We waited in the heat. Finally we got word that the Trumps were arriving, and we stood up and gathered neatly—neatly for Cajuns, at least—and waited for Donald and Melania to make their way to us. Todd and Jon beamed at the president and first lady. They shook hands, and then shook hands some more. Todd told him, “We couldn’t have done it without you.” The president said something about trying to provide the Cajun Navy with boats; I couldn’t catch the details. A gaggle of Louisiana politicians followed the first couple’s trail, along with Betsy DeVos, included for reasons unknown.

That was it. We went home high on accolades and the sweet sense of proximity to power. Later we gathered at the Renaissance hotel in Baton Rouge. Scott Freshwater, a volunteer who couldn’t make it out, called in to pick up the tab for the crew of the Cajun Navy. We got very drunk.

The politics of rescue and recovery seem as though they should be simple—come to the aid of people in need, regardless of race or creed. But in reality, they are often tribal. The most egregious example of this was New Orleans during Katrina, when the federal response was late and wholly insufficient, and led to hundreds of deaths in a city that is predominantly black. This year, after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Trump reprised George W. Bush’s failure, and for the same reason: New Orleans and Puerto Rico are full of people who aren’t white and thus not a national priority. (Twelve years later, there are tens of thousands of black people missing from New Orleans who left after the storm and never returned.)

Todd was particularly sensitive to questions of race—the Cajun Navy was almost completely white. On Thursday he had canceled an interview with CNN because they wanted, he said, to “make it about race.” Also, he claimed, they had once asked him to stage a rescue for live television. He explained while we waited for Trump, “In New Orleans, we were rescuing hundreds of black people from places most would never go. This isn’t about race. This is about coming together.” Todd appeared to be correct: In contrast to the lopsidedness of federal relief, I encountered no evidence that any victims were denied help from the Cajun Navy because they were black and saw many pictures documenting the opposite.

A certain kind of volunteer vigilantism, in the forms of both search and rescue and guard and protect, is having a moment.

But tribal undercurrents did run through the rescue efforts. Fans of the Cajun Navy were quick to point out that many of its members did belong to a certain group, one that has long been ridiculed in the media and which has come to represent to many, since the 2016 election, what’s wrong with America. As one supporter wrote, with some hyperbole, on Facebook, “Every member of the Cajun Navy would be deemed ‘deplorable’ by that certain individual who will never, ever be President of the United States.”

This wasn’t strictly true. For instance, Shon Smith, an ardent Trump supporter, had also voted for Obama twice. But then Smith wasn’t a Cajun, and most of the Cajuns were cagey about their politics. Certainly they suspected mine diverged from theirs, but they never made a point of saying so, and nor did I make a point of telling them. For the people of the Gulf Coast, this was a moment of transcendence, not a time to get mired in the weeds. It was a stark contrast to the callousness I had seen on Twitter: Angry liberals suggesting that Texas, after voting against funding for Hurricane Sandy relief, should be left to fend for itself after Harvey—climate deniers and Trump voters should not, in their opinion, expect relief from outside sources when they failed New York and New Jersey.

Shon Smith Giancarlo Dagostaro Jon Bridgers Giancarlo Dagostaro

If nothing else, the Cajun Navy has proved that in some situations, organized citizens can act more effectively than the professionals who are paid by our tax dollars. There’s something to be said for the empowerment of the individual when the government fails. But this empowerment is a mixed blessing. For every person rescued by a volunteer, there may be another who drowns because an untrained dispatcher can’t tell the difference between a real call and a prank. The more visible the Cajun Navy became, the more people called in emergencies, sometimes with misleading information or simple noise. It became a liability for the organization. There had also been some backlash against the Cajun Navy from law enforcement. Todd said, “Rogues and yahoos with pistols are giving us a bad reputation. We need a sticker or something.”