How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → conferences & gatherings → Spring 2015 NWTRCC national in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Today, a roundup of links from here and there:

American War Tax Resisters

• Ruth Benn reports on war tax resister presence at the protests surrounding the United Nations review of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Here are some photos from NWTRCC’s national gathering in Milwaukee earlier this month. Erica Weiland wrote up a recap of the gathering.
• On the radio program A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor gave a nod to war tax resistance in the course of a segment telling the story of the history of the Mennonites and another comic dramatization of a whimsical tax resister. Check out the “Garrison Keillor talks about the history of Mennonites” and “Catchup” segments in the archives.

IRS Woes

• The Treasury Department’s inspector-general issued a report stating that over a recent ten-year period, 1580 IRS employees “were found to have willfully evaded taxes.” Most (75%) were not fired, and some later received promotions, raises, and bonuses.
• The number of people who renounced their U.S. citizenship is aiming toward another record high this year. The first quarter of the year saw 1,335 people tell Sam “you’re not my uncle” — a new record.

Tax Resistance Campaigns Around the World

• Spanish war tax resisters have produced a stylish video to promote their cause: No Pagamos (We Aren’t Paying):

• Police brutality, discrimination, and mistreatment towards Israel’s Ethopian Jewish minority has led to protests, clashes, and to Shlomo Molla, one of the few Ethiopian-Israelis to have been in the Israeli parliament, calling for tax resistance, refusal to serve in the army, and other forms of civil disobedience.
• Paul Nicolson, a retired Anglican vicar, took his local council government to court, saying the £125 in fees it had added to the council tax that he had refused to pay in protest were excessive. He won his case.
• Payroll tax arrears are up 19% over the last fiscal year in Hong Kong and some are blaming the conscientious tax resistance movement (良心抗稅運動) that was launched as part of the pro-democracy “umbrella movement” there.
• Forty villages in Guragon, India have decided not to pay a new “house tax” the (Haryana) state government is trying to impose on them.
• The Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the northern Indian state of Jammu announced a policy of “total non-cooperation” including tax resistance in order to pressure the state government to meet its demands.

The latest news from the U.S. war tax resistance movement:

• Erica Weiland reviews American war tax resister Frances Crowe’s memoir, Finding My Radical Soul. “Now 96 years old, she is still an activist and still getting arrested for civil disobedience.”
• Ruth Benn reflects on “The Mysterious Ways of the IRS” — the agency seems arbitrary and unpredictable at times in the ways it responds to war tax resisters.
• The three activists who boldly broke through security at the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant in 2012 have had their sabotage convictions reversed on appeal and are no longer being imprisoned. One article about their successful appeal concluded: “They are still obligated to pay the government a fine of $52,953 for the break-in at Y-12. But they took vows of poverty decades ago, don’t have bank accounts, and have neither the means nor the intention of paying it.”
• The War Tax Talk blog has reprinted an op-ed debate that was published in the Sunday Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts back in 1993. It features Juanita Nelson dueling with a U.S. Air Force Reserve Lieutenant-Colonel over the question: “Is it ever right to refuse, on principle, to pay taxes?”

• There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
  • reports from this year’s Tax Day actions
  • concerns bubbling up in the war tax resistance community, like:
    • what to do about sudden, unexpected financial gains
    • how resisters might get hit with an Estimated Tax Penalty
    • how to avoid the now-epidemic tax debt telephone scams
  • book reviews:
    • American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century
    • Waging Peace: The Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist (David Hartsough)
    • Peace Activist: The Autobiography of Bradford Lyttle
  • a report on NWTRCC’s recent national gathering in Milwaukee
  • Redmoonsong reflects on how tactics of dealing with tax resistance and government benefits may change as one ages

Some new audio/video slices of interweb for people interested in war tax resistance and related concerns:

• Videos of presentations from the NWTRCC conference at the Earlham School of Religion are now available for viewing on-line. These include:
  • “What Does the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Decision Mean for War Tax Resisters?” by Peter Goldberger:
  • “Quakers and the War Tax Concern: Unfinished Business?” by Lonnie Valentine:
• Some audio from last month’s conference in Milwaukee is also now available on-line, including:
  • Patrick Kennelly on the work of the Afghan Peace Volunteers:
  • A panel on “Methods of Resistance” with Mary Watkins, George Martin, and Ruth Benn: