Engage in Pickets, Protests, and Other Public Demonstrations
Pickets and other public demonstrations commonly accompany tax resistance campaigns.
Example Tithe War
During the Tithe War in Ireland, one parliamentarian noted with some panic a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland—attended by 100,000 people—“who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins, on which were inscribed ‘Tithes’ and ‘Rent’.”
Example Benares Hartal
The Benares hartal of 1810–11 was in part a general strike, but also in part a huge demonstration, the duration and peaceful discipline of which demonstrated the determination and unity of the demonstrators.
Example British Women’s Suffrage Movement
The Women’s Tax Resistance League used signs, banners, handbills, chalked-slogans, and sandwich boards to help get their “No Vote—No Tax” message across at their frequent public demonstrations.
Example Rebecca Riots
When the Rebecca Rioters came to Carmarthen, they came en masse and, uncharacteristically, during the daytime, almost as a parade. They were “preceded by a band of musicians playing popular airs, and men bearing placards with the following inscriptions in large printed letters”:
Justice and lovers of Justice are we all.
Freedom and better food.
Free tolls and Freedom.
Example French Wine Region Tax Strike
The tax strike in the French vineyards region in 1907 was preceded by huge demonstrations and parades. Wrote one reporter:
All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons. A feature of the parade was the large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines, &c.
Another wrote:
…all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours. Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and, headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and children, marched to their quarters…
This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters, welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the march through the streets began at 11. Placards threatened, “The day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there 500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.
Example Anti-Chavez Venezuelans
In 2003, anti-Chavez protesters launched a tax strike by tearing up their income tax forms in a demonstration in which thousands of people marched on the tax offices in Caracas.
Example Breslau Dog Tax
When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany, in 1925, 5,000 dogs (and their owners) descended on city hall to protest.
Example Gandhi in South Africa
One of Gandhi’s first experiments with satyagraha was a strike in South Africa to protest against a tax on Indian immigrants there. The culmination of that campaign was a mass protest march of striking workers—a march that deliberately violated laws that restricted the movement of Indians in the country.
Example Ammon Hennacy
Ammon Hennacy accompanied his solitary tax resistance with periodic protests at Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters. He would typically hold these protests on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and would fast (for penance) and hand out copies of the Catholic Worker and leaflets that explained his tax resistance—while carrying a sign and wearing a sandwich-board that put things more concisely.
Example Indian Bhats
In 1861 the previously-untaxed caste of Bhats in India responded in dramatic fashion to being subjected to the income tax:
Two thousand men turned out to remonstrate with the Superintendent of Police who appeared on the scene. He remained firm, whereupon they cut themselves with knives, cursed the Assessors, bespattering them with their blood, and declared they would rather die than surrender their birthright. When several were apprehended, their wives began to hack their persons, and so severely that several have since died. Up to the last intelligence the Bhats still gloried in their refusal.
Example War Tax Resisters
American war tax resisters have frequently engaged in rallies, pickets, street theater, and other such actions around tax day (the day when federal income tax returns are due). This, among other things, helps to ensure that the war tax resistance message is one of those represented in the obligatory tax day news stories. Here is a description of one tax day event:
The group then left for the federal building, in which the IRS and a number of other offices are located, at which 75 people burned tax forms and blockaded the street for a bit. There were no arrests. In conjunction with the tax form burning, they used a banner with the quote: “Pardon us, friends, for the fracture of good order, for burning paper instead of babies,” sent from prison during the Vietnam War by Daniel Berrigan… They offered their apologies for burning tax forms instead of Colombian villages, Palestinian schools, Iraqi hospitals, Filipinos’ mosques, and Afghan homes.
In another case:
After a mock President Clinton bragged to onlookers about the many areas in which the U.S. was #1—military spending, arms sales, violent gun deaths, etc.—he drove home the point with an 8-foot Patriot missile tossed into a group of students, parents, nurses, and other ordinary people.
Mass dying ensued, followed by an appearance by the grim reaper himself. Ostensibly there to collect bodies, he assented to an interview with M.C. Daniel Woodham. Death was the only one at the rally willing to even attempt an explanation of the maniacal logic of a still-bloated U.S. military budget.
Some war tax resisters in Wales brought their tax payment to the tax office in a bucket of blood. When the payment was refused, they poured the blood over the steps of the building.
In 1997 members of the Magdalene House Catholic Worker held a demonstration at the IRS office in which they “laid out a cloth altar with candles, flowers, and health care items to represent life, and tax forms with their blood poured on them to represent death. They held a worship service and talked about why they were there.” This was enough for several of them to get arrested.
Example Poll Tax Rebellion
During the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax, there were several demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to protests in England, and some of these rallies and marches turned into riots (or were attacked by police, depending on whose stories you believe). On such occasions, the riots became the message of the demonstrations, whatever the intentions of the organizers were. This had mixed consequences for the movement.
Notes and Citations
- Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XIII (1833), p. 1160 (29 June 1832)
- Erskine, J.R., quoted in Selections of Papers from the Records of the East India House Relative to Revenue, Police and Civil and Criminal Justice, vol. II (1820) p. 89
- Evans, Henry Tobit Rebecca Riots! (2010) p. 53 (translations from Welsh)
- “Strike of a French City: All Governments to be Dissolved in Wine Districts” New York Times 10 June 1907
- “650,000 in a Procession” Poverty Bay Herald 3 August 1907, p. 2
- “Chavez Foes Tear Up Tax Forms” Reuters (as found on the Television New Zealand website) 8 January 2003
- “Tax Resisted” The [Adelaide] Mail 8 August 1925, p. 12
- “India” South Australian Register 15 October 1861, p. 3 (summarizing a report from Rast Goftar)
- “Activist News: Tax Day in Oregon” Nonviolent Activist May 2002
- “Tax Day Actions, 1998” More Than a Paycheck June 1998
- Hedemann, Ed War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military, 5th ed. (2003) p. 82
- “More Tax Day Actions Than Ever!” More Than a Paycheck June 1997
- Burns, Danny Poll Tax Rebellion AK Press (1992), pp. 84–85