Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Anne Barron

A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content including:

• Jason Rawn shows how war tax resistance can fit into a campaign of climate-oriented divestment.
• Sue Barnhart memorializes the recently passed war tax resister Peg Morton.
• International news concerning peace tax fund promoters in London, a global campaign on military spending congress in Berlin, and war tax resisters doing direct action at a barracks in Bilbao.
• A profile of war tax resister Anne Barron.

Some new links of interest to war tax resisters in particular:

• The next national gathering of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee will be held from 13–15 May 2016 in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia). Check this page for details.
• Anne Barron shares her experiences in organizing a recent war tax resistance teach-in in San Diego.
• I’ve put together a page on Pioneers of the Modern American War Tax Resistance Movement at the NWTRCC site. It gives brief biographies of those resisters who were part of the organized war tax resistance movement that emerged in the late 1940s.
• War Resisters’ International highlighted the bright yellow attack by war tax resisters in Bilbao on the Juan de Garay military barracks.
• Fifth Estate carries Erica Weiland’s article on how war tax resistance featured in the movement to end the U.S. war on Vietnam.

I also recently discovered some war tax resistance items on Issuu — an on-line magazine publishing platform:

• “Mennonites say no to war taxes” — the cover story from an issue of The Mennonite from 2014.
• “Turning Toward Peace program redirects war taxes” (page 40) — a war tax redirection program sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee, as described in The Mennonite of April 2015.
• The Broken Rifle #62 — an issue of the War Resisters’ International newsletter devoted to war tax resistance, from 2004.
• “What if They Gave a War and Nobody Paid?” — an article by David Hartsough in the April 2013 Street Spirit.
• Clearly from My Heart — devoted to the life and ideas of Albuquerque war tax resister Don Schrader.

Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches in the U.S.:

• A syndicated feature about American tax resisters — featuring Rod Nippert, Jay Sordean, Ruth Benn, Peter Smith, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Barron, and Joseph Olejak — appeared in newsweeklies around the country this week, including the Colorado Springs Independent, Salt Lake City Weekly, Athens, Georgia Flagpole, and Baltimore City Paper
• The author of that piece, Mary Finn, was interviewed on Democracy in Crisis.
• The Independent also ran a second article — The new tax resistance? — about a Baltimore woman named Kesh, who has stopped paying her taxes:

  This year she isn’t paying because she began thinking more about where her tax money goes and she feels like she can’t keep paying the government. “It’s not going to anything that I can see personally that is going to benefit me,” Kesh, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “But me paying it is definitely going to hit me. Not having that money that needs to go towards other things that I have to pay — that affects me immediately. That’s a loss for me.”

  The inauguration of President Donald Trump only worsened her feeling about the situation. First, because she has her doubts about whether Trump has bothered to pay his fair share of taxes, and second, because his administration seems to be waging a war against people like her. “I’m all the groups that are hated. I’ve decided to come to earth in this body and be black, be a woman, gay, so you know, I get hit on every side of it,” she says. “I was a teenaged mother, I’m a single mom — I’m all the things [Trump and Republicans] hate.”

  Living in Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015 and where just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to hamper police reform, taxes funding the police are an issue for her as well. (Police are primarily funded through local and state governments, but Kesh isn’t paying state taxes either.)

  “I know that my tax money is going to the police and I can walk down the street and get shot,” she says. “I can get shot by my own money and get killed by my own money and there’s no one that’s gonna do shit about it. So basically I’m giving you money to kill me and people that look like me.”

  Unlike long-time tax resisters, Kesh is new to this. She doesn’t know where it will lead her yet — hence her decision not to use her name. The Internal Revenue Service may target her, but not paying feels right.

  “I’m basically saying, ‘Fuck you.’ ” she says. “I’m keeping my money.”

• There are lots of war tax resistance-related actions going on around the country in the tax-filing season this year.
• The Alaska Dispatch looks back at the Alaska photo [that] did for the IRS what that passenger video did for United Airlines. (In this case, IRS agents who broke the windows of a car to drag out the passengers so they could seize it in 1979. This was photographed, and the outrage led to IRS policy changes on using violence during collection.)
• The Satyagraha Foundation for Nonviolence Studies is continuing its series on tax resistance with A Call for Tax Resistance — “a joint appeal from leading nonviolent activists and organizations, urging US taxpayers to nonviolently express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration by refusing to pay a symbolic amount of their US federal income tax, and instead donate that amount to a deserving charity or institution.”
• War tax resisters’ letters-to-the-editor and op-eds are starting to appear, too, including ones from:
  • Daniel Sicken, and
  • Sue Barnhart

The NWTRCC held its national gathering last weekend in Los Angeles.

A few dozen people, including veteran war tax resisters from around the country and curious local activists, gathered at Casa Roja for a series of panels and workshops, followed by the NWTRCC business meeting on Sunday morning.

The opening night panel concerned various interpretations and implementations of “Divestment.” Dr. Melina Abdullah of Black Lives Matter addressed the Invest/Divest plank of The Movement for Black Lives platform, the preamble to which reads:

We demand investments in the education, health, and safety of Black people, instead of investments in the criminalizing, caging, and harming of Black people. We want investments in Black communities, determined by Black communities, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance, and exploitative corporations.

Jim Haber of Jewish Voice for Peace discussed the oft-misunderstood (and persecuted) Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement which is trying to put economic pressure on Israel to stop oppressing Palestinians.

Anne Barron spoke about how to be tactically smart in choosing divestment targets, and how the divestment tactic has spread to diverse movements including those against private prisons and fossil fuels.

Paula Kahn of CodePink was scheduled to speak on the Divest from the War Machine project, but the attempt to keep a teleconference connected remotely from Tijuana (where she’s working in support of the migrant caravan) was unsuccessful, so we missed most of her message.

On Saturday morning Lincoln Rice introduced himself. He’s taking over the job of NWTRCC coordinator after Ruth Benn’s 15-years at the helm. Lincoln is a long-time war tax resister who works with the Casa Maria Catholic Worker house in Milwaukee.

We also spent some time Saturday morning discussing the current state of activism and organizing in our communities. This was a good opportunity to learn about trends and innovations around the country from people who have been working in a variety of causes, ranging from responsible investing, to counterrecruitment in the schools, to environmental activism and climate change concerns, to youth-led challenges to structural violence, to assistance for immigrants, to organized tax redirection, to grassroots media.

Experienced resisters held a “War Tax Resistance 102” session after lunch. I asked around to see if anyone had yet been targeted by the new federal government policies that can deny passports to people with large tax debts, or that can turn federal tax debts over to private debt collection companies. So far nobody has heard of any war tax resisters who have had their passports denied or rescinded, but a couple of resisters have had private collection agencies assigned to their cases.

After that I led a workshop on Quaker war tax resistance and that of other congregations and faith-based organizations. I gave a brief overview of the history and varieties of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends, and mentioned how some other groups like Brethren, Mennonites, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic Workers, and more recently groups like the Agape Community, Restored Israel of Yahweh, and the new monastic movement, have incorporated war tax resistance into their practices. We then discussed how people might try to introduce or promote war tax resistance as a spiritual practice and a way of strengthening and distinguishing faith-based communities.

That evening, we learned more about The Poor People’s Campaign (“A National Call for Moral Revival”), which is ramping up and looks to potentially be a strong protest focal point on the left in the U.S.

Lincoln Rice also spoke about the Catholic Worker movement’s attempts to identify and counter lingering racism within the movement and to speak more strongly about racism in American society in general. Rice was part of a group that drafted a controversial letter on racism in the Cathoic Worker community that included the provocative claim that “The Catholic Worker is a racist institution.”

Sunday morning NWTRCC held its business meeting. I don’t have much to report: some run-of-the-mill policy and budget discussion, details surrounding the transition in the coordinator position, a couple of new administrative committee members coming on board.

There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:

• NWTRCC co­ordin­ator Lin­coln Rice gives a run-down of some of the “Tax Day” actions taking place this year.
• Anne Barron relates war tax re­sist­ance to Cop­Watch activism.
• Some notes about the new Qual­i­fied Busi­ness In­come de­duc­tion, the IRS budget request, tax evasion of “gig economy” workers, the ongoing fake-IRS phone scam, and the difficulty of resisting tariffs.
• Some ideas and resources to help you with your outreach.
• Announcements on the death of Joffre Stewart, a memorial service for Tom Wilson, the upcoming NWTRCC national gathering in D.C., and stats about NWTRCC’s social media presence.
• A profile of war tax resister redmoonsong.

In other news…

• A new initiative launched with a splash in Catalonia under the name Ni 1 euro x a la repressió (“Not one euro for repression”). Modeled on the Spanish war tax resistance movement, it is urging people to redirect the taxes that would otherwise go to pay for the Spanish monarchy, the judiciary and state prosecutor, and the internal security services. The aim is to stop financial support for the Spanish suppression of Catalan independence. The website is splashy, and its interactive how-to-resist page in particular seems worth emulating by other similar resistance campaigns.
• Ashley Powers of the New York Times took a long look at the still-thriving “sovereign citizen” movement, and how sovereign citizens leverage their strange mythology to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS by filing “frivolous” returns faster than the agency can keep up with them.
• The epidemic of destruction of automated traffic ticket machines along the roadways of France continues. According to the latest figures, government revenue from these cameras has dropped dramatically. The government believes it has lost €660 million in expected ticket revenue so far, and that’s in addition to the costs to repair or replace the damaged machines.