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."
:)
I've concluded that Hal Turner is in desperate need of large quantities of valium, and I'll be happy to do my part by forwarding him a few hundred emails that some nice folks in the Fine Mreddications business were kind enough to send me.
Bringing a thought over to this thread.
>>> Because of bacteria, they are forcibly removing people <<<<
What’s really a good laugh. Is those of us who have gone to & from Olongapo / City Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines
Once you made it past the guards at the front gate, you crossed a bridge which spanned a river known simply as the "S**t River." (and that’s what it smelled like) Not a pleasant name, but fairly appropriate given that raw sewage from the town was often dumped into it.
Girls in little, flimsy boats and boys swimming in the water beckoned from below the bridge, telling passers-by to throw pesos or centavos into the river
There would usually be about eight to ten teenage girls down there, all wearing white slacks and brightly colored tank tops. They would balance precariously in their boats and had nets to catch Pesos tossed down from the squids above. Some squids would try to throw the coins just out of the girls reach in the hope of making them fall out of the boat.
(Never saw a girl fall though.) They each did, however, have a young boy in the water next to their boat to dive down for the Pesos that the girls missed. These kids were
literally swimming in an open sewer.
Yet they all healthy.
Gee a painted label San Miguel would go down great now.
Can you pick up the chocolate on your way?
Please? :)
The militia is everyone. What do you think people did before there was a national guard?
And just because there is now a national guard doesn't mean that the rest of us should all be slacking off here. YOU are ultimately responsible for your own safety and well-being, and asking someone else (police, national guard, whoever) to take a bullet for you smacks of snootery.
"Actor Sean Penn lugs a shotgun through the flooded streets of New Orleans as if he is starring in an action thriller - but he is not. On Tuesday the Hollywood Liberal looked more like Charlton Heston, prowling the storm ravaged Delta loaded for bear. Penn's spokewoman said the weapon is not Penn's, she said did not know exactly how Penn suddenly became a poster child for the second amendment."
Thanks again for the ping!
Strictly speaking, the National Guard, when not federalized, form the Organized Militia, or at least a part of it in states which have a State Guard.
Here is the definition of the militia in federal law. Basically all males 17 to 45 and all female members of the National Guard. (And male guardsmen beyond those ages as well) YMMV depending on your state, in Texas it's all persons, save a few public officials, from (approximately) 18 to 60. Even the old Cat has a few more years in the Texas militia.
Bump 2 post 34
Now that is a true heroine from the Second Battle of New Orleans.
Not necessarily. It could have been a series of small charges, or even only one, that weakened the levee in a single spot (for each break) the water pressure would do the rest. Such an explosion might not even be noticeable on the surface, if it was buried deeply enough in the levee.
However I agree that the chances of finding any explosive residue after all that water rushed by, would be nil.
How the hell do you get "State Militia" out of "the people?"
People bear arms to form militias. Militas don't form arms to bear people.
What the hell kind of right would that be?
Even the old Cat has a few more years in the Texas militia.
Just look at it like Ted Nugent does, "The Senior Militia"
It really bothers me to see the cops going door to door prying open doors, marking walls, and then leaving the homes open and unguarded for the looters.
What a great story!
Of course, if the Founding Fathers had not intended for the people to be armed, they would have disarmed them instead of adding the 2nd Amendment.
To RobbyS. Congratulations. Your reading and comprehension of the 2nd Amendment has just assured you the support of the gun grabbing lobby for a seat on the SCOTUS.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the peopleState to keep and bare Arms, shall not be infringed.
See how silly that looks? The government guarantees itself that its military can bare arms? What a joke.
It's always discouraging to see the result of an "education" provided by the GOVERNMENT schools....
It GOOD that folks like this, DON'T arm themselves......they would be dangerous to themselves and others..
Semper Fi
I hadn't heard that. When did that happen?
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