It’s official: the next NWTRCC national gathering is going to be held in Harrisonburg, Virginia over . Mark your calendars.
If you’re planning a demonstration or some other action for — let the folks at NWTRCC know about it so they can help publicize it, and make sure to get some good photos too.
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out.
Some of what you’ll find inside:
The debate about whether or not NWTRCC should endorse the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill was interesting.
Supporters of the bill tend to project their hopes for what they think such a bill ought to accomplish onto the actual bill that’s being proposed. In doing so, they make claims for what the bill would do that are not supported by the bill’s actual substance.
But there was actually much less of this in the current debate than usual. With one exception, even the supporters of the bill recognized that it is flawed and that it would not accomplish much of substance. More remarkable to me were the number of people in the debate who said that they don’t support the bill or the “peace tax fund” idea in general, but who think that NWTRCC should go ahead and endorse it anyway so as to better preserve our good ties with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
The folks at NWTRCC are compiling an ever-expanding list of Tax Day Actions for war tax resisters nation-wide.
And people pissed off at the bailouts and other financial shenanigans in Washington are also planning “tea party” protests across the country on .
Our local war tax resistance group is still trying to come up with a game plan for . We may try to come up with an action of our own and then invite some other local groups in the anti-war/militarism milieu to join us. Or we may try to piggyback on some other group’s tax day protest.
I suggested that maybe we could try joining up with the local incarnation of the Tax Day “Tea Party” protest. Those protests are happening nationwide this year, and are being egged on by the usual megaphone-wielding suspects in the American right-wing. The protests are meant to be a way for citizens like you and me to express our outrage at the government’s waste of our money in the bailout boondoggle (and in general), and at the tax increases that are bound to follow.
Here’s how our local group is putting it:
Together with Tea Parties taking place in hundreds of cities across the country, concerned taxpayers will gather on in Civic Center Park in San Francisco to send the following message to President Obama and the Congress:
- No You Can’t! spend taxpayers’ hard-earned money on reckless stimulus packages loaded with pork.
- No You Can’t! implement a pork-laden budget that can only lead to increased taxes and further debt.
- No You Can’t! put a stranglehold on our economy.
- No You Can’t! take our money and limit our freedoms.
The consequences of such profligate spending are far-reaching and will affect the economic well-being of future generations while thwarting the basic liberties entrusted to the people by our Constitution.
When, in , the colonists were not heard or respected, the Boston Tea Party was born and the Sons of Liberty dumped tons of tea into the Harbor as a protest against the British government. Tax Day Tea Party protesters are gathering across this great nation in the spirit of those patriots, demanding to be heard.
The winds of change are blowing but this isn’t change any of us can believe in. The irresponsible behavior of Washington’s politicians has prompted taxpayers to action. Hard-working Americans throughout the country and across the economic and political spectra are joining forces to send a message to their politicians: America is going to party like it’s !
While protesting shoulder-to-shoulder with folks who get their news from Fox would be a big step out of the traditional comfort zone for our local war tax resistance group, I think it might be productive. We’d be introducing conscientious tax resistance to a group of people who may never have encountered it before. And we could point out that most of the pork and waste in Washington is pentagonal in shape — a message the dittoheads may not have yet been exposed to.
My proposal has gotten a lukewarm reception so far. One person emailed me saying that she wasn’t sure she wanted to join a protest against the government’s spending priorities since she’d just gotten an email from the American Friends Service Committee declaring its enthusiastic support for the budget!
Sad to say, it’s true. Read it and weep. The email message was even worse than what you find on the web site. Dozens of liberal groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, signed on to support “President Obama’s budget priorities” and urge passage of his budget, claiming:
His budget commits major investments in health care reform, education, and clean energy, while restoring fairness to our tax system and reducing military expenditures over time in a responsible manner. [Emphasis mine — ♇]
This is an incredible distortion. Over the last decade, in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, U.S. military spending has just about doubled. Is Obama reversing this cancerous growth? Hardly. Obama’s budget allocates more to military spending than any of the Dubya Squad’s budgets did. And the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Committee on National Legislation are doing their part to make sure it passes.
Graphic design is not my strong suit, but for Northern California War Tax Resistance’s actions I’ve been tasked with coming up with some sort of sign that uses a bar chart to illustrate the U.S. federal government’s discretionary spending priorities based on Barry Hermanson’s numbers
Well, I’ve sketched out an idea. It’s not much to look at, but here ’tis:
As you can see, I’ve integrated tea bags into the design as a way of tapping in to the latest trend in Tax Day protesting and in hopes of catching the eye of those protesters who are outraged at government spending but aren’t clear on just why that spending is so darned high.
I dunno. What do you think? It strikes me as a little cluttered and confusing, while at the same time being a little too oversimplified (for instance, the graphic doesn’t indicate that it’s talking about discretionary spending rather than all government spending). I’m not crazy about the “your tax dollars…” tag line either. Any ideas?
Marc Guttman, at Connecticut’s The Day, puts the upcoming Tax Day “Tea Party” protests in the context of historical tax resistance campaigns — including Gandhi and Thoreau, tax strikes during the Great Depression, and modern-day war tax resisters. He concludes:
Though national political figures have tried to coopt the movement, many of these modern-day tax protestors are citizens who largely reject both the major political parties.
Many demonstrators are interested in expressing their disapproval of decades of federal government fiscal irresponsibility and unfair, intrusive policies. These policies have impoverished us. They include needless foreign military interventions, corporate bailouts and the socializing of private business losses.
These protesters reject policies that provide taxpayer subsidies to industry and special interests, they rebel against excessive and unfair spending and decry gross monetary expansions that cause insidious tax inflation. They warn of deficit spending that promises to leave a crushing debt to future generations, and call for an end to the borrowing, printing, spending, taxing and regulating policies that have caused our current economic suffering.
Some dismiss as selfish anyone who considers tax rates too high or who disapproves of certain government spending. Some believe in government taking on a larger role in our lives and see high taxes as something that responsible and fair-minded citizens should pay happily.
But for those who recognize that excessive taxation robs many of their ability to pay for the needs of their families, the tea party provides an appropriate outlet for their frustrations. These demonstrators are in good historical company. It seems right to join them.
I’m still working on a bar graph poster for Tax Day that highlights federal discretionary spending priorities. I think I’m going to go with a poster-board and construction-paper job along these lines:
Along with the anti-pork “Tea Parties” and the various war tax resistance actions going on this , this year there is a third set of activists using tax day as their rallying-point.
Equal Taxes, Equal Rights protesters are going to be meeting last-minute filers at post offices around the country to remind people that gays and lesbians are still paying for a first-class ticket but getting second-class citizenship.
Charles Merrill is among the organizers of protests in Washington, D.C.. And the Boston rally will include a Boston Tea Party Reenactment. Tax Day is getting crowded. It’s getting to the point where you won’t know who is protesting what without a program.
Organizers and promoters of the coming “Tea Party” protests are caught up in a messaging tug-of-war. On the one hand, there’s been an attempt to cast the protests as non-partisan, populist, grass-roots affairs. On the other hand, the Republican Party and right-wing activists are trying vigorously to put themselves at the head of the parade so as to channel the outrage for partisan gain.
At our local event, for instance, it looks like the master of ceremonies is going to be the chair of the local Republican Party, who will be introducing as speakers Melanie Morgan (a pro-war activist and right-wing partisan who co-authored a book slamming Cindy Sheehan and who chairs the pro-war group Move America Forward) and Dana Walsh (who ran as the Republican candidate for Nancy Pelosi’s House seat in the last election).
Morgan has gone so far as to urge her followers to try to run people with anti-war signs out of the Tea Party rally. If we don’t disapprove of the same spending the Republicans disapprove of, I guess, they’ll call the cops to have us removed.
All this is making my hopes of some cross-pollination between this group and our left-leaning group of local war tax resisters seem ridiculous. I’m not much looking forward to being harangued by a bunch of Republican jingos with bullhorns .
Here it is, . I’m fresh back from holding signs and banners and handing out pie charts at a local BART station in the cold pre-dawn commute hours.
In an hour or so, with some trepidation, I’ll see how well my message goes over at the “Tea Party” protest.
The local American Friends Service Committee put together a banner illustrating federal discretionary spending
Barry Hermanson hands out “postcards for Obama” with his pie chart graphic
Elizabeth Boardman displays my federal spending graphic
I’m sure you’re eager to hear how the “Tea Party” went. The short version is three pictures long:
The crowd assembled in front of City Hall…
…and marched to the Federal Building…
…where they cheered on various speakers.
I went to the rally but didn’t find any other local war tax resisters there. One of our crew did show up, but oddly we never ran in to each other even in the fairly small crowd.
So there I was, with my “War Tax Resisters Aren’t Buying It” / “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” sandwich board. The looks I got gave me the vibe of: “Is he from the bride’s family? the groom’s family? does anyone know this guy?”
A few people came up to talk with me. I didn’t get any hostility at all, mostly just curiosity. I told them what I was about, how I thought that war tax resisters might have something to teach that Tea Partiers might be eager to learn, and typically got a “hmmm” & a nod.
One fellow shared a good conversation with me about the prospects for tax resistance in the conservative set and whether as the country goes further to hell there’ll be any chance of the left-grassroots and the right-grassroots realizing that they have a common enemy in the politicians who are robbing them blind and telling them to blame it on each other.
The Party was dominated by the Fox News demographic, and the speakers tossed them the expected anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi red meat. To a large extent, many are eager to swallow what their manipulators are eager to dish out. But there were other folks there as well: some folks peddling Obama conspiracy theories of one variety or another, “show me the law”-style tax protesters, objectivists, some radical anti-capitalist critics of the economic crisis, and even a liberal Obama fan pissed off at the bailout who had the courage to grab the megaphone and address the crowd.
There was a sizable libertarian contingent — which you might expect, given the anti-tax, anti-government-spending focus. But other libertarians have been skeptical of the Tea Party phenomenon, and at least one went from being a Tea Party organizer to deciding to sit it out on the sidelines as the events became captured by opportunistic Republican politicians and media personalities.
A group of about a half-dozen very white punk rock kids, calling themselves “Anti-Racist Action” had somehow gotten it into their heads that the Tea Party was going to be a rally for the anti-immigrant “Minutemen” group. So they were there to counter-protest with a couple of signs reading “Smash the MinuteKlan” or some such. I may have been the only person who noticed. In any case, I saw a single sign in the Tea Party crowd complaining about the burden illegal immigrants place on taxpayers, but otherwise no indication of an organized “Minutemen” presence.
Amusingly, an Australian tourist came up to me at one point and asked if it was an anti-immigration demonstration. I was surprised and asked why he’d drawn that conclusion. He pointed to a sign reading “United States of France!” I had to explain that in the American conservative milieu, “France” is a shorthand description for everything bad, and that this had nothing to do with French immigrants.
How did the Tea Party compare with our local anti-war rallies, like that last ANSWER fiasco I went to?
Well… compare and contrast. On the contrast side, the Tea Partiers not only recited the pledge of allegiance, but they sang the national anthem and God Bless America… no Jackson Browne whatsoever. I also saw no giant puppets.
On the compare side:
The protest signs had a familiar ring to them.
Although the turn-out from our local war tax resistance crew was slim, at least one war tax resister elsewhere braved the Tea Party. Heather Snow got frustrated by handing out flyers at the post office and decided to take a look at the Tea Party in her neck of the woods. She was unimpressed. She tried to do some direct outreach (whereas I just sort of passively used my sandwich board), and found an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience.
Myself, I’m not sorry I went, though I’m hard-pressed to point out anything much that made a difference to my cause or theirs.
reports and media mentions of war tax resistance are coming in from across the country:
And in other news:
Probably nothing. If you’re self-employed without any major assets or loans, the odds of getting busted are extremely low. In fact, an estimated 7 million Americans fail to file their taxes every year, and in 2008 the IRS examined only 158,000 such cases. That comes out to a roughly 2 percent chance of getting caught. Even if the IRS does audit you, the agency probably won’t press charges. Instead, they’ll just file a tax return for you and charge you a fee for the trouble.
IRS employees have reported that taxpayers are occasionally citing the Geithner case when they are asked to pay their tax bills. “It’s making the compliance conversation harder,” [Colleen] Kelley [of the National Treasury Employees Union] said.
Some news of interest from hither and yon:
I believe that the statement contains both humorous ridicule and a meaningless poke at his critics. First, Jesus was clearly ridiculing his accusers when he led them to assume that the presence of Caesar’s likeness and inscription on the coin proved that Caesar held a title of ownership to that coin and that the tax should be paid. One might just as well claim that the picture of a Quaker wearing a blue hat on every box of Quaker Oats oatmeal “proves” that the Quaker owns every box of oatmeal that features his likeness on it. Likewise, the image of George Washington on a U.S. quarter dollar does not mean that George owns every such coin or that we should pay taxes because of it. It seems obvious that Jesus was making the same kind of joke with reference to the denarius. I can almost hear the laughter. Can you?
Further, the statement “Render to Caesar…” is completely circular and therefore conveys no actionable information whatsoever. If a man named Tom and a second man named Bill were both claiming ownership of the same bicycle, would it really help to resolve their dispute if a judge in a court of law declared that what was Tom’s was Tom’s and what was Bill’s was Bill’s? I don’t think so. Again, Jesus was clearly playing games with his opponents — delivering a meaningless poke that successfully confused them.
I have decided that I cannot, with good conscience, continue to contribute to the greed and war-based economy of our country.
I cannot rest any longer, knowing my tax dollars are helping to contribute to the maiming and killing of innocent people around the world in wars based on lies from our leaders.
I cannot stand the thought of my hard-earned tax dollars going to line the pockets of greedy or irresponsible financial executives and ignorant U.S. automobile manufacturers who’ve for too long made gas-guzzling behemoths partly responsible for the oil addiction of this country. I cannot support outlaw politicians who are free to trample our Constitution without any consequences.
I have discussed national issues with my family, friends and acquaintances, written and called my representatives in Congress, petitioned and marched in protests. Still, I feel like I need to do more.
Therefore, I am withholding a part of my federal income tax in protest. Our 75-year-old War Tax Resister’s League estimates that about 20 percent of your taxes this year will go to the current war expense and a much larger part toward paying for previous wars.
In lieu of my payment to the IRS, I will be increasing my support to the local charities, especially our area food bank, which has been extremely overburdened recently by our poor state of the war-based economy. God help America!
The author of this article and the editors of this Web site do not in any way advocate for, endorse, or condone any act of tax resisting or tax evasion. We recognize that these activities are potentially illegal and subject to strict fines and penalties, including possible jail time. For more information on specifics of tax penalties and tax law, we encourage you to consult with a tax expert, such as a tax account [sic] or tax attorney. The names of quoted individuals were changed at the request of the editor.
Things got a little wilder than usual at the Tax Day demonstration in Rochester, New York:
On the evening of , three activists were handing out literature and holding signs protesting war spending in front of the IRS building on East Ave. in Downtown Rochester. One of the demonstrators climbed a tree and held a sign that read “Cut War Spending.”
…the first two officers to arrive at the scene threatened to taser Emily from the tree and place her under mental health arrest if she didn’t comply with their orders to get down. Shortly thereafter, they called in six other police cars and two firetrucks to the scene. Three police officers used a firetruck ladder to get to Emily in the tree. One officer pepper sprayed her in the eyes at point blank range and forcefully removed her from the tree.
Before the Emily was removed and arrested, Mary, who was holding an anti-war tax sign under the tree that Emily was sitting in, was arrested for trespassing. Ben and Jake were arrested after chanting, behind police lines, “No Justice, No Peace! Fuck the Police!” Ted was arrested after asking the officers what the charges were against Ben and Jake.
Later that night, Ben and Ted were released on bail. Emily and Mary refused to be bailed out. Jake wasn’t released because police claimed that his photo ID had expired. The next morning, after the arraignment, it was discovered that his ID was in fact valid and that it was to expire in three months.
The following day, all five were arraigned in Judge John E. Elliott’s court. Emily was charged with resisting arrest and trespassing. Mary was charged with trespassing. Ben, Jake, and Ted were charged with disorderly conduct: obscene language/GES.
According to the lawyer who represented three of the five in court today, the section of the disorderly conduct statute that deals with obscenity was already found unconstitutional by the appeals court. The five are scheduled to go back to court at .
There’s some video footage of the protest arrests on-line. Looks like things went pretty much as described above. They really did arrest those kids for yelling “fuck the police.” They even have footage of a police spokesperson explaining afterwards to the upset protesters and independent journalists that of course you can be arrested for yelling profanities in public.
He claimed that the validity of such arrests are settled law, upheld by the courts, which I believe is untrue: the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down convictions of people for cursing police officers or for wearing clothing with slogans like “fuck the draft” in public places on First Amendment grounds.
Bottom line, though: “My officers do not have to tolerate being treated like that,” he says.
I see this sort of split perception of police officers a lot in the angry radical set: On the one hand, rhetorically they see the police as a bunch of lawless fascist thugs brutally enforcing the whims of the ruling classes and trampling on the rights of good folk. On the other hand, they act alarmed and surprised when the same police officers don’t leave them alone to smash the state at their leisure or when they disrespect the Bill of Rights in so doing.
Charles Madigan throws down the gauntlet to the “tea party” tax protesters:
Let’s go back to two of the most valiant protesters of the Vietnam War era, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel, the Jesuit and Philip, the former priest (now dead), who were at the center of lots of disruption as the anti-war movement found its way. I’m not here to argue about those positions. But the Berrigans at least were effective.
That was because they were willing to give up everything they had, including their freedom, for their causes. You don’t take a hammer to the nose of a warplane unless you are willing to spend some time in a prison cell. You don’t spill blood on draft board records, or burn them with homemade napalm, unless you understand there are consequences, and those consequences become part of the protest effort.
So, here’s my question: Are you angry enough about taxes to go to jail? Are you angry enough about taxes to forfeit some of the federal benefits you might collect, starting with Social Security and including Medicare (if that relates in your case) or any other benefits? Are you angry enough to go stand at the gates of Ft. Bragg and set fire to copies of your taxes to protest federal spending on the military? Are you angry enough to break into an IRS office and spill cow blood on some records?
His conclusion: “Will the tax protests become more serious? No. The problem with getting the right-of-center middle class involved in much of anything is that it likes too much being right-of-center middle class.” Well, tea partiers? You gonna take that kind of abuse?
I’m back from the NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I’ll share some of my impressions and go into more detail in the coming days.
I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day. We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.
After the administrative committee met on morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.
Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement. They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.
Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.
One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.
Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.
Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.
Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.
Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church. On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church. He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.
After breakfast morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.
Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward. Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):
Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.
First thing on afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.
After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions. In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS. Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.
I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting. I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan: “I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”
One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not. There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together. I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.
The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.” I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that. What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.
Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions. I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.
was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.
The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post. For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes. So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.
The good news is that I’ve got a paying gig that’s keeping me very busy. The bad news is that I’ve been very busy, and haven’t been able to update The Picket Line as much as I’d like.
: a bunch of links I thought were interesting enough to share but that I’ve given up hope about being able to weave in with some original commentary.
I love the smell of moral clarity in the morning.And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning: In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”
Carlos Gomez calls for war tax resistance in Colombia (excerpt, in my translation):
I declare tax civil disobedience. I refuse to give a single peso from my wallet to fund the war, with which they pay rewards for “false positives” [the euphemism used by the Colombian military when they inflate their body counts by killing civilian non-combatants]. In my case, the Democratic Security Policy has not benefited me one bit: they say that now we can travel peacefully on the highways to our estates and summering spots: I don’t have an estate, nor a vehicle, much less money to pay for a hotel in La Heroica; they say that peace returned to the country and that foreign investment increased in Colombia, but if this is true, why is unemployment still rising?; if the country is cruising along so well, then why are we in second place behind Sudan with the largest number of displaced refugees? When will we question the supposed benefits of a policy that hasn’t done anything other than to urbanize the violence in Colombia?
Only three years in, the country told him no about Caguán because at that time the guerrillas had no intentions of negotiating (as their acts proved)… and we took seven years and went for twelve with the same governmental conclusions without which nothing will change. Is it not perhaps also time to question said militarist proposal?
Recently the U.S. cut $33 million of aid from Plan Colombia, England has made its contributions conditional on human rights issues, the European Greens urge their countries to reconsider economic aid… the entire world begins to be skeptical about the merits of a war policy that only benefits the ruling class of this impoverished nation… that must be the reason for the tax proposal justly from the mouth of Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo that has stopped adding on more zeroes with the pyramid scheme called Grupo Aval. It goes to show that the presidents of this corner of South America chose corporations instead of the people — what to say of the enormous contributions that the sugar plantations (now in the market for ethanol fuel) made in the reelection referendum?
I propose, in view of the thousands and millions of unconditional Uribe-ists who are sure they have benefited from this security policy, that they can pay the tax. Or that the children of Uribe cede part of their earnings from the shadowy market in the Free Economic Zone in Bogota in order to finance the war that stirs the immeasurable malevolence of their father. Or what of the business tax exemptions which are intended to stimulate investment, and that represent 5.7 billion pesos of our national treasury, equivalent to 1.2% of the GDP… invest them in the expenses of the war from which they enrich themselves. It is said that this tax will be temporary, however “analysts note that in the country all temporary taxes become permanent, those that cost to rescind, and if it makes itself more extensive this tax without an expiration date will remain for life, with the four-per-thousand happening now ultimately becoming a necessity for the Executive that cannot find another way to substitute for those resources.”
I declare tax resistance, if necessary right away tomorrow I will cancel my bank account that bleeds me… tomorrow is now. To me, the Democratic Security Policy has been of no benefit… how has it been to you? Are you willing to put up with more deprivation at home in order to finance an endless war? Maybe you are, but not me.
The issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is now available on-line. Among the features in this issue:
was .
NWTRCC regulars were joined by curious locals like Tom Quinn of EcoWatch and Michael Patterson from Dennis Kucinich’s office (our meeting place is in Kucinich’s House district and he was curious enough to send an aide to take notes).
A few things jumped out at me during the opening introductory go-’round:
We watched a near-final cut of a film NWTRCC is producing about war tax resistance and resisters: Death and Taxes. It met with great acclaim (and plenty of suggestions for last-minute edits). Last I heard, it’s due for release .
Attendees watch a cut of Death and Taxes, an introductory war tax resistance film due to be released next month
Later, Phil Althouse, an election observer in El Salvador, updated us on conditions there, and Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace talked about how to move from activism to organizing and build bonds between disparate parts of the broader anti-war coalition.
Mike Ferner and Phil Althouse address the gathering
While coalition building always sounds great in the abstract, when it comes down to actually doing it, it runs into the practical difficulty of finding a common ground and deciding where to compromise and where no compromise is possible. Ferner thought that organizing around the larger vision of real democracy was the way to go. Other folks were skeptical. It can be difficult to find anything approaching an ideological common ground even in a small group like NWTRCC with an inherently common, specialized and political interest.
In members of NWTRCC there’s often a tension between avowed nonviolent principles and promotion of progressive projects (like universal health care and publicly-financed elections for instance) that fundamentally rely on a coercive, violent state to carry them out. The avowedly nonviolent progressives either don’t see the violent ramifications inherent in such projects or I have failed to understand the ingenious way they have squared this circle. I usually avoid the temptation to press the point, but sometimes give in.
Anyway, after this we split up into two groups: a War Tax Resistance 101 discussion group that I moderated, and a larger group that discussed issues of interest to more experienced resisters. There were other groups that met over the course of the afternoon as well, but by then I found it hard to be in even one place at once.
In the evening we heard more in-depth stories of the tax resistance from our hosts, Maria Smith and Charlie Hurst, and from Juanita Nelson and Erica Weiland. Juanita Nelson told the story of her arrest-in-a-Sears-bathrobe that she also tells in A Matter of Freedom. Erica described her transformation from a young Dean Democrat to a tax resisting anarchist (a salvation narrative in which, to my delight, The Picket Line plays a role).
Juanita Nelson tells her story
