Gandhi outlined three elements for social transformation and saw them as intertwined.
Social change will not come about by just doing one of them.
The three elements are personal transformation, political action, and constructive program.
Personal Transformation:
Gandhi saw this as a beginning, because even if each of us becomes “peaceful,” we still need to do more.…
In addition, personal transformation includes understanding the choices that we make.
In my own work with high school students, it is apparent that young people need to know about choices — how we live our lives, lifestyles choices, how we relate to others.
This can be the most important part of a workshop with young people, but it is something each and every one of us must explore.
War tax resistance is certainly an aspect of personal transformation, as we make decisions about what we do with our money, what we choose to support or refuse to support.
Political Action:
When asked what is nonviolent action, in the U.S. we often think of civil disobedience or particular actions.
I do an exercise in nonviolence trainings where I ask small groups to list 10 wars.
They do this quite quickly, but then they struggle to come up with 10 nonviolent campaigns.…
And usually they list tactics and movements rather than campaigns, not understanding the difference.
In contrast, when I’ve been in India, people describe nonviolent action as what they are doing in the villages, the constructive work they are doing.
Effective nonviolence is strategic.
Too often we see a problem but only think of single actions in response.
We don’t think strategically about a longer term response.
In her excellent speech at the opening of the World Social Forum in , Arundhati Roy said that even though the international anti-war outpouring on , was wonderful, it was a weekend, and, “Holiday protests don’t stop wars.”
In Gandhian campaigns of nonviolent action against specific evils, noncooperation is a key.
Gandhi’s Salt March initially involved only 80 people, but the act of picking up the salt from the sea and making their own salt in defiance of British taxed salt was revolutionary.
The power of the Salt March was that it became a massive campaign — there was something everyone could do.
Some packaged the salt, some sold it, all could refuse to buy the taxed salt and buy the alternative.
The people of India were saying no to the Empire and that became the turning point in their struggle for independence.
We say no as WTRs.
People in the military are saying no.
We need to explore more in our culture how we say no, how we noncooperate, and acknowledge that there is a network that exists that helps this happen.
Military resisters are not alone by and large.
These days Cindy Sheehan has helped galvanize the network and make it more connected.
To be effective political action, noncooperation needs to be one aspect of a strategic nonviolent campaign that might include other tactics such as protest, public pressure from boycotts, etc.
War tax resisters tend to be very experienced with the two elements above.
It is the third of Gandhi’s elements that we need to study and add to our efforts as we work for social transformation.
Constructive Program:
We are quick to identify and protest the things we don’t like in our society, but we are often asked “so what are you for?”
As revolutionaries we need to start building a new society in the shell of the old.
Gandhi said we should not wait for one to crumble before starting the other.
Constructive program brings people together to do the kind of community work that is empowering, bringing them to a point of self reliance and being ready to develop a new society.
To outline a nonviolent campaign involving all these elements, we need to begin to identify where the change is needed.…
When we talk about the “shell of the old” in the U.S., we can see with Hurricane Katrina that we are one hurricane away from being a third world country.
The structure is not working for people.
It is a façade that is only working for the people at the top.
The poverty, classism, and racism of our society was exposed by the winds and floods of Katrina.
Gandhi was working with a huge society of very poor people.
As we look at our nation of very poor and very rich people, the things that we identify as underlying our constructive program will be much different.
There is also the issues of who defines what the elements of a constructive program would look like in this society?
I think it is a continuous group process that needs to include those most in need of a new society, and those most interested in building one.
That is our challenge.
“It didn’t make any sense to me to be working for peace and paying for war,” says Sheehan.
Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes.
They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters.
They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.
“People think that they can’t live on less.
I encourage people to think of how much — even when you think you don’t have much — you’re still the upper class of the world,” says Sheehan…
Occasionally, tax resisters will join forces to form cooperative housing or business relationships that help to facilitate their resistance.
This is most often found among war tax resisters, for whom resistance is an ongoing commitment rather than a protest or rebellion against a particular government or policy.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.
The Bijou community of Colorado Springs, Colorado is a living example of nonviolent community resistance in the “belly of the beast” of right-wing military and Christian extremism.
The members of this community live below a taxable income level so that they don’t pay for war.
In addition to ongoing bannering and civil disobedience at some of the 5 major military institutions in the area, the Bijou community runs services for the mentally-ill, homeless, working poor, incarcerated, and the general community including: a soup kitchen, food banks, a land trust, several homes for transitional and homeless folks, a free bicycle clinic, and a musical theater group.
The Agape Community
The Agape Community was founded in by a group of Catholics who wanted to live closer to the ideal of Christian community they found in the Bible.
Among the founders were tax resisters Brayton & Suzanne Shanley and Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
They formed the community in such a way that it could support itself with members earning less than a taxable income, for example by being able to grow their own food.
The Shanleys have stayed with the two-house community since its founding, and it has had dozens of more transient residents through the years.
The community hosts speakers and workshops on nonviolence and related topics.
The Whiteway Colony
A group of Tolstoyans made a go of creating a colony based on their interpretation of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism, which included tax resistance, and was eventually the home to forty people.
The land was operated by a committee headed by noted Tolstoyan (and Tolstoy translator) Aylmer Maude, and this committee held the land in trust, while allowing anyone to settle on and work the land, with the understanding that nobody would own any of it except by virtue of being engaged in occupying and working on it.
(The Whiteway community still exists, but has abandoned the more radical communal-ownership principles — today the land is communally owned, but the homes on it are bought and sold as private property.)
Possibility Alliance
The Possibility Alliance farm is a simple-living showcase guided by the following five principles: radical simplicity, service, social activism, inner work, and gratitude.
It hosts free skills-share classes and a group called the Superheroes who dress up like caped crusaders and bike out to do good deeds here and there.
The founders are war tax resisters who resist by maintaining a very low (sub-poverty line) income.
Joanne Sheehan
When the Hartford Courant profiled war tax resisters Anna Aschenbach and Joanne Sheehan, who have been resisting taxes since the Vietnam War, it noted Sheehan’s participation in cooperative projects as being helpful to her resistance:
Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes.
They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters.
They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.
“Land League Villages”
During the rent strike that the National Land League organized against English absentee landlords in Ireland, when landlords were successful in evicting tenants who refused to pay rent, the League would try to find them (and sometimes their livestock) a temporary home on the land of someone who was sympathetic with the resisters.
These might grow to hold several families and were sometimes called “Land League Villages.”
Amish Milk Cooperatives
The cooperatives used by Amish communities to process and package milk turned out to be useful also when the Amish began resisting the then-new social security taxes (they believed the social security program would require them to violate principles of their faith, and after many years of resistance, they won a legal exemption from the program).
The government tried to levy the checks that the cooperative wrote to pay those of its milk suppliers who were resisting the tax, but the responsible officials of the cooperative refused to sign the checks.
Peacemakers attempted to build a decentralized and self-disciplined movement which stressed local initiative and group coordination along the lines of the nonviolent revolutionary movement in India.
Emphasis was put on building intentional communities which practiced communal living.
“Groups or cells are the real basis of the movement,” Peacemakers announced, “for this is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee.”
Instead, Peacemakers emphasized a living program which included resistance to the draft and war taxes, personal transformation, and group participation in work for political and economic democracy.
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place…
Juanita and Wally Nelson, founding members of Peacemakers, and war tax resisters Betsy Corner, Randy Kehler, and Bob Bady were among the organizers of the Valley Community Land Trust.
The trust resisted IRS attempts to seize the Corner/Kehler home for back taxes, and helped to get their home returned to them.
Art Harvey’s farm
Dorothy Day visited Art Harvey’s farm in and described it this way:
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal… by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
Peter Maurin Farm
Peter Maurin Farm
is a Catholic Worker project — a “hospitality house on the land” near Manhattan that also grows food for the urban hospitality houses.
Many of those involved in the project were conscientious objectors, and appreciated being able to be part of a self-supporting project that required its volunteers to earn little or no taxable income and so enabled them to stay under the tax line.
Collective Impressions
War tax resister Ed Guinan created a business to help facilitate the tax resistance of its employees.
One news profile described it this way:
[I]n Washington, D.C., is another group of tax resisters who have formed a nonprofit cooperative print shop and who refuse to send their taxes to the IRS.
Ed Guinan is a priest and the coordinator of the shop, called Collective Impressions.
A year and a half ago Guinan and his colleagues decided to continue paying social security taxes but to send their withholding taxes to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
“Every quarter, when taxes are due, we send a check to the Arms Control Agency,” Guinan says.
“They return it with a polite note saying that they cannot accept it, and we put it into a tax escrow account which cannot be used for normal business expenses.”
Collective Impressions owes only $500 per quarter to the IRS, but Guinan and his coworkers believe they are making an effective protest against U.S. military spending policies.
Restored Israel of Yahweh
Similarly, members of the small religious group called the Restored Israel of Yahweh formed a small construction business and helped those of its employees who were also members of the group to resist their taxes — eventually facing criminal tax evasion convictions for this.
V. Schneider’s take on the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters.
I’ve shared some of my experiences with the Act’s provisions as a low-income, return-filing resister here at The Picket Line.
Ms. Schneider writes about the challenges of the Act from the perspective of a resister who does not file returns, and therefore has no clear way of proving that she qualifies for the Act’s insurance subsidies.
Schneider has some helpful recommendations for non-filling resisters who cannot afford non-subsidised insurance.
Some notes on the new federal standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for the upcoming tax year, on the new IRS program that allows you to download some of the files the agency keeps on you, on a new website that keeps track of the legal aspects of alternative currencies, and on the troubles of the increasingly overwhelmed and under-budgeted IRS.
Some war tax resistance news, including a report of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day war tax resistance display at a recent anti nuclear weapons protest, a mention of some recent honors given to war tax resisters Robin Harper and Joanne Sheehan, and a brief note on the conviction and jailing of Quaker war tax resister Joseph Olejak.
You can find more about the Olejak case in this recent article from the Times-Union.
Olejak is spending several consecutive weekends in prison, and has agreed (in a plea bargain) to partially and incrementally pay the $242,684 the IRS says he owes since he stopped paying in .
The group is looking for people who want to serve on its Administrative Committee.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund — which helps to reimburse any penalties and interest seized from a war tax resister by the government — is now under new management.
The next NWTRCC national gathering is scheduled for and will be held in San Diego, California.
Robin Harper reflects on the development of “redirection” as a war tax resistance tactic: “I think it is fair to say that the essence and origins of the very widespread practice today of WTRs conscientiously redirecting their refused taxes into channels of constructive activism, community building, and addressing human needs, can be traced to [his own case in] .”
