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G-8 Summit hosts pre-emptive repression
Compiled by Liz Allen
May 12, (AGR) — The G-8 Summit is to be held on Sea Island,
70 miles to the south of Savannah GA, June 8 -- 10. The private resort
of Sea Island, an elite resort area with beautiful beaches and world
renowned golf courses, will be surrounded by an ultratight cordon while
George W. Bush hosts the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, Japan,
Italy, Canada, and Britain.
Demonstrations against the summit will take place in the small coastal
town of Brunswick, GA, sited at the only entrance to the causeway road
first leading to St Simons Island and then to Sea Island just a few
miles away.
With an unknown number of protesters planning to visit, Savannah is
adopting a siege mentality. Shop owners have ordered plywood for their
windows; citizen patrols have been organized to safeguard architectural
gems; Girl Scout troops that had planned to visit from June 8 -- 10
have been told to reschedule. The city’s art college is ending
classes a week early, and administrators are encouraging everyone to
leave town.
In a move that has rankled civil libertarians, Savannah and the municipalities
nearest Sea Island have adopted a new set of ordinances intended to
keep public gatherings short and small.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit May 10 against the city
of Brunswick and Glynn County on behalf of people planning to demonstrate
at the economic summit, saying laws requiring permits for groups of
six or more people illegally restrict free speech. The ordinances require
that demonstrators release the government from any potential lawsuit
or claim, even if government officials are found directly responsible
for injuring a protester.
“This attempt to absolve the government of any potential wrongdoing
is legally dubious and an invitation to abuse,” ACLU Georgia Legal
Director Gerry Weber said.
Brunswick and Glynn County approved laws in March requiring permits
for groups of six or more people gathering on public property for any
purpose aimed at attracting the attention of bystanders.
The laws require groups to put up deposits equal to the estimated costs
for clean-up and police protection. They also prohibit participants
from carrying signs larger than two feet by three feet, or on sticks
that could be used as weapons.
The lawsuit in federal court comes 18 days after a three-judge panel
of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar law in
Augusta, GA.
Robert Randall, a protest organizer in Brunswick, said the atmosphere
had become excessively paranoid and confrontational.
“The police are being trained to look upon us as enemy combatants,”
Randall said. “Unfortunately our local officials have adopted a
very repressive set of ordinances designed to criminalize free speech.”
Bob Scanlon, Savannah’s G-8 director, said it would be irresponsible
not to plan for the worst. “We’re handling this the way you
raise kids,” he said, sitting in an office in a former cotton warehouse
overlooking the Savannah River. “Let them have free rein, but if
they step over a certain line, the reins get jerked back. That’s
how I raised my son, and he turned out well.”
20,000 or so law enforcement officials are expected to safeguard shipping
facilities, power plants, and the five miles of private beaches that
front the Sea Island Beach Club.
As chief of G-8 law enforcement planning, Captain Gerry Long of the
Savannah Police Department is helping train the city’s 580 officers
in crowd control and the laws regarding diplomatic immunity. She is
also helping coordinate the movements of the thousands of law enforcement
officials enlisted for duty, among them Georgia parole officers, FBI
agents, and Secret Service officers.
“We’re going to be so stealth, you won’t know where we
are,” she said.
Protest organizers question why officials in Glynn County and the City
of Brunswick, which abut Sea Island, have refused to grant any march
or rally permits. Others bristle at what they say is overzealous surveillance
of their organizational efforts. The Brunswick police have issued a
vague warning to residents to report people taking pictures of nontourist
sites, and officials on Hilton Head Island to the north have sent an
e-mail message asking hotel owners to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation
about “suspicious” bookings.
Residents have been enlisted into “ambassador brigades,” which
will double as a civic surveillance system.
Mark McDonald of Historic Savannah explained how a rotating contingent
of volunteers armed with cellphones would guard the public squares day
and night. “They’ll give out information to those who wish
us well, and serve as an early warning system to those who have other
plans,” he said.
Anti-corporate globalization actions planned for the summit meeting
include a 10-day march from Florida to Brunswick by the Florida Coalition
for Peace and Justice, ending on June 5; a Fair World Fair (formerly
G8 Carnival) in Brunswick, Georgia starting June 6 and intended to be
a model for productive educational alternatives in globalization; the
Anarchist-led Fix Shit Up Action to aid the local community; an interfaith
prayer service for Social Justice planned for June 7; a Brunswick portion
of the TOES Summit, an international non-governmental forum for the
presentation, discussion, and advocacy of the economic ideas and practices
upon which a more just and sustainable society can be built; and a Rally
and March Against the Summit and the War.
The company that owns the Sea Island Resort, home of the summit conference,
offered demonstrators a nine-acre parcel just outside Brunswick.
A local organizer, Harry Lyde, rejected the parcel, saying it was contaminated
with toxic waste. “We’d still like to have our events in the
city’s public park,” Lyde said. “That’s our right.”
The G8 Fix Shit Up action, organized by the Southeast Anarchist Network,
calls for a force of activists to spend their protest time renovating
houses and doing important environmental cleanup, thus addressing some
of the area’s most desperate needs. Needs that are even more important
due to county and state tax money being diverted to feed the humongous
costs of hosting the G-8 summit.
The wages for service workers at many of the hotels and restaurants
of the tourist oriented islands have failed to increase while living
costs have climbed sharply. Now, due to G-8 security, service workers
at the island resorts, golf courses, restaurants, and small businesses
are being forced to take anywhere from one to three weeks off of work,
despite living from paycheck to paycheck.
Corporate globalization plus poor conservation, pollution, and over-harvesting
have resulted in a progressive loss of the once thriving shrimp industry
in Brunswick. Seapak and King Shrimp used to buy enough seafood to support
a thriving local industry, but due to globalization, not enough local
shrimp is being bought to sustain local fishing communities. Ecologically
devastating shrimp farms in third world countries are so much cheaper
because of lower with wages that the local shrimpers just can’t
compete. This makes tourism an even more vital part of the local economy,
but the summit will disrupt tourism for at least a week or more.
Environmental issues in the area affect everyone from the wealthy Sea
Islanders -- who are concerned about their island’s sea turtles
sensitivity to local water pollution -- to the poor children of Brunswick,
who endure ill health due to their schools’ location next to one
of the 20 worst toxic waste sites in the country. Four Superfund sites
are found in the small-town area of Brunswick alone. Waters that used
to provide bountiful fish to feed those who could not afford groceries
are now poisoned so thoroughly as to be inedible except by the desperate
and foolhardy. More then 1,000 acres of forest have been clear-cut in
the Brunswick area in the last three months alone. Racism — apparent
here in plantation country — is particularly visible when the environmental
dump locations are considered. Dixville, a section of Brunswick which
houses many of the poorest people of color, is located near the Hercules
plant, one of the worst polluters in the state.
Sources: ACLU, AP, Infoshop, New York Times
Kerry’s heiress wife fights to keep
tax details secret
By Rupert Cornwell
Washington, DC, May 10 — The refusal of Teresa Heinz Kerry,
the heiress wife of the presidential contender John Kerry, to make public
her tax returns is causing a quandary for Democratic campaign managers
as they shape her husband’s bid to capture the White House in November.
The release of tax records is a virtual rite of passage for US presidential
candidates and their spouses -- normally couples file a joint return
which is routinely made public by their campaigns. But Ms. Kerry, whose
inherited fortune through her late husband, the grocery magnate John
Heinz, is worth $500 million or more, is a special case. The Kerrys
would be far and away the richest first family in modern American history,
owners of five homes (the Bushes, by comparison, are worth some $20
million, while John Kennedy died before he could inherit his father’s
wealth).
The Massachusetts senator has indirectly used his wife’s money
for his presidential effort, when he raised a $6.4 million mortgage
on their home in Boston last year to keep his campaign afloat. But Ms.
Kerry remains reluctant to go public, even though, sooner or later,
she probably has little choice.
In a weekend television interview, she insisted her finances were meshed
with those of her three adult sons by her marriage to Heinz. “What
I have and what I receive is not just mine, it is also my children’s,
and I don’t have the right to make public what is theirs,”
she said. A similar argument was used by Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic
vice-presidential nominee in 1984, who refused to make public the tax
returns of her husband, John Zaccaro, a businessman with allegedly dubious
connections. When his tax files were released, they contained no damaging
material, but by then the controversy had dogged Walter Mondale’s
campaign for weeks, drowning out his political message. The last thing
the Democrats want is a repeat in what promises to be a close race this
year.
In fact, Ms. Kerry’s returns may reveal few details about her children’s
wealth beyond the already known fact that the family has about 10 trust
funds. But they will show that she has a huge annual income -- as much
as $30 million a year, according to an estimate in the New York Times.
It is also possible that, thanks to loopholes and concessions, she pays
relatively little tax. That would be perfectly legal — but further
ammunition for Republicans as they depict her husband as a moneyed elitist
out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Another theory is that Ms. Kerry fears publication of her tax returns
would fuel a clamor for further financial data, this time compromising
her children’s right to privacy.
Source: Independent (UK)
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