- Beside a framed text of the Ten Commandments in Dressner's
Family Restaurant on St Simons Island, there is a picture of a small boy
cuddling the American flag. Dressner's serves a breakfast fit for patriots
- eggs, bacon, grits and Coke - and three markedly patriotic-looking chaps
in pressed white shirts, hunting vests and the kind of wraparound shades
a Federal Agent's granny might buy him for a passing-out present are doing
their damnedest to "blend in" with the locals. Should President
Bush and his foreign chums drop in for the $5 special, a table would quickly
be found - a Xeroxed poster in the window offers a "Warm Southern
Welcome to Members of the G8 Summit". But this is unlikely. Bush,
Blair et al are safely corralled in the gated Sea Island complex some four
miles away from St Simons Village. And out there in the community, the
Warm Southern Welcome is wearing paper-thin.
-
- When it was announced a year ago that President Bush
would be hosting the 2004 G8 Summit on Sea Island (Sea Island as in cotton,
as in slaves), the upscale resort where George Bush Snr and Barbara spent
their honeymoon, there was a surge of civic pride in this sleepy corner
of coastal Georgia. The summit, locals confidently predicted, would put
the Golden Isles (so called for the region's spectacular sunsets) on the
world map. Millions of government dollars would pour into local coffers.
There would be untold improvements to the islands' infrastructure; holiday
rentals - on which the seasonal economy substantially rests - would go
through the roof; local shops and restaurants would see an unprecedented
boom. In short, the Golden Isles would enjoy their very own Klondike.
-
- It didn't work out. As the summit opens today, the atmosphere
on St Simons is more ghost town than gold-rush. In the days before an earthquake,
it's said to be the cats who leave first. The cats of St Simons appear
unfazed - it's the eerie absence of automobiles that tells you something
is about to blow. In a community where four- or five-car families are not
unusual, driveways stand deserted. For days, the Humvees streaming across
the slender causeway that is the islands' only link to the mainland have
been met with nose-to-tail traffic streaming in the opposite direction;
around half the islands' residents have evacuated, scared silly by the
double, and largely undifferentiated, threats of international terrorism
and violent protest.
-
- "How did this happen?" asks local teacher David
Ray Dockery ("Hairy Dave" to his friends), hurling industrial
quantities of organic cereal and dog food into his pick-up in preparation
for the exodus to the mainland. "We're just a little-bitty island.
No one ever thought we'd be put in a position where we'd have a bullseye
on our back."
-
- Paranoia, perhaps. But there's nothing like the chunter
of helicopters to put the wind up a generation raised on M*A*S*H. The skies
along the coast, normally the arena for spectacular aeronautics by brown
pelicans, are black with military aircraft, swooping low over the houses
on endless security sorties. Roadside checkpoints, manned by cheery grunts
cradling machine-guns, are scarcely more reassuring.
-
- "This is real scary shit," says Jay Thompson,
a Delta flight attendant, who has decided to sit out the siege at home.
"We never had a war here. We're not used to seeing tanks and guns
on American soil. This is stuff you see in movies."
-
- It's not hard to see why the security services plumped
for this location. An island off the end of an island, it is eminently
defensible. The romantic history of the presidential honeymoon was just
the icing on the cake. Less romantic souls have suggested that Sea Island
was selected because Martha's Vineyard and other, groovier East Coast islands
refused point-blank to host the summit and only Bill Jones, the third-generation
owner of the Sea Island Company, and the area's biggest employer, was snobbish
and greedy enough to say "Yes".
-
- Cheri Leavy, editor of Coastal Illustrated, an organ
devoted to reports of bridal showers and the charitable doings of the Colonial
Dames of America, flaps her fan in the face of cynics. "What an amazing
honour that President Bush and the G8 Summit Committee chose Sea Island,
Georgia, as their meeting spot to discuss matters of international significance!"
she breathes. "To picture the world leaders travelling our streets
through the lazy moss-draped oaks gives me a sense of peace as they will
leave their hurried paces at home."
-
- St Simons, however, has also traditionally attracted
a Bohemian fringe of artists and writers. At Beachview Books, a gathering
place for embattled, vociferous liberals, attitudes are is less gung-ho.
Larry, editor of The Great Speckled Seagull, a "semi-underground"
periodical, is a gentle radical who wears a cowboy hat with a feather in
it and carves weirdly beautiful faces in the island's trees. He has just
heard a rumour that 2,000 body bags have been delivered to the clapboard
Chamber of Commerce across the road from the bookstore. This intelligence
is passed around like a joint at a fortysomething party, a delicious whiff
of recreational danger. Five minutes later, one of the island's fire chiefs
drops by, fresh from a briefing. It's not a rumour. The body bags are here,
together with a refrigerated lorry to take away the corpses. "I liked
it better when it was a rumour," says Larry.
-
- The fire chief is glad to take the weight off his feet
and shoot the breeze. All leave at the island's 13 fire stations has been
cancelled for the last three weeks. Firefighters, who double on St Simons
as the ambulance service, have received intensive training in dealing with
"biological, chemical and explosive emergencies". Public and
official nervousness was not helped by the announcement, last week, of
a planned al-Qa'ida attack on "significant events in the US",
but the fire chief considers they've got things taped. He reckons you'd
need a crop duster to deliver significant amounts of chemical/biological
weapons and all air traffic, apart from government aircraft and the three
daily commercial flights from Atlanta, has been suspended for the duration
of the summit. Just in case, there are Patriot missiles parked on the beach,
ready to shoot suspects out of the sky. The fire chief is someone you'd
want around in a crisis, a big, comfortable man who manages to make Patriot
missiles sound kinda friendly, but not all his inside information is so
reassuring. The firefighters, he confides, will be issued with a biological
antidote for their personal use. There won't be any antidote for members
of the public, but at least the firemen will be around to shovel up the
remains and stop disease spreading in the 90-degree heat.
-
- For many islanders, the massive security operation unfolding
on their doorstep is too much, too late. And certainly there seems to be
something a little skewed about this Soviet-style display of hardware in
a community where nobody bothers to lock their door. In a flurry of public
officiousness, 17 Czech house framers whose visas had expired were taken
off the island in handcuffs and deported; the fact that they had been working
here a year before the location of the summit was announced did little
to mute the trumpeting of this national security coup.
-
- The biggest threat to public safety, in the fire chief's
opinion, is confrontation between anti-G8 protesters and the island's massively
beefed-up police force. "The Feds are taking into consideration that
this is south-east Georgia, where a lot of people carry guns," he
says, with something like pride. And for local authorities, mindful of
violent clashes at previous summits in Genoa and Seattle, it's protesters
rather than terrorists who are the real bogeymen. In the spirit of Christian
reconciliation, the First Presbyterian Church ran a "Meet the Protesters"
evening of food and fellowship with a "fun program" of games
such as "What's My Issue?" and "Who Wants to Be An Activist?".
Kathy, who runs the Nature's Gifts store on St Simons' main drag, has stockpiled
1,000 bottles of mineral water among the sun-catchers and ceramic frogs.
The water is to hand out to protesters. "I figured that as long as
everybody keeps cool, it'll be all right," she says.
-
- Not everyone takes this hospitable stance. A State of
Emergency granting extra powers to local law enforcement was announced
by the State Governor on 7 May, and while nowhere has yet been "set
aside" for the protesters to protest (a quaint notion in itself),
a playing-field over on the mainland has been fenced for use as a detention
centre. On the island, a rash of fly-posted "WE HATE G8" bumper-stickers
and neatly stencilled pictures of George Bush, swinging a missile like
a baseball bat with the legend "Let's Play Ball" had given cause
for concern. "There was a bunch of people in real nice cars singing
peace songs down by Gould's Inlet," offers Mimi Skelton, a St Simons
lawyer. "They didn't look too frightening."
-
- Mimi, like many St Simons residents who go to work on
the mainland, has had to suspend business while the island is in security
lockdown. "A week's enforced vacation is all right if you can afford
it," she points out. "But it's those on the lowest incomes who
suffer most." The local shrimp-fishing industry, falling foul of the
the three-mile exclusion zone around Sea Island, is also out of action
for the duration of the summit, with no hope of government compensation.
It's no wonder that patriotic fervour is fading.
-
- "This time George Bush really has shit and fell
back in it," says Wanda Bullard, who teaches children with learning
difficulties in Brunswick. Wanda's school runs a holiday lunch programme,
offering underprivileged (mainly black) children a hot midday meal. This
too has been cancelled because the school has been commandeered as an emergency
centre by government agents. "It's plain disgusting," Wanda fumes.
"Bush and his cronies are going to be sittin' around Sea Island discussing
world hunger, as it affects, say, children in Africa, while African-American
kids are going hungry right here because of them."
-
- There are no children, either, on St Simons. Normally
the first week of the school holiday marks the start of the "season",
with holiday-makers arriving to take advantage of the spectacular World
Heritage beaches. Today the beaches, patrolled by sharky, high-speed gunboats,
are empty and shorn of the sea broom and bramble that provided much-needed
shade for humans and wildlife (terrorists who make it past the tanks and
missiles might hide there). Much has been made of President Bush's personal
fondness for the loggerhead turtles who nest along the shoreline. He gave
his personal assurance that no turtle would be disturbed by the world leaders.
In fact, dead turtles have been washing ashore at a rate of 40 a week because
the Department of Natural Resources, which monitors the toxic effluent
of the shipping injury, has been suspended for the summit. On the bright
side, a sophisticated electronic tag-and-track device has been made available,
at the government's expense, to all remaining turtles. People round here
say the turtles are working for the CIA.
-
- And what of the fabled bonanza for local business? Some
of the shops on St Simons are boarded up against protesters. Others are
open, but empty.
-
- Last week shopkeepers took out an advertisement begging
for local custom to make up for the lack of profitable visitors. (Feds
aren't big on buying knick-knacks). The hotel and rental industry, with
the notable exception of The Sea Island Company, has suffered a massive
loss.
-
- One hotel was block-booked by government agencies, presumably
to queer the pitch for the more affluent protester, and last week, the
bookings were cancelled. No apology, no explanation, and, crucially, no
compensation.
-
- So there won't be too many people on St Simons waving
the G8 flags today. "No matter which way you look at it, you're polishing
a turd," says Hairy Dave. "You can polish it up as much as you
want, dress it up in pretty pink ribbons, and what have you got at the
end? A shiny turd."
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=529162
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