Social Justice Tours uses tours as a medium to dig beneath the surface of what New Yorkers regularly see. We aim to engage New Yorkers in critical dialogue about the past, present and future of our city from the perspective of marginalized populations. The ultimate aim is to assist in movement building; that is to spread information, expose injustice and highlight inequality in a digestible, understandable way to encourage thought and inspire action.
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 PodcastContagion: 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. |
Contagion: Xenophobia is a disease that spreads
"Xenos": from the Greek root, meaning stranger, guest, or host.
Phobia: an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.
Panic: sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior.
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"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. " |
Digital Tour: Tenant uprisings and the women who led them
A History Lesson for Today's Rent Strike Movement
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