American War Tax Resisters Hold National Gathering in Asheville

I’m back from Asheville, North Carolina, where NWTRCC was holding its Spring 2013 national gathering: A pretty town, though it was a stormy weekend so we didn’t get out much.

David Swanson spoke on Friday evening, and later wrote up his impressions of the gathering. Cindy Sheehan was also there, and addressed the gathering on Saturday evening in her usual tell-it-like-she-sees-it way. Here are some video excerpts from their talks.

I gave a couple of presentations:

Highlights from the 14^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns

These are some notes on what I learned in Bogotá last February, along with a closer look at the marketing analysis conducted by Conscience UK.

How to identify and reach out to diverse varieties of war tax resisters

There are several distinct varieties of war tax resister, each with subtly different motives for their resistance and a somewhat different idea of what war tax resistance is meant to accomplish. Because of this, when we counsel or try to recruit new resisters, it is important that we take the time to learn what sort of resisters they are.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The Household Tax resistance movement in Ireland has adopted a new tactic. Two Cork city council members, among others, were arrested for demonstrating inside a Bank of Ireland branch. The bank was targeted in part to protest that the government has been using tax money to bail out banks while raising taxes and imposing austerity budgets on citizens.
• Enric Durán had another plan to strike back at the banks: he visited 39 banks, and took out 68 loans for a total of €492,000, which he donated “to various social movements that are building alternatives to capitalism.” Then he went underground and left the banks holding the (empty) bag. Waging Nonviolence recently interviewed Enric Durán in hiding, and published an article about his actions. Apparently he’s at the core of the group that is promoting “Desobediència Integral” (Comprehensive Disobedience) that I mentioned last month.
• The Washington Post published a nice long-form piece about the Transform Now Plowshares activists who boldly broke into and vandalized the Y-12 (Oak Ridge) nuclear weapons facility last summer.
• Bill Buppert, at Zero Gov, has written a nice profile of incorrigible moonshiner Popcorn Sutton.