Assist the Families of Imprisoned Resisters

If your tax resistance campaign anticipates that resisters may be imprisoned, you can give those resisters one less thing to worry about by having a plan to help the families of those behind bars.

Example Satyagraha in South Africa

Photo of about nineteen people in three rows in front of a corrugated tin building.

Gandhi and others at Tolstoy Farm where he was developing his satyagraha method of nonviolent struggle

Gandhi usually stressed that imprisoned satyagrahis should be self-reliant and should not expect much organizational assistance. But when he was planning a tax strike in South Africa in 1911 he thought that supporting imprisoned strikers’ families was a priority: “[U]ndoubtedly, the Congress [of resisters] should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.” Some of these families were put up temporarily at Gandhi’s “Tolstoy Farm,” and campaign sympathizers sent donations to help support them.

Example Peacemakers

The American war tax resistance group “Peacemakers” founded what they called the “Peacemaker Sharing Fund”:

…a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.

Notes and Citations

Gandhi, M.K. “From a Letter to A.H. West” We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader (2008) p. 348
Cooney, Robert & Michalowski, Helen The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States (1987) p. 118