N.Y. CARIBBEAN PARADE RETURNS
Caribbean N.Y.ers just loving it Color fills the streets
IT WAS A MAJOR show of colors — and diversity — as the New York Caribbean Carnival Parade danced through Brooklyn on Monday.
Tens of thousands of New Yorkers showed up for the lavish Labor Day event filled with flashy floats and jaw-dropping costumes.
Extra police were also out with beefed-up security measures to prevent violence from blotting the revelry.
Paradegoers were decked out in the colors of the rainbow — especially red, yellow, green and blue — to celebrate the heritage of the city’s Caribbean residents.
“We’re all from the islands, and it’s a part of our culture that we come here,” said Jada Johnson, 48, of Brooklyn. Johnson stood on a bench near the Brooklyn Museum to watch the festivities.
“We go through a busy day working and hustling in America, and then this takes us back to our roots so we can enjoy ourselves a little bit and remember what it’s like in our country — where there is more freedom, less hassle.”
Revelers chowed down on jerk chicken in the late summer sunshine as the smell of other tasty Caribbean delicacies wafted through the air.
“It means a lot. It’s our heritage, it’s our culture. We all get out — all the Caribbean countries come, we reunite, we party, we have fun,” said Chanel Maye, 37. “We drink, we eat. Just live up. It’s a blessed day.”
Mike Galindez, a self-described “Flatbush guy,” has been going to the parade for almost 30 years.
“You get the food, you get the music, you get the people, the costumes, the energy. You can’t top that,” said Galindez, 44. “This is Brooklyn all day. This is what we’re about.”
Pols marching at the event made it clear everybody loves a good parade — no matter who they are or where they’re from.
A day after undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as kids learned they could lose their federal protections and face deportation, Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo put the parade in a national context.
Hizzoner said the day celebrated “what hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people of Caribbean descent have done for New York City to make us greater.”
He added that “all that success was not despite immigrants. It was because of immigrants. And we’ve got to remind people, what we celebrate today is the greatness of New York City and the greatness of America to welcome all, and how together we become greater than the sum of the parts.”
Cuomo said the event celebrated diversity, “and at this time where in this country there are forces that would make diversity a weakness. And they’re targeting diversity, targeting people from different places. Our message is the exact opposite.”
The governor said “the national dialogue that would pit one of us against the other is in many ways injecting a virus into the body politic.”
Monday’s parade was another chance to send another message to the country, he said.
“We are black, we are white, we are brown, we are gay we are straight . . . and that’s our strength,” Cuomo said. “And New York shows that it can work.”
Republican mayoral hopeful Nicole Malliotakis, whose mother is from Cuba, said she was “very proud of my Caribbean roots.”
The assemblywoman said she was “very proud to be here celebrating with people from so many nations in the Caribbean.”