Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Cathleen Deppe

The August issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is now on-line, with contents including:

• Perspectives on whether or not to pay the “social security tax” by Ruth Benn, myself, Susan Miller, and Larry Dansinger
• Notes about an especially aggressive IRS levy of Social Security payments, and about the agency’s retreat from its overzealous infliction of “frivolous filing” penalties on people who added messages of protest to their tax forms
• Reviews of Brayton Shanley’s The Many Sides of Peace: Christian Nonviolence, the Contemplative Life, and Sustainable Living and Rosalie G. Riegle’s Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community
• A note about an Independence Day war tax protest at which IRS forms went up in flames, and about pioneering war tax resister Juanita Nelson’s 90^th birthday
• Some resources that would be appropriate for the upcoming “Nuclear Free Future Month”
• News about the upcoming NWTRCC national gathering and the New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters
• A profile of war tax resister Cathy Deppe

There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content that includes:

• Cathleen Deppe reports back from the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space Conference delegation’s recent visit to Japan.
• Notes about IRS-impersonation scam phone calls, and how to calculate penalties & interest on unpaid federal taxes.
• International News with notes about tax resistance in Spain, Burundi, and Honduras.
• Domestic war tax resistance news including an announcement of the upcoming New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters, a note about Ron Paul’s new call for tax resistance to combat American imperialism, skepticism about the “United States Institute of Peace,” and notes from the recent Mennonite Church USA convention.
• A report from the Veterans for Peace 30^th Annual Convention.
• A note on the 75^th anniversary of the founding of the Center on Conscience & War.

Some notes from here and there:

• Cathy Deppe reports on NWTRCC’s presence at the World Peace Conference in Berlin in the U.S. Communist Party’s Daily Worker.
• The Capital Gazette reports on the anniversary of the burning of the Peggy Stewart — a reprisal by American revolutionaries against a ship owner who tried to break the boycott against taxed British tea.

There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content that includes:

• Ruth Benn looks at the post-election prospects of the war tax resistance movement
• Joel Mathis reports on war tax resistance talk among Kansas Mennonites
• Cathy Deppe reports back from the International Peace Bureau World Peace Conference
• Some movement news including a report from the New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters & Supporters, and Erica Weiland’s report back from the School of the Americas Watch Border Convergence at Nogales.
• A recap of the NWTRCC fall national gathering in Florida
• Chrissy Kirchhoefer connects the work of war tax resisters with the Dakota Access Pipeline struggle in North Dakota

Hannnelore Morgenstern, of the German “peace tax” group Netzwerk Friedenssteuer, sent me a recap of the Conscience and Peace Tax International conference that was held in London in June. (I have made some edits for clarity, as English is not Morgenstern’s best language):

Fourteen participants from six countries met to make the necessary decisions. Now the work of the Board has been strengthened and the assignments for our Geneva delegate have been appointed. Board members are Jan Birk, Derek Brett, Robin Brookes, Dietmar Czemy (chairman), and Milena Romero. If necessary, Chris Coverdale and Cathy Deppy want to support the board. And it needs support.

Since the transformation of the association, only a few countries have reregistered themselves. In order for us to continue our work, we must levy a membership fee from now on. The modest balance in our account only allows for three assignments to the CPTI delegate, Christophe Barbey, in Geneva. New ways of funding must be found.

It was agreed that the website should be updated and maybe even redesigned. An expert, and the money, remain to be found.

No announcement was made regarding the next international conference.

For some context, one of the things CPTI members seem to value most about the organization is that it has “special consultative status” at the United Nations. Christophe Barbey is the representative at the UN who carries out whatever privileges this allows CPTI.

CPTI dissolved at its meeting in 2013 with the intention of reforming in another host nation under the same name. That, and the deaths of two board members, disrupted the already fraught group, and they’ve been struggling to find their footing ever since.

The group has only a tangential relationship with war tax resistance, though some of its members are war tax resisters. The group is mostly composed of representatives of various national “peace tax”-promoting groups, and it hopes to somehow convince some authority in the United Nations to declare that this form of conscientious objection to military taxation is a universal human right.