I Hate Illinois Nazis

The tale of some residents of Algiers setting up a vigilante militia in the days after Katrina, and one member’s boast that shooting black residents was “like hunting pheasants in South Dakota” ,have swept through the blogs and into the Times-Picayune.

The article is poorly titled “Katrina’s Hidden Race War“. I don’t think a handful of shootings qualifies as a race war. And given that the organizers of this were from out-of-state, I think I like my own headline even better.

Given that we are all forced to live with the rumors of what happened at the Dome and Convention Center, which are largely urban legends unsupported by evidence, I am glad this story has finally surfaced. That is not to say that shootings, car jackings, rapes and other assaults did not occur in the city, but not where people had assembled for safety.

You were much more likely to get shot trying to cross the Danziger Bridge that at the Convention Center.

At one level I’m glad this story came out, if only to try to lay to rest the idea that barbaric behavior after the storm was racial.The asshole from the Gretna P.D. who pointed an assault rifle at the head of an acquaintance’s son as they tried to walk across the bridge to their home in Algiers was as much of an out-of-control animal as whoever torched Oakwood and these white racists from Algiers point.

When civil society breaks down two sets of people come to the fore. The most powerful tale is of the altruists, people like the “Cajun Navy” of sportsman from all over Louisiana who arrived unbidded with their duck boats and other shallow water craft and conducted the majority of rescues in the days after.

The other group are the animals who see an opportunity to run amok. These vigilante’s think of themselves in the same glowing terms as those who made heroic rescues and gestures of relief. They are not. They are among the rabble who ran wild and lawless in the streets, and they deserve to be immortalized along with looters of televisions and shoes and the police on both banks who also run amok.

Read New Orleans Slate’s eyewitness account of life on Algiers Point after the storm.

I hate Illinois Nazis.