War Tax Resistance News from the NWTRCC Newsletter

A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content including:

• A look back at 45 years of grants from war tax resistance “alternative funds”.
• Jason Rawn on the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and its relation to NWTRCC’s “Divest from the Pentagon, Invest in People” campaign.
• Erica Weiland asks whether police brutality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized racism are another “war” worth resisting.
• Highlights from a Q&A session on legal issues surrounding war tax resistance led by NWTRCC’s legal advisor Peter Goldberger.
• A call for a volunteer to be NWTRCC’s representative at the World Congress on Military and Social Spending in Berlin later this year.
• Announcements about the upcoming New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters and of Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Week, along with commentary on tax day actions and the recent Shut Down Creech camp.
• Ruth Benn reflects on the recent NWTRCC national gathering.
• A profile of war tax resister Margaret Weitzmann.

A Daily News dispatch from Asyut, Egypt, on this date in 1884 told of a tax resistance campaign there:

The financial condition of Egypt is becoming daily more desperate. The policy of collecting the taxes in kind has proved a complete failure. The fellaheen in Upper Egypt obstinately refuse to pay the taxes. Neither the arrears nor the current taxes can be collected. Only £5 sterling was paid last month in the Moudirieh of Esnieh. The Moudir has been removed. The fellaheen complain that the price of produce allowed by the Government is insufficient. They will pay neither in coin nor kind. There are no disorders, but a sullen passive resistance is everywhere offered. This attitude is encouraged by the Sheiks and Notables. The Egyptian Government is on the eve of absolute bankruptcy. A great part of the money borrowed on the security of the taxes in kind, and not yet collected, has been spent already. I am assured on good authority that on July 4^th there will not be a shilling in the Treasury to meet the ordinary expenses. The Ministry of Finance has issued orders to the Moudirs to compel the immediate payment of the taxes, and to warn the fellahs that if not paid at once their land will be sold. This action is equivalent to a general eviction of the population. The wisdom of this energetic course is doubtful at a moment when the insurrection is creeping north, and the Mahdi’s agents are known to be inciting the fellahs in Upper Egypt to revolt. An attempt to collect the taxes by force will probably lead to a social war, which might spread over all Egypt. The attitude of the population in Upper Egypt is so threatening in several districts that the European residents are sending their families to Cairo as a measure of precaution.

This was a particularly rough period in Britain’s turn to play Imperialist Outsiders Try To Run The Middle East.