Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Clare Hanrahan

Two things kept rattling around in my brain after I got back from the NWTRCC conference in Birmingham last weekend.

One was Joffre Stewart’s a capella “Oh-Ba-Ma!” song. I don’t remember the lyrics, but only the general tone of blasphemy, in which Barack’s virgin birth was denied, and the miracles attributed to him were cast into doubt.

The other was something Clare Hanrahan said about redirection.

“Redirection,” in which war tax resisters take all or some portion of what the IRS claims they owe and send the money instead to charity, is a very popular war tax resistance tactic. Some would say “tactic” is the wrong word — it’s not really the means to an end but is itself the end they’re aiming for: being able to use their money to support their own idea of community needs, rather than the Pentagon’s wasteful and immoral priorities.

But those of us who are doing tax resistance by reducing our incomes below the income tax line can sometimes feel left out when redirection is given a big priority, or when, as sometimes happens, those resisters who do redirect their tax money talk as though they assume that’s what all of us do or should do.

But we don’t have an amount to redirect because our strategy has been to reduce that amount to zero. Furthermore, because we may have had to squeeze our budgets in order to do tax resistance this way, we may not have much left over with which to make a big donation in April.

Hanrahan said that as she sees it, there’s more to redirect than money:

For the most part my redirection of time and personal involvement has been possible by my choice to spend my hours in direct service and solidarity where my heart leads me, rather than in wagework geared to bring in cash. Currently I do literacy volunteer work, stand in solidarity with Veterans for Peace, and with Women in Black, serve on boards and committees, and in years past, founded and managed a homeless advocacy center. I believe that redirection of time and presence provides a personal and potent contribution to the common good, a gift of self that has more dimensions than money alone. I redirect each time I give my time and energy in support of good work within my community. It is a way to share in the work of change, my liberation bound up in that of those I stand with, rather than perpetuating the hierarchy of charitable giving.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

A couple of days back, WPVM in Asheville, North Carolina did a show on the recent NWTRCC conference in Birmingham, Alabama.

The show is mostly the result of the hard work of Clare Hanrahan, who was at the conference as a participant, but was also recording the proceedings and interviewing others who were there.

You can listen to the show on-line (click the “Stream” button) — it’s like being there. Listening to the show, I felt like I was back in Birmingham hearing the stories and voices all over again. If you couldn’t make it to the conference, this is the next best thing.

The June edition of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is on-line now. Some of the highlights:

• Clare Hanrahan reports on the 2008 War Tax Boycott redirection ceremony
• Reports on Tax Day actions nationwide last April
• A brief review of We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader
• A report on the NWTRCC National in Birmingham last month
• A profile of war tax resister Geoff Huggins

The October issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out. It includes:

• The reports from the 12^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns from Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann that I linked to last month.
• Clare Hanrahan’s review of We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader:

  “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.”

• Elizabeth Boardman’s review of American Quaker War Tax Resistance:

  “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.”

• Some notes on frivolous filing warnings, new tax laws, and IRS enforcement techniques.
• Notes about tax resisters Bob Williams, Mike Palecek, and David Schenck, about the trial of two Los Alamos National Laboratory protesters, and about the upcoming New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters.
• A story about long-time resister Thomas Wilson. The state of Massachusetts suspended his dental license 21 years ago when he stopped cooperating with state tax laws because the state, in turn, was acting as a collection agency for the IRS. Wilson kept practicing dentistry without a license, and was able to keep doing so until this year when he was forced to shut down after a competing dentist ratted him out to the state board of registration.

  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.”

I’m back from the Spring 2009 NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I’ll share some of my impressions today and go into more detail in the coming days.

I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day. We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the Friday and Saturday sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.

Friday

After the administrative committee met on Friday morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, Friday night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.

Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement. They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.

Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.

One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.

Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.

Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.

Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.

Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church. On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church. He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.

Saturday morning

After breakfast Saturday morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.

Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward. Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):

David Waters

I love the palm cards.

Pam Allee

It would be good to keep the campaign going on a low simmer during the sleepy times so that we would be ready to jump in with a flashier campaign when the moment is right.

Bill Ramsey

I recommend a scaled-down campaign in which we keep the website updated but reduce the budget.

Robert Randall

How can we hold on to the new resisters whom we learn about for the first time when they sign up for the boycott?

Ray Gingerich

I’m confused as to whether the boycott is meant only for first-timers or if it’s for everyone; to me it seemed gimmicky and not particularly appealing.

Susan Balzer

Some people might not want to sign on to the boycott because they don’t want to be “on a list” and they might be more comfortable if there’s a way to remain anonymous.

Jim Stockwell

I think maybe “boycott” is a threatening or discouraging word to some people.

Clare Hanrahan

The hard copy boycott sign-on sheets weren’t at all popular when we were tabling.

Daniel Woodham

We should make the palm cards less likely to go stale by removing the year and references to specific wars/issues.

Geov Parrish

The value of the campaign is mainly as a vehicle for publicizing war tax resistance as an option, not so much in getting people to sign on.

Erica Weiland

I wonder if by framing the campaign as a one-year thing we prompt people to make their resistance temporary.

Clare Hanrahan

I do low-income resistance and I redirect unwaged labor, not money. I think the war tax resistance movement should honor that and recognize that option for boycott participants (not assume everyone has a dollar amount to redirect).

Tim Godshall (and others)

We need to have better follow-up with the people who sign on — by phone is better than by email.

Robert Randall

Maybe we could parcel out some of the following-up to people in our network list.

Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.

Saturday afternoon

First thing on Saturday afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.

After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions. In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS. Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.

I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting. I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan: “I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”

One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not. There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together. I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.

The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.” I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that. What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.

Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions. I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.

Sunday

Sunday was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.

The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post. For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes. So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.

Clare Hanrahan will be facilitating a workshop on “The Power of the Purse: Women and War Tax Resistance” at the 2009 Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking this October 23–25 in Memphis, Tennessee. Panel participants will include Judy Scheckel, Pam Beziat, and Kathy Kelly.

War tax resisters Pam Beziat, Kathy Kelly, Clare Hanrahan, and Judy Scheckel held a panel discussion about “The Power of the Purse: Women and War Tax Resistance” at the 2009 Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking last Saturday.

According to a news account of the panel:

Whenever Pam Beziat, Nashville peace activist, thinks about paying federal income taxes, she looks at pictures of children who have been maimed, bruised and broken by war.

“I would look at the pictures and decide I was never going to pay taxes again,” said Beziat, one of four female panelists who discussed war tax resistance at the Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking on Saturday.

Conference keynote speaker and panelist Kathy Kelly, who was sentenced to a year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites in 1988, said she came to the personal conviction that she would not support “bloody” government practices almost 30 years ago.

“There is no way, no how I would give my money to the Mafia, much less the IRS,” she said.

“We face a serious question about whether or not to continue to pour resources and productivity into military projects while we cannot meet human needs,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea to take that question seriously, as a personal question.”

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is keeping tabs on upcoming “tax day” (April 15) actions around the country. Take a look to see what’s going on in your neck of the woods.
• C-SPAN has made its archives available on-line, including this video of the “Day Without The Pentagon” rally in 1998 featuring Clare Hanrahan of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee at about the 67:40 mark.
• Jeffrey F. Barr shares his take on the “Render Unto Caesar” koan at LewRockwell.com. “As Dorothy Day is reputed to have said, ‘If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar.’ ”

The Spring 2010 national NWTRCC gathering in Tucson, Arizona has been, as usual, a fruitful mix of experienced war tax resistance veterans and enthusiastic, curious, and somewhat uncertain newbies.

The agenda was less heavy this time than in the recent past — no contentious issues like the Peace Tax Fund Bill to worry us, and an improving budget situation. This left us plenty of time both to talk shop and to learn from local activists about their areas of expertise.

Friday night

Friday night we viewed the new war tax resistance film Death & Taxes and heard from Steev Hise, who directed the lion’s share of the filming and gave us some insight into the process, and from a couple of us who were in the film.

Film sales have exceeded our yearly projections already, half-way through the year, and everyone seems to report that the film is effective in spurring enthusiasm for and curiosity about war tax resistance.

Saturday morning

The meeting began, as such meetings often do, with a go-around-the-circle round of introductions. This also included updates about what local war tax resistance and other activists have been up to in recent months.

Erica Weiland addresses the meeting

Clare Hanrahan and Coleman Smith reported on their successful south-east regional war tax resistance gathering that was held at the beginning of the year. The opening of a new regional gathering (there’s a well-established one in New England already) was a priority for NWTRCC and so we were pleased to hear both that this meeting went well and that the organizers plan to make it an ongoing thing.

A number of people reported that their local groups were smaller and less-active this year than in the recent past. Most attributed this to the general dip in progressive activism during the Obama-sedation period, with some saying that they’ve noticed progressive activists so eager to distinguish themselves from TEA Party activists that they don’t want to associate themselves with a group whose focus is on tax resistance and they meet our message with more than the usual reluctance and defensiveness.

Still, there were the usual penny polls, literature tables, redirection granting ceremonies, and rallies on Tax Day this year, competing with dwindling but still sizable TEA Party crowds (that sometimes dilute our message and other times provide a media springboard for it).

The Nuclear Resister

Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa, who edit The Nuclear Resister, were our hosts and local organizers in Tucson. Their newsletter covers and organizes support for imprisoned anti-war / anti-nuke civil disobedients, including the occasional war tax resister.

They spoke about their work and about anti-nuclear activism in general, such as the actions coordinated by an international coalition to focus on the 40^th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Opposition to nuclear power has been on the wane, both because few new nuclear power plants have started in the United States recently, and because nuclear power has been greenwashed as a potential solution for global warming and other consequences of hydrocarbon fuel. Jack thinks the greenwashing is hooey, that nuclear power — seen over its whole lifecycle — is neither energy efficient nor emissions-friendly, and that the nuclear power industry is tightly linked with nuclear weapons and that the real reason we have a nuclear power industry has much less to do with electricity than with maintaining an infrastructure, knowledge-base, and the raw materials for a perpetual nuclear arsenal.

There was also some discussion of the campaign to divest from Israel, modeled on the anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed against South Africa.

Border activism

If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ll know that government harassment of immigrants is a big issue in Arizona right now, as the state government just enacted legislation that it promises will usher in a more draconian crackdown on illegal immigrants. There have been calls to boycott the state, and so there was some embarrassment that our group had decided to go through with its meeting here.

On the other hand, we met in part, and many of us stayed the night during our stay, at BorderLinks, a group that specializes in ameliorating the effects of government policy in this area. So we helped to support this work, a bit anyway, by our housing fees. BorderLinks, at least, was glad we didn’t cancel our conference.

Reviewing a map of recent deaths of immigrants in the desert near the Arizona/Mexico border

This also gave us an opportunity to learn from local border-issues activists, who had no difficulty pointing out both the close relation between our groups (a number of border-issues activists are also war tax resisters), and that because of the increasing militarization of border enforcement, war tax resistance is directly applicable to their struggle.

The repulsive border wall, and increased border patrol enforcement in general, have not stopped people from crossing the border, but have merely forced the immigrant trails to be more arduous. Crossing the border has become more deadly as the safer routes become more difficult to pass. Humanitarian groups have responded to the crisis by trying to put bottled-water and first aid stations along the newer routes, actively patrolling to come to the aid of people who are lost, injured, or dehydrated, and setting up desert camps where people can stop along the way. Such efforts are, naturally, subject to sporadic government harassment.

What of the TEA Party?

Saturday afternoon I ran a War Tax Resistance 101 workshop for people who were just getting their feet wet or who were preparing to take the plunge. This group was eager and enthusiastic going in, and, I think, came out of the workshop even more so, and with some more practical pointers on how to take the next step, whichever step that is for them.

The afternoon session ended with a group brainstorm about the relationship between organized war tax resistance groups like ours and the TEA Party movement.

Ruth Benn addresses the gathering

Some of us see the TEA Party as an embarrassing distraction on Tax Day, and think it is important that we clearly distinguish our message from theirs so that war tax resistance doesn’t get confused in the public eye as some sort of TEA Party variant.

Others felt that there is enough common ground between war tax resisters and some portion of the TEA Partiers that we might be well-served by trying to do some outreach, which might hold the hope of introducing the tactic of war tax resistance to antimilitarist libertarians, isolationist paleoconservatives, and the other radical government skeptics who make up one tendency in the TEA Party. For instance, Joffre Stewart reported having recruited a new phone tax resister from within the TEA Party ranks at one of their rallies.

We’re wrapping up our vacation in Mexico today, so I’ll soon be able to contribute more to The Picket Line, which has been getting a little dry lately with all of these yellowing-pages and microfiche posts I’d been saving up.

Have you seen the NWTRCC website lately? We’ve been working on a redesign for several months now and it just recently rolled out. Ought to make the site easier to use, kinder to the eye, and easier to keep up-to-date.

Also, Clare Hanrahan, a member of NWTRCC’s administrative committee, has a fine op-ed in Couterpunch on the ongoing U.S. torture policy and our responsibility to confront it.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Roni Deutch: The Tax Lady Blog answers Five Common Questions About Bankruptcy and Tax Debts, such as: can you eliminate your old tax debts by filing for bankruptcy?
• The Citizen-Times of Asheville, North Carolina, profiles war tax resister Clare Hanrahan.

Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are some examples from past years:

“White House Picketed by Foes of Segregation, Taxes and Nerve Gas” New York Times 16 April 1960

Reports on April 15^th White House picketers featuring members of the Peacemakers, including war tax resister Max Sandin.

“Singer Again Refuses To Pay Her Income Tax” The Modesto Bee 15 April 1974

Joan Baez sends a protest letter to the IRS instead of a check. Roy Kepler also quoted.

“No tax woes — he just doesn’t file” The [Spokane] Spokesman-Review 15 April 1983

War tax resister Irwin Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years. (don’t miss the ad below the article for a special on the Sony Walkman: only $89.00)

“When morals clash with Uncle Sam’s bill” Gainesville Sun 15 April 1984

An op-ed piece by Horace G. Davis on personal entanglement with the military-industrial complex includes notes on Raymond Hunthausen and some of the publications of the war tax resistance movement.

“Tax resisters turn cash over to ‘common good’ ” Wilmington Morning Star 15 April 1995

Clare Hanrahan is redirecting her taxes to a group that helps the homeless. “We’re not evading taxes. We’re redirecting them and putting them where they’ll do the most good, immediately.” Also quotes Karen Marysdaughter.

“Protesters oppose death, taxes” The Tuscaloosa News 15 April 2002

Susan Quinlan, Larry Harper, and Bill Ramsey discuss war tax resistance.

“Protesting war, a few dollars at a time” St. Petersburg Times 15 April 2004

Ruth Paine is the focus of this article. Ruth Benn and Mary Ann C. Holtz are also quoted.

“Outraged by war, tax resisters ignore filing deadline” The [Fredericksburg, Virginia] Free Lance-Star 15 April 2005

Karl Meyer and Ruth Benn are quoted in this piece on the war tax resistance movement.

A new edition of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line, and features the following:

• A war tax resistance manifesto by Larry Rosenwald, and responses from Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, Karl Meyer, and Bill Glassmire. (I’ll have more on this in a future Picket Line entry… stay tuned.)
• Buyer Beware, a poem on military spending by Marge Piercy
• Some news briefs, including these notes of particular interest:
  • The IRS has gotten in the habit of sending out “frivolous filing” notices to anyone who writes them a letter explaining their reasons for tax resistance (or even in response to letters from non-resisters who are just paying under protest). These notices are accompanied by a $5,000 fine — a fine that, by law, must be paid before it can be appealed. The IRS is only authorized to assess such fines in response to a tax filing that is incomplete, inaccurate, and that involves some frivolous legal stance, so it is pretty clearly overstepping its bounds here: but because a resister must pay the fine in order to appeal it, and most war tax resisters are unwilling to do so, this puts them in a bind. One resister, Steve Leeds, got such a frivolous filing notice and then, instead of paying the fine and formally appealing it, he complained to his congressional representatives about the IRS’s abuse of the law. One of his representatives then contacted the IRS, which then caved — sending Leeds an apology.
  • If the IRS attaches a levy to your salary, it will leave you some portion of your salary to live on while it sucks away the rest. How does it determine how much to take? Is it based on your base salary, or on what’s left over in your check after deductions for 401(k) contributions, insurance premiums, commuter checks, or what have you? Turns out the answer is the latter, but only if those deductions were already in effect at the time the levy was received by the employer.
• A book review of The Green Zone by Clare Hanrahan — this book looks at the environmental impact of the U.S. military, which is exempt from laws and treaties designed to protect the environment, and, according to the author, is “the largest single polluter of any single agency or organization in the world.”
• War tax resistance ideas and actions, featuring a penny poll in Oregon, a protest in Washington D.C., and the upcoming New England gathering of war tax resisters.
• NWTRCC News — a behind the scenes look into operations at NWTRCC headquarters.
• A profile by and of war tax resister Lauren Tepper

Yesterday was the deadline to file federal income tax returns, which is traditionally a day for protesters with a tax-related message to get their rallies on.

In my neck of the woods, a number of groups including Northern California War Tax Resistance, BAY-Peace, CodePINK, Global Day of Action on Military Spending, Iran Pledge of Resistance, Courage to Resist, and Occupy Oakland, marched downtown and held a rally at the Federal Building. I showed up long enough to take a quick look-see and get some photos, but was feeling too sick from a head cold to stick around long.

Here are a couple more of the early tax day action reports that have been trickling in:

War tax resister Clare Hanrahan spoke at a tax day rally in Asheville, North Carolina. Democrats and organized labor were hoping to make the rally a celebration of “the Buffett rule” and other “tax the rich” messages, but Hanrahan reminded them what tax money pays for. “My speech at today’s tax-day rally was a bit too seditious for MoveOn,” she writes, saying that group canceled their appearance at the rally when they heard a war tax resister would be speaking. Here’s what she had to say.

War tax resisters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire held their annual “penny poll” outside the local post office, asking passers-by to vote with pennies for their idea of what the nation’s spending priorities ought to be. This, then, is contrasted to the priorities reflected in the federal government’s budget.

Here is the text of Clare Hanrahan’s great tax day speech that she delivered at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina. Her speech repulsed the contemptible vampire liberals of MoveOn (they withdrew from the rally when they heard a war tax resister would be addressing it) better than if she had been wearing a garlic wreath, holding up a silver cross, and shooting holy water from a super-soaker.

“The greatest changes in history have only come when people are willing to put everything on the line.” Julia Butterfly Hill

Environmental activist and tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill took direct action when the IRS claimed she owed them $150,000 from a court settlement. Instead of aiding and abetting war, Julia redirected this money to education, arts and cultural programs, community gardens, programs for Native Americans, alternatives to incarceration, and environmental protection.

When war is illegal, isn’t paying war tax a crime?

I have refused to pay war taxes since 1981. That’s the year I took the pledge. That’s when I decided to break the deadly habit of paying for war.

It’s not just our federal taxes that fuel war, but our lifestyles of waste and habitual consumption, this privilege that we maintain on the backs of the destitute of the world, is upheld by the Pentagon and its deadly force.

I’m one of thousands of people around this country who openly identify themselves as War Tax Resisters. Some file and refuse to pay. Some refuse to file or cooperate in any way. Some refuse a portion of federal taxes, some refuse to pay any at all.

Most War Tax Resisters are also Peace Tax Payers, redirecting refused war-tax dollars to fund community needs. Local alternative Funds throughout the U.S. each year deliver more than $50,000 in refused war taxes to support constructive projects.

As we gather here today to call out Bank of America, to demand that they stop participating in this business of death — to demand that they stop funding mountain top removal coal mining enterprises, stop facilitating the buildup and modernization of nuclear weapons, and stop loaning millions to criminal enterprises like Eric Prince and Blackwater/Xe, the largest mercenary operation in the world.

As we say to Bank of America and its shareholders: Stop!

Are we willing to risk our own economic privilege to obstruct this business of death?

Who will block the doors to the post office today when most Americans will voluntarily submit taxes on the demand of the IRS — the taxes that fuel the Pentagon!

When war is illegal — I ask you — isn’t paying for war a crime?

Whatever the risk to property or privilege, career or liberty, we must stop. We must stop supporting this system of destruction. Not merely because it is immoral and unjust, but because it is illegal — according to International Law.

The Pentagon and media are aligned in their efforts to hide the costs: the maimed soldiers, the battlefield carnage, the grieving widows, the broken souls, the poisoned Earth — funded with nearly one-half of every tax dollar obediently submitted under threat.

The mandate of the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal of 1950 is clear:

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to [refuse to obey] domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.

We cannot say we did not know.

We who refuse to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service in its coercive efforts to collect the funds to wage illegal wars, are in fact upholding International Law and treaties that compel citizens to refuse to cooperate with the crimes of their government.

Each citizen has a responsibility to ensure that their own personal conduct does not breach international law.

According to the International Criminal Court a person is criminally liable who “aids, abets or assists” in the commission of such a crime “including providing the means for its commission.”

Governments cannot wage war without the money to buy weapons, pay troops or purchase supplies. Without the support of taxpayers and moneylenders war would be impossible.

When war is illegal, isn’t paying war tax a crime?

Look around. The crime scene is everywhere. Let’s just talk about what we harbor here in these ancient mountains — weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction — weapons that violate all the criteria for acceptable weapons of war, including: “Distinction” (between combatants and non-combatants), “Proportionality” (causing excessive loss of civilian life); “Protection of Environment” (causing “widespread, longterm & severe damage”).

In Jonesboro, Tennessee, weaponized uranium in the form of armor-piercing bullets is manufactured at AeroJet. It contaminates, kills, and deforms for generation after generation. In Erwin, Tennessee, Nuclear fuel Services manufactures the fuel for Trident Nuclear Submarines — the first strike nuclear submarines, themselves a violation of International law, and in Oak Ridge at the Y-12 nuclear bomb factory where billions more are being spent to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal for generations.

The United States is the number one military spender and arms exporter in the world.

U.S. war crimes include “crimes against peace” such as the “planning, preparation, or initiation of a war of aggression.” “Crimes against humanity,” (both civilians and soldiers). Violations of the rules as to the “means and manner by which war is to be conducted once begun.” These include the following prohibitions: “killing of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the use of certain types of weapons, killing of defenseless soldiers, ill treatment of POWs and attacks on non-military targets.”

We can’t say we didn’t know.

Any violation of these two sets of laws is a war crime — when done on purpose, as the U.S. has done, they are grave breaches — Nazis and Japanese following World War Ⅱ were hanged for such grave breaches.

The United States and its leaders have committed international crimes. As global citizens, under International law, we are complicit in these crimes against humanity, these war crimes.

When war is illegal, paying for war is a war crime.

How long, I ask, will it take those of us who know the futility of the Pentagon’s wars, how they rob us of our brightest and best, how they kill and rape and maim, tear apart families, lay desolate the land, leave orphans and widows and broken and discarded veterans wandering our streets, filling our jails, or bringing the violence of war back home?

How long, war-tax payers, will you persist in this deadly submission?

We can’t say we didn’t know.

When war is illegal, isn’t paying war tax a crime?

The June issue of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line, and includes:

• Clare Hanrahan’s tax day speech: “We must stop supporting this system of destruction. Not merely because it is immoral and unjust, but because it is illegal — according to International Law.”
• counseling notes — Congress considers revoking passports from tax delinquents, the IRS struggles to cope with a flood of tax fraud, and Ed Hedemann suggests low-income tax resisters inflate the numbers on their income tax statements so they have something to resist.
• international news — tax resistance in Spain, and a new nonviolent campaign guide from War Resisters’ International
• legal news — updates on the Frank Donnelly and Cindy Sheehan cases
• Tax Day 2012 action reports and photos
• reports from the Spring 2012 NWTRCC national gathering in Chicago
• a collection of brief “how I became a war tax resister” anecdotes from attendees at the Chicago conference

When trying to bring new tax resisters into a movement, there are lots of hopeful short-cuts, but sometimes there is no substitute for addressing potential resisters individually: whether that be through letters, petitions, or face-to-face meetings.

• When the United States approved a billion-dollar military aid package to the government of Colombia in 2000, the president of the Mennonite Church of Colombia, Peter Stucky, and Ricardo Esquivia, the director of that church’s Justapaz organization and the coordinator of the Evangelical Council of Colombia’s Human Rights and Peace Commission, wrote a letter to their sister churches in the U.S.. In that letter, they explained the disastrous consequences of fueling the civil war and the military wing of the war on drugs there, explained how the church there was trying to respond more productively to the crisis, and called on churches in the U.S. to do their part:

  In reality, the government of the United States, using the tax-payers money, is supporting the Colombian government in what we consider to be a negative form. This means that the message arriving from the North to the Colombian people becomes a message of death and destruction. For that reason we are calling the churches in the North to redeem their taxes, on one hand by demanding that the U.S. government invests this money in life-producing projects, and on the other hand by redirecting part of their taxes toward a different project in your community or the world that promotes abundant and dignified life, as our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us.

  The American Mennonite Central Committee responded by urging taxpayers to redirect their taxes from the U.S. government to the Mennonite-run “Taxes for Peace” fund, which in turn would be dedicated that year to peace-building efforts in Colombia.
• This sort of advocacy can be dangerous, as this next example will show. In 1918, R.W. Benner, a Mennonite minister, got worried reports from members of his congregation who were being told in no uncertain terms that they would buy so-called “Liberty Bonds” to support the U.S. war effort, or they would answer for their refusal. Benner wrote to his bishop, L.J. Heatwole, who responded with a letter in which he reiterated the position of the church that Mennonite brethren “Do not aid or abet war in any form… [and] Contribute nothing to a fund that is used to run the war machine.” He noted:

  In a number of places where brethren have refused to contribute to the different war funds, outlandish threats have been made and in a few cases have been put into execution — such as, tar and feathering, painting houses yellow, decorating autos and buildings with flags to test them out on their principles of nonresistance.

  But he urged his fellow-Mennonites to keep the faith and to embrace this sort of martyrdom like good Christians. Benner conveyed this message to his flock. For this, both of them were charged under the Espionage Act and convicted. (To give you some idea of the railroading involved, Heatwole did not learn that a guilty plea had been entered on his behalf by his court-appointed attorney until after he appeared for the trial!)
• Letters, or “epistles,” from war tax resisting Quakers to their fellow-Friends were an important way of spreading and maintaining the practice in the Society. American war tax resistance can be said to have begun on 16 December 1755, when John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and several other Quakers addressed a letter in which they explained to other Friends why

  as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the [recent] Act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal, which we hope to be enabled to bear with patience.

  David Cooper reflected on how thoughtful letters like these helped him maintain his war tax resistance in times of doubt:

  I read with singular satisfaction the piece which you lent me respecting taxes, as it was very strengthening to my mind, which before was somewhat encompassed with weakness on this account.… I have since felt much weakness, and had come to no solid conclusion of mind, until I read your little manuscript, which caused my heart to rejoice, under a feeling sense that it is the truth which leads those who walk and abide in it to hold forth this testimony unto the world. And oh, says my soul, that I may yield faithful obedience to its monitions, let what will be the consequence.

  Yearly Meetings would sometimes send letters to Quarterly or Monthly Meetings to reiterate the Quaker position on war tax resistance and give instructions as to how it should be enforced. For instance, this is from an 1831 letter from the North Carolina Yearly Meeting:

  …all our members should stand firm, and be faithful in bearing their testimony against war and military operations; taxes and fines appertaining thereunto, either directly or indirectly; or any way conniving or compromising with the specious and plausible offers of the legislature, by the tax proposed in the late act, to screen us from muster fines or military services. And in order that all our members may be clearly informed on this subject, and be fully prepared to meet the trial likely to come upon us by this law, we have thought it best to send it down in this epistle.

• American war tax resisters today do a lot of recruiting by reaching out to attendees of the annual protests of imperialist atrocities at the School of the Americas Watch vigils. Clare Hanrahan and Coleman Smith of NWTRCC carried the message of war tax resistance with them on a “circuit riding” barnstorm of activist centers in the American southeast. Harvard and Radcliffe activists used a petition drive to recruit phone tax resisters during the Vietnam War. And during that war also, individually-addressed letters were used to recruit new tax resisters to sign on to the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest.”
• An organizer of the Dublin water charge strike recalls:

  …months of work had been done in local areas convincing people of the primacy of [non-payment]. This was done through local public meetings, door-to-door leaflets and even knocking on doors and talking to people… The building of the campaign in this way was crucial. Local campaign groups were built and then came together and federated, rather than a central committee being formed first and then coming along to organise people.

  …it became clear that while people might not have come out to the meeting, they had kept the information about the campaign and the campaign contact numbers had their place on a lot of fridge doors.

• American women’s suffrage activist Anna Howard Shaw wrote a letter to women in the movement in 1913, urging them to refuse to fill out income tax returns. “In this manner we can show our loyalty to those who struggled to make this a free republic and who laid down their lives in defense of the equal rights of all free citizens to a voice in their own Government. … Let our protest be universal, and let every believer in justice unite in this mode of passive resistance and steadfastly refuse to assist the Government in its unjust and tyrannical violation of its fundamental principle that ‘taxation and representation are one and inseparable,’ and thus prove ourselves worthy descendants of noble ancestors, who counted no price too dear to pay in defense of liberty and equality and justice.” She told a reporter: “Since my letter was sent all over the country, I have received letters of encouragement and support from all directions,” and she soon thereafter won support for her stand from the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.
• Only some of the women’s suffrage activists in Britain were responsible for paying taxes, so although tax resistance was an important part of the campaign there, it was a part not everybody could participate in. The movement made a special effort to find women who had taxes they could resist. For example, at one meeting in 1910, Margaret Kineton Parkes “asked anyone present who knew women who paid taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.” In 1913, Marie Lawson launched what she called a “snowball” protest: a sort of chain letter in which she sent out letters that advocated tax resistance (and protested on behalf of an imprisoned resister) and that asked the recipients to join her and to in turn send the same letter “to at least three friends.”



• The campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax used some creative outreach techniques (quotes from Danny Burns’s history of the movement):
  • “The Aberdeen Anti-Poll Tax group was formed when people from the radical bookshop came together with a community arts group:

    “…The local community arts group had a theatre group called “Wise Up” and they got a show together about the Poll Tax. They took this show around the estates with information for people about registration and how to fight it, to encourage them to set up local groups and support networks. The plays were performed in local community centres. Attendance for the plays varied from about 10 to 40 or more. The meetings which followed were encouraging because people gave their names as contacts or asked people to set up future meetings.”

  • “In my local group… the union was built up through a door-to-door campaign. A group of five or six people (mostly friends) formed the core. They advertised a public meeting on the Poll Tax and about 50 people turned up. Out of these some joined the organising group. This small group then mass-produced a window poster which said ‘No Poll Tax Here.’ The poster was dropped through the letter-boxes of 2000 households and the group waited to see who put them up. Posters appeared in about 100 windows. Activists then went round and spoke to these people individually, inviting them to attend the next organising meeting; about fifteen did — enough to form the core of a group.”
  • “[Our] network was strengthened by a door-to-door survey of over 500 households. The survey was not intended to be scientifically accurate. Its purpose was to give the APTU a fairly accurate picture of what was happening on the ground, and, perhaps more significantly, it was a pretext for engaging people in conversation about the Poll Tax, informing them of the non-payment campaign and encouraging them to join their local APTU.… Over a third of the people canvassed became paid up members of the union. By the end of the exercise Easton had over 300 members and street reps for almost every street. The canvass was not left there. The key to its success was the second visit. The group compiled all the statistics on a street by street basis and many of the reps then went back, door-to-door, and told people the results of the survey in their street and the neighbouring streets. A newsletter was delivered to everyone telling them what the overall results were for Easton. This meant that people knew how few of their neighbours were going to pay and it gave them confidence not to pay themselves. They had spoken to the canvassers personally, so they knew that the survey was genuine.”
  • “An independent television company approached the Easton group in order to work with us on a film about the Poll Tax. The film was never shown, but the way the community was engaged in the process of making it is instructive. The film producers wanted a shot of all the doors in the street, opening one by one as the occupants came out of their houses with banners and signs. Charles, the local street rep, went round to people’s houses every evening for a week and explained to them what was wanted. Out of 30 houses in the street (a cul-de-sac) 28 agreed to participate. The street is multi-racial with a fairly wide class mix. It was inspiring to see white working class men standing shoulder to shoulder with Asian women and their kids, holding the same banners and engrossed in conversation. Some of them had never spoken to each other before. The film was made, but more importantly, as [a] result of making it, virtually every one of those households joined the Union, and most still had posters in their windows a year later. People were brought into the campaign, not through a leaflet or a canvasser, but through an interesting activity. They didn’t have to go to the campaign, it came to them.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1997

There was a resurgence of war tax resistance news in the Friends Journal in 1997, including an interesting series of articles on the voluntary simplicity / low income lifestyle as a tax resistance tactic, and the beginning chapters of the tale of Quaker war tax resister Priscilla Adams.

A note in the March issue plugged the “Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account”:

Established in 1980 by the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia, the account allows war tax resisters to set aside refused military taxes in a secure fund. Deposits may be retrieved at any time (to replace assets seized by the IRS, for example), and interest from the account is used to promote war tax resistance and support peace and social justice activism. Depositors’ funds are reinvested in socially responsible institutions assisting low-income communities and minorities. The CMTC Escrow Account is the largest and most geographically diverse war tax redirection fund in the United States.

War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience, and resisters potentially face fines, levies, and seizure of assets. However, the escrow account itself is a trust fund, and as such is confidential and entirely legal. Depositor records are not available to the IRS, and individual deposits are considered to be anonymous portions of a larger fund invested in fully insured institutions. Participants receive records of their transactions, annual statements, and a free subscription to NACC’s quarterly war tax resistance magazine.

(I wouldn’t rely on any of that as solid legal advice. My understanding is that the IRS sometimes treats “warehouse banks” like these as illegal operations that they can seize wholesale under the theory that they’re being operated for money laundering or tax evasion purposes.)

In a letter in the May issue, William Kriebel called out Quakers on their careless or politically-correct use of of language; in particular he claimed: “There are no ‘war taxes.’ All income tax money goes into the treasury without earmarking for the military. Taxation is a legitimate power of any government. Our points of protest really are the decisions (budget-making, appropriation) to use money out of the common fund for military purposes.”

An article on the Quaker Council for European Affairs in the same issue noted in passing that “conscientious objection to war taxes” was one of the “studies for publication” that the organization had produced. Another article in that issue noted that the National Association of Evangelicals had endorsed the Peace Tax Fund bill:

“At first this was just a lonely struggle for the peace churches,” said Marian Franz, director of the campaign, “then we got the support of the mainline churches, which represent over 12 million people. Now we have support from more conservative religious organizations, who, until recently, had seemed to be unlikely allies.” Marian attributes the recently attained, broad base of support to a change in tactics from an issue of conscientious objection to an issue of religious liberties. Marian explained that “having this broad base of support means that members of Congress, even conservative members, take the issue more seriously.”

On 4 May, there was a benefit premiere showing of An Act of Conscience, a documentary on the Kehler/Corner house seizure and subsequent occupation. There was some tangential Quaker involvement in the benefit (it was sponsored by several organizations, including a regional AFSC office, and some Massachusetts Quakers took part in the occupation), and the benefit screening was covered in a note in the August issue.

In the lead editorial in the June issue, editor Vinton Deming paid tribute to Eleanor Webb:

Eleanor Webb, who died March 5, was clerk of the Journal board when I was appointed editor-manager in 1981.… It was Eleanor… who stood firmly in support of staff who resisted paying the military portion of their federal taxes.

One of the feature articles in the July issue was written by David R. Bassett and told his story as “The Founder of the Peace Tax Fund Movement.” Excerpts:

This year marks the 25th year since the introduction of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the U.S. Congress. I have been involved in the initiation of this legislation, a laborer in the centuries-long effort to establish on earth the type of peaceful world envisioned by Jesus and George Fox. I firmly believe that, on some significant day in the future, some nation will for the first time pass a Peace Tax Fund Bill, thereby establishing legal recognition of the right of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes. Once this is accomplished, other nations will follow suit. I consider this goal as one of the crucial and route-determining “trail-signs” on the path to that time and place where the world will realize that ahimsa (soulforce) is the preferred way to resolve conflict and to govern communities, and where conscientious objection to war and other forms of violence will be considered the norm.

[My] orientation as a conscientious objector to war and of preventing preventable suffering impelled Miyoko and me, beginning in 1967–68, to wrestle with the fact that each year we were paying (through our federal taxes) to support the Viemam War and the military system generally. In fact, some 50 percent of those tax moneys went to support U.S. military systems! One of my most graphic memories of that time was, while working many nights at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, hearing U.S. Air Force jet tankers, fully laden with jet fuel, flying over the heavily populated part of Honolulu on their way to Indochina.

Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes

In 1968, with the Vietnam War continuing, we moved to Ann Arbor to work at the University of Michigan. We became members of the Ann Arbor Meeting and found there a number of people who were actively grappling with the issue of whether to continue to pay the military portion of federal taxes for a war that we opposed. I came to realize that any nation’s military programs are made possible the, monetary resources that, in the analysis, are extracted from the nation’s citizens by taxation. It also became clear to me that one who was conscientiously opposed to military systems must not allow his or her funds to be used for this purpose. Surveying the pervasive role of our military system not only in our foreign policies, but in its effects on our economy, our environment, and on the nation’s culture and spirit, I carne to feel that this issue was central to our times. Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes is as important to be established as was the ending of slavery and of apartheid and the establishment of women’s right to vote. At the same time, I held then, and still hold, the view that the federal government is capable of carrying out many beneficial and constructive programs and that I am willing, indeed obligated, to pay my full share of taxes to support those programs.

I came to know that it would not be enough simply to focus on reductions in military spending by influencing legislators and electing new ones (though this was obviously necessary). The challenge was to extend the right of conscientious objection to war to include not only one’s physical body, but also one’s economic resources. I knew further that there had been repeated resistance in the U.S. courts to such change and concluded that, while civil disobedience in this area (i.e., war tax resistance) would continue to be essential, the principal focus of attention should be to change the tax laws.

During the year 1969–1970, there was for me a struggle with my conscience, not in regard to what I believe on this issue but whether to take some action and what that action should be. Should I live below a taxable income level? move to Canada? engage in war tax resistance? take our civil disobedience actions into the judicial system? or attempt to change the federal tax laws? Miyoko and I knew that to embark on any of these actions would require great amounts of time and energy; that each course would require some changes and risks, not all of which we could anticipate at the outset; and that none were assured of “success.” I knew that to commit the time necessary to move this issue forward might conflict with my hopes of making progress in academic medicine and in research into the causes of atherosclerosis. We gradually came to the view that it seemed wisest to try to resist paying the military portion of our taxes and to begin to take steps to bring about legislative change.

It was the quiet voice of conscience that kept nagging me almost every day, as I found one or another reason not to take some action. Finally, in the later fall of 1970, I phoned Professor Joseph Sax at the University of Michigan Law School and outlined to him the basic idea: the need to change the federal tax laws so as to have Congress grant legal recognition to the right of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes, while enabling the taxpayer to pay the full amount of his or her tax with assurance that those tax monies would not be used for military expenditures. Professor Sax sketched out how this might be accomplished. Over a period of eight to nine months, with the assistance of Michael Hall, we began the process of drafting what became the World Peace Tax Fund Bill.

Other Ann Arbor Friends, Joe and Fran Eliot and Bob and Margaret Blood, had been considering drafting a bill. A brief written for them by Thomas Towe (a Quaker law student) proved a helpful resource. It was not hard to draw together a working committee of seven or eight people during the spring and summer of 1971 to work on this legislation and to take the initial steps in deciding how to bring the bill to Congress, how to publicize it, and how to raise funds. We were encouraged when Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Council for Peace decided to support the legislative effort and appointed two very effective members to meet with us on a regular basis.

The World Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in the U.S. Congress on April 15, 1972, with Representative Ronald V. Dellums as the lead sponsor, with nine other cosponsors. The Peace Tax Fund office moved from Ann Arbor to the Florida Avenue Meetinghouse in Washington, D.C., in May, 1975. The bill was first introduced in the Senate in 1977, with Senator Mark Hatfield as its sponsor. In 1985 the bill was renamed the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill. A dedicated staff, led for the past 14 years by Marian Franz, has coordinated the lobbying effort. The orientation and the gifts that she brings to her work are evident in her book, Questions That Refuse To Go Away.

A sidebar noted resources available from the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and also made note of the international conferences at which similar plans proposed in other countries are discussed.

Another sidebar gave a version of the ever-popular War Resisters League “pie chart” of federal spending, showing in particular how it looks when social insurance trust fund spending is removed.

The same issue also contains Clare Hanrahan’s article “Wholesome Poverty: A Revolutionary Adventure.” Unfortunately, in the archived PDF, some of the opening paragraph is obscured by an insert card. The article appears to begin with Hanrahan saying that she initially adopted a lower-income simple-living lifestyle in order to resist war taxes, but then came to believe that frugality and thrift and anti-consumerism and simplicity had a larger role to play in the pursuit of “a just and sustainable global community.” It continues:

When I must work for wages, I do so as an independent contractor so that I can maintain control over tax withholdings. I redirect a fair percentage of cash wages and many hours of volunteer time to support life-affirming projects at home and abroad. Self-employment suits my temperament and has enabled me to develop skills and to pursue interests I may never have had the time for in a conventional career. I’ve tried to be resilient and open to any honest labor. If I’m asked what I do for a living, each day I can provide a different answer. One day I might be gathering and saving seeds for next year’s garden or harvesting wild herbs for a winter tea; another day might be spent in household repair, community organizing, or researching and writing a grant for a nonprofit organization. I’ve learned the wisdom in giving due time each day to labor of the mind and of the body and to quiet reflection that feeds the spirit. I value my free time and open schedule far more than any accumulation of cash or property, security, or prestige. The freedom to choose how I will be with each moment is a gift and a challenge that I count as my greatest wealth.

Living on the edge, more or less, over the years I have honed the skills and nurtured an attitude of wholesome poverty. Meeting basic needs without a substantial cash flow has been least stressful when I’ve lived within a stable community where interdependence and cooperative values are practiced. But during my nomadic years I learned to trust in the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of life. I came to value the gifts of the pilgrim spirit and to recognize the importance of the itinerant wayfarer in the lives of the comfortably settled.

I’ve lived and traveled aboard small sail boats, in a tipi, in rural cabins, and in derelict inner-city housing, trading cleanup and repair for rent. I’ve made do in the back of an old school bus and afloat on a homemade houseboat on a Mississippi backwater. I’ve worked in a cooperative shelter for displaced women and children, with room and board as compensation, and I’ve battered for home and garden space by exchanging pet and plant care.

My primary transportation is the slow way. As a pedestrian, a bicyclist, and a bus rider, I keep a less frantic pace, and the more personal contact with those I encounter enriches the journey. I can borrow a car or catch a lift from a friend if necessary, and by paying my fair share of the cost, the cooperative way serves each of us.

Nutritious food is available in surprising abundance if one is willing to look to unconventional channels: I’ve participated in grassroots distribution networks of urban gleanings, intercepting the produce, grains, and other surplus foods otherwise lost. Best of all, I’ve learned to grow my own food in community gardens and backyard plots whenever I had the opportunity. As a worker-member at the local coop I claimed a significant reduction on food purchases, and by eliminating meat from my diet, the cost of my sustenance is affordable and sustainable.

Insurance against old age, disability, accident, or disease has never been an affordable option, nor one in which I place my faith. Catastrophic illness or accident or the incapacities of age could happen to anyone. Yet time and again, I’ve been sustained through economic precarity with help that comes at just the right moment. This has happened so often that I live with a trust that keeps fear at bay.

I have learned to lean into the present moment, focused on the work before me, while keeping a well-honed sense of the adventure of it all and a very real faith in the unfolding process. The inherent goodness of the universe has been made visible through the most unlikely of allies, and the travelers I’ve met along the way have been the wisest of teachers.

Peace Pilgrim, writing in her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace, recalled a visit to a city that had been her home:

In the poorer sections I am tolerated. In the wealthier sections some glances seem a bit startled, and some are disdainful. On both sides of us as we walk are displayed the things that we can buy if we are willing to stay in the orderly lines, day after day, year after year… Thousands of things are displayed — and yet the most valuable things are missing. Freedom is not displayed, nor health, nor happiness, nor peace of mind. To obtain these, my friends, you too may need to escape from the orderly lines and risk being looked upon disdainfully.

Stepping outside the tyranny of “orderly lines” and daring to risk the uncertainties of disaffiliation can make of our very lives a revolution. The way to the just and sustainable global community that we seek will open before us as we walk.

Another article in the same issue took the “voluntary simplicity” idea and ran with it. Starting with Jesus’s one-sentence summary of his teachings — love your neighbor as much as you love yourself — the authors took this to mean “taking our fair share of global resources and no more.” This starts with refusing war taxes because militarism is directly destructive of “our global neighbors.” But that’s just step one of a six-step process.

Step two would be to imagine the world’s resources shared equally, which, the authors assert, means “an annual ‘fair share’ of just over $3,000 per person.” But because the world is not using its resources in an environmentally sustainable way, step #3 is to reduce this fair share some more, to a more sustainable level: $1,800 per person per year. But since that much money would go further in a place like the United States, where it’s relatively easier to live off the cast-offs of the wealthy, level #4 “challenges us to live on even less than level three, since we have an easier time doing so in a society with a relatively affluent public infrastructure.”

We’re not done yet. Level #5 considers the non-monetary wealth most Americans enjoy because of the relatively high levels of medical care and education they have had access to. “With such advantages (and others), we ought to be able to live on less resources than folks who lack education and have chronic medical problems.” Finally, level #6 is for those who are not hampered by disabilities, encouraging them to sacrifice yet more so as to leave more for those who have to struggle harder.

Challenging? Certainly. Even the authors only seem to have made it half way to step #2, limiting their income as a couple to $12,000 a year. Some other choices they made were to “keep the majority of our savings in the form of non-interest-bearing loans” so as to avoid the sin of usury, and to “give away each year an amount equal to what we spend on ourselves.”

(A letter-to-the-editor in the October issue criticized this radical simplicity, saying it smacked of “intelligent, able-bodied adults who consciously decide to let others subsidize” the benefits of society. In particular: “In reducing their income to avoid paying taxes to support the military, this couple also avoids paying taxes that support the other half of the federal budget. So, there goes their support for many of the roads they use, for medical research they might avail themselves of through that subsidized doctor, for other federally supported scientific and social research, for national parks, and so forth. The authors are obviously well educated. Their education was probably supported by local, state, and federal subsidies. One wonders if they are repaying society for the educational benefit they’ve received.”)

Another brief note in the July issue reported on the results of a “penny poll” that had been “conducted by Christian Peacemaker Teams in Elkhart, Ind.” and had indicated that those polled implicitly supported huge reductions in military spending.

A letter-to-the-editor from Marjorie Schier and Suzanne Day of the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting War Tax Concerns Support Committee” published in the September issue summarized the war tax issue as they saw it:

Resisting taxes

When a draft call finds some conscientious objectors unable to participate in war, the government not only has provided them alternatives, but also has proceeded to draft others who will participate. It is individual conscience that makes the difference, not how the government allocates the recruits. Some Friends have been unable to enlist, and some cannot voluntarily send dollars in federal tax for military uses.

Interacting with the federal government through tax resistance as witness for peace is more than symbolic; it can be earnest, meaningful religious conscience in action. However, it does not change how the government allocates its resources, and efforts to witness for changed priorities are also significant. Many Friends and others work for passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill by the U.S. Congress because it would not only provide a legal opportunity for pacifists to pay their full federal tax without supporting war, but also give the government an indication of the numbers of citizens exercising this option.

Yes, the federal tax on telephone service is refused by many pacifists (with a note of explanation accompanying the refusal and redirection of the money for constructive purposes) because that tax was specifically reinstated to support the war in Vietnam. Federal bookkeeping does not distinguish certain tax streams for specific purposes, and has not since John Woolman wrestled with this same issue. Nevertheless, many Friends are prompted to take a stand for peace via taxes and thereby find a forum for disclosing that witness with meetings, governmental representatives, families, and neighbors.

An obituary notice for Abram Bresel Goldstein in that same issue noted that “[t]hough he worked briefly for the Internal Revenue Service, Abram left that position during the Korean War to avoid aiding the collection of taxes for war.”

On 8 November, NWTRCC and the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sponsored a seminar on “Corporate Conscience and War Taxes” at the Moorestown, New Jersey, Meeting (according to a calendar listing in the November issue).

Priscilla Adams

The war tax resistance of Quaker Priscilla Adams became a cause célèbre that played out over nearly a decade in the Friends Journal starting in 1997. I’ll break with my chronological examination of the Journal for a while to follow this thread.

The July 1997 issue introduces Adams and her legal case:

Priscilla Adams, a war tax resister and member of Haddonfield (N.J.) Meeting, is challenging the IRS in court under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Her case is the first of its kind to test conscientious war tax resistance since the passage of the RFRA in 1993. Priscilla and her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, will challenge two points covered by the act: the government’s use of penalties against war tax resisters for their stands of conscience; and the lack of a government accommodation for conscientious objectors to paying for war (like a Peace Tax Fund). The RFRA states that in conflicts between the government and religious freedom, the government must show compelling state interest and then use the least restrictive means necessary. In this case, Priscilla is challenging the government’s lack of recognition of conscience in response to the IRS assessing her taxes and penalties. She and Peter are arguing that under RFRA, the IRS should waive penalties for religious war tax resisters as long as they recognize other forms of reasonable cause for noncompliance with the tax law. They also are stating that the RFRA requires the enactment of something like a peace tax fund for religious war tax resisters who are willing to accept a reasonable accommodation, such as earmarking tax monies for non-warlike purposes in the federal government. The case has completed its earliest procedural stages and will be heard in United States Tax Court. Though no date has been set, lawyers expect a trial date this fall. Priscilla has participated in several clearness committees and is receiving guidance and support from Haddonfield Meeting, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s War Tax Concerns Support Committee, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and family and friends.

The June 1998 issue gave an update:

Priscilla Adams… will appeal the court’s decision rejecting her right to refuse to pay taxes. The case went before the Philadelphia Tax Court, where Adams presented an extensive outline of Quaker history and beliefs related to war tax objections. The court’s decision states, “Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 does not exempt Quaker from federal income taxes, despite taxpayer’s religious opposition to military expenditures.” Since October 1997, Rosa Packard of Purchase (N.Y.) Meeting and Gordon and Edith Browne of Plainfield (Vt.) Meeting also have filed complaints in federal district courts seeking to protect their conscientious acts of war tax refusal.

The March 1999 issue mentioned her appeal:

Tax resister Priscilla Lippincott Adams… faced the Federal Court of Appeals on January 14. Her case against the IRS for penalizing her for her religious objections to paying the military through taxes was dismissed in March 1998… The court had the choice of hearing oral arguments or making a decision based on the written briefs. In a positive turn, the judges heard oral arguments. Adams said her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, passionately presented her case, “just like a lawyer on T.V.” The three judges will now make a decision, a process that could take anywhere from six weeks to six months.

From there, to the Supreme Court, according to a December 1999 press release that formed the basis for a February 2000 Journal news brief:

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of its member, Priscilla Adams… who petitioned the high court in November 1999, following unsuccessful efforts in lower courts to obtain government accommodation for her conscientious objection to paying war taxes by allowing her to pay federal taxes without paying for military expenditures. Her employer, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supports religious witness by not forwarding the military portion of a conscientious objector’s taxes to the IRS. A Peace Tax Fund, where tax dollars of conscientious objectors would be directed exclusively to nonmilitary programs, is one possible solution to the dilemma for adherents to nonviolence; a bill to establish a Peace Tax Fund has been introduced in every Congress since 1972.

…Lower courts addressed the issue of accommodating war tax resistance only by declaring that the government has a compelling interest in collecting taxes; the courts have not dealt with the arguments that accommodation of conscientious objection would be possible within the context of mandatory participation in taxation. The Supreme Court has not heard any case that raises these religious liberty questions under the 1993 law.

By then it was too late, though. The March 2000 issue noted that Adams’s Supreme Court appeal had been turned down:

On January 19, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals by Gordon and Edith Browne and Priscilla Lippincott Adams to lower-court rulings that allowed the Internal Revenue Service to impose late fees and interest for their conscientious refusal to pay the military portion of their federal tax. The issue in this case was not paying the tax when forced to do so by the IRS, but whether a “religious hardship” existed that should enable them to pay without any penalties and interest. The lower-court rulings reaffirmed a statement of the Supreme Court in 1982 that “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge [it] because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.” The Justice Department lawyers said that “Voluntary compliance with the tax laws is the least restrictive means of furthering the government’s compelling interest in collecting taxes.”… “We’re very disappointed that the Supreme Court will not be taking the opportunity to reinforce religious freedom and freedom of conscience,” said Marian Franz, executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “Congress seems like the most appropriate place where this human right can be protected.”

Adams wasn’t going to give up though. Whether or not the government was going to deign to make her war tax resistance legal, she was going to resist, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was willing to help her. From the November 2003 issue:

The United States Department of Justice, Tax Division, is suing Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for refusing to forward wages of an employee to the Internal Revenue Service. The employee, Priscilla Adams, resists paying taxes for war and the military on the basis of religious conscience. The lawsuit, filed in July 2003, is a move to attain funds from PYM as recompense for taxes owed by Priscilla Adams, plus a 50-percent penalty for not garnishing her wages as instructed by the IRS in 2001. If the IRS succeeds, PYM would owe approximately $60,000.

On September 18, PYM’s Interim Meeting decided to respond to the lawsuit and defend its position in court. PYM stated that to garnish Priscilla Adams’s wages would infringe upon her religious beliefs, and PYM should not “be required to act as a collection agent for the government when doing so will require it to violate key tenets of the Quaker faith.”

Thomas Jeavons, PYM general secretary, commented in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “About 50 percent of our taxes pay for weapons and warfare… We have long sought the creation of a Peace Tax Fund, a government fund for nonmilitary use, where taxes of [those who regard paying for war as a violation of religious conscience] could go. Legislation for this has been in Congress for many years. It should be passed now.”

The January 2004 issue spelled out the Meeting’s legal argument:

On October 22, 2003, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting filed its answer to a Justice Department lawsuit that asks a $20,000 penalty to be imposed on them and seeks to make them the collection agent for the government. The yearly meeting’s response makes dear its intention to stand by its essential religious principles, and publicly defend the free exercise of religion on all possible grounds, including constitutional and statutory religious freedom defenses. The IRS contends that PYM must garnish the salary of one of its employees and members who refuses — in keeping with longstanding Quaker convictions — to pay taxes that support war and preparations for war. While the IRS could easily take other courses to collect the back taxes it claims are due, instead the federal government is trying to force a church to collect these funds for it, an action that would require this Quaker organization to violate its own essential religious convictions regarding freedom of conscience. PYM has refused to do so. The answer to the suit says that the government “asks the court to assist it in violating the most fundamental religious principles of an established church… Although those principles and the yearly meeting’s reasons for its actions have been painstakingly explained to the [government]… the complaint purports to set forth the history of this matter without even mentioning PYM’s efforts at communication and conciliation. Further, the complaint labels the Yearly Meeting’s religiously mandated actions as a ‘failure’ to submit to government coercion, and brands the [Quaker] theological scruples as ‘unreasonable’ and deserving of harsh penalties.” The news release from PYM adds, “Quakers have long been known for their religious pacifism, opposition to war, and support of religious freedom and freedom of conscience. PYM regrets that being true to its faith has now brought us into conflict with the government. The Quaker organization sees itself as defending freedom of religion and freedom of conscience — and not just for itself, but for all those who desire to be both good citizens and people of faith. While PYM regrets the need to resort to legal action, it looks forward to a full airing of the issues involved in a public forum where both the sound reasons and religious principles that guide this Quaker organization’s actions may be upheld. PYM’s defense will rest on the constitutional right to freedom of religion generally, and particularly as upheld and restated in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1994.”

The August 2004 issue reported on how far they’d gotten with that argument:

On June 21, A federal judge ruled that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting must comply with a levy on the wages of war tax refuser Priscilla Adams, but rejected a 50 percent penalty desired by the Internal Revenue Service. U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell agreed with the Quaker argument that complying with the levy “substantially burdens its exercise of religion,” because, as PYM General Secretary Thomas Jeavons earlier testified, the organization “considers it a sacred duty to support the conscientious actions of its individual members, especially in such historic witnesses as the Peace Testimony.” Judge Stewan Dalzell also agreed that the PYM defense “raised novel and important questions,” thus demonstrating in this instance that the previous refusal of PYM to comply was not a frivolous activity. But he disagreed that the IRS had practical alternative means to collect taxes from Priscilla Adams. The government should not be required “to engage in a time-consuming, and possibly fruitless, scavenger hunt for other assets.” In 1999, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already rejected Priscilla Adams’s claim that the government could devise a means for earmarking taxes for nonmilitary expenditures, stating that there were “particularly difficult problems with administration should exceptions on religious grounds be carved out by the courts.”

That issue also noted:

Film students from Brooklyn Friends School are directing and producing a video documentary about Quaker peace activist Priscilla Adams. The students came to Friends Center in Philadelphia to interview her about how her religious beliefs led her to refuse payment of taxes in order to avoid contributing to military funding. The students also interviewed George Lakey, head of Training for Change, and Gene Hillman, adult religious education coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This documentary film may be an entry for Bridge Film Festival, which is open to middle and upper school students at Quaker schools worldwide.

The May 2005 issue noted that the film had been made — a 16-minute short titled A Need to Witness. And hey, look — it’s on-line:

The “Comprehensive Disobedience” movement in Spain has developed international ambitions, and as part of this project it has launched a new media platform — RADI.MS — that aims to spread news about allied projects around the world. The site content is currently translated into English, Castillian (Spanish), and Catalan.

I contributed an article on the American war tax resistance movement for the inauguration of the project:

In mid-April, people across the United States struggle to fill out their federal income tax returns. This shared calamity has created something of an inverted holiday season — with grumbling about paperwork and frustration towards government bureaucracy replacing the “peace on earth, goodwill to men” of the Yuletide.

But at a church in Berkeley, California, this past April, people were handing over their taxes with a smile. They were members of the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, and they were smiling because their checks — averaging more than $1,000 (more than €800) apiece — were not made out to the federal government, but to twenty-seven local groups including the Bay Area Community Land Trust, the Berkeley Food Pantry, the Biketopia Community Workshop, Oakland Sustaining Ourselves Locally, People’s Community Medics, and the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

The money came from a war tax resisters’ “alternative fund” called the “People’s Life Fund” — one of more than a dozen such funds in the United States. The Fund’s annual mid-April “granting ceremony” brought together representatives from each of the recipient groups, who accepted their checks and briefly summarized their work for the benefit of the other attendees.

The People’s Life Fund (like most other such funds) accepts deposits from war tax resisters of the money they are refusing to pay to the government. The fund holds the money in alternative financial institutions like credit unions and socially-responsible investments. If the government manages to seize the resisted taxes from the resister, he or she can reclaim the money from the Fund. Meanwhile, any investment returns from the deposits are distributed to local groups in these annual granting ceremonies.

“Redirection” has a long history in American war tax resistance. American war tax resister Bill Ramsey says it reminds him of Gandhi’s “constructive programme” with which the commander of the Indian resistance movement worked to strengthen grassroots Indian institutions at the same time he was trying to weaken British imperialist ones:

The spinning wheel was the center of Gandhi’s constructive program. Redirection is the war tax resistance movement’s spinning wheel. The “constructive program” is positive action that builds structures, systems, and processes alongside the obstructive program of direct confrontation to or noncooperation with oppression. When we redirect our war taxes, we invest in imaginative and positive projects in our communities and around the world.

At first, redirection was largely practiced by individuals, and in an ad hoc manner. For example, in 1968, war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by. “I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said. “Here: go buy yourself a beer.” But today redirection is frequently coordinated by local or national war tax resistance groups.

Some have used redirection to strengthen the anti-war movement. One group used its alternative fund to create a scholarship for college students who had been barred from government financial aid because they refused to register for the military draft. Another made an interest-free loan to a legal defense group that was supporting a group of military draft resisters who were on trial.

Traditional charity and relief organizations have also been recipients of redirected taxes. In 2008, a national effort called the “War Tax Boycott” redirected $325,000 (approximately €235,000) in federal taxes from the U.S. Treasury to two organizations: a health clinic in New Orleans struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Direct Aid Iraq, which provided medical care to refugees from the American war.

War tax resisters aren’t just redirecting their money. Many American war tax resisters resist by deliberately lowering their income below the level where the federal income tax applies.  They do this by working fewer hours of paid employment and by simplifying their lives so that they can live on less money. Such resisters no longer have an amount of income tax to redirect, but they can redirect their time instead. One low-income resister, Clare Hanrahan, wrote: “I believe that redirection of time and presence provides a personal and potent contribution to the common good, a gift of self that has more dimensions than money alone. I redirect each time I give my time and energy in support of good work within my community.”

In recent years more ties have developed between American war tax resisters and the grassroots or “solidarity economy” — a model that is currently being spearheaded by Spain’s “comprehensive disobedience” (desobediencia integral) movement. National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) made “economic disobedience” the theme of its last national gathering, and had fruitful exchanges there with the debt resistance group Strike Debt! which has since incorporated a chapter on resisting “tax debt” into its Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual.

When Erica Weiland of NWTRCC delivered the keynote address at a recent “economic disobedience” conference in Eugene, Oregon, she said:

When we heard about this work in Spain, it was clear to us that war tax resistance is economic disobedience, the refusal to cooperate in an economic system that is built on war, militarism, and the perpetuation of human suffering. It was also clear to us that a variety of movements that also practice economic disobedience are allied with us in this struggle. When people refuse to pay debts to ruthless debt collectors, resist foreclosure, set up bartering networks that don’t report bartering as income, set up gift economies that avoid the IRS bartering regulations, organize lending circles for low-income borrowers, counsel high school students on alternatives to military service, squat abandoned houses, organize tent cities for the homeless regardless of bureaucratic and inhumane regulations, and struggle against corrupt landlords and employers, we are engaging in economic disobedience. The economic system we live under is not set up to support us, so we should withdraw our support from the system whenever feasible.

American war tax resisters are withdrawing from the warfare state and the economic model it enforces and are committing themselves with all of their strength and all of their resources to the creation of a more just system in which we can live with dignity. In doing so, they are blazing the trail that leads to this better world we all yearn for.

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David M. Gross, an American tax resister, is the author of 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns (2014).

There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Contents include:

• introducing Sam Koplinka-Loehr, NWTRCC’s new field organizer / outreach consultant
• notes about real and phony communications from the IRS
• Conscience has introduced a “Taxes for Peace Bill” in the U.K. parliament
• reviews of John T. Schwiebert’s Resistance and Redirection, Clare Hanrahan’s The Half Life of a Free Radical: Growing up Irish Catholic in Jim Crow Memphis, and Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson
• reports from the People’s Justice and Peace Convention in Cleveland, from the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair, and from a Mennonite District Conference, among others
• a profile of war tax resister Nathan Beall