Notes
†This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ms. Johnnie Mae Brown, a true warrior for justice, and to her family, friends, and her neighbors in Hyde Park.
1Except for people who explicitly requested otherwise, I have used pseudonyms.
2See http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/training/web/relocation/overview.cfm, accessed July 21, 2010.
3Specifically, ethnographic methods included participant observation, open-ended interviews, and the collection of life histories. Participant observation consisted of working as a volunteer at the Hyde Park community center (where in addition to observing and participating in Center activities, I was able to hold informal conversations with almost all residents over the course of fourteen months); volunteering for Hyde Park's neighborhood organization (the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee [HAPIC]); and attending informal and formal community events. In addition, I conducted extensive, open-ended interviews with approximately 35 residents, and approximately 25 public officials, developers, consultants, non-profit organization staff, and civic leaders from outside of the neighborhood. My most intense period of ethnographic research lasted from September 1998 through November 1999; from November 1999 through 2011, I kept in very close touch with HAPIC activists and other neighborhood residents and visited usually twice per year.
4For some examples of the extensive literature on this topic, see di Leonardo (Citation1998) and Reed (Citation1999).
5See also Peluso and Watts Citation2001; West Citation2006.
6Much of the information described here can also be found in Checker (Citation2005).
7HAPIC had no membership dues and considered anyone living in Hyde Park a member.
8From the “Southern Wood Piedmont Augusta Plant History,” a document prepared by SWP's attorney in 2004, on file with the author.
9As summarized in Governor's Task Force, Governor's Task Force on the Long-Term Health Care Needs for Southern Wood Piedmont Residents. Augusta, Georgia, Citation1996. Author's files.
10For some summaries of this work, see Checker (Citation2009); Fitchen (Citation1988); Shrader-Frechette (Citation2010); Tesh (Citation2000).
12 http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/6581542.html?storySection=story, accessed July 21, 2010.
13Over the years, residents continued to joke that they were “still waiting for Ms. Y to come to a meeting.”
14See http://www.fanning.uga.edu/work/images/brownfieldsfy08.pdf, accessed July 21, 2010.
15 http://www.epa.gov/aging/grants/grant-list/2008_0630_grant_1.htm, accessed February 9, 2010.
16The CSRA EOA is part of a statewide authority that among other things provides direct income assistance to help low-income Georgians pay their rent, utilities, and some medical bills.
17Some private non-profits have created capacity-building programs to address this problem, yet the problems discussed continue to plague the public funding process.
18Detention ponds retain water indefinitely, while retention ponds reduce flood damage by gathering storm water and eventually releasing it.