– Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org
February 11, 2003
To the young man's right (Eli Pariser) is the suave, articulate Ambassador Joe Wilson, who served as Deputy Chief of Mission to Iraq in the Clinton Administration. To his left is former Congressman Tom Andrews, the savvy new National Director of Win Without War, a broad-based anti-war coalition.
These men, along with Darcy Scot Martin of Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), Rev. Brenda Gerton-Mitchell of the National Council of Churches and others are at the Marriot to make the case to the American people for the continuation of UN inspections as a strategy of containment. The goal: to avoid destabilizing the Middle East, which would increase the chances of future terrorist attacks and expose U.S. military and Iraqi civilians and soldiers to the retaliation with biological and chemical weapons that an invasion of Iraq may well provoke.
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The Moveon 527, which receives major support from billionaires Peter Lewis and George Soros, is called the Moveon Voter Fund, and has not run any ads in four months, according to Trevor Fitzgibbon of Fenton Communications, which represents Moveon. A third entity, called Moveon.org, is a 501c4 committee and is allowed to do political advocacy work.
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Fenton Communications is a public relations firm which was founded by David Fenton in 1982. It specialises in PR for not-for-profit organisations.
"Fenton Communications, a Washington, DC-based public relations firm, bills itself as the nation's leading "public-interest" firm. It is a founding member of the so-called Business for Social Responsibility. Yet Fenton has played a key role in a growing number of health scare campaigns involving both his non-profit and for-profit clients."
Fenton runs ads on Air America Radio.
David Fenton
Fenton is also a co-founder of three independent nonprofit organizations: Environmental Media Services, which coordinates communications activities for environmental groups; New Economy Communications, which works on human rights issues in the global economy; and the Death Penalty Information Center. Fenton was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the “No Nukes” concerts in 1979 with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and other artists. He is a native of New York City.