Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual war tax resisters →
Daniel Sicken
The Brattleboro Reformer reports on a group of tax resisters — including Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, Bob Bady and Erik Schickendanz — who decided to write their checks to charity instead of to the U.S. Treasury :
In all, $5,000 was given to charities, including to the Windham County Reads program, to a group starting a community garden on Upper Dummerston Road and to the Citizens Awareness Network, a local activist group. ¶ Morningside Shelter received almost $800 from the tax resistors.
“We are opening a new building for homeless pregnant women and those who have just given birth,” said David Mattocks, the executive director of the shelter.
“This is a significant contribution to that project.”
Daniel Sicken, an East Dummerston resident and a member of Tax Resisters of Conscience, said, though he pays local and state taxes, he hasn’t paid federal taxes in .
He said giving the money instead to charity is much more appropriate.…
“But it’s hard to be a resistor,” said Sicken.
“It has a lot of rewards, but also a lot of difficulties.”
Sicken said though he has never been prosecuted for his failure to pay federal taxes, he and other resisters have had to learn to live with very little money or within the barter economy — trading goods and services for other goods and services.…
“Not paying taxes has liberated me from consumer society which has improved the quality of my life,” said Ellen Kaye, a 43-year-old Brattleboro resident who said she stopped paying federal taxes after a trip to Nicaragua in .
Kaye said she saw how her tax dollars were being used to kill innocent people and she was disgusted.
She said when it came time to file her taxes that year, she became physically ill, thinking about where her money was going.
Her husband, Bob Bady, 53, of Brattleboro, said the last time he paid federal taxes was during the Vietnam war.
He said though he was 18 at the time, he refused to serve in the military.
“And if I’m not willing to fight, why would I pay for someone else to fight for me?” asked Bady.
In Battleboro, Vermont, war tax resisters held a ceremony in which they redirected a few thousand dollars from the IRS to community groups.
The Times Argus covered the ceremony, at which resisters Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, and Lou Waronker.
Ellen Kaye of Brattleboro, who was holding a hand-painted sign that said, “I Haven’t Bought A Bomb ,” said she decided in that she just couldn’t send money to the federal government to use on military actions.
And Berkeley’s KPFA covered war tax resistance on their Sunday Salon program.
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research and Jeremy Scahill (author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army) presented the problem, and area war tax resister Jon Marley promoted a solution.
Host Larry Bensky talked about his own tax resistance from years ago.
(If you download the archived broadcast, the tax-themed segment starts at 67:45.)
, war tax resisters in New England have been gathering at the Woolman Hill Conference Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
The Greenfield Recorder is covering the conference.
’s article mentions Ruthy Woodring, Randy Kehler & Betsy Corner, Aaron Falbel, Frances Crowe, Daniel Staub, Juanita Nelson, Erik Schickendanz, and Daniel Sicken.
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter — More Than a Paycheck — is out featuring an article I wrote about how to craft a persuasive and motivating tax resistance message.
(It’s a distillation of a Picket Line entry from .)
Also in the newsletter are some notes about IRS policy and foibles, an update on the ongoing attempts by war tax resister Daniel Jenkins to find a legal forum that will rule that conscientious objection to military taxation is a human right, and the latest on All Saints Church’s struggle to maintain its freedom of speech and its tax-exempt status at the same time.
“I suddenly woke up about five years ago and made a big sign that said ‘Does Our Lifestyle Demand War?’ and hung it on my door.”
Frances then proceeded to work at changing her lifestyle, starting by not using her car for two days a week.
As she walked more, she found she could use her car less and less — and liked walking more and more.
It became something of a meditation, with the added bonus of meeting people along the way.
She changed from a Friends Meeting that was some miles away to one within walking distance, and dropped her YMCA membership where they use so much heat and air conditioning.
She doesn’t want to fly anymore and takes the train instead.
She’s still working on many things, like buying food that is grown locally.
She’s really working to reduce her footprint on the planet, and at the same time redirecting taxes from war to funding real human needs like schools, peace and justice work, and rebuilding the new society in the shell of the old.
in the United States, and all across the country people were scrambling to get to the post office in time to have their tax returns postmarked by the deadline.
There to meet them were tax resisters:
The Ryder Report has video of the protest in Keene, New Hampshire, including feedback from passers-by.
In Brattleboro, Vermont, war tax resisters including Bob Bady and Daniel Sicken redirected their taxes to local charities:
Kevin Flaherty, a postal employee who ducked out in the afternoon for a smoke break, said it was encouraging to see the war tax resisters give away their money.
“It’s great,” he said, pointing out that it was Kevin Flaherty the citizen — not Kevin Flaherty the postal worker — who was supporting the group.
“Sometimes when people are paying their taxes, I joke that somebody has to pay for the Iraq War.
Maybe this will make them pay attention.”
Tax resisters in New York City handed out War Resisters League budget pie charts at the midtown post office.
Joshua Klein of Nashua, New Hampshire filed his tax returns , but decided to include a protest letter instead of a check.
“Klein would not reveal how much he owed but said he’s donating the money to America’s Second Harvest, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the country, and the American Civil Liberties Union, although he’s not affiliated with either group.”
In Los Alamos, New Mexico, two protesters were arrested for trespassing during a vigil at the Los Alamos National Laboratories.
The protesters said they were there “to prayerfully encourage the nonviolent, safe, clean disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, along with the clean-up of LANL… [and] to visibly celebrate the war-tax boycott organized by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.”
War tax resisters in Bangor, Maine, including Larry Dansinger, protested at the post office and gave away redirected taxes.
One of the grants was a scholarship to a student who, because he has refused to register with the selective service system (for the military draft), will be ineligible to apply for college financial aid.
The Home News Tribune of New Jersey has a video report of the war tax protest at the post office there.
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, peace activists held a “penny poll” in which they asked passers-by how they would prioritize the nation’s budget.
Meanwhile, constitutionalist tax protesters handed out documentaries and documentation about their theories.
In Berkeley, California, Code Pink was out with their “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” banner.
Free Speech Radio News covered national protests over war taxes, government spending priorities, and the Capitol Hill press conference.
Along with the news coverage, bloggers commemorated with more personal commentary:
At The Begging Bowl, Jake writes about his tax resistance: “The money I would have paid the government has gone to the Chicago Anti-Hunger Foundation.
When votes no longer matter we vote with our dollars.
I vote for the works of mercy and feeding the hungry.
And if it means the IRS is gonna come knocking on my door for $119, I will offer them some food too.
And if they ask for a check, I’ll go with them to jail.
That’s another work of mercy, visit the imprisoned.
If we took the works of mercy as seriously as we took our 1040s and economic stimulus package, the Kingdom of God would be at hand.”
J.D. Tuccille, at Disloyal Opposition, gives a thumbs up for tax resisters — “whatever their reasons, I think it’s worth saluting folks who go out of the way to avoiding feeding the beast.”
Kerrie, at State & Local Politics, reacts to news coverage of the Schwieberts: “It takes a whole lot of nerve to do what his couple is doing.
But I wonder if Bush would take notice and stop the war if more people took this route to protest the war?
I know that we have to do something because things are getting worse not better.”
Will Shetterly, at It’s All One Thing, discusses tax resistance, and includes some inspirational quotes from tax resisters.
The documentary Path of Greatest Resistance is now available on-line.
It was made by Bill Hector Weye and Emily Harding-Morick in .
It focuses on the arrest of Randy Kehler during his war tax resistance, but covers the war tax resistance movement in general, particularly the local war tax resistance scene in Western Massachusetts.
Aside from Kehler, some of the resisters who appear in the documentary are Andrea Ayvazian, Daniel Sicken (who performs the best war tax resistance blues tune I’ve yet heard), Wally Nelson, Brayton & Suzanne Shanley, Henry Lappen, Amy Martyn, and Erik Schickendanz.
Tax resistance history buffs (there must be more of us out there somewhere) will appreciate the shout-outs to the Shays Rebellion, another tax revolt in Western Massachusetts 200 years earlier.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Tax Day action reports are starting to trickle in.
This year, the TEA Party presence seemed way down, or at least the news media has gotten tired of covering it.
There were many reports of liberals engaged in various creative protests designed to shine some light on profitable corporations who somehow manage to rake in government subsidies and get away without paying taxes, and a couple of reports of anti-war activists trying to inform the public about the bloated military budget.
Some folks have taken to submitting an affidavit along with their tax returns declaring that they are only filing “under threat, duress and coercion… because I fear retaliation by the IRS… to avoid going to jail, not because I believe there’s a legitimate obligation; I am terrified of the IRS… and being attacked by them if I don’t comply with them.”
They hope to make explicit the threat of government violence that is largely implicit at tax time and to preempt silly people like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who insist we have a “voluntary” tax system.
The Independent also ran a second article — The new tax resistance? — about a Baltimore woman named Kesh, who has stopped paying her taxes:
This year she isn’t paying because she began thinking more about where her
tax money goes and she feels like she can’t keep paying the government. “It’s
not going to anything that I can see personally that is going to benefit me,”
Kesh, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “But me paying it is
definitely going to hit me. Not having that money that needs to go towards
other things that I have to pay — that affects me immediately. That’s a loss
for me.”
The inauguration of President Donald Trump only worsened her feeling about
the situation. First, because she has her doubts about whether Trump has
bothered to pay his fair share of taxes, and second, because his
administration seems to be waging a war against people like her. “I’m all the
groups that are hated. I’ve decided to come to earth in this body and be
black, be a woman, gay, so you know, I get hit on every side of it,” she
says. “I was a teenaged mother, I’m a single mom — I’m all the things [Trump
and Republicans] hate.”
Living in Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015
and where just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to hamper
police reform, taxes funding the police are an issue for her as well. (Police
are primarily funded through local and state governments, but Kesh isn’t
paying state taxes either.)
“I know that my tax money is going to the police and I can walk down the
street and get shot,” she says. “I can get shot by my own money and get
killed by my own money and there’s no one that’s gonna do shit about it. So
basically I’m giving you money to kill me and people that look like me.”
Unlike long-time tax resisters, Kesh is new to this. She doesn’t know where
it will lead her yet — hence her decision not to use her name. The Internal
Revenue Service may target her, but not paying feels right.
“I’m basically saying, ‘Fuck you.’ ” she says. “I’m keeping my money.”
The Satyagraha Foundation for Nonviolence Studies is continuing its series on tax resistance with A Call for Tax Resistance — “a joint appeal from leading nonviolent activists and organizations, urging US taxpayers to nonviolently express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration by refusing to pay a symbolic amount of their US federal income tax, and instead donate that amount to a deserving charity or institution.”
War tax resisters’ letters-to-the-editor and op-eds are starting to appear, too, including ones from:
