Krewe du Vieux made its way through the below-freezing French Quarter last Saturday, with each float featuring a common theme: a satirical protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Founded in 1987, Krewe du Vieux is a raunchy and often provocative walking parade with handmade and personalized throws. This year, the parade featured 17 sub-krewes.
From Comatose’s “ICE Gets Creamed” float, depicting restrained ICE agents splattered by a gaudy ice cream truck, to L.E.W.D.’s “Icecapades” float with a chained Statue of Liberty, political statements about ICE dominated Krewe du Vieux’s march this year.
“The floats are much larger and more vivid canvases for statements of protest than any individual sign or banner,” Krewe du Vieux Poobah of Publicity Keith Twitchell said. “They have a very different type of impact than a speech, press statement or social media post. They are seen by thousands of people during the parade and broadcast far and wide by social media.”
The intersection of the celebratory Carnival season with the recent ICE protests nationwide, including the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, created a delicate environment for this year’s Mardi Gras. Many attendees found solace in the parade.
“We can celebrate, and we can party, but there are still real issues in the world, and I think [the sub-krewes] had a really good way of protesting and showing that without being angry or forceful,” Tulane University sophomore Maddy Atwood said.
“I hope our satire … does move more people to engage and express their own outrage and opposition to everything that is going [on] and being done wrong in our society,” Twitchell said.
“I think the message NOLA is trying to send is that, as a city, we support the immigrant communities here and will resist if ICE escalates,” Tulane sophomore Bella Myles said.