, I really need and am glad to read this article on rental options. Yes, there are books and other sources on alternatives to the current housing system but having one in this source does mean something to the kinds of folks that would make these decisions.
On the Shelf, On the Playlist
My weekly recommendations of books, music, podcasts, and other pop culture
I’m still reading Viral Justice and it’s been a slow read, because of the allusion to the death of her father, because of stress, earlier than expected. I still want to finish, because it’s providing so much value, but I’ve had to take it slow.
Meanwhile, I downloaded the Max app, which I was already paying for in its previous form, to stream the Tina documentary, because that’s the most comprehensive way I want to remember her. Speaking of jokes, when I get home today and am done with work, we will be streaming the new Wanda Sykes standup.
Also, this is a nice bridge between my two concerts this month! And bonus Alicia Keys!
And I almost included this in the By the Way, but since it’s music-related, I want to say that I called it when read that Janelle Monae is making a present-day album this time around.
Before You Go
This is our last section, where I have classified advertisements for others along with nudges to donate to crowdfunding and social justice campaigns but I also advertise things that I’m doing that are for sale or for hire. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment and $150 for just one week. Learn more and get started with your ad! First, another position open with UC San Diego Labor Center, which has updated their salary requirements and due dates for advertising this position.
POSITION OVERVIEW
Position title: Program Director — UC San Diego Labor Center
Salary range: A reasonable salary range estimate for this position is $86,000 — $106,000. Off-scale salaries, i.e., a salary that is higher than the published system-wide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions. The posted UC academic salary scales
(https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/compensation/2022-23-academic-salary-scales.html
set the minimum pay determined by rank and/or step at appointment. See the salary scale titled, Academic Administrator Series — Fiscal Year for the salary range https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel- programs/_files/2022–23/july-2022-salary-scales/t34.pdf.
APPLICATION WINDOW
Open date: May 11, 2023
Next review date: Friday, May 26, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.
Final date: Thursday, Aug 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be
considered if the position has not yet been filled.
Apply now: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03619/apply
POSITION DESCRIPTION
The UC San Diego Labor Center (
https://laborcenter.ucsd.edu/
) invites applications for a Program Director. The center is administratively housed within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (
https://usp.ucsd.edu/
).
The UC San Diego Labor Center strengthens and expands the labor movement through advanced research,
education, and strategic partnerships with workers, labor organizations, policymakers, tribal organizations, and the broader San Diego region. We place the wellbeing of workers, their families, and their communities at the forefront of our curricula, community engagement, public programs and publications. We focus attention on the unique socio-economic circumstances of the border region, including large binational and refugee communities and Indigenous nations in the region. Our research offers innovative policy perspectives on work and workers while our worker-centered approach advances the goals of fair working conditions, living wages, and climate, gender, and racial justice.
We seek a program director to lead the founding and growth of the center. With funding through the University of California Worker Rights Policy Initiative (WRPI), the center aims, in the next three years, to: build our capacity for research, policy analysis, education, and public-facing programming; support unions and community organizations to conduct their work more strategically by developing curricula and providingtechnical assistance; and develop the next generation of labor and community organizers, researchers, andleaders among undergraduate and graduate students by connecting them with labor and community
organizations, and training and involving them in community-engaged action research. We work closely with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.