The Krewe That Grew

By David W. Brown

It started with $60, a box of cookies and a desire to do something. Mardi Gras had come and gone in New Orleans, and Annelies De Wulf, an ER doctor at University Medical Center, arrived home with grim news. COVID, she said to her husband, Devin, had arrived in New Orleans. Thus for them began a bleak ritual, with Annelies returning home each day and describing for Devin the cases, the strain, the fear. What she and her colleagues were dealing with was the hardest thing healthcare workers had ever encountered. No one at the time knew much about COVID, but they knew enough to know they were risking their lives. Worse, they knew they could go into work, get unknowingly infected, and bring it home to infect their families too.

On March 15, however, Annelies’ daily debrief started a little differently. “A nurse brought cookies,” she said, “and it was awesome.”

Devin De Wulf is the founder of the Krewe of Red Beans, a social group that marches every Lundi Gras, its members dressed in suits bedazzled in beans. The krewe also hosts an annual charity event called Bean Madness — a play on the “March Madness” name of the NCAA college basketball tournament — which involves a block party, food and celebration. With COVID-19 seemingly ubiquitous and New Orleans now known to be a Carnival-fueled hot spot, the krewe canceled its festivities. Devin, still in touch with the event’s restaurateurs, however, had an idea.

“I understood what the shutdown would do to restaurants, and I knew very quickly that these are mom-and-pop businesses really important to the identity of New Orleans,” he says. He realized he could help two groups at once, and Feed the Front Line was born.

He emailed his krewe.

“Hospital workers are on the front lines, protecting us from a new, largely unknown and scary global pandemic,” he wrote. “Here’s one small thing we as a krewe can do: Raising money to buy food treats for hospital workers.” They would help everyone from physicians to security guards. “I know 100% they would appreciate the love right now…so…let’s buy them all a cookie! Or a brownie! Or something delicious — which will also support one of our local restaurants in this time of need!”

The krewe loved the idea. Devin used $60 previously set to be spent at Tropicália Kitchen, a caterer for the now-scrubbed Bean Madness, and asked them to prepare something different from what was originally planned. He requested 60 brigadeiros, a Brazilian dessert evocative of chocolate truffles or bonbons. It would be enough to treat a shift’s worth of workers at his wife’s hospital. Tropicália Kitchen was glad to help, and Annelies brought the goodies to work the next day. They were an instant hit. The Krewe of Red Beans, scrappy and grassroots, beat its drum on social media and, between that and word-of-mouth, Feed the Front Line built momentum.

Donations started streaming in. Eleven hundred dollars on the first day. Five hundred on the second and $1,668 on the third. Devin realized immediately that he had to make a decision about how to spend that money. Restaurants, he figured, would do better if he spent as much money as possible as quickly as possible, which would, in turn, feed as many hospital workers as possible during some pretty dark days. But it was more than a matter of buying treats and racing them to hospitals: Because of COVID’s high level of contagiousness, doctors didn’t want people to just show up, regardless of intention. So Devin worked with Annelies to figure out how Feed the Front Line could make its deliveries safely, and at the best times possible for day and night shifts, without disrupting care or risking becoming a vector of transmission. The details determined, he opened his Rolodex and started dialing.

“I’ve got all these restaurant contacts, and I told them: ‘I don’t care what you make but make it delicious. They need the best meals ever right now,’” he says.

The program, born of a virus, itself went viral. Within a week, krewe members who worked at Children’s Hospital and Tulane Medical Center asked if Feed the Front Line could feed their clinics, too. The answer was yes — and it snowballed from there. People from across the city reached out and asked for other hospitals to be added. Devin received an email early on that underscored just how important the program was becoming for the community: “She said her dad had died at Ochsner Medical Center West Bank, and she said the staff did a great job. She was grateful that they had tried so hard, done so much, and asked if we could send food so we can say thank you to them. And it was like…we are creating love. We are helping the grieving process.”

He received an email from the wife of a doctor at one hospital. She said that morale was cratering, and could they help? “Absolutely,” Devin replied. “We’re going to hook that hospital up. Give me two hours and I will have dinner for them, and every single day we will send them food.”

All of the Ochsner locations were added, EMS workers, every emergency room in the city and every intensive care unit. The money was doing double duty, improving the spirits of healthcare workers and also saving local restaurants, which had fallen into dire straits due to the quarantine and stay at home orders. The program took on a life of its own, growing until Feed the Front Line was literally feeding every single hospital in New Orleans twice a day, every day, for six weeks.

For donors as well, the money was helping. “Everybody was stuck at home and scared, and you felt powerless,” Devin says. “This was something that people could do. And the community started to rally behind it. We were this little group from the neighborhood. We aren’t wealthy or have a ton of money, but we were getting stuff done, and people were rooting for us.”

At its peak, the program spent $30,000 per day, feeding 2,200 hospital workers twice a day (once for the day shift and once for the night). By the end of the program, it had delivered 90,000 meals, 10,000 cookies and coffees, and supported 49 local businesses.

Devin wanted to help as many culinary establishments as possible. “We asked restaurant owners the bare minimum they needed to survive,” he said, “because if we could hit that target with one, we could help somebody else, too.” Ultimately, Feed the Front Line raised and spent $1.2 million over six weeks. Doctors, dining and donors benefitted, and Devin found a way to add one more group to the list: musicians. When you run a successful Mardi Gras krewe, you know local musicians. Like restaurant workers, everyone in live entertainment was hurting, so the program hired musicians to deliver the food. “They had just lost French Quarter Fest and Jazz Fest. From my parade organizing, I knew a lot of musicians, and I texted them.”

Musicians were each assigned to specific hospitals to learn the processes for safe delivery and to build relationships there. The program built a network of 35 musicians who delivered food, and they took the job deeply seriously, Devin says, never missing a single delivery. It was for them an inspiring job: In the middle of a terrible pandemic, they were making a difference and also getting paid.

Bean piece created by Red Bean Krewe member Cate Swan as a thank you to New Orleans medical workers

Babydoll Honey of Le Bon Ton poses while filming an FTSL promotional piece in Rouses Markers

photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

The program ended once donor fatigue set in. Devin is particularly proud that every penny of the $1.2 million is accounted for. “We spent zero dollars on the administration of this effort. It was all volunteer. I will forever be proud that every dollar that was given to us was spent in a way that was impactful to the community.”

Feed the Front Line was only the beginning. Devin soon started plans for something bigger, that would help even more people and help preserve the culture of New Orleans during unprecedented times. Feed the Second Line was born.

Devin De Wulf grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. In high school, he read Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, by Jon Lee Anderson, and it set him on a path to study Latin American history at the College of Charleston. He came from a family of lawyers, and the idea was to go to Brazil and learn Portuguese, and to Mexico to learn Spanish, and on the other side of his degree, he could enroll in law school and become an immigration lawyer. He studied abroad “like a fiend,” he says, and would take extra courses each semester to maximize the time he could spend in other countries. He developed a deep appreciation for other cultures and peoples, and he would eventually spend a year as an exchange student at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil. It changed his life.

“Not being able to communicate is an interesting process, because you lose your personality,” he says. You can’t make jokes or do even the simplest things, and only over time, with great effort, can you slowly rebuild yourself and your abilities. “It’s a really good experience that every young person should go through. If you can’t communicate, you are forced to be uncomfortable and go through that tough learning process.” Devin was ever in possession of a dictionary and notepaper, listened intently to Brazilian music and watched local television, and over time he learned not only the language but also the culture, from food to music. “I learned more in that year than in all of college. That was my education.”

While there, he also encountered beans for the first time. They aren’t a South Carolina staple, but in Brazil, they’re served twice a day, every day. In the university cafeteria, they served rice and beans with a protein like chicken on the side. On Sundays, he would eat feijoada (a black bean dish made in large batches and served at home or at bars, where everyone watched football) with everyone else. Beans were a culinary revelation for him, and his new favorite food.

Not long before his residency in Brazil ended, he watched in horror as Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. When he returned to the United States, he decided to volunteer in New Orleans as a photographer. He would take photographs for nonprofit organizations, and give them the prints for use in fundraising, marketing and archiving.

“I was here for a week with a couple of friends who came too, and we were idiots exploring a city we knew nothing about,” he says.

He was struck by the New Orleanian sense of resilience. In the terrible aftermath of the flood, the people, he noticed, didn’t complain. That feeling of coming back from the brink created a sense of civic pride unlike anything he had ever experienced before, and he saw vividly that the people of New Orleans chose to come back, chose to fight for their community.

On his second day in the city, he stumbled onto John Boutté singing in a church. He ate a shrimp po’boy from a corner store. He sat on lawn chairs someone had put out along Bayou St. John. The combination of those things brought home to him that certain specialness of New Orleans, and his love of culture and people found a home in the U.S.

During his final year of college, every time a break came up (Spring, Thanksgiving, Christmas) he would drive 13 hours crosscountry to the city. When he graduated, no ties held him to Charleston, so he packed his belongings and drove the 13 hours — this time one-way. He moved into an Uptown apartment and got to work building a new life. He found work as a teaching assistant. The job played to all his strengths: He was fluent in Spanish, artistic, and in possession of a boundless love for the community. (As for his plans of becoming a lawyer: While still in college, he was scheduled to take a practice LSAT, the exam necessary to get into law school. It was the most beautiful day, he thought, walking into the building, 80 degrees and sunny, and when he arrived in the classroom where the test was being administered, he looked around the room and thought, “I am clearly not going to hang out with these people the rest of my life.” Five minutes into the exam, he handed in his test and went to the beach. That dream died on the spot.)

His first fall in New Orleans, he was sitting at Pal’s Lounge in Mid-City brainstorming what his Halloween costume should be. He thought about the things that made New Orleans special, and he arrived at the New Orleans tradition of red beans and rice on Mondays. When the Saints played on Monday nights, that tradition, paired with (a different kind of) football, evoked memories of his time in Brazil. He had an epiphany: He would make a suit of red beans and rice.

Back he went to his little apartment Uptown, and he holed up in his room with a hot glue gun, a sack of red beans and an old suit. You start hot-gluing red beans and rice to your clothing, and there is only one option: total commitment. He guessed it might take an hour, maybe. (He grossly underestimated the task.) But by Halloween, he had done the unusual, and his jacket and pants were now entirely and elaborately made of red beans and rice.

“I walked around Frenchman Street, and people freaked out,” he recalls. “People were taking my picture like paparazzi! And I thought there was clearly something to this.”

Concurrently, he was still doing volunteer photography in the city, and a family who was part of the Black Feather Mardi Gras Indian tribe invited him to their house, a place in Gentilly, for Mardi Gras. He arrived the day before, on Lundi Gras, and spent 24 hours documenting their night of final preparations. “I was a fly on the wall. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, watching months of work being pulled together.”

The Mardi Gras Indians are celebrated, among other things, for their ornate suits of beads, feathers and sequins that can cost thousands of dollars to design, and take nearly a year to make. For Devin, that night and the next day were mesmerizing. “I saw how if you put so much of your heart and soul into a suit, it becomes who you are. It can be transformative. When I saw the Big Chief put his crown on, it was like witnessing a religious moment.” Again, just as he did in Brazil, Mexico and across Latin America, he saw with clarity how the culture of a place is shaped by its people.

The Krewe of Red Beans attracts 15,000 spectators and includes 350 members. To help manage the crowds, they’ve started three separate and simultaneous parades.

photos by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

Al “Carnival Time” Johnson, Grand Marshal for the Krewe of Red Beans

photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

Inspired by the Mardi Gras Indian tradition and the style of the second line and brass bands, he decided to start a parade. He made a PowerPoint presentation and everything. He invited the friends he had made during his teaching certification program to join him. He proposed the creation of the Krewe of Red Beans. They would march on Lundi Gras — the traditional day for red beans and rice — and they would wear suits decorated in beans, as he had done for Halloween.

Twenty-five people were in, and every Sunday, they gathered in Devin’s little apartment, hot glue and beans all around. The night before Lundi Gras 2009, they had a little celebration. Musician and local legend Al “Carnival Time” Johnson even turned up at the festivities.

The next day, they marched. At two in the afternoon, sharp, they met on the corner of Port and Royal streets. They had no permit, no spectators and no idea what they were doing. But Benny Jones of the Treme Brass Band joined them, and for the rest of the day, they walked, 25 people in bean suits, with a shopping cart carrying a keg of beer. Hours later they were exhausted but jubilant.

“We weren’t trying to be a thing,” says Devin. “We were trying to have a fun time.”

They were definitely going to do it again. And they did. Again and again and again. Two on the dot every Lundi Gras afternoon.

Eleven years later, the Krewe of Red Beans attracts 15,000 spectators and includes 350 members. To help manage the crowds, they’ve started three separate and simultaneous parades. “We stay true to the philosophy of a small neighborhood walking parade.” They were in their 20s when they started, and are now all in their 30s, with children. The second generation walks in the parades now, too. “It’s kid-friendly. We are all about the neighborhoods and celebrating beans and the carnival.”

While running Feed the Front Line, Devin began to worry about Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and Benny Jones. Both are in the high-risk categories for COVID-19, meaning a trip to the grocery store could be fatal. Krewe members volunteered to groceryshop on behalf of the music icons, but the city of New Orleans is filled with such cultural figures. In the past, every loss of someone like musician Allen Toussaint or chef Leah Chase was devastating; now, here was this virus that was specifically targeting some of the aging legends who make New Orleans what it is.

Devin wondered if he could take everything he learned while building a million-dollar philanthropic effort in a matter of weeks, his experience building a huge operation like the Krewe of Red Beans from scratch, and his understanding of local culture, and build something long-term to help the culture bearers of New Orleans.

“We have to protect the culture that we have,” he says. “Culture is built by people. If a Big Chief dies, they are irreplaceable.” How many walking cultural treasures do we have in the city, he wondered. What if half of them died? What would New Orleans do? Moreover, those artists were among the hardest hit economically in the pandemic’s wake. Mardi Gras was canceled. Most music venues were closed. Already, many of the city’s most notable cultural figures were from impoverished neighborhoods. Run out of money, and power and water could be cut off, but you can’t cut out food. Groceries were an inescapable expense.

Thus was born Feed the Second Line, a nonprofit effort to bring fresh groceries and meals to the elder cultural figures of New Orleans. In practice, the program involves a social worker checking in on vulnerable culture bearers and getting a feel for how things are going. The artist is given a penciland-paper shopping list of about 80 items. (The generation most in need is not the savviest with technology; low-tech is best in this case.) What food could you use for the next month or two? A freezer, fridge and pantry could be stocked for around $200 to $400. With the shopping list in tow, volunteers could do the shopping and bring the groceries back. Feed the Second Line is also a job creator. Like Feed the Front Line, Feed the Second Line employs younger local musicians to do the grocery shopping and delivery for the elder, more vulnerable musicians and artists of the community.

Feed the Second Line’s motto, Love Your City

beadwork by Duane Cruse of the Wild Magnolias

Rouses Markets partnered right away with Feed the Second Line to make the program a success. For Rouses, local is everything. The company provided a credit line for the nascent effort, allowing it to do all the shopping it needed to feed the men and women responsible for the city’s cultural identity, and to do so in a way that would be respectful and grassroots, coming from the community itself.

“Grocery shopping is great because it is sustainable. You can scale up or down depending on donations,” Devin explains. Presently, the program is able to feed about nine people per day. To maximize the time available, volunteers have mapped the inside of Rouses and know the most efficient routes to get every item on grocery lists. Already, the program is helping around 75 culture bearers. There’s something in it for the donating public, too. You go to a Mardi Gras parade, and you might get a picture of — or if you’re lucky, a picture with — a Mardi Gras Indian. But there’s never before been a way to give back. Feed the Second Line is that way, and people can sign up at feedthesecondline.org to donate monthly. The average monthly donation is $22.

“The only way this program is possible is if people become monthly donors,” says Devin. “It doesn’t matter how much. A dollar or five or 10 or 100. Anything. It’s a way of saying, ‘Thank you for being you. Your creation of culture has enriched all our lives.’”

With the public’s backing, Devin plans to help as many Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Club members, artists and musicians in the city as possible. His record of achievement and devotion to New Orleans says that if anyone can do it, he can. Which isn’t bad for someone whose whole destiny was determined over red beans and rice. “Over the course of all this,” he says, “I met my wife when she joined the krewe, and that’s why I have all this, have my children. That moment sitting in Pal’s Lounge and deciding to make a bean suit was the most important moment in my life.”

Cagney Goodly filming an FTSL promotional piece in Rouses Markets

photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

Mr. Victor Harris, Big Chief of the FiYiYi Spirit of the Mandingo Warriors

photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee