A United Press International dispatch from :
Six Refuse to Pay Tax on War Making Grounds in State
Philadelphia (UPI) — A perennial refusal to pay taxes on the grounds the money goes for war purposes bobbed up again as the midnight deadline for income tax returns neared.
The Peacemakers, described as a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian concepts of non-violence, announced 73 of its members signed declarations of non-payment of taxes. Sixteen were from the Philadelphia area.
The signers included David Gale (3509 Hamilton St.) Philadelphia, a member of the crew of the Golden Rule, the 30-foot pacifist ketch which attempted to sail into the U.S. nuclear testing zone in the Pacific last year.
Rev. Maurice McCrackin, a Presbyterian minister, and Rev. Theodore Olson, a Baptist minister from suburban Fallsington, also were listed as signers of the non-payment pact.
McCrackin is at an Allenwood, Pa., federal camp serving the last weeks of a six month term for refusal to pay federal income taxes. Olson was released from the county jail at Cheyenne, Wyo., after serving four months for his attempt to impede construction of the first U.S. international missile base.
The Peacemakers is the group which called for non-cooperation in a civil defense drill scheduled for .
In announcing the non-payment declaration, the group said “war-making has come to be the major activity of the federal government.”
“The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only because of military expenditures which take four-fifths of the tax dollar,” the declaration said.
“The sharp upward trend of expenditures for high-powered bombs and long-range missiles greatly increases the possibility that mankind will be extinguished. We dissent, and want our lives to be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
