As dawn breaks over New Orleans on February 17, 2026, the city’s iconic St. Charles Avenue is already pristine, the only hint of last night’s revelry the faint scent of confetti and king cake lingering in the air. For many, the magic of Mardi Gras is in the spectacle—the dazzling floats, the marching bands, the coveted Zulu coconuts—but few pause to consider the herculean effort required to restore order after the parades. This year, that behind-the-scenes labor is finally stepping into the spotlight, thanks to a new campaign by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.
The campaign, called “We Are Not Disposable,” aims to improve the working conditions of the hundreds of cleanup workers who descend on the parade routes each night. According to Verite News, the initiative recruits volunteers to distribute food, water, and personal protection equipment at two key stations along the parade routes—Harmony Circle and outside the Fresh Market at the intersection of Louisiana and St. Charles avenues. Supplies are also offered at the start of the route, where crews gather before fanning out to tackle the aftermath of Carnival’s biggest celebrations.
Cleanup workers are a diverse group: some are employed by the city’s Department of Sanitation, but most are hired on short-term contracts through the city’s workforce platform Job1 and Ramelli Janitorial Services. Their arsenal includes rakes, shovels, roll carts, and debris blowers—tools of the trade for a job that is as physically demanding as it is essential. Shifts can last anywhere from 10 to 20 hours, with many workers returning home well past midnight, only to rise early for another day of labor. For some, these double shifts—10 hours two days in a row—are a grueling reality.
Officially, the city maintains that workers are well-provided for. In a statement to Verite News, Isis Casanova, communications director for Mayor Helena Moreno and the city of New Orleans, said, “Clean-up workers are provided with water and snack pack (chips, cookies, fruit snacks, granola bar, Blow Pop) daily. On parade days where clean-up workers report in the morning, a sandwich is provided.” Ramelli Janitorial Services echoed this, stating workers receive gloves, reflective gear, and goggles as needed, and are “well-taken care of,” often working only 4 to 5 hours after the parade ends.
But the reality on the ground, according to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, is far more complicated. After conducting more than 40 interviews with workers since early 2025, the organization found that many workers receive inadequate personal protective equipment, limited water, and little information about how to request additional gear. Volunteers have been conducting street interviews throughout Carnival season to better understand the challenges workers face, and the findings have been sobering.
Jordan Bridges, organizing director for the Workers’ Center, has experienced these hardships firsthand. “You can’t organize for people [who] you have no idea what they’re going through,” he told Verite News. Bridges described dealing with severe nasal congestion and a sinus infection for weeks after his cleanup shifts in 2025, a result of inhaling dust and debris kicked up by powerful blowers. Even after donning a mask during this year’s efforts, he reported lingering congestion. “There’s all this particulate matter that’s just getting thrown around and getting in your eyes,” added Magali Ortiz, a community organizer with the Workers’ Center, who has led public training sessions to raise awareness about the workers’ plight.
Ortiz noted that while the city claims to offer a variety of protective equipment, workers are rarely told they can request more—and what is provided often falls short. “People are mostly raking, but from time to time they have to actually put their hands in a lot of this trash … [The gloves] are not waterproof, they’re not resistant to things like glass or other trash that might be in there,” she explained. The cleanup shift, she added, often begins hours after workers receive their food and drink, leaving many hungry and dehydrated during long stretches of work.
Breaks, according to the city, are taken “periodically along the route as the water truck refills and in between clean-up segments.” But Bridges disputes this characterization, saying, “It’s not a break. Anybody that’s ever been on-call knows that if I’m on-call I’m basically working. … We have to move away from devaluing people’s time.” He described breaks as little more than standing around waiting for the next task, with bathroom access extremely limited.
Assignment to parade routes is random, with some workers following directly behind the debris blowers—missing out on any of the festivities. Each parade day, between 200 to 500 cleanup workers are deployed. Yet, despite the scale of the operation, there is no first aid available on site for workers in case of injury. The Red Cross tent, focused on parade-goers, packs up and leaves once the floats pass, leaving workers to fend for themselves if something goes wrong.
The disparities don’t end there. City-funded cleanup services began on February 6, 2026, after the Krewe of Cleopatra parade, but only the largest krewes receive these services for free. Smaller krewes must pay for their own cleanup, and West Bank parades like NOMTOC on February 15, 2026, receive no city-funded cleanup at all—resulting in trash lingering in neighborhoods for days. “I think it just brings in a bit of a question of who deserves to have their neighborhood cleaned up, and why are we doing that cleanup?” Ortiz reflected. “And when is that being done for tourists, as opposed to the people who are actually living in the neighborhoods that are being impacted?”
Racial and economic disparities are especially stark. Bridges reported seeing wealthy college students laughing and recording cleanup workers—many of whom are Black—as they toiled in high-income Uptown neighborhoods. “I’ve watched people bring trash out of their houses and throw it right on the ground when they see us coming,” he said. “People throw pizza—take a bite of it, don’t want it no more, and just throw it into the trash pile.”
Despite these challenges, the camaraderie among workers is palpable. “Workers I’ve seen sleep in cars, I’ve seen just wander for a few hours. I’ve seen people sleep on the sidewalk next to Fresh Market, exhausted from either the previous shifts they’ve done or just trying to catch a nap,” Bridges shared. Yet, as the Workers’ Center continues its campaign, the call is clear: better pay, safer working conditions, and greater respect for those who keep the city shining after the party ends.
Meanwhile, the city’s Carnival spectacle rolls on. According to NOLA.com, the Zulu parade kicked off at 8 a.m. on February 17, 2026, with the Rex parade following at 10:30 a.m., both rolling down St. Charles Avenue and streamed live from the LCMC Streaming Stage. Dr. Pepper was the official beverage sponsor for Mardi Gras for All Y’All this year, underscoring the scale and commercial appeal of the festivities. Yet, as the last float passes and the beads are swept away, the unsung heroes of Mardi Gras remain hard at work—often unseen, but absolutely indispensable.
The question lingers, as Bridges puts it: “At the end of the day, are the workers that are doing the Mardi Gras clean-up and staying up and sacrificing their bodies and time and lungs and health and don’t get to enjoy Carnival—are they being taken care of? The answer is, we can do a lot better.”