Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Margaret G. (Meg) Bowman
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance kept charging on through the early
issues of the Friends
Journal, though there was some indication of post-Vietnam War war tax
resister fatigue.
The issue gave an overview of
how various Friends in various places were meeting the war tax challenge:
“Friends in Illinois and Massachusetts, for example, have shared letters
to the
IRS,
to their elected representatives, to newspapers, and to the meetings in
which they have expressed the wrongness of militarism and their
conscientious refusal to support governmental expenditures for military
purposes.”
In Philadelphia, “when the
IRS
seized a car owned by Margaret (Meg) Bownan… [this] was met by many
members of the meeting and other supporters who went with her down to the
garage where the auction was held. A bouquet of bittersweet was placed on
the car’s hood, cranberry juice and cookies were passed out to everyone
(and graciously accepted by the police and the
IRS
representatives), and meeting members formed a special support corporation
and bought the car so that Meg and others may use it in their travels in
and about the city.”
Robert Anthony was fighting a Tax Court battle from Moylan, Pennsylvania,
with First Amendment freedom-of-religion arguments: “compelling the
payment of that part of the income tax that is used for war or war
preparation makes it impossible for a Quaker to practice his
religion.”
Thomas L. Carter of Santa Barbara, California, quoted Peter J. Ediger in a
parable about the Quaker peace testimony:
The devil took the Quakers to a very high mountain, the mountain of
academic-socio-economic success and showed them all the kingdoms of the
world, and the glory of them; and he said to the Quakers all this will I
give you…
financial security
acceptance in your society
many opportunities for doing good
tax exemption for your worship centers and your service programs
many other benefits too numerous to mention
if you will fall down and worship me…
bless the armies which protect your privileges
pay taxes without question for my armies around the world (a few
words of dissent to support your moral image are OK as long as you
refrain from any form of civil disobedience)
And the Quakers said (multiple choice/check one):
we want to keep our service program going, so…
we’re uneasy with your terms, but we like the benefits…
would you serve as one of our Trustees? We need more practical minds
like yours…
as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends
we are under obligation to free ourselves from this complicity.
In the issue, the clerk of the
Nashville (Tennessee) Friends Meeting wrote in about that Meeting’s decision
to disregard the legal exemption on local property taxes for church property
and to go ahead and pay the property tax on its meeting house.
The meeting’s decision had, according to Bob Lough, the clerk, four reasons
behind it:
The sense that churches are just as much the beneficiaries of city
government services (like “fire protection, road maintenance, libraries,
schools, social services, parks,
etc.”) as
anyone else.
That “a position in favor of paying taxes form which we are exempt may
enhance our credibility as tax resisters. we decided to continue refusing to pay the excise tax on
the meeting telephone as symbolic of our opposition to a foreign policy
which we cannot support.”
Being in favor of the separation of church and state, the meeting was
opposed to the implicit government subsidy of religious bodies owning
property that the tax exemption represented.
The meeting also felt that the property tax exemption for religious bodies
had encouraged churches to become property owners — erecting “modern day
‘steeplehouses’ which resemble country clubs more than places of Christian
service.”
The piece concluded by encouraging other meetings to consider following their
lead. “As Quakers we are noted for being conscientious about taxes, and
resistance of taxes for war-related purposes has a long history in our
tradition. Perhaps our tax record should not merely reflect our opposition to
the evils we see in society, but also demonstrate that we have a
responsibility that calls for support as well as dissent.”
an ad from the 1 February 1977 issue of Friends Journal
Ross Roby wrote in again (see ♇ 24 July
2013 for his earlier letter) to express his puzzlement about why Quakers
hadn’t gotten all enthusiastic about the World Peace Tax Fund bill. “[T]he
National Council for a
W.P.T.F. is
still operating on a shoe-string and still being warned by sympathetic
Congressmen that there is little apparent concern about the bill if they can
judge by their mail.”
Has Friends Journal any interest in developments in
the W.P.T.F.
bill…? There have been frequent opportunities in the last year for the
Journal to support and encourage lobbyists for the
W.P.T.F.,
and the chance was again present in the article of
on “Friends and the
IRS.”
For some inexplicable reason, the Journal has again
missed an opportunity to remind us that the tax laws can be changed by
legislative action — that the
W.P.T.F.
bill is a reasonable way to put conscientious objection as an alternative in
every citizen’s form 1040!
Again, Roby seemed blind to the real concerns that Quakers and other
conscientious war tax resisters might have with the plan advocated by the
“peace tax fund” advocates.
In the issue, George Lakey shared
his annual letter to the
IRS,
accompanying the letter with a telling comment: “I thought you might like to
print part or all of it to remind your readers that some of us Quaker tax
refusers are still doing it!” Although from my perspective, the
coverage of Quaker war tax resistance in the
Journal seems to be going strong, it seems that from
the perspective of this particular Quaker tax resister the practice had begun
to wane in the post-Vietnam War period. Excerpts:
Again I am asked to pay taxes to support an approach which reduces my actual
security as a human being… for paying taxes to this government means giving a
license for various kinds of international misadventures.
I see no reason, therefore, to change my own policy of refusing federal income
taxes. I very much support the principle of taxation, and encourage the
government to tax at a much higher rate the corporations whose interests it so
faithfully serves. Since it does not serve my interests nearly so well, I
withhold my hard-earned money until I see a basic change in values. I want to
see the government focused on human security, not “national”
security. I want to see the government make a serious commitment to
environmental quality. I want to see in all its policies the government taking
the side of life, not death.
To implement my tax refusal policy, I return the form only partially filled
out, lacking the financial information which would enable you to collect the
tax.
Virginia Snow Mountain and Darrell Bluhm shared their letter to the
IRS in
the same issue. Excerpts:
We have given ourselves a War Crimes Tax Credit for the amount your charts
would otherwise have had us owe and we request that you refund us the money
withheld from our incomes last year.
…Through our involvement with the Religious Society of Friends and our
personal experience of the Divine Spirit we have come to know that all life
is sacred. We are called to live in such a way as to “remove the cause of
war.”
…[O]ur vocations involve the nurture and education of children. Daily we work
to help guide young people to grow up to be peaceful, responsible adults.
They are our joy and our hope for the future. It is unthinkable to us that
any part of the wages that we earn in this work should be used to support
weapons systems or armies whose effect is to injure and kill people, or to
add to the great potential for nuclear holocaust that already exists with our
huge stockpiles of weapons. Knowing that more than half our tax dollar goes
to the death and destruction the American military represents has caused us
to conclude that we will no longer pay our Federal taxes. We cannot support
the military’s protection of corporate profit at the expense of human needs.
That issue also reprinted the text of a “petition” written by R.L. Anthony
(and invited others to sign or use it):
Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) since the Society’s
beginning have been guided by a belief in the sacredness of life and have
implemented this by seeking ways of peace. This compels in conscience their
refusal to participate in war.
I believe the U.S.
tax laws deny us the constitutional right to religious freedom by
not providing under law an alternative to paying that portion of the income
tax devoted to war preparation.
If I should at present follow my conscience and my religious beliefs by
refusing taxes for war, I would have to face the prospect of forced
collection or legal prosecution and penalties. I believe the
U.S. tax laws
thereby deny me the free exercise of my religious beliefs.
In keeping with my beliefs and conscience, I wish to pay the war portion of
my income tax to a peace fund, such as the World Peace Tax Fund
presently in a committee of Congress, set up as a legal alternative under
U.S. law. I would
make this alternative payment instead of the war portion of my income tax if
the U.S. tax laws
provided such an alternative for all citizens conscientiously opposed to war
and the taking of life.
I wish my position made known to all branches of government concerned,
including the U.S.
Congress, the courts and the
IRS.
In the issue, Allyn Eccleston
compared the reemerging Quaker opposition to paying for war to the emergence
of Quaker abolitionism in American in the
.
Excerpts:
Today we have a different impediment in our relationship with God and we are
called, each one of us, to hold it to the light and test whether we feel at
ease. Our continued commitment to a world-wide arms race not only deprives
the world of comparable expenditures for human service, it enslaves the world
in a struggle for real and symbolic power that engenders hatred, fear and
greed. We are the masters in an arms race that enslaves the people
of this earth.
Do I feel at ease knowing that approximately fifty cents of each of my tax
dollars goes to military expenditures?
Do I feel at ease knowing the United States spends more money on armaments
than any country in the world?
Do I feel at ease knowing United States arms merchants have been peddling
ever more sophisticated weaponry to other nations, totalitarian and
democratic, undeveloped and developed, poor and rich; that in Greece, Turkey,
the Near East, and Latin America we have armed both sides of existing (or
potential) conflicts, as well as equipped and trained some of the most
repressive governments in existence?
Our country’s dependence on military manpower has been reduced even to the
point where conscription is no longer necessary. During the Vietnam conflict
it became the explicit policy of the United States to substitute wealth and
technology for manpower. This policy is directly responsible for more
indiscriminate killing and destructiveness (in ways contrary even to the
international conventions of warfare). We annihilated women, children, old
people and, in designated areas, all living things, and we did this by remote
control, thereby removing and insulating the killers from the acts.
Regardless of who actually handled the equipment, it is you and I and every
other taxpayer who paid for the weapons and are therefore responsible.
It is not as though a madman picks up our sledgehammer or another useful tool
and hits someone over the head with it. When soldiers, hired by us, use our
weapons to kill, it is not misuse-that is what the equipment is designed and
purchased for. And we must presume any future use will be as destructive (at
least) as what we witnessed in Vietnam.
It isn’t necessary to document for Friends why the preparation for conflict
is more likely to lead to war than to peace or how the evils of hatred, greed
and fear can be addressed by practical demonstrations of love, self-sacrifice
and self-confidence. Let us search for steps we might take that would set us
on a new course.
There are approximately 150,000 Friends in the United States. What would
happen if 30,000 Friends felt moved to take some step, however small, to
register their “dis-ease” in a meaningful way?
Suppose you are one of these Friends moved to register public dissent and
dismay by enclosing a personal statement with your tax return. If you owe the
government money, the letter would specify that at least a token amount has
been withheld as a testimony for peace. To be more effective, you would also
send copies of the statement to your senators, to your congressperson and to
your newspaper.
In addition to increasing the effect of your witness, this public declaration
protects you against accusation of intent to defraud the government.
Withholding some portion of your tax does subject you to the seven percent
interest charge plus a possible monthly penalty of one-half of one percent
per month up to twenty-five percent of the amount not paid. Therefore, it is
you who must determine the appropriate amount to withhold for your witness.
Some Friends might feel they should begin with one percent of their total
tax; others might be led to withhold ten percent or the actual percentage of
the budget allocated to military expenses.
If you are moved to witness this year but cannot withhold from the government
(because your money was already collected), you might consider requesting a
refund (form 843) of the amount you would have withheld. Whether you receive
a refund or not, the witness will have been strengthened. In the current tax
year, you can legally assure that you will owe some money to the government
by declaring expected allowances on your W-4 form at a level that takes your
peace witness into account.
If the burden of the witness gets too heavy, you can, and should, stop the
process by making the payment or by allowing the
IRS to
find and take payment from your bank account. (Beyond late-payment penalties,
the IRS
cannot take punitive action once you have paid the assessed tax.) The witness
already made to yourself and your friends, and the strength and truth gained
by this witness, will have moved us that much closer to world peace. We will
have another opportunity to witness next year, and the next and the next.
Each year we will have more knowledge and more strength and, if we are
mindful of the light, more love. And this will sustain us for as many
generations as it may take.
Some Friends will argue that since the government gets the money plus penalty
charges anyway, tax refusal is counterproductive. This is not so. The whole
system of tax collection is computerized and is dependent on voluntary
cooperation. By requiring the system to take special steps to collect your
tax, your message is felt. The message gains weight as the
IRS is
forced to put more and more time and attention on this matter. Friends may
feel easier about the extra money collected if they view it as a contribution
toward the government’s higher administrative costs. (There is no way the
additional money can be diverted into military expense.)
It will concern some Friends that this action is “against the law” or it
isn’t proper to claim a deduction for “peacework” if the money isn’t actually
spent or that there is no item under “Credits” where one could appropriately
list “peace witness.” True enough, the way of the tax refuser is not clean
and simple. We are confronting a system we believe to be immoral and, as
Friends have always done in similar situations, we must compromise, following
the path we believe moves us closer to the ideal.
This is why a tax refuser needs the insight, information and support of other
(Friendly) resisters. We need to discuss the pros and cons of the
alternatives open to us and to help each other in our witness.
IRS
regulations and procedures change. Individual circumstances change. If one is
isolated it can be confusing and lonely. It is important to stay in touch
with others, by mail, if necessary.
Regardless of the impact on the government, our witness will have an
immediate impact on each of us and on our meetings. This impact is likely to
differ from that which we may have experienced in visiting prisons,
counseling conscientious objectors, sorting clothes for AFSC,
or work in other worthwhile programs in which we minister and offer aid to
others. In tax refusal, we are concerned with our own brokenness and are
committed to a healing ministry of ourselves, not by words, but by deeds.
In addition to the most important witness of tax refusal, every Friend should
consider actively supporting the World Peace Tax Fund. If passed, this bill
would grant conscientious objector status to taxpayers in much the same way
as a conscientious objector status was granted to draft resisters and would
allow the military expense portion of a conscientious objector’s tax to be
diverted to a World Peace Trust Fund (for peace education and research, and
humanitarian use).
Those of us who are clear on this issue must act and we must support each
other. We must make our testimony public that others may find clarity and
courage. And when we are given the opportunity, we must lovingly and
patiently labor with other Friends who have not yet been moved to hold this
issue to the light.
The IRS
readily admits the whole tax system is dependent on voluntary cooperation.
Ultimate control is in our hands (not the Pentagon’s)! Whether we want to
acknowledge it or not, we are the masters, the slave masters. We can learn
from the early Quakers. We must seek truth in the light and speak truth to
power.
Finally, the issue gave the
unsurprising news that the “Ann Arbor Monthly Meeting was recently denied a
claim for exemption from payment of war taxes,” which it had asserted on
religious freedom grounds. Cleverly, at least from a propaganda point of
view, “[t]hey supported their claim by citing the
Buckley vs. Valeo
case where the Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to limit how much
money of his own a candidate can spend for his campaign, thus establishing
money expenditures as a means of free expression.”
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about the renaissance of Quaker war tax resistance during the Cold War.
Much of what I have assembled here comes from my close look at the archives of the Friends Journal, the only Quaker publication from this period I have reviewed thoroughly, and so whatever editorial biases that publication may have had may also bias my history of this phase.
There is a lot that happens in this short period of time, and in some places my narrative is going to be condensed into a bunch of bullet-point-like summaries of the rapid-fire events to try to keep up with it all.
The Renaissance ()
The modern war tax resistance movement began in the wake of World War Ⅱ in the United States.
There had been isolated war tax resisters here and there in other places in recent years, and there was a quiet war tax resistance tendency hiding under the surface of the Society of Friends, but things did not come out into the open in any organized and growing fashion until then.
Quakers were not in the forefront of this movement, but Quaker war tax resisters took courage from it, and it wasn’t long before they began trying to reestablish the war tax resistance traditions in the Society of Friends.
The earliest mention of this that I have found from this period concerns Franklin Zahn of the Pacific Yearly Meeting, who was distributing a leaflet on war tax resistance as early as .
A report on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year noted that the subject of war taxes had come up and had led to what sounds like a long and earnest discussion:
Few present felt it right to refuse to pay, nor yet felt comfortable to pay.
Varied suggestions were presented: Send an accompanying letter expressing one’s feeling about war; live so simply that income is below tax level; make no report, but once a year send a check for nonmilitary purposes; engage in peace walks and other minority demonstrations; follow Jesus’ example of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; beware of taking for granted the evils deplored, such as riding on military planes; associate more closely with the Mennonites, who share Friends’ concerns; rise above one’s own shortcomings through personal devotion; work to unite with all Friends Yearly Meetings in refusal to pay taxes.
Nothing can be done unless there is a willingness to suffer unto death.[!]
The blinders put on during the Great Forgetting period were still evident.
An article in a issue of the Friends Journal described “refusal to pay taxes for support of war effort emerging as a new testimony” [my emphasis].
Another article from the same issue, titled “The Quaker Peace Testimony: Some Suggestions for Witness and Rededication” didn’t mention taxes at all.
By this time some Friends in Switzerland had been refusing to pay war taxes (I would guess, under the tutelage of Pierre Cérésole).
In some Quakers in the Pacific Yearly Meeting began to sketch out the initial drafts of a legislative “peace tax” proposal which they envisioned would be a way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes into a fund that the government could only spend on non-military items.
The idea that there might be a legislative solution that could make tax-paying no longer an act of complicity with war would bob up throughout this period, until, by the end of it, the temptation of lobbying instead of committing to direct action would contribute to the eventual decline of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.
also, the Yellow Springs Monthly Meeting issued a statement of support for war tax resisters, the first example of new institutional support for war tax resistance in the Society of Friends that I could find from the 20th century.
In there was a burst of excitement about war tax resistance in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting (yet a survey of 350 adults from that meeting found only two or three who were willing to consider actually becoming resisters; whereas almost half of those surveyed were totally unconcerned about their tax money going to the military).
A group of about twenty Quakers, organized by Clarence Pickett and Henry Cadbury, met at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to discuss war tax resistance, but they were unable to come up with a consensus statement.
Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans was imprisoned for three months for his tax refusal.
In the Friends Journal ended what strikes me as a policy of editorial embarrassment about Quakers and war tax resistance by publishing its first article devoted to the practice, and one that also full-throatedly advocated it.
This started a debate in the letters-to-the-editor column and certainly caused more Quakers to confront the question, directly or indirectly.
By the tide was shifting rapidly.
Before this time, individual Quaker tax resisters are unusual enough to highlight individually as being on the cutting-edge; after this, Quaker war tax resistance becomes commonplace enough that individual resisters are exemplars of a larger trend.
In the New York Yearly Meeting promoted war tax resistance in an official statement, and promised financial assistance for any Quakers in the Meeting who might be forced to change jobs or to suffer other financial hardship for their stand.
The statement in part read:
We call upon Friends to examine their consciences concerning whether they cannot more fully dissociate themselves from the war machine by tax refusal or changing occupations.
That was the most concrete advocacy of war tax resistance by a Quaker institution in years.
Franklin Zahn wrote a booklet on Early Friends and War Taxes to reintroduce Quakers to their own history and to further banish the Great Forgetting.
The support from Quaker institutions and publications at this point is often noncommittal and is usually vague about exactly how to go about war tax resistance, which taxes to resist, and how to deal with government reprisals.
There is nothing like the specific, concrete discipline of earlier Quaker Meetings.
This means that Quaker war tax resisters from this period are largely making it up as they go along, conferring with each other informally and organizing, when they are organizing, in groups like Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and the Committee for Non-Violent Action — that is to say, with non-Quaker groups.
(There was briefly something called the “Committee for Nonpayment of War Taxes” run out of Quaker war tax resister Margaret G. Bowman’s home in , but I have not found much about it.)
Quakers were using a broad variety of tax resistance tactics.
Arthur Evans and Neil Haworth refused to pay some or all of their income taxes or to cooperate with an IRS summons for their financial records.
Johan Eliot redirected twice the amount of his taxes to the United Nations to promote international federalism as a world peace strategy.
Clarissa & Samuel Cooper lowered their family income below the tax line.
John L.P. Maynard and Robert W. Eaton took pay cuts that reduced their incomes to the maximum allowable before federal income tax withholding was mandatory.
Lyle Snyder stopped withholding by declaring three million dependents on his W-4 forms.
Alfred & Connie Andersen stopped filing income tax returns.
Some Quakers fled to Canada as taxpatriates to join the draft evaders there.
Others deposited their taxes into escrow accounts and invited the IRS to seize the accounts while refusing to pay voluntarily.
Lloyd C. Shank advocated “the ‘sneaky’ way” of tax resistance — what many people would call tax evasion — saying “ ‘cheating’ is only an oppressive government’s name for a good man’s refusal to murder.”
Phone tax resistance was beginning to become widespread, and many Quaker meetings began resisting this tax on their office phones (one meeting was unable to reach consensus on resisting the phone tax and compromised by dropping its phone service entirely).
People too timid to resist, and meetings unable to reach consensus on resisting, might instead write their legislators to urge them to enact some form of legal conscientious objection to military taxation.
The most timid groups, like the American Friends Service Committee, urged people to pay taxes “under protest” or to match their war tax payments with additional payments to the AFSC.
Robert E. Dickinson had perhaps the most creative tactic of the bunch.
He designed and built a set of furniture for his home that was formed of interlocking sheets of plywood such that it could be quickly disassembled and hidden away.
He called this “my tax refusal furniture” and meant it to frustrate IRS attempts to seize furnishings from him for back taxes.
Two Quaker employees of two groups within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked their employers to stop withholding income tax from their paychecks, and that Meeting tried to come up with a good policy to follow in such cases.
The fourth Friends World Conference was held in .
The “Protest and Direct Action group” there “called upon Friends in countries party to the [Vietnam] conflict to ‘go as far as conscience dictates in withholding support from their governments’ war-making machinery,’ first by direct communication with those against whom the protest is made, and then if necessary by public witness and individual action, including the possibility of refusal to pay taxes for war.”
U.S. President Johnson called for a 10% income tax surcharge explicitly to fund the Vietnam War.
This would be the first explicit “war tax” (other than, arguably, the phone tax) since World War Ⅱ, and its announcement prompted renewed interest in war tax resistance inside and outside the Society of Friends.
Quakers were, because of this tax, better-enabled to quote the discipline of early Quakers on refusal to pay explicit war taxes as a way of explaining their own stands.
In 203 delegates from “nineteen Yearly Meetings, eight Quaker colleges, fifteen Friends secondary schools, the American Friends Service Committee National Board and its twelve regional offices, and nine other peace or directly-related organizations” met in Richmond, Indiana, to draft a “Declaration on the Draft and Conscription.”
Part of this declaration mentioned the war tax concern:
We call on Friends everywhere to recognize the oppressive burden of militarism and conscription.
We acknowledge our complicity in these evils in ways sometimes silent and subtle, at times painfully apparent.
We are under obligation as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends to break the yoke of that complicity.
We also recognize that the problem of paying war taxes has intensified; this compels us to find realistic ways to refuse to pay these taxes.
After only of thaw, some seventy years of Great Forgetting have been melted away, and the Society of Friends has again reached a consensus that Quakers are compelled to refuse to pay war taxes.
President Johnson’s war surtax went into effect in , adding a 7.5% surtax to the income tax returns for , and 10% for (the tax would be extended at a reduced rate into and then abandoned).
Meetings all across the country were discussing and passing minutes on war tax resistance, though few would advocate it in specific and unreserved ways, most choosing instead to voice expressions of unspecified “approval and loving support” for Quakers who felt compelled to resist.
In , the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting passed a relatively strong minute stating:
Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends…
We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion.
We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making…
Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.
The New York Yearly Meeting decided to begin resisting corporately by refusing to honor liens on the salaries of tax resisting employees (though it could not reach consensus on a refusal to withhold income tax from such employees), and, , by refusing to pay its own phone tax.
The American Friends Service Committee finally decided to do something concrete about the war tax question, but it was a little odd.
They withheld and paid taxes from a war tax resisting employee and then sued the government for a refund.
The strange structure of their process seems to have been a very deliberate way to structure a legal suit for maximum effectiveness, and it did (briefly) show some success.
A court ruled in , on First Amendment freedom-of-religion grounds, that the government could not force the organization to pay the taxes of an objecting employee — alas, the Supreme Court almost immediately, and overwhelmingly, overturned this.
Also in , Susumu Ishitani, a Japanese Quaker, formed a war tax resistance group in Japan — the first example I am aware of from Asia.
By , the Friends Journal’s coverage of war tax resistance is less occupied with advocacy, debate, and the presentation of individual exemplars, and is more concerned with the practical aspects of how Quakers are going about it.
The editorial stance shifts again, to one of more forthright advocacy.
It is assumed that Quakers want to avoid paying war taxes, and the question is how to do so well.
The ending of the U.S. war on Vietnam did not seem to slow the enthusiasm for war tax resistance.
In the Friends Journal devoted an issue to the subject for the first time.
In Robert Anthony began another attempt to get the courts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation.
It went nowhere, but notably, in a letter to the court, his monthly meeting wrote:
We assert that the free exercise of the Quaker religion entails the avoidance of any participation in war or financial contribution to that part of the national budget used by the military.
If not exaggerated for effect, this statement would be among the strongest yet articulated by a Quaker institution in this renaissance period — not simply expressing support for war tax resisters, or encouraging Friends to consider resisting, but asserting that to practice the Quaker religion necessarily meant to refuse to pay war taxes.
In , Quakers met with their Brethren and Mennonite counterparts to draft a joint statement that encouraged war tax resistance — the “New Call to Peacemaking.”
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked its ongoing representative meeting to draft some formal guidance for Quaker war tax resisters for how they should go about it, and to set up an alternative fund to hold and redirect resisted taxes.
(New England Yearly Meeting began its own alternative fund for resisted taxes .)
By this time war tax resistance is a core part of any discussion of the Quaker peace testimony, and there are increasing calls for Meetings to resist taxes as an institution.
In the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting approved a minute on war tax resistance that pulled its punches a bit:
Our strength and our security are derived from our belief in the reality of a loving God and the oneness of that of God in all people.
In order to say yes to this belief, we must seriously consider saying no to payment of war taxes.
This “seriously consider” compares poorly to discipline of times past (e.g. “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony” [Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1819]).
It also, some Quakers point out, sometimes pales next to the more direct and certain advice from some meetings that young Quaker men resist the draft.
As more Quakers and Meetings feel the pressure to take a stand on war taxes, the more timid ones are increasingly desperate to find ways to do so without actually having to resist.
Silly ideas, like writing “not for military spending” in the memo field of their tax payment checks, and “peace tax fund” ideas proliferate.
By , Quakers in Canada and Australia are floating their own peace tax fund legislation ideas.
Meanwhile, Quakers in England seem to have gotten the tax resisting bug.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation and London Yearly Meeting stopped withholding income taxes from twenty-five war tax resisting employees in , putting the money in escrow.
(This resistance was short-lived; after losing a legal appeal in , they went back to withholding.)
In war tax resistance, according to Friends Journal reports, was a “major preoccupation” of the London Yearly Meeting, and a “burning concern” at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (where “unity could not be achieved”).
Lake Erie Yearly Meeting encouraged its Monthly Meetings “to establish meetings for sufferings to aid war tax resisters.”
Pacific Yearly Meeting started an alternative fund.
Smaller Monthly and Quarterly meetings around the country were beginning to take even stronger stands.
The Minneapolis and Twin Cities Meetings approved a minute that asked “all members of our meetings to practice some form of war tax resistance”!
The Davis (California) meeting passed a similar minute.
Monthly Meetings are assembling “clearness committees” to help each other find responses to the war tax problem that are appropriate to their conscientious “leadings.”
also, the Friends General Conference promoted the idea of Quakers giving interest-free loans to them, a thinly-veiled (not explicitly stated) way of hiding assets from IRS:
…Friends loan money to F.G.C. at no interest, which F.G.C. invests to earn income which is used to support the varied programs of the Conference, such as publications, religious education curricula, and the ongoing nurture program.
These loans provide regular dependable monthly income to the Conference, and reduce the interest income on which the lender must pay federal income taxes, while providing the lender with protection against unforeseen financial reversals.
F.G.C. will repay the principal amount within 30 days after receiving a written request from the lender.
All principal amounts are kept in insured investments.
In the Friends Journal, now edited by a war tax resister, devoted another issue to the subject.
Non-resisting Quakers were now very much on the defensive.
One complained that at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting , taxpaying Quakers like him “were compared to the Quaker slaveholders of , and not a dissenting voice was raised,” but even he had to acknowledge that war tax resistance was “in the mainstream of Quaker thought, and therefore entitled to support from Quaker bodies.”
The meeting itself though could only agree to issue another minute that would “not urge” Friends to resist, but would “give strong support” to those who did.
In , the Friends World Committee for Consultation held a war tax resistance conference in Washington, D.C., and formed a standing “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.”
, they held a conference for Quaker organizations that had war tax resisting employees.
The conference was attended by 35 people, including representatives from 21 such organizations.
They were united by an interest in supporting the war tax resistance of their employees in an open and honest fashion, in a way that included the redirection of the resisted taxes to beneficial causes, and that used the “clearness committee” process.
You definitely get the feeling that momentum is building and Quaker war tax resistance is having a vigorous revival.
Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that this is the high-water mark.
In surprisingly little time the tide will begin to recede.
But there is still some forward progress to be made.
In the London Yearly Meeting declared:
We are convinced by the Spirit of God to say without any hesitation whatsoever that we must support the right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war purposes…
We ask Meeting for Sufferings to explore further and with urgency the role our religious society should corporately take in this concern and then to take such action as it sees necessary on our behalf.
The Friends United Meeting adopted a policy of not withholding taxes from resisting employees as well.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting soon followed suit, and refused to withhold federal taxes from three war tax resisters on the payroll (after a legal battle, they would pay “under duress” ).
The Baltimore Yearly Meeting also adopted such a policy, in .
In another conference for employers of tax resisting employees was held, this one expanded to include Mennonite and Church of the Brethren employers.
The Friends Journal got an IRS levy on the salary of its editor, and it devoted a third issue to the topic of war tax resistance.
Some Quakers begin using the tax resistance tactic in the service of other causes, such as opposition to capital punishment or nuclear power.
In an early sign of the receding of the war tax resistance tide, the Friends World Committee for Consultation retired its “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns” in favor of a “Committee on Peace Concerns.”
From here, sadly, it’s pretty much all downhill.
In the next and final segment of this series on the history of Quaker war tax resistance, I’ll try to describe and explore the second “forgetting.”
New Society Publishers began in to bring out a “Barbara Deming Memorial Series” of books meant to highlight women involved in nonviolent action.
The first book in the series was You Can’t Kill the Spirit by Pam McAllister, which included a chapter on women tax resisters, and another separate section on the Igbo Women’s War, which was also a tax resistance campaign in part.
Here are some excerpts from this book:
Injustice, Death and Taxes: Women Say No!
The world just didn’t make sense to thirty-two-year-old Hubertine Auclert.
On the one hand she was considered a French citizen expected to obey the laws of her country and to pay property taxes.
On the other hand, she was denied the citizen’s right to vote simply because she was a woman.
The male rulers couldn’t have it both ways, Auclert decided.
She began plotting a way to unhinge the system.
On election day in , Auclert and several other tax-paying women of Paris initiated the first stage of the action.
They stomped past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration.
They demanded that they be recognized as full citizens of France with rights as well as responsibilities.
They demanded an end to the injustice of taxation without representation.
The men were amazed: there was nothing wrong with the system’s inconsistencies as far as they were concerned!
The women were turned away.
It was time for stage two.
Taking advantage of the publicity the women had generated, Auclert called for a women’s “tax strike.”
She reasoned that, since men alone had the privilege of governing the people and allotting national budgets, men alone should have the privilege of paying taxes.
“Since I have no right to control the use of my money,” she wrote, “I no longer wish to give it.
I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women.
I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations.
I do not vote, I do not pay.”
During the tax strike, Auclert was joined by twenty other women — eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women.
When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike.
The remaining women continued to appeal the decision.
But when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in.
They decided they had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.
Auclert was not the first woman to organize against the taxation of women without government representation.
Mid-nineteenth-century United States saw a number of women’s rights tax resisters.
In … Lucy Stone decided to publicize the injustice of government taxation of women who, because they were denied the vote, were without representation.
, Henry David Thoreau had spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax, an action he had taken in opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico.
Now Lucy Stone decided to use the same tactic to publicly draw attention to women’s oppression as voteless taxpayers.
When she refused to pay her taxes, the government held a public auction and sold a number of her household goods.
Like Lucy Stone, [Lydia Sayer] Hasbrouck’s radicalism led her to become a tax resister, refusing to pay local taxes in protest against the denial of her right to vote.
A tax collector, so the story goes, managed to steal one of Hasbrouck’s Bloomer outfits from her house and advertise it for sale, the proceeds to go toward the taxes she owed.
Abby Kelly Foster had always been an active worker and speaker for women’s rights, but, in , at the age of sixty-three, she was newly inspired.
She had just heard about Julia and Abby Smith, two sisters in neighboring Connecticut, who were refusing to pay the taxes on their farm in order to protest the denial of suffrage to women.
This was just the sort of nonviolent direct action that appealed to Abby.
Her husband, Stephen, agreed.
That year, they refused to pay their taxes on their beloved “Liberty Farm” in order to give voice to the urgency and justice of women’s suffrage.
When they refused again in , the city of Worcester, Massachusetts took action.
The farm was seized and put up for auction to the highest bidder.
Letters of support for the Fosters’ tax resistance poured in from the progressive leaders of the day.
Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote, “Of course I need not tell either of you at this late day how much I appreciate this last chapter in the lives full of heroic self sacrifice to conviction.”
Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent words of encouragement.
William Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist abolitionist, wrote, “I hope there is not a man in your city or county or elsewhere who will meanly seek to make that property available to his own selfish ends.
Let there be no buyer at any price.”
Unfortunately, Osgood Plummer, a politically conservative neighbor, bid $100 for the farm, but he retreated when Stephen Foster chided him.
Later, Plummer wrote a letter to the local newspaper explaining that he had only wanted to teach the Fosters a lesson about obeying the law.
With no other bidders, the deed to Liberty Farm reverted to the city.
For the next few years, Abby and Stephen lived with the fear and uncertainty of losing the farm, but they continued their tax resistance until Stephen’s ill health became an overriding concern.
In , the Fosters ended their protest and paid several thousand dollars to save the farm.
The point had been made.
In , the Women’s Tax Resistance League of London published a little pamphlet entitled Why We Resist Our Taxes… “The government of this country which professes to be a representative one and to rest on the consent of the governed, is Constitutional in its relation to men, Unconstitutional in its relation to women,” wrote Margaret Kineton Parkes, author of the pamphlet.
Parkes did not mean all women, however.
She hastened to reassure the reader that the tax resisters were not in the least radical but only fair-minded, concerned with votes only for women householders, certainly not for all women.
The League, she claimed, was about passively resisting the unconstitutional government ruling England.
Because they had been granted the municipal vote, women tax resisters were more than willing to pay local “rates,” and they promised they’d have equal willingness to pay “imperial taxes” as soon as they were granted the parliamentary vote.
The London tax resisters devised a new way to reach beyond those already enlightened members of the public who attended suffrage meetings.
They began making suffrage speeches at public auctions, a tactic that had unexpectedly good results.
Many people were converted to the suffrage cause once they had the chance to hear the argument from the resisters themselves.
The auctioneers not only permitted the women to make their speeches, but sometimes actively invited the speeches and even addressed the cause in their own words.
One auctioneer who openly supported the tax-resisting suffragists ended his remarks by saying: “If I had to pay rates and taxes and had not a vote, I should consider it a great disgrace on the part of the Government, but I should consider it a far greater disgrace on my part if I did not protest against it.”
Since the granting of suffrage, women’s tax resistance has most often been undertaken to protest a government’s military spending or its involvement in a specific war — such as the U.S. war in Vietnam.
For part of her life, Barbara Deming was a war tax resister.
In her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” she explained the rationale for this form of nonviolent noncooperation.
Words are not enough here.
Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action was “satyagraha” — which can be translated as “clinging to the truth…” And one has to cling with one’s entire weight… One doesn’t just say, “I don’t believe in this war,” but refuses to put on a uniform.
One doesn’t just say “The use of napalm is atrocious,” but refuses to pay for it by refusing to pay one’s taxes.
At , Juanita Nelson threw on the new white terry cloth bathrobe she’d recently ordered from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and answered her door.
Two U.S. marshals informed her that they had an order for her arrest.
What a way to start the day.
Juanita and her husband Wally, who was out of town that day, had not paid withholding taxes nor filed any forms for , so it was, in one sense, no big surprise that the government wanted to see her.
“But even with the best intentions in the world of going to jail,” she later wrote, “I would have been startled to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. to be told that I was under arrest.”
She explained to the bright-eyed government men that she would be glad to tell the judge why she was resisting taxes if he’d care to come see her.
Then she proceeded to explain why she would not willingly walk out of her door to appear in court.
I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes.
I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes.
I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable.
I cannot come with you.
The government men were not moved.
They called for back-up assistance while Juanita considered her situation.
Should she get dressed?
Would getting dressed be a way of cooperating?
Quickly she called a friend on the phone to let others know what was happening to her, and just as quickly she was surrounded by seven annoyed law enforcement officers.
There was a brief exchange about her still being in her bathrobe, and one uncomfortable officer asked her whether or not she believed in God.
She answered in the negative.
(“He did not go on to explain the connection he had evidently been going to establish between God and dressing for arrest,” Juanita later reported.)
Suddenly, a gruff, no-nonsense officer said, “We’ll just take her the way she is, if that’s the way she wants it.”
He slapped some handcuffs on her and lifted her off the floor.
In maneuvering her into the government car, he apparently tried his best to expose the nakedness under her bathrobe while another officer tried to cover her.
As the car carried her into the heart of Philadelphia, she tried to think.
“My thoughts were like buckshot,” she wrote of her experience, “so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent.
The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems. Why am I going to jail?
Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe?”
The only thing she was sure of at that moment was that, until her head cleared, she would refuse to cooperate with her jailers.
When the car stopped, she was yanked from the back seat, carried into the federal court building, dragged up a flight of stairs, and thrown behind bars.
[S]everal friends stopped by to visit her.
(Her phone call had been a good idea.)
The first visitors were two men, tax-refusing pacifists like herself.
They thought it best, for the sake of appearances, to go to court in the proper clothes.
They offered to get some clothes for her, and she agreed — just in case she decided she’d feel more at ease in them.
After the men left, a woman friend stopped by.
“You look like a female Gandhi in that robe!”
she said.
“You look, well, dignified.”
Juanita grinned.
When they finally came for her, Juanita, still refusing to walk, was wheeled into the courtroom in her bathrobe.
The clothes the men had brought were left behind in a brown paper bag.
The judge gave her until to comply with the court order that she turn over her financial records or be subjected to a possible fine of $1000, a year in jail, or both.
Juanita Nelson went home.
came and went.
Many Fridays came and went.
The charges were dropped and she heard nothing more.
Every now and then, the Internal Revenue Service sends her a bill or tries to confiscate a car, but so far the government has met a wall of nonviolent noncooperation.
They should have known when they saw Juanita in her bathrobe: nothing will make her pay for war.
Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes.
Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?
Like the ascetics of old, Eroseanna (Rose or Sis) Robinson was singularly unburdened by material possessions.
She had no bank account, owned no real estate, and when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tried to seize her personal property, they found that all she had was an ironing board, a clock, a quilt, and some clothes.
Robinson took seriously her membership in Peacemakers (an organization founded in to promote radical, nonviolent direct action).
She had been a war tax resister since the early fifties, filing no statements of income and ignoring the various notices and certified letters sent by the IRS.
In , thirty-five years old, single and black, Robinson was a skilled artist and athlete; creative, too, in finding ways to live in the United States without paying for the U.S. military.
She tried to keep her earnings below the taxable level and for a period managed to spend less than $3 per week for food.
She also arranged to earn a withholding-free income from several different work situations.
Even with the little money she made, Robinson regularly sent sums greater than the taxes she owed to groups that worked for peace and social justice.
On , federal marshals descended on Robinson at a community center in Chicago and demanded she come with them.
When she refused, they carried her bodily out of the center and to the district court where she was seated on a bench before a judge.
She refused to accept the services of a lawyer and asked instead that they lay aside their roles as judge and defendant and speak to each other as two people with genuine concerns.
When the judge agreed, Robinson talked.
“I have not filed income taxes,” she said, “because I know that a large part of the tax will be used for militarization.
Much of the money is spent for atom and hydrogen bombs.
These bombs have a deadly fallout that causes human destruction, as it has been proved.
If I pay income tax, I am participating in that course.
We have a duty to contribute constructively to life, and not destructively.”
After making this statement, she was handcuffed, put in a wheelchair because she refused to walk, and taken to jail.
The next day she was wheeled into court again, where she encountered a different judge.
This judge ridiculed her and her supporters who were standing in a vigil in front of the courthouse.
He accused her of having an attitude of “contumacious criminal contempt.”
He committed her to jail until she would agree to file a tax return and show records of her earnings.
Not only would she not agree to file a tax return, she also would not agree to cooperate in any way with the prison system.
She would not walk.
She would not eat.
She did agree to see one visitor one time — her friend Ernest Bromley, a radical pacifist and member of Peacemakers, who had come to see her in Cook County Jail.
He wrote while she dictated a message for all her supporters on the outside:
I see the military system and jail system as one thing.
I don’t want to give up my own will.
I will not compromise by accepting a lawyer or by recognizing the judge as judge.
I would rather that no one try to make an arrangement with the judge on my behalf.
I ask nothing from the court or the jail.
I do not want to pay for war.
That is my main concern.
Love to everyone.
On , Robinson was again wheeled into court.
It was clear that she would not compromise her principles to spare her own discomfort.
The judge sentenced her to jail for a year and added an extra day for “criminal contempt.”
On , she was moved to the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.
There she continued her fast, though prison officials began to force-feed her liquids through a tube inserted into her nose.
She refused to cooperate in any way with her own imprisonment nor did she try to send letters through the system of prison censorship.
Ten members of Peacemakers, including long-time activist Marjorie Swann, set up their tents just beyond the gates at Alderson and issued a press release on .
They explained that they were there to show support for Robinson and that most of them intended to fast just as she was fasting.
They invited anyone who wanted to talk to stop by the gate where they were camping.
The pacifists propped up signs along the stretch of dusty road — “No Tax for War,” “Peace Is the Only Defense,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Rose Won’t Pay Income Tax.”
After fasting for , Robinson was suddenly and unconditionally discharged from prison on .
The judge who ordered her release said Robinson had become a burden to the prison medical facilities, adding that he felt she had been punished sufficiently.
He didn’t mention the picketers camped outside.
When Robinson was released from prison late afternoon, the first thing she saw was a huge banner held high by her friends — “Bravo Rose!”
A number of women have become war tax resisters in reaction to a specific war.
Mary Bacon Mason, a Massachusetts music teacher, became a war tax resister in after World War Ⅱ.
She told the government she would be willing to pay double her tax if it could be used only for aid to suffering people anywhere, but would accept prison or worse rather than pay for war.
The only possible defense, she said, is friendship and mutual help.
Of World War Ⅱ she said:
I paid a share in that cost and I am guilty of burning people alive in Germany and Japan.
I ask humanity’s forgiveness.
In , Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio, bedridden and elderly, gained national attention and inspired many people to consider war tax resistance when she withheld 34.6 percent of her tax.
She sent an equivalent amount as a donation to four peace organizations and wrote an open letter to President Truman and the IRS
Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system, leading quite possibly to the liquidation of human society, and has involved the United States in the shame and guilt of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, Quaker, religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.
Eighteen years later, and in response to a new war, another woman from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Doris E. Sargent, wrote to the Peacemakers newsletter with a new war tax resistance tactic.
She noted that the government had reintroduced a federal tax attached to telephone bills.
The money was earmarked specifically for U.S. military expenses.
Sargent proposed a radical response — that all those who demanded an end to the fighting in Vietnam ask the phone company to remove their phones in protest.
If everyone who opposed the war were willing to make such an extreme sacrifice, real pressure could be put on the government.
Then Sargent suggested a less extreme idea — that people keep their phones and pay their bills but refuse to pay the federal tax.
Phone tax resisters could send a note with their bills each month, stating that the protest was not directed at the phone company but at the government which was using the phone tax to support war.
The idea caught hold, and phone tax resistance became a popular way to protest the war in Vietnam.
It is still used as a form of war tax resistance.
The war in Vietnam turned many people into war tax resisters.
Pacifist folksinger Joan Baez set an example as a tax resister early in the war years by withholding 60 percent of her income tax.
She was instrumental in persuading countless others to follow her example.
In , she explained:
We talk about democracy and Christianity — and we try out a new fire-bomb.
We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam.
This country has gone mad.
But I will not go mad with it.
I will not pay for organized murder.
I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.
In , life-long Quaker Meg Bowman wrote a letter to the IRS to explain why she had decided once again not to pay her federal income tax.
“Do you carefully maintain our testimony against all preparations for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ?”
― Query, Discipline of Pacific Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The above quotation is from the book that is intended to give guidance to members for daily living.
The book repeatedly stresses peace and individual responsibility.
It is clear to me that I am not only responsible for my voluntary actions, but also for that which is purchased with my income.
If my income is spent for something immoral or if I allow others to buy guns with money I have earned, this is as wrong and offending to “that of God in every man” as if I had used that gun, or planned that bomb strike.
When I worked a five-day week it seemed to me that one-fifth of my income went to taxes.
This would be equivalent to working one full day each week for the U.S. government.
It seemed I worked as follows:
Monday for food.
I felt responsible to buy wholesome, nourishing items that would provide
health and energy, but not too much meat or other luxuries, the world supply of which is limited.
Tuesday for shelter.
We maintain a comfortable, simply furnished home where we may live in
dignity and share with others.
Wednesday for clothing,
health needs and other essentials and for recreation, all carefully
chosen.
Thursday for support of causes.
I select with care those organizations which seem to be acting in such a
way that responsibility to God and my brother is well served.
Friday for death,
bombs, napalm, for My Lai and overkill.
I am asked to support a
government whose main business is war.
Though the above is oversimplified, the point is clear.
I cannot work four days a week for life and joy and sharing, and one day for death.
I cannot pay federal taxes.
I believe this decision is protected by law as a First Amendment right of freedom of religion.
If I am wrong it is still better to have erred on the side of peace and humanity.
Sincerely, Meg Bowman
“The only thing of which I’m guilty is financially supporting the war in Southeast Asia against my better judgment until ,” said Martha Tranquilli when she was charged with the criminal offense of providing false information on her income tax forms.
At , Tranquilli stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Sacramento, California and addressed the 100 supporters who had gathered.
After a short Unitarian service held on her behalf, the aging white woman with a long gray braid told them in her calm, soft voice that she envisioned the day when scientists and workers would join in refusing to pay war taxes or do war work.
I was very much afraid of going to prison, but I think I have overcome that fear.
I plan to read, write letters, and meditate as much as possible.
I’m going to try my best to make an adventure out of this thing.
One after another, friends and strangers attending the rally came up to embrace Tranquilli and offer words of encouragement.
After some spirited singing, they accompanied her to the federal building where she turned herself in to the federal marshals.
Hers was a media image made to order.
“63-Year-Old Tax-Resisting Grandma Goes to Jail” shouted the headlines, and the war tax resistance movement didn’t mind the national publicity Martha Tranquilli generated.
Tranquilli was opposed to the Vietnam War and all the suffering the war was inflicting on the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States, and on the earth itself.
She had therefore decided to withhold the 61 percent of her income taxes (amounting to approximately $1,100) which she believed would go to pay for the war.
It was in Mound Bayou, Mississipi that Martha was tried and sentenced for tax fraud in .
Like other war tax resisters, Tranquilli withheld her taxes by listing unusual dependents.
Tranquilli listed seven peace organizations as dependents, including War Resisters League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Friends Service Committee.
(Another war tax resister in claimed 3 billion dependents, explaining to the IRS that he felt the population of the earth depended on him and on others to refuse to pay war taxes.
That case went to court and the tax resister was acquitted by a court of appeals of the charge of willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form.)
Tranquilli was found guilty of tax fraud, but the judge was reluctant to send her to jail and indicated he’d give her a suspended sentence if she would only apologize and promise not to do it again.
When Tranquilli refused this offer she was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years probation.
The Mississippi Civil Liberties Union helped her appeal the case and, while the appeal was pending, she moved to California.
Both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.
On , after making national headlines and being cheered on by supporters, Tranquilli began her stay at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California.
She quickly got involved in the life of the prison community…
After her release, Tranquilli wrote to a friend: “Be sure to say that I did not suffer in prison.
It was a learning experience.”
Tranquilli continued her tax resistance as well as her work for peace and justice until her death in .
For Mason and Urie it was the Second World War.
For Baez, Bowman, and Tranquilli it was the war in Vietnam.
it is the U.S.-backed war against Nicaragua that motivates many new war tax resisters.
In in Brooklyn, New York, tax resister Donna Mehle wrote an open letter to the IRS which was published in the local newspaper.
She cited a religious basis for her tax resistance, protesting the war against Nicaragua.
The decision to come into conflict with the laws of my country is very difficult, but it is a decision rooted in my Christian faith.
As a Christian, I am called to affirm life and reject violence… My commitment to tax resistance deepened in the past year when I travelled to Nicaragua.
There I saw first hand the effect of my tax dollars ($100 million in Contra Aid ).
I vowed to myself and to the Nicaraguan people I met that I would not be complicit in the U.S. backed Contra war, a war which targets innocent civilians and children.
Mehle informed the IRS that she intended to redirect the money she would have owed in taxes to an alternative fund “which supports life-affirming projects in New York City.”
In , some women in the United States proposed a specifically feminist perspective on war tax resistance.
In New York City, the Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance distributed a brochure which read in part:
We can’t keep working for disarmament, for women’s rights, including an end to lesbian oppression, and for racial equality while paying for a male-dominated government which impoverishes and exploits us now and threatens to eliminate the world’s future.
On , this group performed street theater on the steps of Federal Hall.
Some of the women dressed up as pieces of the federal budget “pie” while others, dressed as waitresses, explained the military menu to passersby and handed out leaflets.
In Canada in , sixty-eight-year-old Edith Adamson made headlines with her tax resistance.
A lifelong pacifist and the coordinator of the Peace Tax Fund Committee of Canada, Adamson was one of approximately sixty Canadians who hoped to prevent the government from using their money to make war.
Not that Adamson and the others wanted to keep the money for their own use: they wanted to redirect their dollars into a peace tax fund.
With the adoption of the new Charter of Rights in the Canadian Constitution, there was a guarantee of freedom of conscience.
“This means,” Adamson explained for news reporters, “that the government should provide a legal alternative to war taxes for those who object to killing on religious or ethical grounds.”
Since , Canadian war tax resisters — who call themselves “Peace Trusters” because they trust in peace, not war — have petitioned their government to develop a peace tax fund which would allow citizens the option of directing their money away from the military budget.
They asked for a simple tax form which would allow taxpayers to check whether they want a portion of their taxes to go for warmaking or peacemaking.
In , Edith Adamson explained her involvement:
In a nuclear war, you wouldn’t have a chance to be a conscientious objector.
And, being an old lady, I wouldn’t be drafted, so it seemed the peace tax fund idea was a sound way to get at the root of the problem.
I not only want to exempt myself from the killing, but I want to try to influence the government to look at this problem — and other people as well to examine their consciences.
A nuclear war would involve everybody and mean total destruction and I couldn’t just hide under my little exemption and stay alive.
This peace tax would be an extension of conscientious objector status for the military.
It’s more appropriate today because war now depends more on money than on personnel; it only took twelve men to drop the bomb over Hiroshima, but it took millions, perhaps billions of taxpayers’ dollars in Canada, Britain, and the United States to develop that bomb.
By there were approximately 440 Peace Trusters in Canada who were withholding a portion of their taxes and putting that money into a peace tax fund.
They had agreed to waive the interest on this money in order to pay the court fees involved in taking on a test case to establish the legality of the peace tax fund.
The claimant Jerilynn Prior, a physician and Quaker originally from the United States where she was also a tax resister, now lives in British Columbia.
In a press release, Prior said that paying for war violates her freedom of conscience and religion.
This deep conviction rises from my commitment to work for peace.
I try to live my life that way — as a mother, a physician, a teacher, a woman, a citizen of this world community.
It would be hypocrisy to voluntarily allow my tax contribution to be used for war or the military or pamphlets about bomb shelters…
Each of us can work for peace in our own life, with our own resources, and in our own way.
This tax appeal is the way I must work for peace.
Nigerian women used song in to ridicule, protest, and pressure a man and, by extension, the system he represented.
In , women streamed into Oloko, Nigeria from throughout Owerri Province.
Word had been sent via the Ibo (Igbo) women’s network that it was time to “sit on” Okugo, the arrogant warrant chief of the Oloko Native Court.
“Sitting on a man” was the figurative expression given a traditional process of punishment during which women gathered in front of a man’s home to sing songs which outlined the women’s grievances or insulted the offender.
The women would dance and sing all day and all night, and sometimes, for the most serious and unrepentant offenders, give added impetus to their words by dismantling the roof of the hut until the man promised to cooperate.
On , the women prepared as their mothers and grandmothers before them had prepared for the traditional settling of grievances: they bound their heads with ferns, smeared their faces with ashes, and put on the short loincloths tradition ordained.
Each woman picked up a sacred stick wreathed with young palm fronds.
These sacred sticks were necessary for invoking the spirit and power of their female ancestors.
Thus attired, they massed on the district office to “sit on” Okugo until he got the message.
Just days before, the women had met in the market to discuss the new taxation rumors.
They remembered that , after promises to the contrary, the British had taken a census and begun collecting taxes from the men.
The women were worried that taxes would soon be imposed upon them as well, especially since a district officer had ordered a new census in which they and their property would be counted.
At the marketplace meeting the women had agreed to spread the alarm and act if any of them were approached for information.
And could anyone doubt their cause for alarm now?
Just Warrant Chief Okugo had approached Nwanyeruwa, a married woman.
He had asked to count her goats and sheep.
She had spat back an insult, “Was your mother counted?”
In anger, Okugo had attacked Nwanyeruwa who had immediately set in motion the women’s network.
Now the women were ready to act.
Nwanyeruwa’s name became the watchword, Nwanyeruwa herself the catalyst.
Carrying their sacred sticks high, thousands of women marched on the district office.
They danced.
They sang songs of ridicule and protest, they chanted, and they demanded Okugo’s cap of office, taking from his head the symbol of his authority over them.
A British officer who witnessed the event claimed that the cap, tossed into the crowd of women, “met the same fate as a fox’s carcass thrown to a pack of hounds.”
After several days of such protest, the women secured written assurances that they were not to be taxed.
They also succeeded in having Okugo arrested, tried, and convicted of physical assault and of unnecessarily worrying the population.
When the news of this victory spread through the women’s networks, thousands of other women throughout the region organized to “sit on” their local warrant chiefs.
The protest spread to Aba, a major trading center along the railway.
The women in Aba, like those in Oloko, dressed in their traditional ferns, ashes, and loincloths and carrying the sacred sticks to invoke the mothers, gathered to dance, sing, and demand the cap of the warrant chief.
