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Free Food Hurts G-8 Summit Restaurants
Thu Jun 10, 4:19 AM ETBy SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
SAVANNAH, Ga. - The Group of Eight summit isn't just about free trade, it's about free food. And that is starving some nearby restaurants.
A ballroom offered two buffets filled with pasta, sandwiches and salad. A restaurant featured grilled pork chops and shrimp-ka-bob. All free of charge.
Officially, the food was just for journalists covering the summit. But day and night, police officers, Secret Service agents, military personnel, volunteers and government workers lined up for gratis meals.
On Wednesday afternoon, there was a table full of law-enforcement officers in dark uniforms with POLICE emblazoned across their backs. There was a man in fatigues whose shoulder patch read "Air Combat Command." Plenty of summit volunteers were there feasting too, along with White House staff members and other government workers.
But at Cheryl Power's restaurant on the Savannah River, lobsters lay three-deep in a tank, and customers filled only three of 40 tables.
"We're down 95 percent," Power said. "I'm not exaggerating."
The free food cost $400,000, part of a pot of $10 million raised by the G-8 National Host Committee, a tax-exempt group created to finance the summit.
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There was also an unmistakable corporate flavor here.
In return for renting mobile phones, Cingular Wireless was permitted to hawk its hardware from a sprawling booth with a giant inflatable model of its X-shaped symbol.
But the human rights and other groups that usually circulate at G-8 summits were absent.
One group that has been a fixture at previous summits, the international aid group Oxfam, said it was told not to come...
― Kingfish Disraeli (Kingfish), Thursday, 10 June 2004 18:34 (twenty-two years ago)