Defying Gentrification

The stories are coming out right and left of grassroots voter coalitions turning over seats that were forgotten or underfunded, or bypassed by the official Democratic Party organizations tasked with running candidates and winning elections. Those voter coalitions embodied what I call being a good neighbor. What I call defying gentrification is being a good neighbor. I measure being a good neighbor...

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” - Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple (and other things) We are on the eve of another national election, one that could change our lives. But isn’t that what an election is supposed to do? I think, though, when we are bound in a soup of apathy, despair, gentrification, racism and all the other isms, it’s been...

The Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) movement shows that we can gather people around to talk about building homes. And I’m grateful that my colleagues in the YIMBY movement have caught up to including subsidized housing in the conversation with affordable housing and ending land speculation, as of December of last year . I’m no stranger to said movement, having delivered a keynote to the YIMBYtown annu...

As I’ve been thinking about visions , missions , and goals this week, I realized that many cities, as in the municipal structure, have missions, visions, and goals too. I have a theory that the more time and energy cities put into these missions and visions, along with how comprehensive and overarching they are, the more likely cities actually live by them. As I said in my posts on my mission, vis...

We’ve now come to the end of our report card series just 50-miles from where we began. Durham and Raleigh are not the same city, but they are siblings . They are now joined at their Southeast and Northwest corners, respectively, and anchored by one international airport that bears their names . They are two points in what was dubbed Research Triangle Park , conceived in the 1950s to invigorate a s...

Welcome to your Daily Dose of Defying Gentrification. I’m Kristen, a public policy expert, a fiber artist making art influenced by city life, and someone tired of the erasure and pain of gentrification and its cousins. On the weekdays (save holidays and days I need to make a holiday), I analyze a few articles, but one in particular, or I deep dive into a topic of my choice. Today, upon hearing tha...

I know I said I’d give you this post yesterday, but since we are coming together anyway every weekday, I decided to make this my Monday post. We have one more of these city-grade posts coming, and it will be Raleigh & Durham, North Carolina, together, but with separate rubrics. Join us on weekdays for links and commentary around defying gentrification and related topics. It’s been exactly ten year...

Baltimore is gentrifying. It too, does a good job of hiding said gentrification because it values things like art and public space and Black aesthetic spaces. But it’s still sitting out here with a D grade. A 75, but still just below a C. One way Baltimore is unique is that it has world-renowned healthcare, but healthcare that hasn’t always been culturally competent or equally available. I feel th...

Welcome back to my series where I grade the cities I’ve lived in on whether they are defying gentrification. We are tackling one of the poster children of American gentrification, Washington, DC, with my new rubric. You can listen above or read more below. How Do I See Gentrification Affecting DC? So much has been written about how gentrification has affected DC. I want to honor all of that writin...

Welcome back to my series where I grade the cities I’ve lived in on whether they are defying gentrification. This week, my beloved hometown, Greensboro, North Carolina, is the first to get a deep dive. Before we get into said dive, I want to note that this will be one of the most biased of my reviews, because of my relationship with said city. I did my best to give the town the number grade of 67,...

No city (or metro region) is defying gentrification. All of them are failing at it. I feel that in my bones and soul when I step out of my creative studio and into a world where the train might be cancelled after I made the 15-20 minute walk to the station, and I can only get to McDonald’s on foot within 5 minutes. A world where my younger cousins in school may not be valued because they’re Black,...

Listen to the podcast version of this above. I could have made this post a part two on Audre Lorde’s influence on why I’m moving in this direction. After all, she was the one who said our silence wouldn’t protect us. But in meditating on said silence and learning more about my Black queer feminist foreparents, I came across a The New Yorker article from 2020 that detailed how June Jordan was a not...

(Listen to this post as a podcast above ) Welcome back to our Black August series. This week, I’m sharing how I know what I can and can’t control and how that (and the Defying Gentrification Manifesto) are different based on what resources we all have. Let’s tap in for the week! Defying Gentrification would be easy if I had a magic wand. People would have clean, reliable public transit at their do...

Welcome back to the Defying Gentrification with Kristen Jeffers Black August series. This month, as we honor our political prisoners and radical revolutionaries, I’m situating myself in that literary canon and providing clarity on how The Defying Gentrification Playbook can give you the inspiration for your and your community’s journey to liberation. Today, I talk about muses and how Audre Lorde b...

I was so proud on the morning of Tuesday, May 28, 2013. I was sitting in the Harvard Club, awaiting the beginning of my very first influencer event, sponsored by Siemens for environmental influencers. My cousin called, and I hit ignore, making a note to call him back and get a vibe check on the music scene here, since he was a budding producer at the time and he would know. Then, his parents calle...

I was listening to Alex Elle ’s most recent Insight Timer meditation series, and on day five of the series, she talked about ways of being and relationships being obsolete- not all in a bad way, but in a “ sometimes you evolve, and that makes things obsolete”. Or maybe this was my reflection as I did said meditation, based on her new book The Company You Keep . Either way, I went down a deep dive...

I'm back going live with a visual representation of what my big theme post was this week. I originally had an even longer post where I had even more grievances that didn't make the cut last week, but I didn't want to rage again, at least not for the email. But here on the "talkback" I do talk about why I got to this point where I realized The Defying Gentrification Playbook is my own bible that ge...

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 w...

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 p...

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, ti...

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 a...

I knew this week sitting down with Chicago-based journalist Arionne Nettles was going to be a great conversation, but I was very excited about what she had to share, about how Black migration and neighborhood choices past and present are in defiance of gentrification. And our hot topic this week is the terrible parking meter deal that the mayor of Chicago made in 2008, that’s actually not how you...

I knew this week sitting down with Chicago-based journalist Arionne Nettles was going to be a great conversation, but I was very excited about what she had to share, about how Black migration and neighborhood choices past and present are in defiance of gentrification. And our hot topic this week is the terrible parking meter deal that the mayor of Chicago made in 2008, that’s actually not how you...

This week on the podcast, I'm joined by Christine Edwards of Civility Localized, a Charlotte-based public engagement firm that is changing the game on so many levels. But most of all, this is an episode of two Black Southern women who are connected in some shape or form to North Carolina, talking about how we both are motivated and have or haven’t been supported by that state. About our Guest Chri...

This week on the podcast, I'm joined by Christine Edwards of Civility Localized, a Charlotte-based public engagement firm that is changing the game on so many levels. But most of all, this is an episode of two Black Southern women who are connected in some shape or form to North Carolina, talking about how we both are motivated and have or haven’t been supported by that state. About our Guest Chri...