The War Resisters International bulletin — The Broken Rifle — mentions that it started to support the war tax resistance of its staff in the wake of the “war on terror” and notes that the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns is coming up in Manchester .
For more info on the conference, take a look at its website.
Paul Sheldon attended the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Manchester, England, and wrote up some of his impressions. Excerpts:
…Wonderful people, some very good times, some very frustrating times.
Perhaps I spoke too much, but for me, there was very little in the way of direct action from this Conference group. This seems surprising, when I consider what I know of the wonderful examples of direct action that have been taken by so many of those who were present. There was a lost opportunity here. I should have stood up and cheered when, during the perennial discussion of why there were essentially no young people at this conference (thank you, Kristen, for being an exception), someone stated out loud that no young person could stand to attend something (often dull — my addition) as this was. Exactly one possible solution was offered… let’s get nifty interactive websites on sites where young people are active. Since this is an older group whose members tend to be ignorant of technology, [this] can take the form of “the answer” when nothing else seems possible. Peacepays is a great website… but it is not “the answer.” My question — what do we offer after the website? And just how great is that medium for us? I am dubious about how well we can ever compete on youth websites — our message is not inherently well suited to the medium, in the way that the way the U.S. Army has the best hi-tech video games in the world on their websites. How far can this take us — then what?
Our action needs to be “on the ground” and we offered not one stitch of that at this conference. Well, I walked around Fallowfield with my “War, No Way, Don’t Pay” shirt on, and a number of young folks clearly looked at it and got the message. As far as I know, that is the only hint that we gave to the many young people that were all around us in that town, that an international peace conference with some amazing people was being held that weekend, right in their midst.… Where was the real dialogue at the conference? It was preaching to a small group of the already converted. A group that will grow progressively smaller if we don’t take this to the streets and do some direct peaceful action. It is also what young people, in my experience, find most satisfying and appealing.…
You might say that much of what I say here is not directly relevant to our Conference topic of War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns. I think we all realize that it is highly unlikely that war tax resistance/campaigns will ever be the “gateway” for young people to enter the peace movement. We need to start with a more direct and less intellectual focus. Out of Iraq — Now! At this point in the war, that is not a shocking statement in the U.S.. Or be gentler (but making the point, very visibly) if you are with a more conservative group. How can we get out of war? Present various options, and one of these is always taxes for peace not war. But don’t expect any active response from people hearing about WTR for the first time, or even for quite a while. Civil disobedience appears scary and difficult for most people. Personally, I believe that WTR is generally inappropriate for anyone new to the peace movement. I have on one or two occasions gently discouraged individuals whom I believed did not understand its full implications and were not prepared for what is required of war tax resisters. On the other hand, Mimi is a young Menonite whom I have spoken with considerably about this topic, and she became a war tax resister . Her commitment to pacifism was already well developed, and thus WTR was a new and additional avenue for her to express and witness to her beliefs. As a practical matter, in the United States peace tax campaigns are much more user-friendly to the vast majority of people and represent an easier place to start a discussion.
I am a person who believes in street speaking. Be a public Friend or whatever you are. Let our beliefs be known directly to the public. Not to be in someone’s face, not as a weirdo, but let it be known (gently) to whomever you meet. If, between now and the time of our next Conference , each of us enlisted one new person to our common cause, our members (well, we don’t have members really, do we?) would be dancing in the streets. We should not expect to ever be a large group, or even a young group. What we are struggling with now is simply to replace the old people with a new crop of experienced middle-aged people. I know that as individuals we are “activist” and willing to take risks. What wonderful people I met at the Conference. But our work does tend to be of the legalistic and formal variety, which does not engage young people. And to the extent that the Conference itself represented how we present ourselves to the world, it was not an enticing model.
I hear lot of frustration here, and I’ve heard some similar things from the war tax resistance movement in the U.S. (especially frustration at being unable to engage younger activists on a large scale, and occasional clumsy gestures at trying to jazz things up to appeal to the youngins).
I don’t share Paul’s enthusiasm for petitioning politicians or supporting peace tax legislation campaigns, but I do agree that direct action is a good way of engaging impatient peace activists. But in my opinion, war tax resistance is (or can be part of) a lifestyle of direct action — and we’d be wise to market it that way. Want to engage in direct action? Don’t wait for the next big rally to get arrested at a worthless die-in farce for the benefit of the evening news — start acting directly now and keep it up day after day.
Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s coordinator, attended the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance & Peace Tax Campaigns in Manchester, England .
she wrote up a preliminary report on the goings-on. Some excerpts:
There were about 60 people from 14 countries — about standard for these conferences. Sadly I have to report that our efforts to get George Rishmawi from Palestine to the conference ended in a refused visa, so that he could not travel to the conference. The British organizers tried really hard to get thru the red tape but to no avail. Two people from Ghana were refused visas also.…
…As with most conferences (at least in my humble opinion) the time spent talking with folks at meals and between the organized sessions is at least as important as anything that comes up in the sessions. Quite a few of my conversations were with individuals from other countries who are war tax resisters, who refuse to pay at least some of taxes due to their respective governments. Many combine their refusal with redirecting the money to some kind of fund for nonviolent defense or peace-building funds.
As we have found in the past, it is more difficult to resist in most countries because of the way taxes are pulled from paychecks. Those who resist tend to be self-employed. In general, collection is much faster in other countries than has been our experience in the U.S. (at least up to now), and many organizers at this conference make no effort to build WTR, seeing it as futile. The majority of people at the conference are working on peace tax fund campaigns or looking for ways to take their complaint of being forced to pay for war through some court system or U.N. body. I think 5 of the Peace Tax Seven were in attendance, and they are slowly making their way into the European Court of Human Rights. Daniel Jenkins from the U.S. reported on the effort to bring a formal complaint to a U.N. body. The Germans have a resister or two in their circles, but are focusing on a new effort of 10 people to take a complaint to a German high court based on the budget being a violation of fundamental rights because of the military spending. The Germans are trying to get away from appealing through the tax system and instead trying this more direct route to the government officials who create the budget. In Norway peace tax fund campaigners are appealing to their local councils; if the council accepts their complaint as an “initiative of national interest” then the council can send a complaint up to the next level of the government system.
I attended two workshops that related more generally to organizing, with both having some focus on how to widen our efforts. Groups and campaigns in every country seem to face issues similar to our own. “How to bring in more young people” was the topic of one workshop. While no group seemed to be doing any better than many of us here in the U.S., many are looking for answers in the internet, such as getting into Facebook and other networking sites, and upgrading our websites. The Danish peace tax fund campaign has been working with the model U.N. program in high schools with some success at making “the right not to pay for war” a topic in those discussions. One person noted that the activists groups that seem to be most successful at drawing in young people are the ones that give new members something to do immediately and regularly. There was also a good deal of discussion of language, in particular the use of the word “conscience,” and whether that is a word that resonates with young folks today. Because the hosting group was Britain’s “Conscience: the peace tax campaign,” it was the local folks who were having this discussion among themselves and also bringing it to the conference. “Taxes for Peace Not War” was a slogan that many people appreciated due to the positive spin.…
…There were small group sessions to talk about the common ground between war tax resisters and peace tax campaigns and develop ideas about how we can all work together more across international boundaries. I don’t know if any of the groups came up with any brilliant insights on this. My group did spend quite a bit of time comparing our tax systems and learning more precisely what each of our organizations do. It’s hard to figure out how to work together without understanding more about each situation; there’s a lot of confusion about why there is such a “strong” war tax resistance movement in the U.S. as compared to other countries. One person said rather emphatically — “I just don’t understand why anyone would be a war tax resister without also working for a peace tax fund.” Others perceived that peace tax fund campaigns and WTR need each other, that you can’t have one without the other; I said that I could certainly resist without any connection to a peace tax fund campaign, but I began to see that many Europeans see the effort to actually redirect military taxes to a fund that is only for peace-building efforts or alternative defense is primary to their peace tax fund campaigns. I think the U.S. efforts have never had this peace-building fund as an emphasis; the peace tax fund bill as it has been written in the U.S. redirects the taxes of conscientious objectors to the non-military spending in the U.S. budget, not to a specific peace-building effort. I found that insight rather interesting as I never understood so clearly how many of the campaigns are writing their bills for this specific purpose.
In my small group and in general there was clearly interest in making Conscience and Peace Tax International more of an umbrella group for all of our work. Due to technicalities of nonprofit status, NWTRCC has not been an official member of CPTI but has been a supporter. CPTI was founded as more of a link for the peace tax fund campaigns than for WTRs, but we’ll see how things develop. Many wanted to see more organizing successes and ideas posted on the CPTI website. Right now it has links to the groups in each country and information on WTR court cases and conscientious objection rulings within the U.N.…
…If you’ve read this far, you get the bonus link to some of Ed Hedemann’s photos from the conference. They are posted at: http://www.nwtrcc.org/ManchesterConference_2008.html.
Ruth Benn has followed up on her earlier report on the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns. Excerpts:
Although WTR was never really really strong in other countries, I did sense at this meeting that there were fewer resisters from countries other than the U.S. and Britain than my first meeting way back 20 years ago, which most attendees attributed to the quickness to collect/seize in many countries. (Or are people being drawn into peace tax fund efforts as a safer alternative?) However, although the German groups seem to be all about peace tax fund efforts, they also told about holding a vigil for a resister who was taken to court recently. And I didn’t write about War Resisters’ International in Britain, which is a case of an organization choosing to refuse to send on withheld taxes voluntarily because that is the only way the staff can resist. Their board had to make that decision. They await Inland Revenue’s showing up to sticker their equipment for seizure now, but they are also trying to figure out how to make their resistance more public and convince other orgs that they can do this (even though Inland Revenue usually collects, it is at a point of forced payment).
Still, while I can see these good examples, I do find it discouraging that in the times we are in there are not masses turning to this form of resistance (or even to the peace movement in general for heaven’s sake!) in the U.S., if not elsewhere.…
War tax resisters and peace tax fund advocates have some similarities in the sort of goals they’re aiming for: they think that their governments overspend on the military and they’d like their own money spent in better ways. But tactically, they’re miles apart: peace tax funds are about the polar opposite of conscientious tax resistance, and in fact are most likely to be enacted as a weapon in the government arsenal to fight against war tax resistance should it ever become sufficiently popular to be troublesome.
A lot of peace tax fund promoters don’t see it this way. They think of peace tax fund schemes as being a natural extension of the same impulses that cause people adopt war tax resistance, and they support the former for the same reasons that other people support the latter. So, to that extent there’s some harmony between the groups: peace tax fund promoters typically have their hearts in the right place and just need to appropriately reposition their heads to match.
But, since peace tax fund schemes are really inimical to conscientious war tax resistance, there is necessarily some tension here.
I think it might be useful to rethink the “big tent” that brings war tax resisters and peace tax fund advocates together in conferences like this one. Not that I think there should be a formal divorce, but maybe instead we should consider making the tent even bigger, to include tax resisters who resist from different motives than antimilitarism. The invitation of George Rishmawi was a good example of this (he was one of the organizers of tax resistance during the intifada in Palestine) — too bad he couldn’t make it.
Here’s another example: what appears to have been a sophisticated campaign of tax resistance from Mexico, where the motives of the resisters were to protest that the government simply wasn’t providing the minimum of service in return for the taxes. (From the Saltillo Palabra a couple of years ago; the translation is mine, which is why it’s clunky):
TIJUANA — The executive council of the National Chamber of Commerce [Canaco] in Tijuana decided to hold back taxes from the three levels of Government since they do not provide security to the city, said César Cázares, president of the organization.
“There is a group of tax lawyers who are advising us. We are going to stop paying taxes. Already we have had agreements, meetings, plans. It’s a method of civil disobedience," he said.
So far this month, 24 people have been assassinated in Tijuana, among these was the assistant chief of security who was ambushed Thursday.
Cázares asserted that tax resistance is being tried because the retailers of Tijuana are very worried about the constant crime wave, and they do not see a response from the authorities.
He explained that since Thursday Canaco is consulting with the College of Accountants of Tijuana to find a way to redirect the taxes to some government entity and for the retailers not to be sanctioned as tax delinquents.
“The possibility exists that the taxes will be redirected to an account in the Federal Court for them to hold in escrow so long as the government fails to return security to us,” he emphasized in the press conference.
About 35 presidents of skilled groups from Canaco entreated Cázares to ask the state authorities for the intervention of the Army.
In addition, they will initiate a campaign to urge the rest of the population to stop paying taxes: property, vehicle, and others.
Cázares indicated that there are commercial sales losses of 30–50% due to the insecurity that Tijuana suffers.
Canaco Tijuana includes 2,300 companies in packaging, pharmacy, hardware, used car sales, junkyards, and repair shops, among others.
War tax resisters in many ways have a lot more in common with tax resisters like these shopkeepers in Tijuana — for instance how we organize, what legal complications we have to deal with, what sort of mutual support we provide, and so forth — than we have with peace tax fund promoters. I think we’d probably have a lot more to talk about, too.
Ruth Benn has expanded on her impressions of the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns over at the NWTRCC website.
Included with that article is another by Ed Hedemann in which he compares war tax resistance in the U.S. with that in other countries, particularly those in Europe. Excerpts:
U.S. peace activists who want to refuse to pay for war have it easy, at least compared to most of the rest of the world. In the United States, everyone who wants to resist taxes can do so.
We must file — or refuse to file — income tax returns, which makes refusal possible, whereas in most countries that option doesn’t exist. For example, in Britain, unless you’re self-employed, there is no income tax return to file. Income taxes are taken directly from your paycheck (through Pay As You Earn — PAYE) and employees cannot control the amount that is withheld unless their employer is willing to be complicit…
…The consequences for those who are able to resist (mostly the self-employed) are also a bit different. Generally, a court order is required in Britain to seize personal property, which is done more frequently than in the United States. In other countries (such as Germany), if there is a judgment against a resister, tax agents can come to your house and put stickers on personal property (TV set, computer, bicycle, etc.) to indicate that these items will be seized in 30 days unless the government gets paid. Also, it appears that the percentage of resisters being sent to jail — though small in number (only four in the last 20 years) — is higher in Britain than in the United States. The sentences have ranged from a week to four weeks.
As a result of these restrictions, the numbers of war tax resisters in other countries are much smaller than the several thousand in the United States. For example, in Belgium, only one person is known to be a war tax resister.
Benn and Hedemann both note the differences between the peace tax fund proposals in Europe from the one in the United States. In the U.S., the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would wall off federal military spending from other federal spending and would mandate that tax contributions from conscientious objectors could only be applied to the non-military budget items. The proposals of European peace tax fund plan advocates, by contrast, “are geared towards having their taxes put into new programs established to develop systems of nonviolent defense as an alternative to the military.”
The issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out. It includes:
“both daunting and encouraging and well worth the considerable reading time… captures in one indexed volume many individual acts and campaigns of conscientious objection to war and of revenue refusal to tyrannical governments… sincere voices and challenging arguments.”
“167 intelligent and intense writings on the challenging question of whether people of conscience should pay for war… People struggling with this moral issue today will be guided by the writings in this book and may find some wonderful language to use in their own statements of conscience… a straightforward and compelling book.”
At 75 Tom is philosophical about closing the door on his professional life and has no regrets about his choices. “In this present economy we’re getting a payback for what the government has been doing and what I haven’t been paying for and resisting all this time. People ask if war tax resistance changes anything. I can’t say that, but it’s helped me put up with what we have to put up with in this country.”
