Moving On: A New Kind of Peace Activism

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted February 11, 2003.

"Our goal is to make it impossible to ignore the anti-war sentiment in this country."
– Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org

A tall, bearded young man, his blue suit hanging awkwardly on his body, steps to the microphone in an ornate room in Washington, D.C.'s JW Marriot Hotel. To the young man's right 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.

At the podium, the contrast is clear. The smart talkers in the tailored suits are at the top of their game, effectively making the case against an invasion of Iraq. Yet to those in the know, it is 22-year-old Eli Pariser, the tall guy in the rumpled blue suit, who is the powerhouse in the room. Pariser, who is International Campaigns Director of the organization MoveOn.org, tells the cameras that "the Internet is allowing Americans in unprecedented numbers to voice the degree to which mainstream America" disagrees with this war.

But Pariser's modest comments don't quite convey the tremendous scope of his success. For Pariser, along with MoveOn's founder Wes Boyd and his wife Joan Blades, are the brains and sweat behind a strikingly successful organization that has unquestionably emerged as the leader of the diverse peace movement that is desperately scrambling to derail the Bush war express.

A New Kind of Organization

MoveOn has leveraged the Internet to create a new kind of organization with the ability and credibility to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and move tens of thousands of people to action within hours. Without MoveOn, with its more than 750,000 members in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands more around the globe, the peace movement would not be the grassroots phenomenon it is today, garnering broad media attention and earning respect from many quarters.

In the most important ways, MoveOn is at the epicenter of the current peace effort. Yet, while most organizing and political energy by other groups is focused on mass demonstrations – including those in cities and countries around the world this coming weekend, (events that MoveOn strongly supports) – MoveOn is more focused on the grassroots, local media and members of Congress.

"In a sense," Pariser observes, "part of MoveOn's attraction is that it aims for normal people, not just activists, and engages them successfully."

Sincere, polite and reasonable, Eli Pariser modestly describes MoveOn as incredibly gratifying: "The efforts fund themselves ... we're just trying to keep up. We ask for a specific amount of money and much more pours in."

Beneath this Maine native's calm surface clearly lie major ambition and discipline. Pariser's parents are longtime organizers of an alternative school in Camden, Maine that takes high school dropouts and helps them earn diplomas. Clearly his parents did a terrific job of raising him. Right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Pariser, who graduated from the alternative Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, created a website called 9-11Peace.org, which advocated a peaceful response to 9/11 based on international law and calling on Bush and Congress to exercise restraint. The site was an instant global success, enlisting 500,000 signups worldwide. Not long afterward, Pariser joined up with Wes and Joan at MoveOn.

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