AN AMERICAN CITIZEN
These are the darkest times. Lawlessness has engulfed stricken and flooded New Orleans. Blameshifting has become the political order of the day as criminal gangs and snipers roam the streets, making rescue and relief dangerous and next to impossible. Formerly tolerant, but now outgunned, city police are overwhelmed and many are now quitting while the innocent suffer and die. State and U.S. Military forces have not yet filled the gap to backup the men in blue who remain. We desperately need a hero. And one steps forward from the shadows. Who is he?
In the Carrollton neighborhood, two armed men - self-appointed sheriffs in a white pickup - confronted them. Spotting thieves who had commandeered a forklift and smashed into a Rite Aid store, the two men fired above the looters' heads and ran them off.A man emerged pulling a little wagon stacked with Pampers, food, water and soda. He screamed at the men with the guns.
"Who are y'all? Who are you to stop us?"
"I'm an American citizen," was the reply. "Take your food and go."
Who is that man separating good from evil and dealing out both justice and mercy? He's not a subject, he's not a prole, he's not a mercenary. He's an American citizen.
Not far away, at Cooter Brown's Bar & Grill, the weary owner stood sentry with a pal to keep the looters at bay. He had a .357 magnum, a 9-mm. handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun and no hesitation about using any of them."The cops are busy as it is. If more citizens took security and matters into their own hands, we won't be in this situation," said owner Art DePodesta, 30, as he warily scanned the street.
...A group of men pried open a Coke machine and then fights broke out over the soda. A few Guardsmen moved in, locked and loaded. At the sight of the rifles, the fighting ended.
He's not a politician. He's not a movie star. He's something greater. He's an American citizen.
John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.One said, “We want that generator,” he recalled.
”I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum,” Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. “They scattered.”
He smiled and added, “You’ve heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street.”
He's a farmer or a mechanic or a store clerk or a teacher. Whoever he was before the disaster, he's a hero now. "I'm an American citizen."
Charles C. Foti Jr., the Louisiana attorney general, said a temporary detention center and courthouse would be established somewhere outside New Orleans. “We will be ready to accept you in our system, and teach you about rules and order,” Mr. Foti warned looters.On Tuesday, the state police sent in 200 troopers trained in riot control, said Lt. Lawrence J. McLeary, a spokesman for the state police.
He said that the “nervous energy” in New Orleans reminded him of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “I’ve never seen anything like that in Louisiana,” Lieutenant McLeary said.
With no officers in sight, people carried empty bags, shopping carts and backpacks through the door of the Rite Aid on Wednesday and left with them full. The forklift was still in the doorway. As they came and went, the looters nodded companionably to one another.
Paul Cosma, 47, who owns a nearby auto shop, stood outside it along with a reporter and photographer he was taking around the neighborhood. He had pistols on both hips.
Suddenly, he stepped forward toward a trio of young men and grabbed a pair of rusty bolt cutters out of the hands of one of them. The young man pulled back, glaring.
Mr. Cosma, never claiming any official status, eventually jerked the bolt cutters away, saying, “You don’t need these.”
The young man and his friends left, continuing the glare. A few minutes later, they returned and mouthed quiet oaths at Mr. Cosma, and his friend Art DePodesta, an Army veteran, who was carrying a shotgun and a pistol.
Mr. Cosma stared back, saying nothing.
Through the silent stare he communicated all that needed to be said: "I am an American citizen."
It's important to keep in mind that while a few bands of criminals have gone on a rampage, endangered thousands of innocent people, hindered rescue and relief efforts and will probably get away with major crimes like armed robbery, rape or direct and indirect murder, common Americans know that becoming little armies of one or two can make a big difference. Even in chaos, they will take responsibility and help others, even at great risk to themselves. Collectively they can help restore order, even if their sovereignty only extends for a street corner or a block. This is the meaning of citizenship--not entitlements or a lifestyle of handouts, but liberty coupled with the weight of responsibility. Around the world, whenever disaster strikes, the hero steps forward.
"I am an American citizen." "Let's roll."
(co-written by Chris Regan)
UPDATE: A reader nails it:
When the man said "I'm an American citizen", I doubt that he meant it in the expansive, "we are the world" sort of way. Maybe the man was white, maybe he was black, it does not matter; what does matter is that in Jacksonian fashion he was drawing a line, recognizing those that are inside the circle, and those that are outside the circle. There are those that obey the code, and there are those that don't, and those that don't shouldn't expect much....the American is the great indispensable element; an American is an unrecreatable consequence of a certain people, with a certain culture, a certain nature, in a certain time, over a few centuries becoming what the American is today.