15 April 2008

It’s Tax Day in the United States — the deadline for filing our personal federal income tax returns. In a few minutes, I’m going to head across the bay to meet up with Berkeley’s notorious squadron of Code Pink protesters at the Marine Corps recruiting center. From there, the crew will march to the main Oakland post office to remind the last-minute filers what they’re paying for.

War tax resisters nationwide are having deductions taken from their fifteen minutes of fame today, as the news media take advantage of the Tax Day angle to swing the lens their way.

Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now show is broadcasting from Portland, Oregon today, and it features war tax resisters Pat & John Schwiebert, Portland locals who have been resisting taxes for thirty years. (You can hear the show on-line — the Schwiebert segment starts at about 12:49.)

U.C. Berkeley’s Daily California covers last night’s People’s Life Fund granting ceremony (that I attended and mentioned in yesterday’s Picket Line).

LoHud.com out of New York takes a look at war tax resisters there, including Ethan & Rima Vesely-Flad, Chad Murdock, Frederick Dettmer, Rosa Packard, Daniel Taylor Jenkins, and Hugh & Sirkka Barbour.

STLtoday.com from St. Louis covers the post office protest of tax resisters there

Mike Ives, who wrote a story about Vermont war tax resisters a couple of weeks back, shares with his readers some additional tidbits that he wasn’t able to fit in that story.

At Mark Of The Beast, an author shares with us the letter s/he sent to the IRS explaining why 58% of the tax bill was going unpaid this year. Excerpt:

Tax resistance is the most direct way U.S. citizens can avoid being complicit in this war and other illegal activities and actions by government employees and agencies. If all of us who have written our Congresspersons or taken to the streets also refuse to financially back the war and other illegal activities and actions of the government, the decision-makers in Washington have a much harder time ignoring our resistance.

Thanks to Books Carnival for plugging The Picket Line.