How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → conferences & gatherings → Spring 2013 NWTRCC national in Asheville, North Carolina

A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up. Here’s the highlight reel:

• The IRS has been pursuing war tax resister Cindy Sheehan for months, and not long ago they hauled her into court to try to get a judge to order her to cough up financial information they could use against her. She fought back, with help from NWTRCC and its legal advisor. The IRS has apparently thrown in the towel! Sheehan posted to her blog a letter she got from the agency in which it informs her that they have withdrawn their summons.
• There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter on-line, with content including:
  • Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann comment on the popular War Resisters League federal budget pie chart, why its numbers differ from those of some other groups, and some of the judgment calls that go into its calculations.
  • A first look at the responses to NWTRCC’s questionnaire surveying people in the war tax resistance movement.
  • Some notes on the taxable income baseline, how to adjust your withholding as a new employee, and the latest news on the telephone excise tax resistance front.
  • A brief article on War Resisters International’s flamboyant tax capitulation last month. (See also the coverage of this in SchNEWS and The Friend.)
  • A review of war tax resister Peg Morton’s new book Feeling Light Within, I Walk.
  • Announcing the upcoming Spring 2013 NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville, North Carolina.
  • A profile of war tax resister Andrea Ayvazian.



• A coalition of groups have organized a “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” national day of action to try to point out that the sacred cow of Pentagon spending is really a pricey pig in a poke.
• Levante profiles ecological and antimilitarist activist Francesc García Barberà, who was involved in the Spanish struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection to military service, and in its war tax resistance movement. Excerpts (my translation):

  As a conscientious objector, García Barberà performed alternative service in the Barrio del Cristo, where he became involved in the Workers’ Catholic Action Brotherhood, to which he remains linked, as with the objector movement. “The objection is in all of life; it’s not only not doing military service, but it’s rethinking the role of the Army and of military spending. The movement did not end when objection was legalized nor when conscription was abolished,” he notes.

  Today he is associated with pacifist groups, never fails each year to make a symbolic assault on the NATO base in Bétera, and practices tax resistance, like a handful of Alaquàsers of his generation. “We omit the percentage that we estimate is dedicated to military spending (between 7% and 12%) and redirect it to Caritas or some NGO,” he explains, which on some occasions has meant conflict with the Treasury Department. “Armies defend borders when what ought to be defended is a dignified life for people. And even if they are dressed up as humanitarian actions, they serve large vested interests. In a war the strongest wins, not the most just,” he says.

• Amy Wachspress reminisces about her years as a war tax resister in the early 1980s on her blog.
• Armies of citizen informers… a behind-the-Iron-Curtain Orwellian nightmare, or the latest IRS business plan? IRS payments to what it calls “whistleblowers” who inform the agency on tax evaders jumped from $8 million in 2011 to $125.4 million in 2012. A single $100-million payoff to an informer inside the Swiss bank UBS helped boost the total this year.

A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out. Contents include:

• my report on the International Conference in Bogotá last month
• Julian Forth on tax resistance and symbolic protest
• notes on a seeming IRS capitulation in the Cindy Sheehan case, the prospects for war tax resistance communities, and the scoop on Social Security levies
• ideas and actions such as marching war tax resisters in Austin, next Fall’s New England Regional Gathering, and a call for more fraud in military spending
• news about the upcoming May NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville, North Carolina
• Ruth Benn on “60 billion reasons to act”

Tomorrow I’m heading out to North Carolina for the Spring 2013 National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee national gathering in Asheville. If you’re in the area, stop by and say “hi.”

Elsewise… for what I think is the first time, the gathering is going to be broadcast over them thar interwebs. You can eavesdrop starting Friday afternoon at http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3800127/nwtrcc.

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.

A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out. Contents include:

• Redirection: Our “Constructive Program” — Bill Ramsey compares redirection (the common practice in war tax resistance circles of giving your due taxes to charity rather than to the government) to the “constructive program” part of Gandhi’s campaigns.
• Like us! — Erica Weiland points out the various facets of NWTRCC’s social media presence.
• Counseling Notes — how credit rating worries and student debt may discourage war tax resisters; suspicions of an uptick in the underground economy; lots of bad news for the IRS; and war tax resistance counselor training notes
• War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — a recap of some of the creative outreach and protest actions of the nationwide war tax resistance community
• How We Want Our Tax Dollars Used — a look at the granting decisions of a handful of war tax resistance alternative funds, which coordinate the redirection of many war tax resisters
• NWTRCC News — a recap of the NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville earlier this month
• Passionate for Peace — a profile of war tax resister Aanya Adler Friess