Change Will Come
Tune in to the first episode of Season 2 as we challenge the status quo and embrace the process of demanding what we deserve with candidate Kristen Jordan of District 9 for NYC Council.
Kristin Richardson Jordan was born in 1987 in Baltimore, Maryland to Dr. Lynne Richardson and Dr. Desmond Jordan, two minority physicians who have worked extremely hard and who have overcome great obstacles to establish successful careers while striving to serve their communities and help those underserved and underrepresented in health and science.
Growing up in Harlem, New York and the Upper West Side with frequent visits to New Jersey, Kristin attended the Calhoun School where she graduated cum laude with distinction in Social Studies, Spanish, Mathematics, Science, and Music. She then attended Brown University where she graduated class of 2009 as a double major in in Black Studies (“Africana”) and Literary Arts and was a commencement speaker for the Africana Studies department.
Kristin is now a book printing poet, teaching artist, author, and activist in the Harlem community (where her mother is from and now lives, where her great aunt lived, and where her grandparents lived – 3 generations of Harlem). She has published her own (and others) work by starting an independent publishing company called Pens Up Press, for literary activists generally, and Black and Latino activists in particular to publish and promote books for and about making a better world. Kristin’s first book titled Mules Fight Back: 40 Activist Poems and Stories is a poetic response to the famous Zora Neale Hurston reference that the Black woman is the “mule of the world,” and her most recent work, Water & Light: Choose Love Now, rooted in her personal experience with an abusive relationship is about a totality of things from personal, interpersonal, romantic, platonic, social, communal to national revolution. In addition to her own work and publishing, Kristin also coordinates the Uproar Poetry Group, an online Facebook platform for activist poets, and runs senior poems and senior current events workshops at A. Phillip Randolph Senior Center and Central Harlem Senior Center.
As a teacher and a teaching artist Kristin has worked for a number of notable organizations including Directions For Our Youth and Girl Be Heard; and is currently a literacy specialist at Harlem Boys & Girls Club. She is also the co-founder of Freedom Love Birthright a writing and community theatre youth program in the spirit of African and African-American ancestry that has held workshops at the Kennedy Center in Central Harlem.
As an activist Kristin has participated in Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy Harlem) mass movements and founded a Harlem cop watch team in 2012. She has also been a member of the ANSWER coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a supporter of Freedom Hall and Sister’s Uptown bookstore in Harlem, and a member of AALUSC (African Ancestrial Lesbians United for Societal Change). As a guest speaker she has presented at Circle of Voices, the Kennedy Center, Hostos Community College, and Montclair State University.
Kristin is passionate about social justice, and the history, politics, and culture(s) of all people generally and Black people in particular. Politically spiritually and personally she believes in serving people including but not limited to housing, environment, health, food, education, and criminal/policing justice. She is an optimist and an idealist who dreams about a truly equal and equitable world based on seeing whole people and the humanity in every person.