Posted on 09/10/2005 7:02:27 PM PDT by TERMINATTOR
NEW ORLEANS -- The Algiers Point militia put away its weapons Friday as Army soldiers patrolled the historic neighborhood across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter.
But the band of neighbors who survived Hurricane Katrina and then fought off looters has not disarmed.
"Pit Bull Will Attack. We Are Here and Have Gun and Will Shoot," said the sign on Alexandra Boza's front porch. Actually, said the woman behind the sign, "I have two pistols."
"I'm a part of the militia," Boza said. "We were taking the law into our own hands, but I didn't kill anyone."
She did quietly open her front door and fire a warning shot one night when she heard a loud group of young men approaching her house.
About a week later, she said, she finally saw a New Orleans police officer on her street and told him she had guns.
"He told me, 'Honey, I don't blame you,' " she said.
The several dozen people who did not evacuate from Algiers Point said that for days after the storm, they did not see any police officers or soldiers but did see gangs of intruders.
So they set up what might be the ultimate neighborhood watch.
At night, the balcony of a beautifully restored Victorian house built in 1871 served as a lookout point.
"I had the right flank," Vinnie Pervel said. Sitting in a white rocking chair on the balcony, his neighbor, Gareth Stubbs, protected the left flank.
They were armed with an arsenal gathered from the neighborhood: a shotgun, pistols, a flare gun and a Vietnam-era AK-47.
They were backed up by Gregg Harris, who lives in the house with Pervel, and Pervel's 74-year-old mother, Jennie, who lives across Pelican Street from her son and is known in Algiers Point as "Miss P."
Many nights, Miss P. had a .38-caliber pistol in one hand and rosary beads in the other.
"Mom was a trouper," Pervel said.
The threat was real.
On the day after Katrina blew through, Pervel was carjacked a couple of blocks from his house. A past president of the Algiers Point Association homeowners group, Pervel was going to houses that had been evacuated and turning off the gas to prevent fires.
A guy with a mallet "hit me in the back of the head," Pervel said. "He said, 'We want your keys.' I said, 'Here, take them.' "
Inside the white Ford van were a portable generator, tools and other hurricane supplies. A hurt and frustrated Pervel threw pliers at the van as it drove off and broke a back window.
Another afternoon, a gunfight broke out on the streets as armed neighbors and armed intruders exchanged fire.
"About 25 rounds were fired," Harris said.
Blood was later found on the street from a wounded intruder.
Not far away, Oakwood Center mall was seriously damaged in a fire caused by vandals.
"We were really afraid of fires. These old houses are so close together that if one was set afire, the whole street would all go up," Harris said. "We lived in terror for a week."
Their house is filled with antique furniture, and there's a well-kept garden and patio in back.
"We've been restoring this house for 20 years," Harris said.
There are gas lamps on the columned porch that stayed on during the storm and its aftermath. The militia rigged car headlights and a car battery on porches of nearby houses. Then they put empty cans beneath trees that had fallen across both ends of the block.
When someone approached in the darkness, "you could hear the cans rattle.
Then we would hit the switch at the battery and light up the street," Pervel said. "We would yell, 'We're going to count three, and if you don't identify yourself, we're going to start shooting.' "
They could hear people fleeing and never fired a shot.
During the days, the hurricane holdouts patrolled the streets protecting their houses and the ones of evacuees.
"I was packing," Robert Johns said. "A .22 magnum with hollow points and an 8 mm Mauser from World War II with armor-piercing shells."
Despite their efforts, some deserted houses in the neighborhood were broken into and looted, Pervel said.
Now the Algiers Point militia has defiantly declared it will not heed any orders for mandatory evacuation. The relatively elevated neighborhood area is across the Mississippi River from the city's worst flooded areas and has running water, gas and phone service.
"They say they're going to drag us kicking and screaming from our houses. For what? To take us to concentration camps where we'll be raped and killed," Ramona Parker said. "This is supposed to be America. We're honest citizens. We're not troublemakers. We pay our taxes."
"It would be cruel for the city to make us evacuate after what we've been through," Pervel said.
The roof was damaged on her house, and the rains left "water up to my ankles," Boza said. So she moved into her mother's home nearby.
She said she still has 42 bullets to expend before she'll be forcibly evacuated.
"Then I hope the men they send to pull me out are 6 feet 2 inches and really cute," she said. "I'll be struggling and flirting at the same time."
They may be pawns. After the Rev they will be killed or put in forced labor camps.
Yep , smelled it before I stepped in it .........
As I read it, the 2nd Amendment alludes to the state militia. One can infer an individual right,
Infer? The recent Justice Dept report overwhelmingly proved that our RKBA's is an individual right.
but it would be hard to enforce against a state government.
State government officials are all sworn to support the US Constitution and its Amendments as the Law of the Land. It is not 'hard' to enforce that oath.
At 108 you comment:
That is the way that the Supreme Court read it seventy years ago. Argue your ideology all you want. But until you can make your case before the Supreme Court, it is just academic.
The USSC in Miller did not 'read it your way'. They agreed that we the people have an individual right to keep militia type weapons.
Your own anti- gun states rights ideology is evident at 109, where you claim:
The salient term is "the States" as political entities, distinct from the United States.
You want the 14th Amendment to extend to restrict the states as they now restrict their police power in the area of morals?
States have always been restricted by the Constitutions supremacy as the law of the land. They cannot use their police powers to infringe on individual rights.
I mean how is the claimed right to be enforced? Against whom?
Individual rights are to be protected from local, state or federal infringements by our constitutional rule of law, due process, & trial by jury. -- How else would you have it?
______________________________________
I posted the above some time ago. Apparently you intend to ignore my comments.
Now you're claiming that:
[the constitution's] -- primary purpose is to set up a governor and define its powers.
Wrong. Our Constitutions preamble outlines its primary purposes. Try reading it.
It is left to officers and other officals to interpret.
Not so. They are bound to support it as written. And it was written in the ordinary english of its day, still understandable to ordinary people.
Any guarantee of individual rights will be by that government.
That is their duty, true enough. But above you're claiming that States have no such duty when it comes to our individual right to bear arms. Why is that?
You claim the right of rebellion. Not many governments are willing to acknowledge that claim.
Of course 'they' don't. One of our jobs as citizens is to make sure they remember who is boss. Why do you think this is a bad thing?
What an assinine and sexist thing to say to me! If it wouldn't get me tossed off of FR I'd really say what I think about your F'n remark like that!
Zactly.
sorry, poor choice of words on my part
.
Afternoon SuziQ,
Your theory is a possibilty and could well be true. Regardless of how much the MSM spins the anti-Bush lies, the truth will be revealed.
President Bush did everything according to guidelines and protocol. Nagin shows his zero leadership by not accepting the blame for his incompetence.
Blanco and Landrieu both failed their constituents and are worried about a DOJ investigation into the levees, dams and faulty water pumps. What happened to the funds allocated for their improvement to withstand a Cat-5 hurricane.
The truth will stand on it's own and it will be fun to watch the liberals implement their fruitless damage control tactics.
Ragin Nagin, Stanko-Blanco and Punch Drunk Landrieu, all lied and some poeple in NOLA thus did died.
I presume, the next thing for paranoia will be Bush is releasing prejudiced bull sharks with orders to devour all balcks on welfare and public assistance.
The Beat Goes On,
NSNR-CSAOTL
A woman so ugly, he used her as a threat to stay away from the house. The only thing he left off his sign was: She is so ugly, her mother used to hang a pork chop around her neck, so at least the dog would play with her. LOL...
8mm mauser bump
Thank you!!!
At least she got something right.
>>If it happend to me, I would hold the state accountible for any future damage to my property and not hand over the weapon until a manifest of the property were done.
That's a pretty romantic view of how that event would likely go down.
It is called TRYING to get a legal leg to stand on. In situations like this, leviathan can usually do as it pleases.
Morning CS,
Yes, and short lived heros at the best. Pawns are used to gain the power and then expendable.
Of course communist liberals, brain dead sheeple& unproductive hosts will never grasp the true reality.
Radio Free Vigilant,
NSNR-CSAOTL
In situations like this, leviathan can usually do as it pleases because folks like you in effect support its efforts. And your inablity to defend your positions here gives you no leg to stand on.
conspiracy theories run rampant..
have you seen this one?
http://www.aztlan.net/new_orleans_land_grab.htm
suggests that NOPD killed DoD specialists who were sabotaging the levies to make room for gov't land grabbers.
also has "quotes" of nagin claiming fear of CIA assassins.
My position is that the 2nd amendment limits the national government, just as the first one does. It does not noe was it intended to limit the states, unless oyu wish the High Court to apply the 14th amendment to them as it has, say, the first amendment. That is assuming that you are among those who think that the right to have a personal weapon deserves greater protection than the right to a free exercise of religion or the right of free speech. None of these in the context of our municipal law is an absolute right but a relative one. Freedom of opinion is absolute so long as it is not voiced.
Freedom to have a personal weapon is absolute so long as the gun is plugged.
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