Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual anarchist or libertarian tax resisters → Russell Kanning

I’ve been noticing a number of stories showing up here and there about civil disobedience being used as a tactic by libertarians.

I hope this catches on. What the libertarian movement has been lacking lately is just this sort of grass roots in-your-face activism. Too much jaw-wagging about theory and hoping the politicians will throw you a bone and not enough getting your hands dirty, or, in this case, manicured.

“Libertarians have spent so much time complaining about government, but civil disobedience is a path to actually fixing things,” [Russell] Kanning said. “Who knows what this might inspire?”… He claims not to have paid federal income tax and drives without a valid driver’s license because he thinks it’s a nuisance. He’s considering burning his Social Security card.

Russell Kanning, editor of the Keene Free Press, and a war tax resister well-known in “Free State Project” circles (a project that is encouraging libertarian-minded people to move to New Hampshire in the hopes of forming a political critical mass), was arrested — twice —  for visiting the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire with the intent of handing leaflets to its employees.

The leaflets quote the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal: “Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of the Crimes.” The reverse side is a sample letter that IRS employees could send President Bush to announce that they are resigning their jobs.

“The U.S. government is killing people around the world to expand its power base,” Kanning said. “It is using our neighbors as cannon fodder and your money to accomplish the evil deed. They are building an empire on our backs and in our names. They are imprisoning or killing those that oppose them. Enough is enough.

“Gandhi called his non-cooperation with evil a campaign of civil disobedience. I am calling it ‘Tilting at Windmills’. An individual seems powerless against the lone global superpower, but it is the individual consent of everyone that empowers them. So the power is in our hands to bring down this rotten government.”

He was arrested by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and charged with distributing materials in a federal building and failure to obey a lawful order. After he was booked and released, he immediately returned to the IRS office to try again (without the leaflets, which had been confiscated). He was arrested again, this time charged with disorderly conduct.

“I never got to talk with the IRS workers,” he says, “but I did get to ask some Homeland Security guys to quit.”

Russell Kanning was arrested twice for attempting to hand out leaflets to employees of the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire — leaflets urging them to quit their jobs to avoid complicity in the conspiracy of war crimes that is the federal government.

He’s going to try again this week:

Tilting at Windmills is my term for daring to attack the US government … the most powerful empire known to mankind. They are evil and need to be stopped, but violent warfare is not moral or effective. We also do not have any violent weapons that can beat the feds, so we must embrace nonviolence.

The first step, here in Keene, was to kick the federal officials out of our town. We have 3 offices that I know of here. The IRS office on main street is above the post office. The SSAdmin is near the central square. The military recruiters are on Winchester St. across from Walmart. The IRS office is the biggest and most resembles a “fed building”, so that was our first target.

This time I will try to take 1 flyer to 1 IRS employee and have a conversation about the evils of the federal government and the need for them to quit. I will also most likely talk to the security guys. If anyone wants to join us we will be in front of the IRS/post office building at with anti-tax and war signs.…

I’ll keep you posted as to how the windmills and the tilter fare.

While Russell Kanning never said so explicitly, and I didn’t catch it myself until , the form of his protest — to try to convince IRS employees to reduce their complicity in government wickedness by quitting their jobs — comes straight from Thoreau’s manual of civil disobedience:

Thoreau and Kanning are each featured in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with, — for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel, — and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action.

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

The agents of the Federal Protection Service who arrested Kanning, going right along with Thoreau’s script, charged him with disorderly conduct (see The Picket Line ) — and in Concord District Court, for crying out loud (okay, Concord, New Hampshire, not Concord, Massachusetts, but still).

Kanning was going to try again this week (see The Picket Line ), but his plans were interrupted when he was arrested at his home on morning for failure to appear in court to face the earlier charges.

In court, the government dropped the charge of distributing materials in a federal building (because he had been prevented from doing so), but convicted him on the other charges — two charges of failure to obey lawful orders, one charge of failure to obey posted regulations, and one charge of disorderly conduct.

Kanning declined a lawyer, and for the most part refused to cooperate in the trial — at one point a bailiff seized a paper airplane Kanning was constructing as the trial proceeded. Kanning also said he would refuse to voluntarily return for sentencing, so he is being held without bail . You can send him mail at the following address:

Russell Kanning
c/o Strafford County House of Corrections
266 COUNTY FARM ROAD
DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03820

Russell Kanning is in jail, awaiting sentencing after being convicted of refusing to obey officials who were preventing him from leafletting at the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire. (See The Picket Line , , and for background.)

The latest news is that he has been moved to a maximum security section of the jail after refusing to cooperate with his imprisonment (he refused some requests for information, and, initially, would go limp and force prison guards to move him rather than moving voluntarily).

Supporters have since rallied both at the IRS office where Kanning was arrested, and at the Strafford County House of Corrections where he is being held.

Supporters of jailed war tax resister Russell Kanning protest near the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire.

Russell Kanning has sent out a report from his jail cell, where he is awaiting trial on charges of trying to leaflet the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire:

I have been learning a lot since my arrival in the gentle custody of the Federal Government. It costs the Feds $380/day to house me in my palatial 7′×13′ maximum security state room. I have a bunk, a toilet and a roommate to share the space with. I would have thought that kind of money would get me a beautiful suite with room service for my wife and I, instead of a jail cell in Dover. But I guess the government knows best how to spend $138,700/year for room/board. The good part is that I get to enjoy my room 23 hours/day.

Let me tell you about a man I met before my trial in Concord. His is a short stocky man that speaks broken English. He lives in NH with a large extended family. He is proud of his job as a roofer at $18/hour even though it is hard work. But he has one great flaw in the eyes of the Federal Mafia: He was born in Honduras. So they will lock him up and send him back down there for a second time. Good job, Homeland Security.

So is it time to stop paying Federal taxes to the crime bosses in DC yet, those of you who still do? The government has not reformed either one of us. I will be out someday and am more determined than ever to undermine the evil system. My little friend also vowed to make his way back up to his family and to terrorize unsuspecting homeowners with his quality roofing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been covering the case of Russell Kanning. Kanning was arrested on after he attempted to enter the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire with leaflets urging the employees there to quit their jobs and end their complicity with the U.S. government.

He was re-arrested when he did not voluntarily present himself in court to answer the charges in the original arrest. He was convicted and jailed until his sentencing hearing.

This afternoon Russell Kanning was sentenced to time served, without any probation or fine, but with a nominal processing fee ($20 or so) tacked on (which I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kanning refuse to pay).

Russell Kanning’s crew at the NH Underground is planning another action at the Keene, New Hampshire IRS office .

The planners are keeping the details to themselves at this stage (“we’ll be going to the IRS, telling them that we don’t like them funding murder and torture. Got some fun planned,” is all). I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

The New Hampshire Underground Forum banner features Gandhi’s smiling face

Kat and Russell Kanning, along with some other folks from the NH Underground, returned to the IRS  — the scene of the “crime” in which Russell had been arrested trying to hand out fliers to the IRS employees .

“Several people stopped and talked to us , being supportive. There were lots of honks for the ‘honk if you hate taxes’ sign,” Kat reported. “There was a note on the IRS door saying that the person working there was away on a family illness. I think it’s bogus and they just can’t be bothered to defend their office.…”

“I burned some tax forms back out on the sidewalk. Someone complained to the police, who complained to me, but they didn’t do anything about it.”

The IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire is only open for a few hours on Thursdays during most of the year. The Kannings plan to return to protest every Thursday. Russell, who appeared at the protest with his trademark denim overalls and pitchfork, said “we haven’t kicked the IRS out of Keene yet, but we are working on it.”

Picket Line — How long have you been a tax resister, and how do you resist?

Russell Kanning — I stopped paying Federal Income taxes at . I have paid some SS taxes since then, but do not now. I started by not taking any Federal/CA State taxes from my paycheck. (I was in charge of the company payroll.) Since then I have either paid a little SS/Medicare tax or made money in ways that kept me clear of government encumbrances.

♇ — Have you seen any indications that IRS employees are reconsidering their jobs as a result of your protests & leafletting?

RK — No IRS employees have considered quitting yet in Keene. We have had more effect on the Homeland Security agents (ICE), the Federal court in Concord, the County Jail (Fed lockup) in Dover, and the local cops. They have been mostly annoyed by our signs and flyers and locals honking in support.

♇ — What message are you trying to get across with the straw hat, overalls, and pitchfork?

RK — We were looking for a way to be more recognizable by local residents, so we thought of going with some sort of outfit. A year or so ago, a member of the New Hampshire Underground forum (nhfree.com) from Hampton Beach thought that pitchforks would be a nice touch when we go up against the government. He got the idea from Pat Buchanan’s successful presidential primary here in NH in or that used the “peasants with pitchforks” theme. The outfit does seem to work. The straw hat and overalls help relax cops sometimes. Pitchforks ramp up situations, which comes in handy other times. It helps us not look like annoying intellectuals and puts normal people at ease. Some of our guys have noticed that chicks like the outfit also.

♇ — You’ve done a number of other civil disobedience actions, including burning your social security card and refusing to submit to a TSA screening when trying to board a domestic flight. Is there a unifying theme around your actions?

RK — Every act of civil disobedience my friends and I perform is meant to free us all. I don’t think I or other people should be numbered and tracked by the government, so some of us have burned our SS cards or protested RealID by dressing as Communist or Nazi guards. I hate the way people are treated at airports nowadays, so I tried to push the government back a little in that area by getting arrested for not letting them pat me down or show them any government ID. We burn UN flags often, since that group wants to tax the entire planet, take away all people’s guns, and tell us all how to live our lives.

♇ — What can ordinary people do to reduce the power and viciousness of the state, or to help get the nonviolent revolution up and running? (And what about those people who aren’t ready to risk arrest?)

RK — The first step is to not commit evil acts on behalf of the state, which includes working for them since they steal money or harm people. The second step is to stop funding these kinds of activities. The third step is to show others what you are doing. The last step is to speed up the whole process by provoking the evil government by sacrificing yourself by doing civil disobedience. All of these steps include the ever greater risk of arrest. I don’t know any ways to not cooperate with evil and yet assure yourself of no hassles.

♇ — You’re often associated with the Free State Project, and you certainly travel in FSP circles. But I’ve always thought of the FSP as a ballot-box-oriented thing — what’s the appeal to a Christian anarchist like you who doesn’t even vote?

RK — I am a member of the Free State Project and moved to NH a year after we voted on which state we wanted to concentrate our efforts. Many of us in the FSP have no interest in politics. Others not only vote, but even run for government office. Still others actually work for the government. I am most interested in recruiting other nonviolent revolutionaries to move to NH and work towards total freedom.

♇ — The NH-Underground scene has been very supportive of your action. Usually when I hear about war tax resistance activity, it comes from within the left/liberal activist community or from the traditional peace churches. The NH-Underground is more libertarian-oriented. Is this just an exception that proves the rule, or do you think there is an emerging respect for WTR in libertarian circles?

RK — The federal government gets worse and worse all the time. Maybe that causes some libertarians to gather the courage to stand up to them by not funding war.

♇ — Do you feel that you’ve received useful help or support from the traditional WTR community (NWTRCC, War Resisters League, the peace churches, etc.)? Are there ways it could be more helpful?

RK — We have been doing our own thing, so we have not needed the support of big organizations. We have worked with and our friends with some traditional WTR groups and look forward to more connections being made. The main things I want to communicate to people is that individuals can stand up to organized crime and aggression and that normal people can be successful. You don’t have to be Gandhi or MLK or be part of a huge organization to do what is right.

“An individual seems powerless against the lone global superpower, but it is the individual consent of each of us that enables them.” ―Russell Kanning

For more about Russell Kanning’s tax resistance actions, see also:

Dave Ridley, inspired by Russell Kanning’s attempts to leaflet the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire, followed in his footsteps in Nashua (see The Picket Line ). He reports: “Nothing happened for two weeks, but after my article about this encounter appeared in the KFP, a Homeland Security officer attempted to cite me. The charge was ‘Distribution of Handbills.’ ” He has a court date .

New Hampshire protesters remember the fifth of November at the IRS office

Some short bits from recent days:

  • The site My War Tax purports to calculate how much you, personally, are paying for the Iraq War. You type in your taxable income for , and the site calculates your bill for you (and lets you know how it made the calculation so you can see if it makes sense to you).
  • Kat Kanning wrote up the story of the civil disobedience actions that she, her husband Russell, Dave Ridley, and Lauren Canario have been doing at the IRS offices in Keene, New Hampshire, for the Keene Free Press. NH Insider also did a story on the Dave Ridley case. And if you’re tired of reading, you can watch an action-in-progress on YouTube. As Kat Kanning’s article noted, this action was organized and enacted in less than twenty-four hours, and ten local activists attended on short notice.
  • The U.S. Congress is toying with the idea of shutting down the recently-adopted IRS practice of using private debt collection agencies to hunt down people who don’t pay taxes. At a hearing, one Representative played a tape of one such private debt collection agency harassing its prey over the phone (here’s a PDF transcript).
  • The IRS is still having a hell of a time bringing its database into the 21st century. The latest TIGTA audit of the project found that the “pattern of deferring Project requirements to later releases and missing release deployment dates has continued” with yet another over-budget missed deadline and with requirements radically scaled-back at the last minute (some of these requirements have been deferred for over five years now).

One way a tax resistance campaign can get a leg up is through the acts of sympathizers within the tax collection bureaucracy itself. After all, they’re taxpayers too, and may feel more loyalty to their fellow-subjects than to the government they’re subjected to.

To this end, some tax resistance campaigns have made strides by encouraging resignations, defections, and goldbricking among those responsible for carrying out the tax laws.

In this, they’re following the lead of Thoreau, who wrote:

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.”

Today I’ll give some examples of tax resistance campaigns that tried to persuade the tax collector to switch teams.

Free Keene

A group of activists in Keene, New Hampshire, ranging from Christian anarchists to “Free State Project” ballot-box libertarians, has been experimenting with a number of creative civil disobedience projects.

In , Russell Kanning went to the Keene branch of the Internal Revenue Service and tried to hand out leaflets to the employees there. The leaflets quoted from the tribunal that presided over war crimes trials in Japan after World War Ⅱ to the effect that people are obligated personally to disengage from the crimes of their governments, and then provided a sample letter these employees could send to resign from their jobs.

Kanning was arrested by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and charged with distributing materials in a federal building and failure to obey a lawful order. After he was booked and released, he immediately returned to the IRS office to try again (without the leaflets, which had been confiscated). He was arrested again and charged with disorderly conduct.

A few months later, Dave Ridley followed-up on Kanning’s action, at the Nashua IRS office. He silently held up a sign that read “Is it right to work for the IRS?” and passed a leaflet through the window that read in part:

I have the right to remain silent. IRS agents have the right to quit their jobs. If that is not possible, they have a responsibility to work as inefficiently as possible when taking our money, and as quickly as possible when returning it.

The police were summoned and hustled him out of the building. They later cited him for “distribution of handbills.”

Kat Kanning and Lauren Canario were the next activists in line, going to the Keene IRS office with a “Taxes pay for torture” sign and a stack of leaflets. They were charged with “disorderly conduct and loitering, failure to obey a lawful order.”

At every stage in the process, they tried to directly but non-aggressively confront not only the IRS employees, but also the Homeland Security officers, court bailiffs, judges, and other government collaborators: asking them why they were interfering with American citizens “petitioning their government for redress of grievances,” and asking them to consider taking up a more honorable line of work.

The first intifada

At the launching of the first “intifada” resisting Israeli rule over Palestinians, Palestinians who worked for the tax department under the Israeli occupation resigned their posts. As a result of this and of organized tax resistance, only about 20% of Palestinians subject to Israeli taxes in the West Bank paid their taxes in 1993, the last year before Israel relinquished taxing authority there to the Palestinian Authority.

Greek tax and customs officials

Complicating the Greek government’s campaign to bring in more tax revenue during the recent Euro-region financial brouhaha, bureaucrats in the Greek tax and customs office periodically went on strike to protest the accompanying austerity measures that cut funding for state employees.

British nonconformists

British members of nonconforming Christian sects who did not want to see their tax money going towards schools that taught children the official, government supported faith, resisted their taxes. The newspapers reported:

In Lincolnshire, the sitting magistrate recently refused to try cases of resistance, and left the bench. Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.

Whiskey Rebellion

As I mentioned earlier this month, part of the problem the fledgeling United States government had when trying to enforce its excise tax against the Whiskey Rebels was that it had a devil of a time convincing anyone to serve as a prosecutor or exciseman.

From the beginning, the Whiskey Rebels counted on being able to convince their neighbors not to help the federal government enforce the tax. George Washington’s Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton complained to him:

The opposition first manifested itself in the milder shape of the circulation of opinions unfavorable to the law, and calculated by the influence of public disesteem to discourage the accepting or holding of offices under it…

Annuity Tax resisters

During the resistance against the Annuity Tax in Edinburgh, Scotland, a number of members of the town council who were members of churches other than the tax-supported establishment church resigned rather than be party to administering the act that enacted the tax.

Auctioneers whom the government usually could call upon to preside at tax auctions refused to take the contracts, and carters whom ordinarily could be contracted to cart the goods refused, and so the town had to hire someone new at a higher rate, and purchase new vehicles to haul seized property about.

When people are arrested, tried, or imprisoned for tax resistance, their comrades have sometimes used this as an occasion to hold rallies or other demonstrations. This shows support for the people being persecuted, demonstrates determination in the face of government reprisals, and can be a good opportunity for propaganda.

Here are some examples:

  • When Russell Kanning was convicted for leafletting at the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire, supporters demonstrated at the jail, holding up “Free Russell Kanning” signs.

    • Supporters of jailed war tax resister Russell Kanning protest near the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire

  • During the Dublin water charge strike, according to one organizer: “The campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up in force. … And when the first court appearances took place, over 500 people turned up outside Rathfarnham courthouse to support their neighbours. We marched to the courthouse, had stirring speeches, several songs including ‘You’ll never Walk Alone’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and an amazing sense of our unbeatability.”
  • Sylvia Hardy, an elderly woman from Exeter, refused to pay her council tax, calling it highway robbery that the tax rates have risen by double-digits per year, while her pension rises at only 1.7% annually. When she was summonsed to court, she walked alongside banner-waving supporters and was met by a crowd of supporters outside the courthouse.
  • Another pensioner who refused to pay his council tax bill for similar reasons, David Richardson, was taken to court in . About fifty supporters demonstrated outside, singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” for Richardson.
  • Brian Wright was the first person imprisoned for failure to pay Margaret Thatcher’s “Poll Tax” — 700 people held a rally outside the prison to show support. Other prisons holding poll tax resisters were later picketed by protesters.
  • When J.J. Keon, a Socialist from Grafton, Illinois, was jailed for refusing to pay what he contended was an illegal poll tax in , Socialist Party spokesman Ralph Korngold came to town and gave a speech outside the prison urging people to join Keon in resisting and to ask why no rich tax dodgers were behind bars.
  • Maurice McCrackin was jailed for war tax resistance in . While there, war tax resister Richard Fichter picketed the federal prison camp where he was held. Before that, he’d picketed the courthouse where McCracken was being tried.
  • When the IRS took war tax resister Ed Hedemann to court in to try to force him to turn over financial documents to the agency, some 25 supporters, waving signs and handing out leaflets, joined him to demonstrate outside the courthouse before the hearing.
  • Prior to war tax resister Frank Donnelly’s sentencing on tax evasion charges in , dozens of supporters rallied outside the courthouse. One supporter noted that “[i]n addition to showing up at his sentencing, Donnelly’s friends in Maine threw three ‘Going-Away-To-Jail Parties’ for Donnelly in the days leading up to his prison sentence. In one party surprise, Donnelly cut into a fresh Maine blueberry pie, and he found a file baked into the pie.”

The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom was particularly noted for its courthouse and jailhouse rallies:

  • When Clemence Housman was jailed for failure to pay about $1 of tax in  — with the authorities telling her that they were authorized to keep her in jail until she paid up, however long that took — the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a protest outside the prison, and “gave three rousing cheers for Miss Housman, which… it is hoped reached the lonely prisoner in her cell.” The league then organized a procession to the prison gates. The four mile walk, over muddy streets on a rainy day, ended in a surprising victory, as the government had thrown in the towel and released Housman — without getting a penny from her — after five days.
  • When a Women’s Suffrage wagon full of activists descended on the courthouse where Janet Legate Bunten was being charged with refusal to take out a license for her dog, the authorities panicked. “The court was twenty minutes late in taking its seat,” a sympathetic observer noted, “and it was freely rumoured that the reason of the delay was that more police were sent for to be in attendance before the proceedings began! There certainly was an unusual number present for so insignificant a court.”
  • The Women’s Tax Resistance League organized “a great gathering” to support Kate Harvey who was charged with ten counts of failing to pay national insurance taxes on her gardener’s salary. Following the sentence, they shouted “Shame!” to the judge, then held a “poster parade” to the town square and held a mass meeting there.