Black folks can be agents and victims of gentrification, nothing more and nothing less. Oh, and I’m going to be doing my art in peace.

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.

Get full access to Defying Gentrification, Crafting Liberation at theblackurbanist.substack.com/subscribe