Stevie is Biking to Keep Families Connected

On October 10th of 2025 I am honored to participate in NOLA to Angola's annual three-day, 170-mile bicycle ride fundraiser. We will ride from Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans to Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, in solidarity with families who travel long distances to stay connected with their incarcerated loved ones.  The riders also work to educate people about the ways in which mass incarceration works in tandem with other systems of oppression, such as poverty and white supremacy, to harm members of our communities.

NOLA to Angola supports organizations that mitigate and reverse the impacts of the United States prison industrial complex. This year we are raising money to support Cornerstone Builders' Bus Project, which provides a free monthly bus service from the New Orleans area for families to visit their loved ones in four Louisiana detention facilities, as described in Andru Okun's 2015 Antigravity article. At least once a month, the Bus Project rents a 55-passenger bus and makes the trek to different facilities at an average cost of $2,400 per trip. There are two important objectives for the bus trips:

1) to provide free transportation for families and loved ones of the incarcerated people, especially families with small children

2) to provide passengers with a stress-free and comfortable trip to ease the broader social and emotional ramifications of mass incarceration

The positive impact of contact between incarcerated people and their loved ones is proven by research, as documented in Leah Wang's article for the Prison Policy Initiative.

"Louisiana has an incarceration rate of 1,067 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities), meaning that it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any independent democratic country on earth." (Prison Policy Initiative)

The emotional and financial costs for families to visit and connect with their imprisoned loved ones are exploitative and exorbitant. One hundred percent of your donation supports families separated by the Louisiana (in)justice system.