After opening reception venue change: laissez les bons temps rouler

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Irving Washington, Executive Director of ONA, welcomes partygoers to the #ONA19 opening reception. Photo by Daja Henry

Carlo Finlay, from the University of Georgia, and JuliaKate Culpepper, of USA Today Sports, chat on the Mississippi River overlook outside Mardi Gras World during the #ONA19 opening night reception. Photo by Daja Henry — Carlo Finlay, from the University of Georgia, and JuliaKate Culpepper, of USA Today Sports, chat outside Mardi Gras World during the #ONA19 opening night reception Thursday night. (Photo by Daja Henry)

Music, food, cocktails, Mardi Gras displays and a unique New Orleans “scene” greeted hundreds of ONA19 conference-goers Thursday night at the welcoming reception at Mardi Gras World after a last-minute venue change. Mardi Gras World features massive warehouses along the Mississippi RIver where floats for the parade are built and stored until February rolls around.

Raquel Navarro

Freelance news writer, Raquel Navarro, uses her skills and experiences to uplift the voices and actions of marginalized communities through justice-oriented journalism. Fluent in English and Spanish, she would like to eventually write professionally for bilingual publications in the San Francisco Bay Area, which she calls home. Raquel believes that community support and grassroots resistance coupled with strong journalistic research and writing can bridge and build movements for social and economic justice, racial equality, and ultimately, collective liberation. When not writing about labor, housing, and law enforcement legislation at the local and state level, you can find her doing legal observation with the National Lawyers Guild or organizing students across the Universities of California to stand in solidarity with campus worker unions.