You don’t give money to the bums
On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums.
Talking about you don’t support a crackhead —
What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?
Shit, the government’s an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit
And even if you ain’t on the front line
When the master yell crunch time you right back at it
You ain’t look at how you hustling backwards
And the end of the year add up what they subtracted:
3 outta twelve months your salary
Paid for that madness… man that’s sadness
What started with a symbolic single dollar in
slowly grew to a $100 withholding. Now she
doesn’t pay a penny.
Pam Allee: “I was heartbroken to think of young people, who are barely out of
childhood, being told to go and kill people and doing so. And in the process
becoming either people who didn’t care about it anymore or people who were
tortured.”
Allee and several other Oregonians are becoming increasingly weary of writing
letters, protesting and holding workshops. They want to hit Uncle Sam where
it hurts, they hope — namely in the pocket book.
From the
West Seattle Herald:
Local professor notes Hunthausen’s influence
by Mavis Amundson
A speech by Raymond Hunthausen, Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Seattle, was powerful enough to have major
repercussions in his life as well as influence in others.
That’s the view of West Seattle resident Robert Chamberlain, associate
professor of speech and communication at Seattle Pacific University, who
recently completed a study of the speech, which Hunthausen delivered to
Lutheran ministers and laity in Tacoma.
Ironically, Hunthausen, who is not generally considered “radical or
immoderate,” intuitively knew that for his speech to be effective, his stance
on the nuclear arms issue had to be strong, said Chamberlain.
What Hunthausen had yet to discover, according to Chamberlain, was what the
speech would do to himself.
The archbishop called the Trident nuclear submarine, with its “extraordinary
accuracy and explosive power,” a “first strike” weapons system. As such, he
said, Trident is “immoral and criminal.”
“We must take special responsibility for what is in our own backyard,” said
Hunthausen, referring to the Trident base at Bangor. “I say with a deep
consciousness of these words that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”
Hunthausen suggested actions individuals might take as solutions, such as
writing letters and demonstrating. His speech is remembered most, however,
for what he said next:
“I would like to share a vision of still another action that could be taken:
simply this — a sizeable number of people in the state of Washington, 5,000,
10,000, 500,000 people refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in
nonviolent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide. I think that would be a
definite step toward disarmament.”
The speech was “worded strongly — possibly more strongly” than Hunthausen
intended, Chamberlain wrote in a 10-page paper.
In a Seattle Times interview cited
in Chamberlain’s study, the archbishop said he “really wanted” to change what
he said about his “vision” of many people withholding taxes and put it in the
form of a speculation (“I wonder what would happen if this many people…”)
“It would have taken me off the hook a little,” Hunthausen said at the time.
The result for Hunthausen was that “he was driven to consider taking action
that he might not otherwise have taken,” explained Chamberlain. “The speech
and the public reaction were significant factors in determining the course of
his actions in the succeeding months.”
Hunthausen recalled to Chamberlain that, “It forced me to say, ‘How honest am I about this? What
am I personally going to do?’
“Did it force me to withhold taxes? No, I don’t think so. But it forced me to
analyze whether or not I should… I really challenged myself — more, I
believe, than I believe I intended, but in making the decision ultimately to
withhold taxes I did so with a peacefulness. I realized that if I’m going to
be consistent, this is a step that I must take.”
News of the speech was carried in Seattle-area weekly and daily newspapers as
well as a national wire service. The Times’ religion editor called the
speech “the strongest statement” on the nuclear arms race by a Pacific
Northwest church leader, and more than a year later, Time magazine called it
“outrageous.”
Chamberlain perused letters to the editors in local newspapers and discovered
a “clear pattern” among supporters and detractors of Hunthausen’s speech.
“In short, the opposition letters opposed civil disobedience as a method much
more consistently than any other aspect of Hunthausen’s rhetoric. This is
true despite the face that he clearly spent most of his own energy… pointing
out the significance of the issue,” Chamberlain wrote.
“Those who accepted his position, on the other hand, by and large found it
courageous.”
Chamberlain concluded that, on balance, Hunthausen’s speech contributed to
the growing opposition to nuclear arms.
“It seems that his advocacy and use of civil disobedience, as a cautiously
applied method, did not affect his cause negatively among large segments of
the populace. It may actually have called attention to the issue of nuclear
armament more effectively than would a less drastic rhetorical measure.”
Two Seattle-area religious leaders, asked by a reported if Hunthausen’s
speech changed their lives, confirmed the results of Chamberlain’s study.
William Cate, president and director of the Church Council of Greater
Seattle, said he and his wife became war-tax resisters 10 months after the
speech. “We wouldn’t have done it without the archbishop.”
Pastor Jon Nelson of the Lutheran Campus Christian ministry in Seattle, who
attended the Tacoma gathering where Hunthausen spoke, said, “It was a
dramatic moment for those of us who heard it, realizing that a leader in the
community and the church was risking everything… to express his revulsion to
the nuclear arms race.”
The speech apparently is not a factor in a recent Seattle-based Vatican
investigation of Hunthausen. The investigation, a response to criticism of
Hunthausen within the western Washington diocese regarding issues such as
homosexuality and abortion, found “tremendous support” for Hunthausen,
according to Maury Sheridan, communications director for the Seattle
archdiocese.
The Vatican “went out of its way” to let people know the nuclear arms issue
was not included in the investigation, he said.
Chamberlain was invited to present his study to the annual convention of two
academic groups, the Speech Communication Association and the Religious
Speech Communication Association, held in Washington
D.C.
.
He says he expects to refine the study for journal publication. The study may
also be included in a book Chamberlain intends to complete
.
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