Remembering Laurie Jones Neighbors
Laurie’s Syllabus
From Joanna Kabat
"I'm a teacher - in everything I do, I'm a teacher."
Laurie said this to me years ago and I've never forgotten it. Her clarity about the world was unmatched but so was her clarity about her own work, her own roles and responsibility. As I write this, it is three weeks from the anniversary of Laurie's death and a few days after the anniversary of the last time I saw her. Time together was a gift (since we didn't live in the same city) that the pandemic had stolen, and I was so grateful to be in her physical company again after years of sad texts and Zooms. She was in teacher mode the whole day we were together, building camaraderie with new people, relying on established trust with some of us to build up trust for the whole team, helping us find connections and tension in our work, introducing us to new modes of thinking and new knowledge, leaving us wanting for more. And of course, she always had texts or books to recommend as well.
I think of Laurie every day, and as much as I wish for her gallows humor or wise words to guide me through a dark moment, I also often wish I knew what Laurie would tell me to read or watch or listen to. She held in her mind the most valuable library I've ever had access to, full of poetry and music and critical analysis and history spanning across time, space, political orientations, and identities. It was the first thing I yearned for when she passed, and so in the months after her passing I thought to myself, perhaps others need this too. Maybe we need to know what knowledge Laurie would have carried and shared with us.
I am grateful that many folks who loved Laurie and learned from her were willing to share with me the various media that Laurie had given to them over the years so that we could create this Laurie Syllabus, an attempt to capture how Laurie guided us through the world. This has everything from recent music to political histories to poetry to writings about menopause, plant care, and more. It's not everything. It could never be. She was everything, embodied. I'm glad to have the privilege of even a sliver of the knowledge and curiosity that she carried with her, and honored to share it with other people who loved her.
Remembering Laurie Jones Neighbors
From Maya Paley & Sheryl Lane
As many of you know, Laurie Jones Neighbors passed away unexpectedly on November 1 of 2022. The past few months without her have been incredibly difficult, both personally and professionally. It's difficult to even put language around how devastating a loss this has been. All of us at Cities & People loved, admired, respected, and cherished Laurie, her mentorship, her friendship, her support for us as well as everything she did to create and build this organization.
It's hard to believe that just a week or two before her loss, we were planning all of 2023 out together and talking about our vision for the next 10-15 years of Cities and People. It was supposed to be a long journey of learning, building, collaborating, and sharing our lives with each other and with all of you. It was supposed to be full of laughter and fun and honesty and real talk and equity work and believing in change and justice. It was all of that and then it was suddenly gone.
We - Maya and Sheryl - are determined to continue Laurie's legacy as we carry Cities & People forward, with Laurie's husband Gordon's support and blessing. In the weeks and months to come, we'll be back in touch with you, letting you know more about what that work will look like. And we are excited to share more about our amazing team of consultants who are joining us on this journey.
We've been so moved by the outpouring of grief and love in the aftermath of Laurie's passing, and we wanted to share some of those words with you - they do not lessen the pain of the loss, but it does help us feel less alone to be in community with all of you. Thank you to our friends at the Liberty Hill Foundation for their moving tribute to Laurie, for the kind words from the California Donor Table, Urban Habitat, and so many others sent by email, posted on social media, or shared personally. We are so grateful to you.
We hold Laurie's family in our hearts, and extend our deepest thanks to Laurie's husband, Gordon Edgar, for all he has done for Cities & People (and for us personally) during a time of great loss.
We mourn the loss of our tremendous friend, mentor and leader, and we also celebrate her exceptional legacy every single day. Thank you, Laurie, for all that you were for us and for so many others who knew you around the country. You were special in every way and we loved you deeply.
Best,
Maya Paley & Sheryl Lane
ABOUT LAURIE
Laurie Jones Neighbors, Cities and People Founder
In Memoriam (1966-2022)
Laurie specialized in developing and evaluating programs and policies that transform structural barriers for those who lack public decision-making power.
Laurie was the former Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Urban Habitat, where she served on the organization’s management team and was the architect of the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI), a highly successful program focused on preparing and placing under-represented resident-leaders on local and regional boards and commissions. While at Urban Habitat, Laurie also managed the Bay Area Social Equity Caucus and the annual State of the Region conference.
Prior to her work at Urban Habitat, Laurie taught in and directed a number of academic programs for under-resourced students at several universities and colleges in Texas, Oregon, and California. She had two master’s degrees – one in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Tech University, and the other in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine. She continued to teach throughout her life, including most recently in the Public Health Department of San Francisco State University, where she focused on structural inequalities and public health.
Laurie was the recipient of many teaching awards and, in 2016, was proud to be included on the Living Cities list of 25 Disruptive Leaders working to improve economic outcomes for low-income people in America's cities. She was a former member of the board of TransForm, a California policy and advocacy organization that promotes walkable communities with excellent transportation choices in order to connect people of all incomes to opportunity, and was appointed in 2021 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, for which she served also as a member of the Compliance and Amendments Committee and Chair of the Rules Committee. Originally enacted in 1999, the Sunshine Ordinance expands public access to local government meetings, information and records, and authorizes groundbreaking innovations to better implement and more stringently enforce open government policies.
An adult adoptee of the Baby Scoop Era, Laurie worked to reconnect with her Shawnee family, and was a strong advocate for adoptee rights. As a person with a disability and the adoptive mom of two disabled former foster children, she was a also a passionate advocate for disability rights, disability awareness, and inclusive design. Laurie was a people-loving introvert. She was a serial crafter and artist who enjoyed painting, knitting, photography, embroidery, beading, and gluing pieces of colorful felt together (and combining all those things). She also liked to bake, read, and propagate plants, and take long walks with her dog, Grumble.
“I want to stay with the trouble, and the only way I know to do that is in generative joy, terror, and collective thinking.”