The Toxic Tour’s physical landscape first situates the visitors in Norco, where they learn about the environmental justice and the injustice made to people living in these areas by big corporations like Shell Company, who does not take responsibility for its impact upon the environment (Pezzullo 237). The environmental justice movement is strongly connected with racial and ethnical social justice, as these two dimensions go hand in hand in New Orleans and other Louisiana cities. By referring to the history of the place, the activists indicate that after the abolition of slavery the free slaves were given lands, the lands on which they used to work for their masters, which are currently under high toxicity. The environmental justice activists also indicate that these places were free of pollution before the settlers came, when only the Native Americans lived here, in harmony with the environment. In this context, the physical landscape is used to argue that politicians are disrespectful and unjust regarding the native population and the black Americans or other members of the toxic communities, such as the Mexicans or the Puerto Ricans (Pezzullo 238).
The exit from final stop of the tour, at a locally owned restaurant, provided the visitors the opportunity to see the dark sky, a natural and un-staged evidence of the polluted environment, kept in this condition by careless politicians. This offered the activists the ground of emphasizing the fact that policies need to be urgently adopted to change the current reality that rapidly leads to losing the battle for a clean environment in the area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans (Pezzullo 244-245). The environmental justice movement, again, highlights the injustice that the political system maintains by allowing the chemical and nuclear corporations to toxically infuse the lives of “the submerged, the lowly” Americans living on the Cancer Alley that endangers their existence (Pezzullo 238).
More than a touristic activity, the Toxic Tour offers visitors a history page that looks back into the civil rights, abolition and pre-colonization times, but also a social and environmental reality that challenges visitors to actively engage in changing the current toxic state of Louisiana cities.
Works Cited
Pezzullo, Phaedra, C. Touring “Cancer Alley”, Louisiana: Performances of Community and Memory for Environmental Justice. Text and Performance Quarterly. 23(3): 226 252. 2003. Print
