30th G8 summit

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The 30th G8 summit took place in Sea Island, Georgia, United States, on June 8- June 10, 2004.

[edit] Protests

The protests against the 2004 meeting of the G8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, took place over the course of several days in the cities of Brunswick and Savannah, Ga.

The protests began with an anti-war march in Brunswick on June 8 and an anti-G8 march in Savannah. A vigil on the night of June 9 attracted 300 people and the Fair World Fair was launched. Tensions between police and protestors grew during an environmental march the following day, during which a group of demonstrators faced down riot police outside of a chemical plant.

The last and most eventful action, the March for a Free Palestine, took place in Brunswick. Several activists made a replica of part of the wall being built between Israel and Palestine, and burnt it to the ground. A breakaway march took over the causeway leading to the G8 meeting and ended in a sit-in in front of a security fence. The police arrested some fifteen people.

The protests were considerably smaller than other American protests over the past few years, including the 2003 Anti-War movement and the Summit of the Americas in Miami seven months earlier. While those events drew thousands of people and sometimes as many as 100,000, the convergence in Georgia drew about 500-700.

[edit] Security

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated the summit a National Special Security Event (NSSE), because of the protests and so many heads of state of government attending. However, DHS started to handle another NSSE at the same time: the state funeral of former president Ronald Reagan. Some of the world leaders who attended the summit decided to extend their stay in the U.S. to attend the funeral in Washington. One of them was German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.