Rage Against the Machine
ERICJOHNSON
Harrisburg activist Lori Davis unloads on Augusta’s “Chicago-style” politics
The Metro Spirit sat down and talked with former mayoral candidate and Harrisburg activist Lori Davis. She chose to start with Harrisburg. “Like Sarah Palin said, you can’t put lipstick on a pig,” she says. “I get out of my car with my cell phone and my .38 – why should I have to live that way when we’ve been in a five-year battle?” Though she asks a lot of questions like that, she seldom waits for a response. In this case, she just keeps going, alleging that her five-year battle to take back Harrisburg has received no help from local officials. “We got more pushback than you’ve ever seen in your life,” she says. “We’re still getting it, and Harrisburg is continuing to get worse.” Outside of a couple of code enforcement officers and a member of the marshal’s office, she has nothing good to say about anyone in a position of power. Rather, she points to orchestrated government malfeasance at just about every level, all coordinated by the mostly unnamed movers and shakers in town, the so-called Cabal. “Law enforcement officers have been told to stand down in Harrisburg,” she says. “I know that for a fact. One officer told a friend of mine — he didn’t know it was a friend of mine — that I just needed to move.”
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She first moved to Harrisburg in 2000, when she and her husband at the time were building a home in North Augusta. “We were living in Waters Edge and our house sold quicker than we thought it would,” she says. “We wanted to live somewhere close and inexpensive while we were building our 8,600-square-foot home over in the River Club, so we came to Harrisburg and bought that house. Our idea was to live there while the house was built and then move and rent it.” Divorce, however, changed the trajectory of her life. “There’s no way I could afford an 8,600 square-foot house — not even to pay the power bill, really — and I loved the Harrisburg area and the house,” she says. “So I moved back over here.” “Over here” is on Crawford Avenue, just down from Walton Way and the gates of Tubman Education Center. “You know how close Waters Edge is to Harrisburg, and do you think we had any problems over there?” she asks. “You didn’t have to be politically active — there was no reason to be, V. 23 | NO. 04