New Orleans, LA – On January 7, over 60 motor vehicles in solidarity with Palestine occupied the streets of New Orleans on a traffic-filled football Sunday. The motorcade took place at the start of a busy parade and festival season in New Orleans, as the city geared itself to begin its 2024 Mardi Gras festivities.

Drivers decorated cars with signs, wrote messages on windows, and taped banners on bumpers. Among the protesters’ slogans were “Victory to the Palestinian resistance” and “End U.S. aid to Israel!”

The caravan began at 11 a.m. and lasted for over two hours, with riders waving Palestinian flags throughout. Honks, music and cheers from the slow-riding motorcade echoed through busy downtown streets, highways backed up by traffic, large commercial corridors, and quiet suburban neighborhoods. Residents exited their homes to witness the procession as it drove by.

The participants drove across the busy Crescent City Connection bridge, connecting the East and West banks of the Greater New Orleans area. As the cars arrived in downtown New Orleans and rode past a federal building, thousands of locals and tourists making their way to a Saints football game witnessed the procession. In front of the stadium, protesters chanted, “Resistance is justified, when people are occupied” and “from Palestine to New Orleans, stop the U.S. war machine!”

The motorcade made its way back to Masjid Omar, a local mosque, for a rally. “There is more to be done,” stated Shreyas Vasudevan from New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Port (NOSHIP). As the city ushers in a month and a half of parades and festivities, community members and activists welcome the idea of disrupting business as usual to remind locals and visitors of the U.S. government’s involvement in the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli occupying forces in Palestine.

“Here, in the U.S., we as anti-war students in the belly of the beast that is U.S. imperialism are organizing and fighting back against our common enemy!” said Carson Cruse with Loyola Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

“Even though we have a genocide going on in Gaza, and we’ve lost so many, we’ve gained every single one of you, and that’s something that’s extremely heartwarming,” said Palestinian digital creator and activist Mohammad Alkurd.

Motorcade organizers included NOSHIP, New Orleans Community Oversight of Police (NOCOP), Loyola SDS, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), New Orleans for Palestine, Tulane for Palestine and Masjid Omar. It responded to the National Week of Action for Palestine, from Jan 1 through 7, called by the US Palestinian Community Network, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, And National SDS.

At around 2 p.m., the caravan members dispersed as they prepare for a busy month of actions in solidarity with Palestine in New Orleans.

#NewOrleansLA #International #Palestine #AntiWar #NOSHIP #NOCOP #SDS #FRSO #NAARPR #USPCN