River Parishes Solidarity Tour
We’re bringing together frontline leaders, organizers, and friends for a day of learning and connection with communities defending this region’s land, history, and future. Together, we’ll travel from New Orleans through the River Parishes, exploring enduring legacies of emancipation and liberation, and how they inform struggles for environmental justice today.
Schedule
1 pm: Depart from the NOPSI Hotel in New Orleans
1–4:30 pm: Travel through the River Parishes, including a bus tour of the industrial corridor and stops in Elkinsville (St. Rose) and the Woodland Plantation House Museum & Cultural Center in LaPlace
4:30–6:30 pm: Community celebration and dinner in Wallace with music by the John Gray Jazz Quartet
By 8 pm: Return to NOPSI
If you haven't already, please complete this form to confirm your spot on the tour and share any accessibility needs, dietary restrictions, or requests to bring a guest.
Please note that bus space is limited, so we can’t yet guarantee spots for additional guests. However, we will try our hardest to accommodate all requests!
About The Tour
On Friday, November 13, participants will travel by bus from New Orleans on a solidarity tour through the River Parishes. The overall arc of the tour will move from extraction and pollution toward liberation, collective memory, joy, and the futures descendant communities are building today.
We’ll begin with the industrial landscape and environmental injustices of “Cancer Alley” then travel to Elkinsville, Woodland Plantation, and Wallace, where the focus shifts to the living legacies of emancipation, freedom struggles, cultural continuity, and contemporary organizing—revealing how these histories continue to shape the region.
Especially valuable for Sentinel Awards participants will be the opportunity to learn from The Descendants Project’s broader model. Their work brings together land defense, political organizing, historic preservation, art and culture, descendant-led tourism, locally owned enterprise, and a vision for sustainable development beyond the false choice between jobs and pollution. They offer a powerful example of how communities can draw strength from reclaiming their history and rooting collective identity in legacies of resistance and cultural memory—not only to fight industry, but to claim the future, build community power, and create space for joy, celebration, and thriving along the way.
The day will culminate in Wallace with food, music, and a celebratory gathering. The hope is that the program creates meaningful cross-community exchange, where frontline leaders from different regions can build /deepen relationships, share strategies, reflect on how culture and history can strengthen environmental justice fights, get inspired, and carry those learnings back into their own communities.