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POLITICAL MISH-MASH
Call it like you want, Pete (Pub Notes, Nov.
1]. You and Flagpole do a poor job with elections
and your views come across as a concocted mish
mash simply designed to prod voters to vote
for candidates you personally support. Athens
has suffered greatly, lately, as we have all these
narrow-focus candidates who may seem "cool"
to you but are inexperienced and who typically
avoid issues such as property taxation and the
need for more jobs in Athens-Clarke County.
Saving trees and all that is great, but it is no
substitute for doing the "bread-and-butter" stuff
that can make Athens-Clarke County an attractive
place to live.
univlOl
From flagpole.com
NORMALTOWN WILDLIFE
For any birders out there in the Normaltown
area, I had a real treat on Thursday morn
ing [Nov. 2] as I was turning off Willow Run
onto Edwards Drive (Edwards runs parallel to
Oglethorpe.) I looked up and saw in front of
me this huge h’rd slowly flapping its way up
Edwards, flying only about eight feet off the
ground, its wings seeming to take up about a
third of the road. It went about half the block,
then headed into some fairly deep woods. It was
a Great Blue Heron. What it was doing so far in
town I don't know. I am not aware of any small
ponds in the area except for Larry Walton's on
Best.
Maybe Larry, or whoever bought his house,
should check their Koi population. It may now be
a lot lower than they think.
Charlie Gard'ner
Athens
FOR A NEIGHBORHOOD
A lot has been written and said about my
neighborhood—the close-knit Hancock-Reese
Street community—ever since Kappa Alpha fra
ternity announced its plans to build its cnapter
house in our district. Some of it simply isn’t true.
It's been said that our neighborhood is
no longer residential. The house that I have
called home for the past 20 years has been my
safe haven and four generations of my fam
ily, the Freemans, have graced its threshold,
including my great-great grandfather, Edward
Minor Freeman, who served .as the first African-
American postal clerk in Athens.
The Hancock corridor and Reese Street com
munity have long accommodated blacks from
both the upper class and the middle class. Not
only did we live peacefully side-by-side, but we
also symbolized a spirit of success in Athens.
Our community was listed on the National
Register of Historic Places some 30 years ago
because it contains important landmarks in our
history. Noteworthy are the Susan Medical Center,
the Ida Mae Hiram House (home of the first black
woman dentist in Georgia) and the Athens High
Industrial School, one of the first high schools
for blacks in the state.
The spirit of those African-American ancestors
and the memories of childhood dance among this
community and within its neighborhood struc
tures. Those memories and communal experiences
are vital to making a house a home and a com
munity a great place to live. As a child who grew
up in this community. I am a beneficiary of char
acter unmeasured and would hope my children
would be, too.
But my dream now faces an impending threat.
My neighborhood is going to change dramatically
if KA continues its plans to build in our com
munity. The issue at the forefront is the quality
of life in a residential neighborhood, not racial
confrontation.
We believe ; t would better for KA, and cer
tainly for us, if they accepted UGA's offer to
re-locate in the Greek village planned for River
Road. This decision should not be driven by
finances or legalities or race. We think that the
choice should simply be made by how you maxe
others feel and how what you do affects others'
lives.
We believe a new fraternity house in this
location will disrupt our neighborhood, displace
some residents and threaten our ongoing col
lective history. Altruism should call for these
students to choose the River Road location, thus
preserving the residential quality of life in the
Hancock-Reese Street community. Please do the
right thing!
Hope Iglehart
Athens
SOULLESS CITY?
I read Charlie Maddox's two-page spread in
Flagpole [advertisement, Nov. 1], and saw right
through it. His goal is to get as many white-
bread minivan-owning families of four as pos
sible into newly developed cookie-cutter subdivi
sions.
• Guess what. Chuck. We don't want those peo
ple here! That's what Lawrenceville is for. That's
what Houston/ Baton Rouge/ any bland soulless
city is for. The absence of the homogenized mid
dle class is what has saved Athens from becom
ing just another identical city of strip malls and
soccer practice. I just moved here, and I already
get it, so why doesn't a lifelong Athenian like
Charlie understand this?
Name Withheld
Athens
EMINENT DOMAIN
By now the political storm of words generated
by the election should be over. I certainly am
tired of all the charges and countercharges made
by the various candidates for elected offices.
Among the claims made by more than a few of
our politicians was that private property rights
have been protected in Georgia against abusive
eminent domain practices.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, no
matter which party is making the claim or taking
credit for it happening. The fact is that the elec
trical power industry, one of the most abusive of
eminent domain condemners, was basically left
almost totally unaffected by the bills passed this
year in the House and Senate. There still is not
any oversight of the industry by the PSC, even
with the overwhelming evidence of widespread
abuse of property owners in eminent domain
proceedings.
The industry still gets to pick the attorney
who will act as special master (judge) in con
demnation hearings, a practice so unfair as to
give a stench to the whole process and under
mine any respect that a property owner may
have had for the judicial process in general. An
eminent domain seizure by the power industry is
so one-sided as to virtually assure a victory for
the industry over private property rights at the
special master level every time. So much for due
process or justice.
The only remedy for this sorry situation, since
our politicians have demonstrated a complete
lack of courage to take on the political muscle of
the electrical power industry in Georgia, is a jury
trial. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider
trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined
by man by which a government can be held to
principles of its constitution." In 1735, Andrew
Hamilton said "the jury has the right beyond all
dispute, to determine both the law and the fact
and where they do not doubt of the law, they
ought to do so. This of leaving it to the judg
ment of the court... in effect renders juries use
less (to say no worse) in many cases."
Juries are free to render verdicts (or awards)
to any level that they feel is needed to establish
justice regardless of instructions by any judge or
other authority. This independence of juries, this
removal of outsidt influence over their delibera
tions, is the sole protector of such an old-fash
ioned, out-of-date American concept as the right
to own, truly own, property. Without it we are
not citizens, we are subjects. Protect it fiercely
for freedom.
Don Johm on
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