Chicago, — A Vermont congressman’s son was sentenced today to his third jail
term for distributing leaflets on federal property.
Imposing the 20-day sentence,
U.S. District
Judge Walter J. Labuy commented to Karl Meyer, 22, “I suppose you’ll do it
again when you get out.”
Meyer, son of Representative William H. Meyer,
(D.
Vt.) replied, “I suppose I
will.”
Meyer has served earlier terms of three days and 15 days for passing out the
leaflets in the
U.S. courthouse
which urge a boycott on payment of federal income taxes. Meyer said he feels
that the government will use tax money to wage war.
Meyer is still resisting today. The Numinous Nomads recently visited his home at a Catholic Worker urban farm in Nashville, Tennessee and share their impressions of the visit.
A friend of mine, 43 year old Arthur Evans, a medical doctor with offices in
Denver, Colorado, was sent to jail by Judge Alfred A. Arraj of the Denver district court, for his
refusal to pay his part of the income tax (about 50%) which would be used for
the annihilation of the human race. He sent it, instead, to the United
Nations, to promote peace in the world.
In a statement circulated by him to his friends he says in part: “My lawyer,
the judge, and other lawyers, tell me that there is no law, no constitutional
provision that provides for the individual to refuse to pay taxes for
annihilation. So I go to jail, for I will not, I cannot in conscience be
party to financing the means to annihilation. The Jews under Hitler were
taxed to buy their crematoriums. The same happens here — but it is not only
the Jews who finance their means of destruction — it is almost every income
earner in the United States. This is called democratic because we are all
taxed alike.”
Letters of approval have been pouring in to
Dr. Evans, and since he is
only allowed to write very few, his mother in Philadelphia has taken up the
task of acknowledging them, sending at the same time a typewritten sheet
explaining the affair in detail.
, another
man (who is now considered one of America’s greatest) was picked up in
Concord, Mass. on the
way to his shoemaker, and brought to jail because he had refused to pay his
poll tax to a government he thought misguided and evil because it allowed
slavery and was also at that time waging a war with Mexico to extend its
slaveholding territory. I mean, of course, Henry David Thoreau. Out of that
incident came his famous Civil Disobedience, which
influenced Gandhi and Nehru; Thoreau’s ideas are very much alive in many
parts of the globe today. Strange, how history repeats itself!
Some day, perhaps after another century (if we escape a war of annihilation),
Dr. Evans will be spoken of
with appreciation and respect. We have a way of crucifying the great while
they are with us, and of exalting them after they are gone. At present a
medical doctor is doing laundry duty as a “trusty” in the Jefferson County
Jail in Golden, Colorado, and he may like to hear from you.
