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Tax Strike Tactics

Rally on the Occasion of Arrests, Trials, or Imprisonments

If a resister is arrested, put on trial, or imprisoned, your tax resistance campaign can express support for the resister by holding a rally at the jail, courthouse, or prison. Such an event can also be an occasion to engage with supporters and sympathizers and to get a good message out to the press and to passers-by. It also demonstrates that the campaign will not be discouraged by government reprisals. Here are a few notable examples:

Example Frank Donnelly

Prior to war tax resister Frank Donnelly’s sentencing in 2010, dozens of supporters rallied outside the courthouse. One supporter noted that “[i]n addition to showing up at his sentencing, Donnelly’s friends in Maine threw three ‘Going-Away-To-Jail Parties’ for Donnelly in the days leading up to his prison sentence. In one party surprise, Donnelly cut into a fresh Maine blueberry pie, and he found a file baked into the pie.”

Example Janet Legate Bunten

The British women’s suffrage movement was adept at using arrests, trials, imprisonments, property seizures, tax auctions, and other such official harassment as opportunities to throw rallies.

When a wagon full of women’s suffrage activists descended on the courthouse where Janet Legate Bunten was being tried, the authorities panicked: “The court was twenty minutes late in taking its seat,” a sympathetic observer noted, “and it was freely rumoured that the reason of the delay was that more police were sent for to be in attendance before the proceedings began! There certainly was an unusual number present for so insignificant a court. A meeting was held outside the court, at which Miss [C. Nina] Boyle spoke. The police not only allowed the demonstration, but were interested listeners.”

Example Dublin Water Charge Strike

A court judgment is a good hook for media coverage. The Dublin water charge strike was ignored by the national press until 500 people marched in protest in Rathfarnham on the occasion of a court hearing against some resisters (in which the judge dismissed the cases). By being present in force, the resisters made sure that their point of view would be represented in the news coverage of the court action.

Example J.J. Keon

When J.J. Keon, a Socialist from Grafton, Illinois, was jailed for refusing to pay what he contended was an illegal poll tax in 1910, Socialist Party spokesman Ralph Korngold came to town and gave a speech outside the prison. He urged people to join Keon in resisting and asked why you never see rich tax dodgers behind bars. “All over the United States,” Korngold said, “business men dodge their taxes, but did you ever hear of a business man going to jail for doing so? Do you think that the mayor would send the banker to jail if the banker refused to pay any kind of tax?”

Notes and Citations