Shana M. griffin's 2026 NOLA to Angola Fundraiser!

NOLA to Angola is an annual solidarity bicycle ride fundraiser that supports organizations working to mitigate and reverse the impacts of the U.S. prison system.

By biking each mile in solidarity with families who travel long distances to connect with loved ones held in state prisons, the ride draws attention to the geography of incarceration and how imprisonment extends beyond prison walls, separating families and imposing financial, emotional, and geographic burdens on communities.

The ride also raises public awareness of how confinement, detention, and imprisonment operate alongside discriminatory policies and practices of policing, criminalization, law enforcement violence, surveillance, and racialized social control. Together, these interconnected systems reproduce the violence of poverty, patriarchy, and white supremacy, shaping the geographies of domination that harm our communities.

All funds raised will go to the Cornerstone Builders’ Bus Project, which provides free monthly transportation from New Orleans and Shreveport so people can visit loved ones incarcerated in Louisiana prisons.

Why I’m Riding

Visiting my father at a Louisiana state prison with my mother and siblings. I’m the little one on the left in the leopard coat.

As a child, I remember traveling with my mother and seven siblings to Angola State Penitentiary to visit my father. We would leave early in the morning for a two-and-a-half- to three-hour journey, with the younger children, including me, sitting on older siblings’ laps in the back of the car. I remember the excitement of seeing our father, the exhaustion of the long trip, and the hours spent traveling before returning home.

These visits remind me of the demands of distance, time, transportation, and financial resources that families face in sustaining relationships with loved ones, and of the care and collective labor required to maintain familial connections across Louisiana’s carceral landscape.

This Friday, October 23, I’ll be biking in solidarity with families who continue to navigate these separations and in support of the Cornerstone Builders’ Bus Project, which helps make those visits possible.

-Shana M. griffin