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“You Nazi,” one of them shouted.

“I’m just following orders,” the official said.

“That’s what Hitler’s regime said,” one of the homeowners shouted.

Suzanne Dery huddled on her property, crying.

Mayor Beachy couldn’t believe his eyes. Less than an hour earlier, the street had been quiet and vacant.

“Beach, I’ve had it,” Sandy seethed. “Stop the car and let me out.”

He parked. Sandy got out and instructed him to go home and retrieve the quilt she had been making. She planned to sit on the front steps of the home Barberi was approaching. She wanted the quilt to work on in order to keep her hands from shaking.

Sandy walked past Barberi’s machine and plopped down on the doorstep. The mayor sped home. When he returned fifteen minutes later, a larger crowd had gathered on the street. Officials from the city’s building department were on the scene. They had failed to alert him that the NLDC had secured demolition permits.

“Damn you,” Beachy shouted, his face red and quivering as he crossed the street.

A building official tried to explain that the NLDC had slipped the paperwork in at the last minute.

Beachy didn’t want to hear it. He threw his hands in the air and stormed off, taking a position next to his wife. They crossed their legs and sat side by side, blocking the machine’s path.

The decision to demolish homes on East Street had made the fight personal for Beachy and his wife. When they had first moved to New London, in the 1970s, they had lived across the street from the demolition site, in officers’ quarters at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. At night, their four sons would take a break from homework, hop the navy base fence, and get a sandwich at the deli on the corner of East Street, two doors up from the houses now facing the wrecking ball.

“There’s no way in hell I’m standing by while these guys try to demolish these houses,” Beachy said.

Barberi shut off his machine and folded his massive arms, frustrated at being unable to complete his job. Susette and her neighbors continued shouting obscenities at the NLDC official.

Kathleen Mitchell pulled up in her car. She had been listening to her police scanner and heard a dispatch to East Street. Mitchell looked at the crowd standing across the street from Beachy and his wife. Most of the onlookers opposed the NLDC. Yet no one else dared to sit shoulder to shoulder with Beachy. Mitchell looked at Susette before crossing the street and taking a seat next to the mayor and his wife. If it meant getting arrested, so be it, she thought.

Susette wanted to follow Mitchell, but Von Winkle stopped her. “You don’t want to look like a troublemaker,” he said.

Two police officers approached. “Mr. Beachy, Mrs. Beachy,” one of them began. Neither of the Beachys said a word. The officer advised them that they were trespassing and putting themselves and others in physical danger.

“You might as well arrest us because we’re not leaving,” Mitchell said.

“Will you walk down here and get in the police car?” the officer asked, looking at the mayor.

Beachy turned to his wife. “Don’t walk to the police car,” he told her. “Make them carry you out.”

Abundantly overweight, Mitchell didn’t feel like getting carried. “I’m not going to let you carry me,” Mitchell said, cracking a smile. She walked to the police car and climbed into the backseat.

“We don’t want to have to carry you,” an officer said to the mayor.

“We’re not leaving voluntarily,” he replied.

One officer grabbed Beachy’s wrists. Another grabbed his ankles. Together, they lifted and hauled him to the police car.

Mitchell watched through the rear window of the cruiser as the officers stuffed their own mayor into the back of another police car. What have we come to? Mitchell thought. She had never imagined the dispute would last this long and be this difficult. We’re fighting the big boys now. This isn’t just local politics.

Barberi fired up his excavator and began tearing the house down. Within fifteen minutes, a house that had stood for a hundred years had been reduced to splinters