Covid 19 Response:



Due to the current pandemic, Social Justice Tours will not be running tours until further notice. If you would like to be notified when tours start back up again, please sign up for our newsletter below. If you have the means, donations are extremely helpful to get us through this time. If you are in need of supplies, check our resources tab for information on mutual aid networks. From all of us at Social Justice Tours, we hope you and your community are healthy.

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Queer History Tour
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Journey back to the queer '60s with someone who experienced it all first hand.
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Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn tour

Take a tour highlighting the development that has recreated downtown Brooklyn and displaced many in the process.

Reproductive Freedom in Lower Manhattan tour

This tour traces the people and places in New York that have been instrumental in the fight for...​
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Rezoning and “Dysplacement” in Central Harlem ​

This walking tour looks at the way the rezoning of a single avenue brought about change...
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​Women’s History Tour​
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Even before Greenwich Village became known as the center of American Bohemianism, extraordinary women have been making their mark here...

Environmental Justice in Gowanus
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One of the most polluted waterways in North America, the Gowanus Canal, is an emerging center for real estate investments in New York City.

People’s History of Wall Street

Join us as we undo the mystique of this infamous marketplace. 

Tour General Info

​How much do public tours cost?
All public tours are on a sliding scale from $18 per person to $30.  You decide what you'd like to pay based on what you can afford. 10 percent of money from all ticket sales will be donated to support the mission of a cause/organization in alignment with that tour’s subject matter
I want to join a tour but cannot afford it. Can I still come?
Inclusivity and accessibility is a priority for us. If you would like to take a tour but don’t have the financial means to do so, you will always be welcome! Email us at info@socialjusticetours.com and we can work with you to ensure you are able to join us. Alternatively, if you have the financial means to pay for the participation of another, please consider donating.
Are the tours accessible?
All of our tours are wheelchair accessible. If you have specific needs or concerns around accessibility, please contact us​.
What months do you run the tours? Why don’t you have the tours in the winter?
We run our tours from May through November. We shut down in the winter and early spring. We do this because trying to discuss heavy, intellectual information when it is freezing doesn’t work so well. During our off-season, you can still book one of our private tours.
Where do the proceeds from this tour go?
We donate 10% of all tour proceeds to organizations that are doing the work discussed in these tours. Since each of our tours covers very different topics, the proceeds from each tour goes to a different organization. To see the most up-to-date list of where we donate, visit our current tours page.
What happens if I show up late?
Please try and arrive to the tours 15 minutes early. All of our guides will email out their cell phone number in case you can’t find them. That said, once the tour has started it is very challenging for guides to be attentive to their cell phones, while simultaneously giving the tour. If you arrive after the tour has left the meeting location, there is no guarantee the guides will be able to contact you back to give directions on where to find them.
Do the tours get cancelled because of weather?
No. Our tours go out rain or shine. Please dress appropriately for the weather conditions of that day.
Do the public tours get cancelled due to low turnout?
Occasionally yes. Our minimum number that we run tours for is 3 people. If 24 hours before the tour begins, only 2 people have signed up for the following day’s tour, we will send an email to the guests to attempt to reschedule.
Where does the tour start and end?
The starting and ending locations for each tour is listed on our current tours page. You will also receive an automated email and a personalized email to confirm the starting location and starting date and time of the tour.
Can I get a refund if I cancel?
If you cancel with 48 hours notice, you will be provided a full refund.
Can I get a refund if I arrive late and can’t find the group?
If you arrive late, first try texting the tour guide (their number can be found in the confirmation email). Typically, we do not provide refunds for people who arrive after the group left the meeting location, and are not able to catch up.
What’s the difference between a public and private tour?
A public tour is a tour where we post a date and time of when that tour will run, and anyone can sign up to join. A private tour is where it will be just you and your group with the guide. Typically this is best for school groups, community groups, or groups larger than 8.
How much do private tours cost?
Private tours cost $250 per tour. That said, our organization is committed to having cost not be a barrier to any group. If your group would like to schedule a private tour, but don’t think you can afford $250, email info@socialjusticetours.com and we can do our best to provide the tour within your budget.
What is the maximum group size you can accommodate on a private tour?
The maximum group size for a private tour is 24 people. This is based on neighborhood ordinances of many of the neighborhoods we walk through.
What happens if my group is larger than 24 people?
If a group is significantly larger than 24 people (say 30 to 48) then we would need to split the group in two and try to have two tours go out at the same time.
What tours do you offer as private tours?
All of our public tours can be offered as private tours. In addition, we have some tours we only offer as private tours. To see our most up to date tour offerings, visit the private tours page.

Public & Private Tours

Queer History of the Village

Tour Guide: Jay Toole · Start Location: Washington Square Park · 3 Hours · 2 Miles

Journey back to the queer '60s with someone who experienced it all first hand. Writer, storyteller and queer legend Jay Toole leads folks on a walking tour of the West Village, sharing personal stories and stopping at important places and historical moments along the way. Learn more about the neighborhood through stories about historic lesbian bars, the Women’s House of D (Detention), homelessness in Washington Square Park, the mafia's connection to local gay bars and much more.

Themes Covered: Prison, Homelessness, Queer Bars & Queer Bar History, Police Harassment, The Three-Piece Rule

Sites Covered: Washington Square, “House of D”, Stonewall Inn, 8th Street, Christopher Street, West Side Piers

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE AUDRE LORDE PROJECT.

Reproductive Freedom in Lower Manhattan

​Tour Guide: Cindy Cooper · Start Location: Broadway & Park Place · 2 Hours · 2 Miles

This tour 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. While walking through old New York, Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village, this tour 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.

Themes Covered: History & Status of Reproductive Freedom, Rights, Health & Justice, Changes in Abortion Laws, Suppression of & Access to Contraception & Birth Control, Related & Intersectional Issues of Bodily Autonomy, Maternal Mortality, Activism, Safety, Nondiscrimination, Equality, Human Rights

Sites Covered: Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Marker, Anthony Comstock Outpost, Madame Restell Facility, New York Pharmacy, New York Hospital House of Relief, Trojan Condom & Margaret Sanger’s Diaphragm Headquarters, Illegal Abortion Meeting Site, Mid-19th Century Brothel Setting, 1910 Tenement, First Italian Catholic Church in the US, Polly’s Restaurant, Washington Square Church, Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square Park

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE NEW YORK ABORTION ACCESS FUND.

Women's History of the Village

​Tour Guide: Lucy Piccochi · Start Location: Broadway & Bleecker St · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles

Even 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 while also cultivating a thriving lesbian and trans community. This tour explores sites associated with some of the many fascinating women in the neighborhood, some of whom have been largely forgotten but no less played a vital role in creating the legacy of feminism we continue today.

Themes Covered: Free Love, Queer Culture & Struggle, Birth Control, Women's Suffrage, Anti-Racism, Salons & Debate Clubs, Arts & Journalism, Union Organizing, Settlement Houses, Bars & Restaurants

Sites Covered: Notable Residences, Pfaff's Beer Cellar, National Academy of Design, Triangle Factory, Washington Square, The Original Whitney, Provincetown Playhouse, Liberal/Heterodoxy Clubs, Eve Addams Tea Room, Golden Swan, Cafe Society, Romany Marie's, Women's House of Detention

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE NEW YORK ABORTION ACCESS FUND.

Rezoning & Dysplacement in Central Harlem

​Tour Guide: Greg Baggett · Start Location: Frederick Douglass Circle · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles

In the rezoning of Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, growth and diversification—gentrification—was not imposed on an unwitting community by unscrupulous developers or opportunistic outsiders, but rather it was imposed on the community from within, from the community’s grassroots.  This walking tour discusses the logic and strategy behind a plan framed within a vision of community "progress,” but it was actually a tool to weaponize competing class interest: how one public land process along a single avenue brought about change that resulted in the displacement of almost all of the area’s long-term residents and small businesses along the streets and even the neighboring avenues. Using calculators on our smartphones, the participants on this tour reckon with the deep ideological problem that prompted Harlem's political establishment, community-based organizations, middle-class, and even low-income shareholders in limited-equity cooperatives to produce outcomes that benefited the few and threatened the many.

Themes Covered: Zoning, Rezoning & Upzoning, Displacement & Dysplacement, Progress, Gentrification, Housing Development Fund Companies (HDFCs), Central Harlem South (SOHA) Controversy, Housing Loopholes: Major Capital Improvements, Individual Apartment Improvements, Preferential Rents, Vacancy Bonus, Vacancy DeControl.

Sites Covered: Frederick Douglass Circle, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Frederick Douglass Boulevard, West 116th Street, New construction, HDFC Cooperatives, Graham Court, Row Houses, A. Philip Randolph Houses, Wadleigh Secondary High School for the Performing & Visual Arts, Harlem Hebrew Language School, Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Minton’s (formerly Minton’s) Playhouse, Central Harlem South, First Corinthian Baptist Church, A. Philip Randolph Square, HCCI preservation project, Harriet Tubman Monument

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE A. PHILIP RANDOLPH SQUARE NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE.

A People's History of Wall Street

​Tour Guide: Rebecca Manski · Start Location: Bowling Green · 2 Hours 

Still wondering how Wall Street became the world capital of capitalism? Or how New York City became the place in America where the most money and the most inequity converge to this day? How about all the ways that people fought back? A couple of answers can be found at the foot of the wall erected by the very first corporation in Manhattan, the Dutch West India Company. Still more answers can be found at the dockside where abducted Africans first touched foot on Wall Street. And others can be found on the steps of Federal Hall, our first center of government, ironically constructed right across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. But the best response of all can be found in the resistance movements that converged on Wall Street to fight back every step of the way.

Occupy Wall Street may have been the first social movement in half a century to focus on “economic inequality”, but it was far from the first uprising at the heart of the capital of capitalism. Join a historian and member of the Occupy Wall Street Press Team as we undo the mystique of this infamous marketplace. We’ll be looking at New York's financial district from all angles, but especially from the ground, up. Together, let’s dig into the foundations of American capitalism from the People's point of view. 

Themes Covered: Lenape, Colonial Manhattan, Slave Uprisings, Formation of American Capitalist & Democratic Institutions, Tammany Hall, Resistance Movements

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO UNSETTLING WALL STREET.

Environmental Justice in Gowanus

Tour Guide: Michael Higgins Jr. · Start Location: Union St & 4th Ave · 1.5 Hours · 1 Mile

Gowanus is an intensely contaminated community that is simultaneously undergoing multiple processes of environmental remediation and gentrification. The tour will explore these dynamics and the challenges and opportunities posed by the Gowanus Canal Superfund Clean Up, the rapid disappearance of commercial establishments and services that are affordable to low and moderate-income households and the recently announced housing authority plan to build market-rate apartments at Wyckoff Gardens. You will also learn about the Turning the Tide initiative, a multi-neighborhood effort that focuses on building social and environmental resiliency in five Brooklyn public housing developments in the face of climate change.

Sites Covered: Union Street Bridge, Gowanus Houses NYCHA development, Gowanus CSO Pumping Station, Thomas Greene Park, Lightstone Waterfront Park, Whole Foods Market Waterfront

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO  GOWANUS NEIGHBORHOOD COALITION FOR JUSTICE.

Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn

Tour Guide: Michael Higgins Jr. · Start Location: Jay St & Myrtle Ave · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles

This tour will highlight the development that has recreated downtown Brooklyn as a result of the Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning of 2004. We will also go into political conversations around the use of the 421a subsidy to build new affordable housing and the use of eminent domain at Atlantic Yards in the construction of the Barclays Center.

Sites Covered: MetroTech Promenade, 227 Abolitionist Place (Underground Railroad stop), Myrtle Avalon Plaza, The Giovanni (formerly Associated Site), City Point (formerly Albee Square Mall), BAM Cultural District, Barclays Center & Atlantic Yards

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO BAN (BROOKLYN ANTI-GENTRIFICATION NETWORK).

Private Tours Only

A People's History of Immigration, from New York Harbor to Little Syria
Tour Guide: Rebecca Manski · Start Location: Bowling Green · 2 Hours

Before the twin towers overtook the Lower Manhattan skyline, New York City was a different kind of world trade center, buzzing with migrants, merchants, sailors and refugees, crowding onto passenger liners and cargo ships, around pushcarts and Customs desks. What did it mean for all these people to "wait their turn in line", whether they disembarked at Ellis Island, at Castle Clinton, or before the United States ever existed? Did this nation ever have open borders?

Searching for answers, we will walk along the waterfront where more than half of America’s immigrants first disembarked and most of America’s customs revenue was generated from wares shipped by sea. Along the way we’ll excavate the ruins of the Twin Towers and rediscover a different kind of marketplace— the one at the heart of “Little Syria”, where some Mediterranean salesmen collected cargo off nearby piers and sold them in dry goods stores, and others readied to carve the first nationwide trade-routes by horse and cart. There in the last tiny remnant of New York’s first immigrant neighborhood, it will all become clear: few newcomers to America were accepted right off the boat, but each found ways to define themselves as “native” to this land, at least, relative to the next wave of immigrants! Still, what does it actually mean to be “native”, what does it mean to be an “immigrant”, and what about the many Americans who defy classification? Come down to the tip of Manhattan and let New York harbor tell you the story of who has always “belonged” in America, how that was decided, and why our immigration system came to be. 

Themes Covered: Immigration, Race, Seaport Culture, Public Health, Settlement House Movement, Underground & Informal Economies, Intercultural Exchange & Conflict

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO UNSETTLING WALL STREET.

Protests & Riots in the East & West Village
​Tour Guide: Lucy Piccochi · Start Location: Golden Swan Garden · 2 Hours · 2 Miles

From Greenwich Village to Alphabet City, we’ll visit the locations of some of the many protests, strikes, and riots that have rocked New York City. Looking at their causes, tactics, immediate aftermath, and long-term effectiveness, we’ll consider how publicly disrupting the civil order had succeeded or failed to achieve desired political ends, and what the broader consequences on the city’s racial and economic dynamics have been.

Themes Covered: Racism, Labor Movement, Class Conflict, Anti-War Movement, Gentrification, Police Violence, Use of Public Space

Sites Covered: Little Africa, Washington Square, NYU, Astor Place, Cooper Union, Tompkins Square

10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO UNICORN RIOT.

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