The mission of The California Endowment is to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians.
Our original goal was to support the LGBTQIA+ community using a fun pop culture icon handing out stickers at the Los Angeles Pride parade on June 8, 2025. Characters are universally loved at events like Pride, and in the midst of the Labubu craze, it was an easy choice to deploy this beloved character to support the California Endowment.
Over the course of the day, the objective expanded to include showing up at the LA ICE protests happening across the city to fight misinformation, again in service to The California Endowment’s mission to support the health and wellbeing of all Californians. As crowds gathered to protest the inhumane rounding up and deportation of Angelenos, false narratives about the nature of the protests began to bloom on social media, fueled by right-wing accounts calling the protests violent and out of control. The reality was anything but that - this was a peaceful gathering of protestors, including families and children, at city hall who were simply calling for the raids to stop. By sending Labubu into the protests, we created a viral moment that showed the protests were not raucous, out of control, or violent. The mascot brought a sense of peace, stability, and hope to this moment, energizing protestors and showing our support for the Los Angeles immigrant community.
The Plan:
This part was simple: find a Labubu costume and someone to wear it, print some supportive stickers designed by LaMont Digital’s in-house art department, and hand them out at the Los Angeles Pride Parade. The LaMont Digital team reserved the costume from a local rental and hired a local professional mascotteer, Bliss Ultraomni for a few hours to wear it at Pride. The team assembled at 8am on Hollywood Boulevard, then walked over to the parade route, to the excitement of the crowd and people gathered for the parade. We gave out over 1000 stickers in 2 hours that read “Protect the Dolls” and “Steer Queer” with California Endowment branding - sharing fun messages of pride while also promoting the organization.
How it evolved:
As it happens. Pride was not the only thing happening that Sunday. The people of Los Angeles gathered in the tens of thousands in streets across the city to protest ICE’s unconstitutional kidnapping of immigrants in an effort to deport undocumented workers. As the Pride parade was winding down, our Director of Special Projects, Kate Cohee, got a text from CEO Alf LaMont, asking if Labubu should also attend the protests to help show that they were not the violent riots being portrayed in the media. Bliss, the dancer hired to wear the Labubu outfit, had a prior engagement that afternoon, but Kate was determined to pull off the mission and volunteer to don the suit herself and head downtown - nevermind that she was a full foot shorter than the costume and had never worn anything of the sort. Alf called around Los Angeles to find a mascot chaperone for Labubu to attend the protests with, and the team was off to their next stop.
The Effect:
The most striking thing about attending the protests in a Labubu costume was the community joy that came from seeing a beloved and popular pop culture figure showing up to support Angelenos and the immigrants who make our city great. Labubu, with Kate inside, carried a sign that read “ICE out of LA” and stayed in character as she weaved through the crowd, posing for photos with children, bikers, activists, and everyone who stopped to point and smile. At a time of heightened fear and tension, Labubu’s presence brought a feeling of calm and a spirit of joy to the resistance of a community fighting to protect its own. In Kate’s memory, one of the most amazing things about the stunt was the number of people who kept trying to press waters, Gatorades, and snacks into the hands of the costume on the sweltering Los Angeles afternoon - it was 90 degrees and characteristically sunny, which transposed into an exceptionally warm experience inside an unventilated suit. Community came together to support immigrants, and also came together to support every protestor in attendance, which showed in the crowd’s respect and joy of seeing Labubu.
In addition to being highlighted in NPR, The Cut, Vulture, and in hundreds of organic social posts from protest attendees, the major win was the spirit and energy that Labubu brought to the protests. People were thrilled to see the viral creature walking around and supporting immigrant communities. Furthermore, it posed a visible counternarrative to the armed guards and militarization of Los Angeles being seen largely through mainstream media.
User generated content reacting to the stunt echoed these sentiments, including @quentin.quarentino, a Los Angeles based social media personality with 1.2 million followers, who overlaid a video of our Labubu with his text reading “I’m at the dangerous riot the media is telling you about.” This video alone garnered 5 million views and over 2,300 comments of support, with folks chiming in “Confirming! Here in LA. We’re peaceful.” and “National guard about to look like clowns standing up to some furries.” This was just 1 of several posts that reached over 1 million views created by protest attendees who saw Labubu and echoed similar sentiments.
This was a spur-of-the-moment idea created out of our genuine care for the city of Los Angeles and our knowledge that there was a narrative surrounding the protests that was completely untrue to the reality on the ground. We worked fast to pull this event off - not because we wanted the publicity stunt or to capitalize on the tokenization of kidnapped migrant children - but because we KNEW that our community was being unjustly persecuted and portrayed as violent when they were standing up and exercising their constitutional rights.
