Kerry's wife funds critics of Bush ads

WASHINGTON – The non-profit, tax-exempt organization representing the families of September 11 victims who are critical of campaign ads by President Bush is a project of the Tides Center, which has received millions of dollars in charitable contributions from foundations chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry, WorldNetDaily has learned.

"September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" is a pacifist organization that has opposed not only the war in Iraq but the war in Afghanistan as well. It is a project of the Tides Center, one of the pet causes of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira Heinz Endowment, both directed by Mrs. Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

The group delivered up to the New York Daily News Thursday seasoned spokesmen Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg and others to attack President Bush's re-election campaign ads. None of the critics of the ads in that original story were identified as members of Peaceful Tomorrows.

The Peaceful Tomorrows activists charged the campaign ads exploited the September 11 terrorist attacks for political advantage.

That story in the New York Daily News touched off a national media firestorm. By Thursday night, the Peaceful Tomorrows activists were on every national television news show, often identified simply as relatives of the victims of the September 11 attack rather than members of an activist organization, supported with tax-exempt Heinz funds, with a specifically anti-Bush agenda.

Peaceful Tomorrows is much more than an independent group of grieving survivors. It is a stridently antiwar organization that has ferociously criticized the Bush administration since it was founded about a year after the attacks.

Peaceful Tomorrows claims to represent 120 families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Following the media blitz by the organization's activists, John Kerry himself weighed in on the controversy.

In New Orleans, Kerry said Bush was trying to "scare America" and "change the subject" with the ads.

"You can understand why he's doing that," Kerry said. "He can't come out here and talk to you about jobs. He can't come out here and talk to you about protecting the environment. He can't talk to you about balancing the budget."

The Bush ads contain only fleeting imagery of the Sept. 11 attacks. ABC News' George Stephanopoulos acknowledged that in his own report on "World News Tonight": "You'll have to look very closely to see what all the fuss is about. Blink twice and you'll miss it. But those four seconds set off the first firestorm of this new campaign, when some 9/11 families cried foul."

As WorldNetDaily reported last month, the Tides Foundation, a 28-year-old grant-making institution, is one of Teresa Heinz Kerry's favorite distributors of charitable funds. It sponsors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars radical groups that, among other things, protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, demand open U.S. borders, provide the legal defense of suspected terrorists and promote the spread of Islamist ideology in the U.S.

Heinz Kerry, worth an estimated three-quarters of a billion dollars, working through the Howard Heinz Endowment, oversaw the donation of more than $4 million to the Tides Foundation between 1995 and 2001. For a fee, Tides protects the anonymity of donors by directing tax-deductible contributions to specific groups.

Heinz Kerry not only serves as chairman of the Howard Heinz Endowment, she also sits on the board of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment.

We saw, read it and heard it first on FR. Here is an excellent example by DeBug=int13:

Whining 9/11 relatives have been paid by Tides Foundation!

Thanks to DeBug=int13 for providing these links and the reality of these scumbags.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091052/posts?
page=96#96

And who is this survivors group "9-11 families for a Peaceful Tomorrow"?

Aww - phooey on them -

The real name of the outfit is September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

And from all appearances it is a fund-raising front for the Tides Center (EIN 94-3213100) of San Francisco - and "Peaceful Tomorrows" doesn't try to hide that they are affiliated on their contribute page. I know some Freepers are familiar with the Tides Center, and for those who are not, it is a non-profit organization that rakes in fairly big bucks ($63+ mill in FY 2002, which included $5+ mill in Government grants) to distribute out grants and allocations to various and sundry "social" projects and causes, with left-wing groups getting decent cuts of the action - they consistently lay out a good bit of change to anti-second amendment groups, for instance. September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows doesn't appear to be necessarily autonomous from the Tides Center. Interestingly, the P.O. box listed on the "Peaceful Tomorrows" site shares the same location address and zip in the neighborhood with such notable organizations as The New Formulation: an Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books (a biannual journal examining the value of recent publications to the development of contemporary anarchist theory and politics), Institute for Anarchist Studies, Radical Magick (an "Eclectic Ceremonial Based Magick Group"), South Asian AIDS Action, Lesbian and Gay Labor Network, Dyke Action Machine! or DAM! - not that there's anything wrong with that (in Jerry Seinfeld voice). The Fellowship of Reconciliation website that is also mentioned on "Peaceful Tomorrows" contribute page says it all - offices in Wash. DC and also San Francisco.

Though they may splash New York this and New York that all around, "Peaceful Tomorrows" is created and based in Oakland California, founded and directed by Barry Amundson and sister-in-law Kelly Campbell, with the web technical matters being handled by Steve Simitzis of Saturn5 Productions in San Francisco, which has an apparent mission statement of providing web consulting and "hosting for artists, online communities, activist organizations"

Amundson is Designer and IT manager for the San Francisco branch of Fenton Communications, a "public interest communications" company that has offices in Washington DC, New York NY and San Francisco.

They have a rather interesting list of clientele that include -

MoveOn.org
People For the American Way
Nelson Mandela - Presidential Election
Greenpeace
Ben and Jerry's
Rock the Vote (which is also a "top five" paid contractor for the Tides Center)

Can probe here for the whole listing.

Here's a bit from lengthy LA Times article about what they do and the crowd they hang with - I think the Moderators won't have a cow over this excerpt -

October 1, 2002
Operation: Peace
Antiwar movement reflects a different America than in past eras, but diverse allies keep the spirit alive.
By REED JOHNSON, TIMES STAFF WRITER

"We want to poison your mind," teases the woman with slate-colored hair outside First Baptist Church in Koreatown. Swathed in natural fibers and sporting an anti-Dubya button, she's minding a table piled high with books, pamphlets and stickers decrying the sorry state of the planet--wars, corporate malfeasance, environmental disasters-in-the-making, and so on--along with half a dozen copies of the revolutionary rabble-rousings of Chairman Mao.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But the rally's emotional climax occurred when Kelly Campbell and Barry Amundson, members of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group composed of relatives of 9/11 victims, embraced beneath a giant video screen where images of the burning twin towers had flashed by moments earlier. Barry Amundson, 32, is the brother of Craig Amundson, a 28-year-old Army multimedia specialist who was killed when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon; Campbell is his sister-in-law. Both were in Los Angeles to voice their conviction that the response to last year's attacks on New York and Washington shouldn't be more mangled bodies and grieving relatives.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And over at Indymedia -

9/10 Event in L.A. Features Peaceful Tomorrows
The Nation | 08.09.2002 20:19

"starring" Tom Hayden, Robert Scheer, Alfre Woodard, Ramona Ripston, Medea Benjamin, Maria Elena Durazo, Rev. George Regas and Rabbi Allen Freehling.

(Interesting links on that page)

Socialist birds of a feather flocking together........

96 posted on 03/05/2004 2:28:18 AM PST by DeBug=int13

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