He chaired the Legal Advisory Committee of the Rhode Island Council for Human Rights; marched against nuclear proliferation; and on his wedding night (an elopement with Dorothy Rabinowitz, a social worker and fellow activist) both bride and groom attended a benefit dinner for the NAACP.
Fellow activists Marie and Jim Bohlen, Patrick Moore, and law student Paul Côté were among the earliest members.
An environmental columnist, Stowe understood the symbiotic relationship between the media and activism and recruited gifted journalists to the Amchitka campaign.
He was on the executive board of the New Democratic Party of Canada but declined requests to run for office, preferring to work independently as an activist.
"[5] Bob Hunter, who later became president of Greenpeace International, eulogized Stowe in his Vancouver Sun newspaper column: "No one could say that Irving wasted his time here.