The Shootings At Algiers Point

Allow me to break with all journalistic convention and mention Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, which would be more than what was done during the entire Presidential election. One predictable outcome of that tragedy was the extent to which the conservative noise machine hyped incidents of looting and mayhem, broken down exclusively along racial lines, to "prove" that black people resort to animal instincts in a time of panic. It was not only completely offensive and wrong, but now an astonishing report by The Nation shows that in at least one case, the opposite was true - white vigilantes shot African-Americans in the aftermath of the storm.

The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.

It was September 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. "I just hit the ground. I didn't even know what happened," recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.

The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington's companions--his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. "I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck," Alexander recalls. "I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again." Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander's back, arm and buttocks [...]

Herrington, Collins and Alexander's experience fits into a broader pattern of violence in which, evidence indicates, at least eleven people were shot. In each case the targets were African-American men, while the shooters, it appears, were all white.

The new information should reframe our understanding of the catastrophe. Immediately after the storm, the media portrayed African-Americans as looters and thugs--Mayor Ray Nagin, for example, told Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of gang members" were marauding through the Superdome. Now it's clear that some of the most serious crimes committed during that time were the work of gun-toting white males.

So far, their crimes have gone unpunished. No one was ever arrested for shooting Herrington, Alexander and Collins--in fact, there was never an investigation. I found this story repeated over and over during my days in New Orleans. As a reporter who has spent more than a decade covering crime, I was startled to meet so many people with so much detailed information about potentially serious offenses, none of whom had ever been interviewed by police detectives.

The vigilantes came from Algiers Point, a white enclave in the middle of the city, where the residents stockpiled guns and ammunition after the storm, fearing that blacks would flock to their area, which was relatively unhurt by the storm. They assembled a small group of white males with instructions to shoot anything that moved. The hysteria created by the lurid details of chaos and gang activity led to paranoia and the "frontier justice" that ensued.

Three-plus years later, this is largely an untold story. As AC Thompson says in his story (which should be read in full), no investigation has ever been opened, nobody has been arrested or even interviewed about the multiple shootings and even deaths. If this sounds like something out of the 1950s to you, well I agree.

John Conyers has now responded to the report.

Responding to an investigation published in The Nation into vigilante violence after Hurricane Katrina, Rep. John Conyers Jr. issued a public statement Thursday, expressing concern. The investigation details how, after the storm struck, some white residents in the Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans repeatedly attacked African-American men.

In interviews, eyewitnesses--including some of the vigilantes themselves and two men who were blasted with a shotgun--describe a string of shootings in which at least eleven people were wounded or killed. A video accompanying the report features interviews with some of the vigilantes, including one who says, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."

"I am deeply disturbed by the reported incidents in Algiers Point, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina," said Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, and chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

Color of Change, who brought the traditional media around to covering the Jena 6 case after months of activism, is distributing a petition calling for a full investigation into the Algiers Point shootings. Because this was at least in part caused by the media failure of hyping the "black menace" that led to the vigilantism, it's going to take even more pressure to get them involved. Please sign the petition.