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Word for word
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 7, 2003
On a rainy day in November, about 30 California women gathered at Love Field near Point Reyes Station in Marin County. They stripped naked and posed for a photo.
No, not that kind of photo. It was a political protest. With a photographer perched on a ladder to direct them, the women used their bodies to form the letters of the word "PEACE." Their intent: stop the impending war with Iraq. The Point Reyes Light then published the photo of the group, who called themselves "Unreasonable Women."
In December, it was the men's turn to strip and spell.
This time the photo shoot occurred in Florida, with pictures snapped by a photographer best known for his photos of alligators and the Suwannee River. On Dec. 21, 22 men -- described in a news release as "college students, old hippies, alternative culture folks and Vietnam veterans" -- met at a farm in Marion County where, despite the chilly weather, they took off their clothes and posed for photographer John Moran.
Participants were assured in advance that "there will be no woman allowed near the site of the shoot. . . . Feel safe, feel confident, and more importantly, feel BRAVE. Your collective action will become a page of history."
What follows is a report on what happened. It was posted Dec. 22 via e-mail to the Florida Green Party's subscriber list by state party co-chair Mark Kamleiter, 52, a St. Petersburg lawyer who helped organize the event. The CCAWT he mentions is the Community Coalition Against War and Terrorism, a Gainesville protest group.
Moran, until recently a photo editor at the Gainesville Sun, offered the photos to that paper, but it declined to publish them. So far no other paper has published pictures of Florida's Men of Peace.
We took that as a dare. You can see the pictures online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/floridagreens/message/3847. -- CRAIG PITTMAN, Times staff writer
Friends:
While across Florida peace lovers took action for peace this weekend, a very special peace event took place on a sunny hillside near Gainesville. Inspired by the brave women of Marin County, California, who created an imagine of the word "Peace," with their nude bodies, Florida men gathered to create their own male statement for peace.
Men from Largo, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Gainesville, Orange Lake, Melrose, Newberry, Ft. Myers and Alachua crafted a gigantic peace sign and the word "peace," by arranging their nude bodies on a Gainesville hillside. These images were captured on film by a renowned photojournalist and nature photographer, John Moran. This was a lighthearted moment, which resulted in an extremely serious statement for peace. These bodies, pale and white, laid out, exposed on the ground resemble symbolically the dead that the pending war with Iraq will most certainly produce. May all who look upon these photographs reflect upon the menacing death cloud that is hanging over Iraq.
The statement of this photo moment was enriched by the fact that many of the men who came together to create these images were previously unknown to each other. They were bound together by only one thing: their united desire to stop the American war machine. After the photo shoot many participants went into Gainesville to join a CCAWT peace rally outside of the Oaks Shopping Mall. Pulling our peace signs from the trunks of our cars, we joined those already there, being warmly received in instant unity.
A beautiful day ended as new friends from around Florida gathered around a long table to share a meal together. Again the collegial warmth of being fellow travelers on the road of peace surrounded this beautiful moment. It is in moments like these, as we shared around the table, that we knew with certainty that the only relevant fact we needed to know about each other was our solidarity for peace.