Our friends at the Cult Coalition to Stop Gun Rights Violence refer us to this hit piece by Media Matters on the Algiers Point neighborhood coming together for self-defense after Hurricane Katrina.

Algiers Point was lucky not to suffer the floods, but not because it was a “white enclave” as they were called but because the area is high enough to be above flood waters. Decades ago Algiers Point was mostly very old houses run down and not necessarily the best of neighborhoods until some entrepreneurial contractors bought a house there and decided to bring it back to old New Orleans grandeur. These people were not high rollers in the real state market but more like your Angie’s List type of local contractors who after finishing their house, got contracted by neighbors to do their houses and so on. If I recall correctly, it took over a decade to make the area a pride to live in and the previously run-down houses were now valuable and in some cases historical.

After Katrina, those who stayed behind in Algiers Point were suddenly confronted by individuals looting the area. One of the original contractors that worked on his house was attacked and his working van stolen. Houses were shot at night by marauders and keeping with was going on around New Orleans, police help was nowhere to be found.

So the neighbors decided to get together and defend their lives and property and with success. They armed themselves (many with borrowed weapons), barricaded key streets and watched over each other with great success as they repelled attacks from at the ends were bands of looters. The story got out after things got better and in a moment of comedy, they decided to call themselves the Algiers Point Militia, a name that inflamed the politically butt-hurt and made them immediate targets of investigation.

The best written story of the Algiers Point events can be found in the book “The Great New Orleans Gun Grab” by Gordon Hutchinson and Todd Masson which I have mentioned before and if you have not bought it, you should, now.

Still, it is moronic for CSGV to badmouth people defending themselves after what happened immediately a Post-Katrina New Orleans. Then again I doubt any of the CSGV honchos were living at the time there or gave a crap about what was going on other than the photos of Sean Penn with a shotgun in his hand “rescuing” survivors.