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Photographer embarks on a crusade for peace

Herb Snitzer has joined with Quakers to protest a military school in Georgia.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published November 15, 2006

Herb Snitzer has made a name nationally with his photographs of jazz celebrities. He's also become known locally for his efforts for civil rights. This weekend, he will protest for peace.

Snitzer will travel with several others to Georgia for what has become an annual protest of thousands at a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans.

The protest outside the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Ga., draws people who say graduates of the school have committed human rights abuses and murder in Latin America.

Snitzer, 74, said his activities simply reflect concerns he's held most of his life. Most of those with whom he'll travel this weekend, including his wife, Carol Dameron, are members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Snitzer himself is not a Quaker, a denomination known for its pacifist stance and early denouncement of slavery.

Quaker ideals support what he has believed since he was a teenager, he said.

"My thoughts and ideals about racial and social justice go back to my teenage years.

"It's the events of the second World War and the mass killing of the Jews. It just has informed and still does inform my life."

[Last modified November 15, 2006, 07:13:13]