Social Justice Walks 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
JUNETEENTH:
BLACK FREEDOM & CAPTIVITY IN BROOKLYN
JUNE 19th
SUNDAY 12PM
In the last couple years, Juneteenth has moved from a relatively unknown celebration around the formal end of chattel slavery in the United States to national holiday that has quickly begun to find itself within more mainstream discourses of American mythology. On this day, we center the history of the enslavement of Africans in Brooklyn, walking through time and space to discuss the development of Black American visions of freedom in the decades before and after legal emancipation, and struggles of Black communities to seek autonomy in a growing metropolis deeply tied to the Transatlantic slave trade.
Read the Reproductive Freedom Walk Description
Learn how far the fight for reproductive freedom and justice has come,
and get inspired to continue the fight!
This walk traces the people and places in New York that have been instrumental in the fight for reproductive health, rights and justice, and the adversaries that they’ve encountered along the way. Led by activist Cindy Cooper, this walk through old New York, Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village connects the past and the present. Focusing on the 100 years from the end of the Civil War to the 1970s, the tour also looks at the universal desires for reproductive freedom and the struggles that still exist today.
We find ourselves in a moment of crisis with the direction the supreme court is taking, when action but also knowledge is more important than ever. From Cindy: "This is the beginning of what will be a huge backslide on Constitutional rights. And while I and other people have been trying to say this for years, now it's here. It's going to be a long road back."
To sign up, please click the link below.
and get inspired to continue the fight!
This walk traces the people and places in New York that have been instrumental in the fight for reproductive health, rights and justice, and the adversaries that they’ve encountered along the way. Led by activist Cindy Cooper, this walk through old New York, Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village connects the past and the present. Focusing on the 100 years from the end of the Civil War to the 1970s, the tour also looks at the universal desires for reproductive freedom and the struggles that still exist today.
We find ourselves in a moment of crisis with the direction the supreme court is taking, when action but also knowledge is more important than ever. From Cindy: "This is the beginning of what will be a huge backslide on Constitutional rights. And while I and other people have been trying to say this for years, now it's here. It's going to be a long road back."
To sign up, please click the link below.
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
"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.
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