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.
Our next upcoming in-person walk
A walk on what most people call Thanksgiving Day
Truthsgiving
Starting in front of the Museum of the American Indian
2 PM, THURSDAY
NOVEMBER 25
If you can't forget what Thanksgiving/Thankstaking is all about
(and don't want to)
Truthsgiving
Starting in front of the Museum of the American Indian
2 PM, THURSDAY
NOVEMBER 25
If you can't forget what Thanksgiving/Thankstaking is all about
(and don't want to)
Read the Truthsgiving Walk Description
In 1863, at a time when the notion of the "United States was severely at question (in other words, at the absolute height of the Civil War) Lincoln found himself grasping for ways to bring "Americans" together. Lincoln's idea: To "unite" all "Americans" in the "United States" around their common heritage, that is, their common experience as colonizers of the same continent. Thanksgiving was introduced to mythologize the extraordinarily violent events that followed European arrival, into a story of friendship and mutual sharing. One of the things that makes this day particularly insidious is that it's our country's sole secular holiday, and the only major holiday which invites people of all religions into the "unity" which the U.S. claims to offer all who settle here. Immigrants of all backgrounds are welcomed into the fold on this day, so long as they actively overlook the brutal origins of this country and, as they take part in a harvest meal, buy into the mythology around the colonization of this continent.
Moving between greenspaces, we'll walk along the waterfront at Battery Park, ground ourselves in Bowling Green, and make our way down what was once a major Lenape trail (Broadway). This will be a walk through time, but not in a way that goes backwards, seeking to return to an imagined utopia, undoing the past. Particularly for the descendants of colonized peoples, the past is present, pervaded by a non-linear sense of place and time.
We cannot reverse the past, but perhaps we can invert it, by looking at it from the bottom up, from the ground level, in an embodied way - rather than taking the colonizers' top-down POV, detached. And we can start to shape the future, by taking action together now.
ACTION: We'll start by looking closely at the signage in front of the Museum of the American Indian (MOIA). It hasn't been so long since signage acknowledging the Lenape presence was installed, but it is rapidly deteriorating (see below). What upgrades, or edits, could be made? On this "Truthsgiving Day," what can we do to get the MOIA to accelerate and advance the truthtelling that we all know needs to happen?
Virtual version: In case of rain and/or insufficient signups, we will have the same basic conversation, and take the same actions, as the program goes online.
This walk will be lead by Rebecca Manski. To sign up, please click the link below.
Moving between greenspaces, we'll walk along the waterfront at Battery Park, ground ourselves in Bowling Green, and make our way down what was once a major Lenape trail (Broadway). This will be a walk through time, but not in a way that goes backwards, seeking to return to an imagined utopia, undoing the past. Particularly for the descendants of colonized peoples, the past is present, pervaded by a non-linear sense of place and time.
We cannot reverse the past, but perhaps we can invert it, by looking at it from the bottom up, from the ground level, in an embodied way - rather than taking the colonizers' top-down POV, detached. And we can start to shape the future, by taking action together now.
ACTION: We'll start by looking closely at the signage in front of the Museum of the American Indian (MOIA). It hasn't been so long since signage acknowledging the Lenape presence was installed, but it is rapidly deteriorating (see below). What upgrades, or edits, could be made? On this "Truthsgiving Day," what can we do to get the MOIA to accelerate and advance the truthtelling that we all know needs to happen?
Virtual version: In case of rain and/or insufficient signups, we will have the same basic conversation, and take the same actions, as the program goes online.
This walk will be lead by Rebecca Manski. To sign up, please click the link below.
If you want to acknowledge a different Thanksgiving story, start with the land beneath your feet. Wherever you are in North America, you are on Indigenous land, even if the Indigenous peoples have long since been removed. If you don’t know whose land you’re living on, find out, and be prepared to unlearn the stories you may take for granted..."
-Maile Arvin, The Future Is Indigenous: Decolonizing Thanksgiving
