They popped up everywhere outside of Levi’s Stadium and even inside on Super Bowl Sunday. Less than 48 hours after the “ICE Out” rally towels went viral, organizer Shasti Conrad is still amazed at how quickly the idea snowballed. 

A Seattle Seahawks fan through and through, Conrad knew she wanted to do something more than simply come to Santa Clara to cheer on her team. She and her co-organizer, Caleb Wilson of Sounds Good Presents, had just ten days to figure something out.

“How do we celebrate this moment, but also use the Super Bowl, which is this just super American cultural moment, to be able to draw attention to what’s happening, and putting an end to ICE. Then, we thought, ‘Well, what’s a great way that’s very sports oriented?’” recalled Conrad. 

Which is why they chose a rally towel. Then, teaming with the group Contra-ICE, a collective of artists and musicians who use their work to call out what ICE is doing, they created the artwork for the towel.

“We wanted to do it in a joyful way, right? We wanted to do it in a way that felt really about celebrating Bad Bunny and the Latino community and Puerto Rico and immigrants,” said Conrad. “The reason why the graphic really centers around this image of a Bad Bunny is because we really wanted it to be sort of anchored in the cultural moment of this.

“You have Bad Bunny, Green Day and Brandy Carlile and these are people that have been very outspoken against the Trump administration, against ICE and whatnot,” continued Conrad. “The image was really meant to evoke that connection to the culture and the music and the art and everything was also happening around this very global moment. Then it was, very boldly and plainly, we wanted to say, ‘ICE Out’ and so that was what was on the other side of the towel.”

Some of the towels made it into Levi’s Stadium and even onto national television during the game. Others got picked up by celebrities. Conrad says she saw it show up on one of Diplo’s social media feeds. Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine also posted a picture with one of the towels. Another creator received nearly 2 million likes on his post. 

“It’s been pretty amazing … We’re so proud, so excited … To have this, like kernel of an idea … it’s really unbelievable that we were able to pull it off and that it was as successful as it went,” said Conrad. “We had over 50 volunteers that were distributing 15,000 towels, and we had no issues. The only sort of bummer thing that happened was that the NFL was taking people’s towels if they saw them.”

“It organically came together,” said Carin, one of the volunteers. She said she felt “really strongly about it” and wanted to be on the “right side of history.”

“I feel like the whole ICE thing is just completely out of hand,” said Tom of Orchard City Indivisible, who came from Cupertino to hand out towels. “You can’t sit home. A lot more people need to get out and make themselves known that they don’t like this.”

“There is a purpose for ICE, but not in the way it’s being used, and not how they’re doing it to people,” said Marlene, who joined her husband Tom in handing out towels. “ICE has been around for years, and they have a job to do, and if they do it right, that’s one thing, but to do what they’re doing is wrong. So, we are saying ‘ICE out’ because they need to start over.”

In total, about 10,000 towels were distributed on Super Bowl Sunday. Conrad is shipping the rest back to Seattle and will have them with her to distribute during the victory parade.