Social Justice Walks uses walks as a medium to dig beneath the surface of what people walking the streets of New York regularly see – and in the process we come to understand the incredible challenges New Yorkers have taken on, connecting with the city's proud and creative histories of resistance.
Featured walks
Unsettling Streets: Policing Public Space in NYCNYC cops are famous, or you could say notorious, worldwide. So are Manhattan's edifices of justice, from the streets leading between precincts and prisons, to the lofty colonnades holding up the ceilings of the Supreme Court. But have you ever walked through those Manhattan "movie sets" and thought about how they got there? Have you ever wondered: "Where does the NYPD come from?"
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Women's History of Greenwich VillageEven before Greenwich Village became known as the center of American Bohemianism, extraordinary women have been making their mark here with art, activism and unconventional living. During its pre-WWI heyday, the Village was a magnet for feminists, and it continued to be home to women artists and entrepreneurs throughout the 20th century, including those who helped to lay the foundation for a thriving queer community.
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Gentrification in Downtown BrooklynBrooklyn has turned from outer borough to a world famous brand. At the center of that change was a deliberate effort to remake its commercial center, Downtown Brooklyn over the course of the last 50 years. But the area has a longer and deeper history connected to slavery, abolition and various waves of investment and divestment.
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Public Participatory Programs
Reserve your group with us and discover untold tales of NYC!
Our next upcoming in-person walks
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IN LOWER MANHATTAN
a walk led by Cindy Cooper
SUNDAY SEPT 15th @ 1pm
a walk led by Cindy Cooper
SUNDAY SEPT 15th @ 1pm
On this walk, we revisit the past of New York's hidden movement for the legalization and later mass access to contraceptives and abortion.
Latest episode of Social Justice Tours Pandemic Podcast
Episode 4: In part two of our conversation about how Covid has affected reproductive freedoms in NY, we chat with Neelu Shruti. Neelu is a birth justice advocate in NY, and our conversation focuses on the challenges that pregnant and birthing people face, how their issues have been exacerbated due to insufficient action during COVID-19 and a vision for a better birth future.
Music Credit: Archduke Redcat, @ArchdukeRedcat on instagram/twitter/facebook
Music Credit: Archduke Redcat, @ArchdukeRedcat on instagram/twitter/facebook
Social Justice Tours Podcast
Contagion: When Xenophobia is a disease that spreads
Episode 2: In this week's episode we discuss the ways throughout New York's history that disease has been placed in the bodies of certain populations to exploit racist or xenophobic ideas. We go back to the European colonists, move forward to the cholera epidemic of the 1830's and the backlash against the Irish, and discuss some implications for the Covid-19 pandemic of today.
Episode 2: In this week's episode we discuss the ways throughout New York's history that disease has been placed in the bodies of certain populations to exploit racist or xenophobic ideas. We go back to the European colonists, move forward to the cholera epidemic of the 1830's and the backlash against the Irish, and discuss some implications for the Covid-19 pandemic of today.
Contagion: Xenophobia is a disease that spreads
Click here for access to our Digital Tour
Tour description
"Ask China", repeats the man who calls himself our President. It's a timeworn distraction tactic: Displace responsibility for your failures onto an "enemy-Other". There is nothing new, either, about his coded language: Viruses are a metaphor for so-called "foreigners", the body is a metaphor for the "nation", and our "body" is being invaded by "viruses". But what might be new, along with the comprehensive revelation of America's structural weaknesses, is the widespread realization that extreme xenophobia in America is not a thing of the past.
Our amnesia is subsiding. With the spread of the Coronavirus has come an emergent public interest in tracing the origins of xenophobia. But can we actually locate the origins of American xenophobia, the way we now locate the epicenters of mysterious diseases, and stay far, far away? The answer is not in tracing xenophobic tendencies to "other" parts of the country, but to look around and within. How have our own particular ancestral communities been impacted by, and/or implicated in, the xenophobia that spread alongside epidemics in the past?
The drive to trace the movement of incurable diseases with mysterious causes is a natural one. But when you decide to close off and protect your country, your state, your city, your tribe, your family, some issues that may have seemed settled, arise again: Who was "here first"? Who has a right to travel, and who has a right to remain? When Sioux tribes recently refused to take down their checkpoints in South Dakota, all this came up once more. When you decide to close your borders, whose borders are you really talking about, and where do you draw the line?
SJT walk leader Rebecca Manski offers you "Contagion: Xenophobia is a disease that spreads" as a kind of roadmap to that history, starting with Lower Manhattan. "
Our amnesia is subsiding. With the spread of the Coronavirus has come an emergent public interest in tracing the origins of xenophobia. But can we actually locate the origins of American xenophobia, the way we now locate the epicenters of mysterious diseases, and stay far, far away? The answer is not in tracing xenophobic tendencies to "other" parts of the country, but to look around and within. How have our own particular ancestral communities been impacted by, and/or implicated in, the xenophobia that spread alongside epidemics in the past?
The drive to trace the movement of incurable diseases with mysterious causes is a natural one. But when you decide to close off and protect your country, your state, your city, your tribe, your family, some issues that may have seemed settled, arise again: Who was "here first"? Who has a right to travel, and who has a right to remain? When Sioux tribes recently refused to take down their checkpoints in South Dakota, all this came up once more. When you decide to close your borders, whose borders are you really talking about, and where do you draw the line?
SJT walk leader Rebecca Manski offers you "Contagion: Xenophobia is a disease that spreads" as a kind of roadmap to that history, starting with Lower Manhattan. "
NYC Mass Rent Strikes, Past and Present; Interview with Lucy P.
Social Justice Tours Pandemic Podcast - season 1
Episode 1: NYC Mass Rent Strikes, past and present.
In this time of pandemic, millions of people across the country are feeling increased pressure to be able to make rent. In response, tenant organizers are organizing rent strikes. We talk with guide and activist Lucy P. about the history of rent strikes in NYC, and the women who led them, from the early 1900's to today.
In this time of pandemic, millions of people across the country are feeling increased pressure to be able to make rent. In response, tenant organizers are organizing rent strikes. We talk with guide and activist Lucy P. about the history of rent strikes in NYC, and the women who led them, from the early 1900's to today.
Digital Tour: Tenant uprisings and the women who led them
A History Lesson for Today's Rent Strike Movement
Click here for access to our Digital Tour