The Daily Texan chimes in with its article “Taxes withheld in protest.”
“Of course there are legal repercussions and risks with refusing to pay taxes,” said Ruth Benn, spokeswoman for NWTRCC, who has not paid her taxes . “Those of us who really refuse to pay are looking at what U.S. tax dollars are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that far outweighs anything that the IRS could do to me.”
Democracy Now! has posted a transcript of a interview they conducted with Ruth Benn, national coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
, I ran a war tax resistance information booth at the “Living More With Less” voluntary simplicity conference in Oakland. It was a good conference — articulate and entertaining speakers and an overall lack of the sort of granola-talk that often turns Bay Area events like these into real eye-rollers.
Many people showed interest in tax resistance and came up to ask questions or to browse our literature. One of our pamphlets, “Low Income / Simple Living as War Tax Resistance” from NWTRCC, was especially popular. Alas, it’s also dated. It doesn’t mention things like Health Savings Accounts, or even IRAs, and tends on the whole to make this form of tax resistance seem excessively renunciatory and difficult.
Speaking of which, here’s a bit from the opening paragraph of a new article about activist Kathy Kelly from the Boise Weekly:
$3,000! If that were really what it took to do tax resistance this way, I’d find some other method. Articles like these can do as much harm as good by on the one hand giving an inspiring example of tax resistance and on the other hand making it seem like some frightening martyrdom and daunting sacrifice.
The war tax resistance movement is guilty of contributing to this impression. Its literature universally makes this path seem more difficult than it is, and its representatives frequently repeat the misinformation about how you have to live below the poverty line to live below the tax line. For example, here’s Ruth Benn of NWTRCC, writing in the latest The Nonviolent Activist:
It is going to take a lot of work, apparently, to get the word out that this form of tax resistance isn’t only for the vow-of-poverty set.
Can you stand another parable about the futility of “Peace Tax Fund” proposals? Recently, Ruth Benn of NWTRCC, accompanied by many supporters, gave some eloquent testimony in favor of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill before the New York City Council’s Committee on State and Federal Legislation.
It made me sad, because as I’ve mentioned here before, I think that the “Peace Tax” proposals are worse than useless — they’re actually counter-productive and if enacted would do significant harm to the conscientious objection movement. I think that the war tax resistance movement suffers from its support of such legislation — both because this takes time and energy from meaningful pursuits and because this advertises the superficiality of the “conscientious” objection of some of its members.
It astonishes me to see followers of Thoreau behaving as though they really believed that such an empty piece of legislation could actually provide any genuine moral cover. But there are many people in war tax resistance circles who would gladly open their checkbooks and fork over money to the war makers if they could do so under the cover of a “peace tax” bill.
Maybe another parable will help illustrate why I think this is foolish:
Rex has a problem. Like many teenagers, Rex loves fast food, and there’s nothing he’d rather do after a long day of algebra and such than hit Micky Dees on the way home and get a big mac, fries and a coke.
But when his parents split up Rex’s allowance was one of the things that suffered. His mom was always the stingy one, and gives him only five dollars a week, which is almost enough to feed his habit once, since a big mac costs $3, and fries and cokes are $1.50 apiece.
His dad is more generous with the money, typically, and used to give Rex $40 per week in allowance. But shortly after the divorce he got mixed up in some sort of California religion and has sworn off meat eating entirely. He knows that his son spends his allowance money on big macs, so has cut Rex off. “It’s important that the money I earn and spend not go to end the lives of innocent cows, or whatever animals they use to make those big macs. I’m sure you understand, Rex.”
Which Rex doesn’t. But when whining doesn’t work, Rex comes up with a proposal: He’ll promise not to spend any of his father’s allowance money on meat — swearing any oath his father demands — if only he can get that allowance.
His father relents, and Rex now has $45 dollars to spend every month on his fast food cravings: $5 that he can spend on anything he wants, and $40 that he can spend on anything but meat.
Rex troops off to Mickey Dees with $40 in his left pocket and $5 in his right. He orders his big mac, fries and coke, and pulls three dollars from each pocket to pay the bill:
meat money non-meat money ($2 left over) ($37 left over) $3 = big mac $3 = fries & coke But then he stops. He quickly realizes that this only leaves him with two dollars in his “meat pocket” which isn’t enough to buy a big mac until he gets another five dollars from his mom next week, so he’s not much better off than before, except that he can have all the fries and cokes he wants.
But what he really wants is big macs.
A big mac, as you may know if you remember the commercials, is composed of two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions, on a sesame-seed bun. Which is a 2:6 ratio of meat ingredients to non-meat ingredients, meaning that 25% of the ingredients in a big mac are meat. That suggests, to Rex anyway, that only 25% of the cost of a big mac should have to be paid from his meat pocket.
meat money non-meat money ($4.25 left over) ($34.75 left over) $0.75 = 2 all-beef patties $5.25 = everything else That’s more like it! By only dipping in to his “meat money” at the rate of $0.75 per big mac, he can have his favorite meal almost every day of the week. It would cost him $0.75 × 7 = $5.25 to do it every day. Rex is only twenty-five cents away from his goal of daily big macs! How can he do it?
As Sunday comes and Rex’s meat money drops down to fifty cents, an idea comes to Rex. He borrows a quarter from one of his classmates, promising to pay it back later in the day with a nickle interest. So at the end of the week, here’s how he’s spent his money on seven of his favorite meals:
meat money non-meat money borrowed money (nothing left) ($2.95 left over) (paid back with interest) $5.00 on meat $36.75 on meals $0.25 on meat .30 on loans Rex is happy: he gets his favorite fast food every day instead of only once a week. His dad is happy: none of his dad’s allowance money was spent on meat. The only unhappy ones are the cows, which Rex is eating several times as fast as before.
Ruth Benn of NWTRCC looks into the IRS’s new W-4 policy (previously discussed here on , , and ):
I looked into some other sites about this W-4 policy business, including questions and answers on the IRS site: http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=139412,00.html. Robert may be right that it’s not a “big” change, partly in the sense that most salaried wtr’s hit the roadblock when a levy comes — are they going to stay or go? If the IRS asks that the allowances be changed before a salary is garnished, the wtr employee again has to decide whether to stay or go or how to deal with it.
What seems different to me is that the IRS used to ask employers to send in a W-4 with more than 10 allowances or “exempt” if the person didn’t seem to qualify. The bar was kind of high for enforcement. We knew that policy was dropped, but with the new emphasis by the IRS on under-withholding, the enforcement — IRS telling the employer to change the allowances to withhold more — could hit more people who just take one or two extra allowances so as to have something to resist at the end of the year. The IRS is not relying on hearing about high numbers of allowances so much as (supposedly) enhancing their tracking of income reported on W-2’s with salaried people who owe the IRS money at the end of the year.
The other part of that article… that I was thinking sounded more problematic was this “lock-in” letter following people to new jobs. Will the IRS institute these fines faster on people they think are quitting jobs to avoid the change in their W-4? On this topic I did not find references in the IRS site specifically. I did see some other articles from payroll associations, who are not particularly happy about all of this. They see it as more paperwork than the previous process of just sending in questionable W-4’s (despite the IRS promoting that as paperwork reduction), plus they are asking the question, how long do they have to keep the “lock-in” info in their computers if an employee has left the job or quits. If that person is rehired a year later and the “lock in” info has been purged from their system, is the employer liable for the taxes if the IRS notices that employee again? That seemed to be an open question.
As we’ve said, the main thing to watch is how this is being carried out and enforced by the IRS and whether it appears to be a significant change.…
If you get a salary and you want to try confrontational tax resistance (not paying what the IRS says you owe), you first need to stop or reduce the withholding from your paycheck by filing an appropriate W-4 form with your employer. Here is a PDF of the latest W-4 form.
The tax resistance “April 15 Minutes of Fame” week continues, with articles in the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and elsewhere.
“When the Tax Man cometh, they don’t answer the bell,” says the Monitor:
When Ruth Benn of Brooklyn filed her federal income taxes , she left out an important element: the check.
“In good conscience I cannot pay this money to the US government,” Ms. Benn wrote in a letter to the IRS that accompanied a completed, but unpaid, 1040 form. “I do not want my tax dollars to be used for killing and war.”
Jim Allen, a retired Army social worker now teaching at St. Louis University, knows he is breaking the law by withholding some of his income taxes. But he and his wife, Jan, became fed up with the billions of dollars spent to fund the war in Iraq and decided to take a moral stand.
“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I am when such a large percent is going to pay for war,” says Mr. Allen, who served in the Army for 20 years.
Becky Pierce of Boston says she evades the IRS by not filing at all. Each April she fills out a 1040 form to determine how much she’ll donate to charity, then puts the income tax form in her filing cabinet.
Ms. Pierce says she is part of a long American tradition of tax resistance, reaching back to when revolutionaries tossed tea into Boston Harbor. But to follow in the footsteps of American protesters such as Henry David Thoreau — who went to jail for withholding taxes during the Mexican-American War — Pierce says she must live on a Walden Pond level of thrift. “You need to have control of your money,” she says. “I’m a self-employed carpenter. No one is reporting what I make. That’s why I can go unnoticed.”
But Jim Stockwell of Micaville, N.C., refuses to take a vow of poverty for what he considers “a simple act of conscience.” He laughs about how he never paid income taxes while working as a vitamin supplement salesman in Maine and a Home Depot employee in North Carolina.
“I made bundles and bundles of money and gave bundles away [to charity],” Mr. Stockwell says. “I arranged my life my own way and the IRS never caught up with me.”
USA Today chimes in with “‘War on tax’ waged against costs of war”:
Like most Americans, Peter Smith and his wife, Ellyn Stecker, sit down each year to fill out a federal tax form. Then they write a check to the U.S. Treasury for half the sum in the “amount you owe” box.
They are among thousands of Americans who refuse to pay part or all of their federal taxes as a protest against war and military spending. “It takes two things to fight a war: people and money,” says Smith, 67, a retired math and computer science teacher. “I can’t refuse anymore to go, but I certainly can refuse to send the money.”
Smith and Stecker donate their withheld tax money to charities, such as Oxfam America, which fights global poverty and hunger, and a local shelter for battered women.
Stecker, 60, a physician, wishes the government would spend tax dollars on those sorts of programs instead of war. “You look at what your money is being spent for, and you say, ‘No, I will not give my money for that,’ ” she says.
But the IRS eventually gets its share. The couple know the routine: By July, they get a letter from the IRS asking them to pay the rest of what they owe. They respond with a note explaining their reasons for not paying the full amount.
Then there’s a final notice. The IRS says in 30 days it will extract the money from paychecks, bank accounts or retirement funds. And the agency does just that.
The couple figure that over the years, the IRS has collected about $75,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest from them. , thanks to withholding and charitable giving, they owe nothing to the federal government.
The Berkeley Daily Planet brings us “Tax Resistance: Woman Opposes War, IRS”:
Want your anti-war protest to get noticed? Don’t pay your taxes.
Susan Quinlan’s been doing it for , and she’s attracted plenty of attention from the Internal Revenue Service, which showed up at her front door demanding she pay a portion of her earnings or face imprisonment.
Quinlan refused to cooperate, the IRS slunk away and, , she’s dodging federal tax laws as gamely as ever.
Quinlan, a Berkeley resident, has retooled her life to keep negative consequences to a minimum. She doesn’t own property or maintain much cash in bank accounts and she declines jobs that require she withhold money from her paycheck.
“My approach was, I don’t want to pay any taxes at all, which means adapting my lifestyle to make that possible,” Quinlan said.
As a full-time volunteer peace advocate, Quinlan falls beneath the tax line and need not pay a dime. In the past, though, when she’s owed money, she’s had to navigate thorny legal territory to ensure her earnings steer clear of federal war coffers.
One problem facing many aspiring resisters is that taxes are typically taken out of paychecks automatically, thwarting the opportunity to resist. Solutions include self-employment, contract work, or loading up on W-4 allowances that minimize per-paycheck deductions. When April 15 rolls around, many resisters either submit a 1040 then refuse to pay their taxes or eschew filing altogether.
Quinlan opts for the latter. She hadn’t filed a federal income tax return , when the IRS came after her wages from a job she held at a nonprofit Latina employment agency. Rather than pay up, she quit, and would do it again, she said.
“I loved that job, but my commitment to not pay for war came first,” she said.
Does that mean she pockets the money and heads for the outlets?
Definitely not, she said. Like many resisters, Quinlan redirects those tax dollars to local charities and community groups.
“I always calculated what taxes would be owed because I do feel it’s important that I contribute to the community,” she said. “I just don’t want it to go to illegal, immoral, imperialistic wars.”
Meanwhile, Jessica Lee at The Indypendent asks a variety of anti-war activists for their opinions on new tactics for stopping the war that go beyond marching in the streets or complaining to Congress. Among those who took up her challenge was Ruth Benn of NWTRCC:
While the elections pivoted the antiwar movement to focus its main strategy to politically-leveraging the new Democratic majority to introduce legislation to cut off funding for the war, thousands of Americans have already stopped paying for all wars.
“If you invest in war, you will get war,” said Ruth Benn, coordinator for the War Resisters League and National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Benn estimates that at least 8,000–10,000 Americans are currently war tax resisters, however, for the movement to gain a real foot-hold it would need visibility from larger antiwar groups. “Most peace movements are non-profit organizations, thus are scared to promote this type of action,” Benn said.
Aside from participating in tax resistance, Benn explained that, “Many people choose to reorganize their lives around an anti-capitalism lifestyle.”
NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn was interviewed on “The American Activist” afternoon for KSKQ in Ashland, Oregon.
The host, Lora Chamberlain, had herself quit her job when the bombing of Iraq began, in order “to get off the rolls completely and not pay any taxes.” Benn had a chance to introduce her listeners to W-4 resistance and alternative funds, and to discuss the IRS collection process, asset-concealment strategies, and other ins-and-outs of tax resistance.
Alas, Benn repeated the canard about the tax line being $8,750 (or, as she later corrected herself: $18–20,000 if you take advantage of deductions and credits)! I know she knows better, because she’s been taking an active role in helping to finalize the editing of the upcoming NWTRCC pamphlet on low-income tax resistance — which is full of information on how even single people with no children or other dependents can earn more than that and stay under the line. Sigh. Clearly I’ve got more work to do.
The host of the show wanted to mix war tax resisters in with what she called the “tax honesty movement” (that is, Constitutionalist tax protesters) and the recent movie America: From Freedom to Fascism which has popularized tax protester arguments in many circles. In her mind, we’re all basically on the same side, working in favor of “true, participatory democracy” and against “the corporate fascist state” which serves the parasitical oligarchs of the “tapeworm economy.” Well… horray for low-power community radio; sure beats the crap out of the big stations.
Reporter Aleksandra Todorova of SmartMoney.com brings us one of the first war tax resistance articles of the tax season: Skipping Tax Bill Is One Way Some Are Protesting Iraq War.
It mentions the tax resistance of Larry Rosenwald, Juanita Nelson, Ruth Benn, and myself.
Lots of tax resistance in the news as approaches:
The “Democracy Now” radio show features Ruth Benn of NWTRCC and Pamela Schwartz of the National Priorities Project, talking about the cost of war and how to stop buying it. (This segment starts at 28:45, if you download the audio, or here’s the transcript.) Benn discusses the phone tax and its recent partial repeal, the history of war tax resistance and of her own resistance, and how the government typically responds to resisters (including an update on the imprisoned tax resisters from the Restored Israel of Yahweh group).
The National Priorities Project has released their estimate of how much of your tax bill feeds the war machine. They use a different methodology from that used by the War Resisters League in their pie chart, so they come up with different numbers. If you’re curious, read the fine print.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel profiles local war tax resisters Scott Kennedy and Alexander Gaguine:
Kennedy, 59, a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, has not paid a full federal tax bill as his way to protest war and object to the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. government on bolstering defense.
“It’s a valid moral stance,” said Kennedy, a former Santa Cruz mayor. “To me, it’s not just an extraordinary waste of resources, but withholding taxes is part of the effort to build a more humane world community. We’re happy to pay taxes for a good purpose.”
The San Jose Metro takes note of Silicon Valley tax resistance, and tax resisters Susan Quinlan and “Dave and Mary X”.
Women’s Action for New Directions posts some great ideas for “Tax Day” protest actions.
And Willamette Week profiles tax resisters John & Pat Schwiebert, John Grueschow, and Ann & Bruce Huntwork. I like the article’s subtitle: “Your money is paying for a bloody war. Theirs isn’t.”
Bobby Smith at Buzzsaw Haircut takes a gander at the Ithica War Tax Resisters and quotes resisters Pete Meyers, Mary Loehr, Laurie Konwinski, Ruth Benn, Peter Goldberger, and Joe Donato. Excerpts:
Pete Meyers, a member of Ithaca’s War Tax Resistors, said there are many ethical and personally fulfilling benefits to resisting federal war taxes that go beyond the monetary opposition.
“Having done this for eighteen years, it’s not so much whether it’s denying the military money, but what it has done for me. And it has been profound.”
Meyers, like many war tax resistors, calculates what he owes to the government and funnels the money to philanthropic organizations.
“If I give my money directly to people who need it, I can avoid going through a big government bureaucracy,” he said.
Dave Ross has sampled my interview on his radio show into a commentary that he aired . Here’s a transcript, and here’s the audio:
I only found out about it once the Freepers got ahold of it and their grunts started echoing through the Intarwebs.
In other news, NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn’s appearance on KTLK’s Marc Germain show is finally on-line as well:
Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s coordinator, eulogizes Ralph DiGia at the War Resisters League site. Excerpts:
Way back in Ralph asked the board of WRL not to withhold income tax from his pay. He had joined the staff and thus became the first war tax resister on the WRL staff, the first to press the organization to take a stand against cooperating with the IRS. It wasn’t until , after various collection efforts and a court case, that the IRS took money from WRL’s bank account for four years of Ralph’s many years of refusal to pay war taxes.
WRL has promoted tax day actions for years and handing out pie charts at the IRS office in Manhattan was an occasion Ralph rarely missed. He loved leafleting and would be there whether the action was large or small. In recent years he couldn’t stand up the whole time, but he’d sit on a big cement planter at the edge of the sidewalk near the IRS offering out the pie chart to anyone who would take it. In recent years he looked forward to going even more because one of the IRS employees made a special effort to come out and greet Ralph’s arrival each year. They’d have a good chat before returning to their respective posts.
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out.
Among the interesting articles is one by NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn in which she recounts a meeting she recently had with an officer from the IRS’s “Abusive Tax Avoidance Transactions” branch.
From the sound of things, the IRS seems to be interpreting the war tax resistance advocacy of NWTRCC as though it were “promoting tax schemes” — putting that group in the same category as the kind of folks who peddle offshore tax shelters and bizarre Constitutionalist “sovereign citizen” untaxing kits.
In the course of explaining why ATAT was involved in my case, Officer E⸺ said “You are a threat to the compliance of the income tax system. If everyone did what you do, then the government could not do what they need to do.” Right. So we will continue to do what we feel we must do and see how things develop with the IRS.
Lincoln Rice reports on how the IRS cracked down on one such Constitutionalist group — We The People—
The court’s injunction was based on the conclusion that WTP had created an illegal tax shelter and tax fraud scheme. The injunction prohibits WTP from selling and/or distributing what the IRS considers false and fraudulent information, requires them to remove all this material from their website, requires them to post the injunction on their website, givemeliberty.org, and demands that they give to the government the list of names, addresses, emails, Social Security numbers, etc. of all the individuals and entities to whom they provided materials. The latter directive is perhaps the most disturbing from a constitutional point of view. The appeals court had temporarily blocked enforcement of that paragraph, but eventually sustained it, reasoning that forcing WTP to provide the names of its “customers” would allow the IRS to monitor whether those individuals were, in turn, failing to comply with the tax laws.
So if the IRS is now starting to treat NWTRCC as if it were an organization like We The People hawking fraudulent tax evasion schemes, could the IRS seek a similar injunction against NWTRCC?
Rice says, “probably not.”
The opinion is very precise on why WTP received this injunction, which indicates many substantial and significant differences between WTP and NWTRCC. First, WTP states that the federal government does not have the authority to tax U.S. citizens. As such, they offer materials that show interested parties how to “legally” stop W-4 withholding and provide individuals with paperwork to give their employer, which states that the employer can legally stop issuing W-2 and 1099 forms. This, in addition to their 16th Amendment arguments, is viewed as fraudulent and misleading by the court. Second, the government’s interest in the case pertains to the loss of income caused by what they see as fraud. The government states that WTP is responsible for at least 997 individuals not filing tax returns for at least the past three years. And because it costs the IRS $1,607 to produce a substitute return, this has cost the government at least $4.8 million the last three years alone.
Third, WTP sold their “package” like a commercial product, charging admission to training sessions, and even offering customized “legal opinions” justifying these tax violations. While NWTRCC is of course trying to hurt the military budget’s bottom line, we are not distributing false information and are not operating on a commercial basis. NWTRCC always presents accurate information about legal and illegal ways of resisting taxes that pay for war, and candidly describes those which would constitute a form of civil disobedience. All of our materials represent, to best of our knowledge, the laws that some are choosing to break when they withhold taxes, while fully disclosing the penalties, fines, etc., that we may face.
Ruth Benn was interviewed about NWTRCC’s War Tax Boycott campaign on Australia’s Breakfast with Peter Godfrey .
Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s coordinator, attended the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance & Peace Tax Campaigns in Manchester, England .
she wrote up a preliminary report on the goings-on. Some excerpts:
There were about 60 people from 14 countries — about standard for these conferences. Sadly I have to report that our efforts to get George Rishmawi from Palestine to the conference ended in a refused visa, so that he could not travel to the conference. The British organizers tried really hard to get thru the red tape but to no avail. Two people from Ghana were refused visas also.…
…As with most conferences (at least in my humble opinion) the time spent talking with folks at meals and between the organized sessions is at least as important as anything that comes up in the sessions. Quite a few of my conversations were with individuals from other countries who are war tax resisters, who refuse to pay at least some of taxes due to their respective governments. Many combine their refusal with redirecting the money to some kind of fund for nonviolent defense or peace-building funds.
As we have found in the past, it is more difficult to resist in most countries because of the way taxes are pulled from paychecks. Those who resist tend to be self-employed. In general, collection is much faster in other countries than has been our experience in the U.S. (at least up to now), and many organizers at this conference make no effort to build WTR, seeing it as futile. The majority of people at the conference are working on peace tax fund campaigns or looking for ways to take their complaint of being forced to pay for war through some court system or U.N. body. I think 5 of the Peace Tax Seven were in attendance, and they are slowly making their way into the European Court of Human Rights. Daniel Jenkins from the U.S. reported on the effort to bring a formal complaint to a U.N. body. The Germans have a resister or two in their circles, but are focusing on a new effort of 10 people to take a complaint to a German high court based on the budget being a violation of fundamental rights because of the military spending. The Germans are trying to get away from appealing through the tax system and instead trying this more direct route to the government officials who create the budget. In Norway peace tax fund campaigners are appealing to their local councils; if the council accepts their complaint as an “initiative of national interest” then the council can send a complaint up to the next level of the government system.
I attended two workshops that related more generally to organizing, with both having some focus on how to widen our efforts. Groups and campaigns in every country seem to face issues similar to our own. “How to bring in more young people” was the topic of one workshop. While no group seemed to be doing any better than many of us here in the U.S., many are looking for answers in the internet, such as getting into Facebook and other networking sites, and upgrading our websites. The Danish peace tax fund campaign has been working with the model U.N. program in high schools with some success at making “the right not to pay for war” a topic in those discussions. One person noted that the activists groups that seem to be most successful at drawing in young people are the ones that give new members something to do immediately and regularly. There was also a good deal of discussion of language, in particular the use of the word “conscience,” and whether that is a word that resonates with young folks today. Because the hosting group was Britain’s “Conscience: the peace tax campaign,” it was the local folks who were having this discussion among themselves and also bringing it to the conference. “Taxes for Peace Not War” was a slogan that many people appreciated due to the positive spin.…
…There were small group sessions to talk about the common ground between war tax resisters and peace tax campaigns and develop ideas about how we can all work together more across international boundaries. I don’t know if any of the groups came up with any brilliant insights on this. My group did spend quite a bit of time comparing our tax systems and learning more precisely what each of our organizations do. It’s hard to figure out how to work together without understanding more about each situation; there’s a lot of confusion about why there is such a “strong” war tax resistance movement in the U.S. as compared to other countries. One person said rather emphatically — “I just don’t understand why anyone would be a war tax resister without also working for a peace tax fund.” Others perceived that peace tax fund campaigns and WTR need each other, that you can’t have one without the other; I said that I could certainly resist without any connection to a peace tax fund campaign, but I began to see that many Europeans see the effort to actually redirect military taxes to a fund that is only for peace-building efforts or alternative defense is primary to their peace tax fund campaigns. I think the U.S. efforts have never had this peace-building fund as an emphasis; the peace tax fund bill as it has been written in the U.S. redirects the taxes of conscientious objectors to the non-military spending in the U.S. budget, not to a specific peace-building effort. I found that insight rather interesting as I never understood so clearly how many of the campaigns are writing their bills for this specific purpose.
In my small group and in general there was clearly interest in making Conscience and Peace Tax International more of an umbrella group for all of our work. Due to technicalities of nonprofit status, NWTRCC has not been an official member of CPTI but has been a supporter. CPTI was founded as more of a link for the peace tax fund campaigns than for WTRs, but we’ll see how things develop. Many wanted to see more organizing successes and ideas posted on the CPTI website. Right now it has links to the groups in each country and information on WTR court cases and conscientious objection rulings within the U.N.…
…If you’ve read this far, you get the bonus link to some of Ed Hedemann’s photos from the conference. They are posted at: http://www.nwtrcc.org/ManchesterConference_2008.html.
Ruth Benn has followed up on her earlier report on the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns. Excerpts:
Although WTR was never really really strong in other countries, I did sense at this meeting that there were fewer resisters from countries other than the U.S. and Britain than my first meeting way back 20 years ago, which most attendees attributed to the quickness to collect/seize in many countries. (Or are people being drawn into peace tax fund efforts as a safer alternative?) However, although the German groups seem to be all about peace tax fund efforts, they also told about holding a vigil for a resister who was taken to court recently. And I didn’t write about War Resisters’ International in Britain, which is a case of an organization choosing to refuse to send on withheld taxes voluntarily because that is the only way the staff can resist. Their board had to make that decision. They await Inland Revenue’s showing up to sticker their equipment for seizure now, but they are also trying to figure out how to make their resistance more public and convince other orgs that they can do this (even though Inland Revenue usually collects, it is at a point of forced payment).
Still, while I can see these good examples, I do find it discouraging that in the times we are in there are not masses turning to this form of resistance (or even to the peace movement in general for heaven’s sake!) in the U.S., if not elsewhere.…
War tax resisters and peace tax fund advocates have some similarities in the sort of goals they’re aiming for: they think that their governments overspend on the military and they’d like their own money spent in better ways. But tactically, they’re miles apart: peace tax funds are about the polar opposite of conscientious tax resistance, and in fact are most likely to be enacted as a weapon in the government arsenal to fight against war tax resistance should it ever become sufficiently popular to be troublesome.
A lot of peace tax fund promoters don’t see it this way. They think of peace tax fund schemes as being a natural extension of the same impulses that cause people adopt war tax resistance, and they support the former for the same reasons that other people support the latter. So, to that extent there’s some harmony between the groups: peace tax fund promoters typically have their hearts in the right place and just need to appropriately reposition their heads to match.
But, since peace tax fund schemes are really inimical to conscientious war tax resistance, there is necessarily some tension here.
I think it might be useful to rethink the “big tent” that brings war tax resisters and peace tax fund advocates together in conferences like this one. Not that I think there should be a formal divorce, but maybe instead we should consider making the tent even bigger, to include tax resisters who resist from different motives than antimilitarism. The invitation of George Rishmawi was a good example of this (he was one of the organizers of tax resistance during the intifada in Palestine) — too bad he couldn’t make it.
Here’s another example: what appears to have been a sophisticated campaign of tax resistance from Mexico, where the motives of the resisters were to protest that the government simply wasn’t providing the minimum of service in return for the taxes. (From the Saltillo Palabra a couple of years ago; the translation is mine, which is why it’s clunky):
TIJUANA — The executive council of the National Chamber of Commerce [Canaco] in Tijuana decided to hold back taxes from the three levels of Government since they do not provide security to the city, said César Cázares, president of the organization.
“There is a group of tax lawyers who are advising us. We are going to stop paying taxes. Already we have had agreements, meetings, plans. It’s a method of civil disobedience," he said.
So far this month, 24 people have been assassinated in Tijuana, among these was the assistant chief of security who was ambushed Thursday.
Cázares asserted that tax resistance is being tried because the retailers of Tijuana are very worried about the constant crime wave, and they do not see a response from the authorities.
He explained that since Thursday Canaco is consulting with the College of Accountants of Tijuana to find a way to redirect the taxes to some government entity and for the retailers not to be sanctioned as tax delinquents.
“The possibility exists that the taxes will be redirected to an account in the Federal Court for them to hold in escrow so long as the government fails to return security to us,” he emphasized in the press conference.
About 35 presidents of skilled groups from Canaco entreated Cázares to ask the state authorities for the intervention of the Army.
In addition, they will initiate a campaign to urge the rest of the population to stop paying taxes: property, vehicle, and others.
Cázares indicated that there are commercial sales losses of 30–50% due to the insecurity that Tijuana suffers.
Canaco Tijuana includes 2,300 companies in packaging, pharmacy, hardware, used car sales, junkyards, and repair shops, among others.
War tax resisters in many ways have a lot more in common with tax resisters like these shopkeepers in Tijuana — for instance how we organize, what legal complications we have to deal with, what sort of mutual support we provide, and so forth — than we have with peace tax fund promoters. I think we’d probably have a lot more to talk about, too.
Ruth Benn has expanded on her impressions of the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns over at the NWTRCC website.
Included with that article is another by Ed Hedemann in which he compares war tax resistance in the U.S. with that in other countries, particularly those in Europe. Excerpts:
U.S. peace activists who want to refuse to pay for war have it easy, at least compared to most of the rest of the world. In the United States, everyone who wants to resist taxes can do so.
We must file — or refuse to file — income tax returns, which makes refusal possible, whereas in most countries that option doesn’t exist. For example, in Britain, unless you’re self-employed, there is no income tax return to file. Income taxes are taken directly from your paycheck (through Pay As You Earn — PAYE) and employees cannot control the amount that is withheld unless their employer is willing to be complicit…
…The consequences for those who are able to resist (mostly the self-employed) are also a bit different. Generally, a court order is required in Britain to seize personal property, which is done more frequently than in the United States. In other countries (such as Germany), if there is a judgment against a resister, tax agents can come to your house and put stickers on personal property (TV set, computer, bicycle, etc.) to indicate that these items will be seized in 30 days unless the government gets paid. Also, it appears that the percentage of resisters being sent to jail — though small in number (only four in the last 20 years) — is higher in Britain than in the United States. The sentences have ranged from a week to four weeks.
As a result of these restrictions, the numbers of war tax resisters in other countries are much smaller than the several thousand in the United States. For example, in Belgium, only one person is known to be a war tax resister.
Benn and Hedemann both note the differences between the peace tax fund proposals in Europe from the one in the United States. In the U.S., the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would wall off federal military spending from other federal spending and would mandate that tax contributions from conscientious objectors could only be applied to the non-military budget items. The proposals of European peace tax fund plan advocates, by contrast, “are geared towards having their taxes put into new programs established to develop systems of nonviolent defense as an alternative to the military.”
I’m in Eugene, Oregon at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee conference.
Kathy Kelly looks on as Ruth Benn addresses the NWTRCC conference
So far it’s been a long administrative committee meeting (I’m an alternate on the administrative committee) talking budget and objectives and scheduling, and then meeting the people who have arrived for our regular sessions, which began after dinner tonight.
We have a pretty big crowd this time around, about fifty so far and there are more coming tomorrow morning.
And despite the numbers, we got through the “let’s go around and introduce ourselves” segment with time to spare. This group gets points for staying on-point and not getting thrown off much. In this way it bucks the trend of many grassroots activist groups, many of which can’t seem to run a meeting to save their lives. And it’s certainly not because we’re ideologically unified or lack talkative eccentrics! Somehow when it comes down to brass tacks, we get down to brass tacks.
Robert Randall addressing some of the NWTRCC conference attendees
I’m fresh back from the NWTRCC national conference, which was held in Eugene, Oregon, and hosted by the enthusiastic and welcoming Eugene “Taxes for Peace Not War” group.
I’ve got a binder full of handouts and hastily-scratched notes that I took whenever I found a spare moment. Today I’ll share some of my impressions of the gathering and of the current state of the war tax resistance movement.
The coordinating committee discusses the RFPTFA on morning
Kathy Kelly leads a workshop on “Honesty and Empathy: Questions for Collaborators”
Erica Weiland removes a pillar of militarism in Susan Quinlan’s workshop
Conference attendees review part of Steev Hise’s rough cut for Death and Taxes
And with all that, I’m still leaving a lot out. But for now, that’ll have to do.
A while back I shared my notes from the NWTRCC national gathering. Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s coordinator, took more thorough notes than I did, and today she shared her more official meeting minutes with us.
Via that link, you can also see NWTRCC’s objectives for , our fiscal year budget, and reports from some of the workshops.
As I mentioned in my recap of the NWTRCC national gathering in Eugene , the national war tax resistance organization is going to try to encourage more regional gatherings of war tax resisters. There’s already a regular regional in New England, and we’d like to see more of that sort of thing.
To this end, NWTRCC budgeted some seed money and committed to providing that, and additional non-monetary assistance, to a new, emerging war tax resistance regional, assuming we could find one.
I recently learned that the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resistance group from Western Massachusetts liked the idea so much that they boosted our initial modest $300 of seed money with $1,000 of their own money. They’re also hoping this extra money will enable the national organization to help nurture more than one such regional gathering.
Ruth Benn, NWTRCC’s national coordinator, recently sent out a request for regional gathering proposals. Here are some excerpts:
Have Fun, Meet Great People!
Start a Regional Gathering of War Tax ResistersNew England war tax resisters have been holding an annual gathering for more than 20 years! While on occasion other areas have hosted regional gatherings, there has not been one outside of New England in many years.
The Coordinating Committee (CC) meeting in Eugene adopted a objective to cultivate at least one new war tax resisters’ gathering somewhere in the U.S. The idea for this grew out of the results of the Affiliate Survey last year and discussions at the CC meeting in Birmingham where this was considered high priority. Clark Hanjian included this is a proposal to the meeting, which was slightly modified and then agreed to by full consensus:
Encourage regional gatherings
The NWTRCC Administrative Committee (AdComm) recommends that NWTRCC coordinator contact groups in NWTRCC network that might be willing to host a regional gathering asking if the group would submit a brief proposal to NWTRCC for that gathering and some help with funding and promotion of the new regional gathering.
The AdComm would choose one region to help from the submissions.
Among the criteria for choosing a region are:
- Possibility of repeatability — not just a one-time gathering;
- Located in a region that has not had regional gatherings;
- Regional focus, not local or just national;
- Opportunity for WTR counselor training
If you or your group has even the slightest interest in getting a regional gathering going in , please contact Ruth Benn at the NWTRCC office. If you are really interested, please write a letter or informal proposal describing some of the ideas for setting the planning in motion, and email/mail/fax it along. We don’t want to discourage anyone from investigating the possibilities for organizing a gathering and will try to help make it as easy as possible. Because of the War Tax Boycott we do have many people around the country who would like to meet other resisters in their area. The NWTRCC office and others in our network will help with outreach and other tasks as much as we can.
Once proposals are received, the AdComm (or subcommittee thereof established by the AdComm) will review them and select at least one region to assist in planning the gathering.
While there is no exact deadline, planning for a gathering should get underway a few months in advance of the event. We would hope to have some requests or ideas in motion by the next NWTRCC meeting, . Contact the office as soon as possible with your ideas.
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck. It includes a brief review of We Won’t Pay! from Don Kaufman (author of The Tax Dilemma and What Belongs to Caesar):
Also in this issue:
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.
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 most contentious item on the agenda at the NWTRCC national gathering was our organization’s relationship with the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, a long-time affiliate of NWTRCC, which promotes the act.
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation. We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill. That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals. These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in. But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore. The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name. So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion. Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse. Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement. Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF. After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation. She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors. She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it. She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next. Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition. Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA. Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad. That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this. If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments. Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true. But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies. If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
First, they admit that if the bill were to pass “The government would receive more revenue from increased participation in the payment of income taxes and would spend less on the cost of forced collections.” They also say, of those who pay into the PTF, “nor will their participation in the Peace Tax Fund directly decrease the amount of money spent on war [as] this would violate the Constitutionally given powers of Congress to determine spending priorities.”
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war. Why on earth would we want this? Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war. But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement. If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon. So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good. Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not. The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA. This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions. If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters. They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people. Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law. I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial. It tells people that war tax resisters:
- are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
- are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
- are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
- would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches. Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair. I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place. They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way. I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so. In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill. Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one. In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority. In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically. Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to. He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle. That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress. Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style. He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation. From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category. In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go). He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill. As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place. He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities. She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them. He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted. That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work. She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement. He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism. He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school. He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy. He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since . She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law. She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible. She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished. The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset. She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue. These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA. I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it. Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it. My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.” This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
Here’s some more about the NWTRCC national gathering held in Virginia :
Ruth Benn was on a special edition of Joyce Riley’s “Power Hour” after show-me-the-law style tax protester Peter Hendrickson. The Benn segment starts at about 33:00.
NWTRCC is keeping tabs on war tax resistance protests nationwide at its site.
Meanwhile, Fox News contributor Ellen Ratner takes a look at the fledgling TEA Party / CodePink détente.
The Spring 2010 national NWTRCC gathering in Tucson, Arizona has been, as usual, a fruitful mix of experienced war tax resistance veterans and enthusiastic, curious, and somewhat uncertain newbies.
The agenda was less heavy this time than in the recent past — no contentious issues like the Peace Tax Fund Bill to worry us, and an improving budget situation. This left us plenty of time both to talk shop and to learn from local activists about their areas of expertise.
night we viewed the new war tax resistance film Death & Taxes and heard from Steev Hise, who directed the lion’s share of the filming and gave us some insight into the process, and from a couple of us who were in the film.
Film sales have exceeded our yearly projections already, half-way through the year, and everyone seems to report that the film is effective in spurring enthusiasm for and curiosity about war tax resistance.
The meeting began, as such meetings often do, with a go-around-the-circle round of introductions. This also included updates about what local war tax resistance and other activists have been up to in recent months.
Erica Weiland addresses the meeting
Clare Hanrahan and Coleman Smith reported on their successful south-east regional war tax resistance gathering that was held at the beginning of the year. The opening of a new regional gathering (there’s a well-established one in New England already) was a priority for NWTRCC and so we were pleased to hear both that this meeting went well and that the organizers plan to make it an ongoing thing.
A number of people reported that their local groups were smaller and less-active this year than in the recent past. Most attributed this to the general dip in progressive activism during the Obama-sedation period, with some saying that they’ve noticed progressive activists so eager to distinguish themselves from TEA Party activists that they don’t want to associate themselves with a group whose focus is on tax resistance and they meet our message with more than the usual reluctance and defensiveness.
Still, there were the usual penny polls, literature tables, redirection granting ceremonies, and rallies on Tax Day this year, competing with dwindling but still sizable TEA Party crowds (that sometimes dilute our message and other times provide a media springboard for it).
Jack and Felice Cohen-Joppa, who edit The Nuclear Resister, were our hosts and local organizers in Tucson. Their newsletter covers and organizes support for imprisoned anti-war / anti-nuke civil disobedients, including the occasional war tax resister.
They spoke about their work and about anti-nuclear activism in general, such as the actions coordinated by an international coalition to focus on the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Opposition to nuclear power has been on the wane, both because few new nuclear power plants have started in the United States recently, and because nuclear power has been greenwashed as a potential solution for global warming and other consequences of hydrocarbon fuel. Jack thinks the greenwashing is hooey, that nuclear power — seen over its whole lifecycle — is neither energy efficient nor emissions-friendly, and that the nuclear power industry is tightly linked with nuclear weapons and that the real reason we have a nuclear power industry has much less to do with electricity than with maintaining an infrastructure, knowledge-base, and the raw materials for a perpetual nuclear arsenal.
There was also some discussion of the campaign to divest from Israel, modeled on the anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed against South Africa.
If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ll know that government harassment of immigrants is a big issue in Arizona right now, as the state government just enacted legislation that it promises will usher in a more draconian crackdown on illegal immigrants. There have been calls to boycott the state, and so there was some embarrassment that our group had decided to go through with its meeting here.
On the other hand, we met in part, and many of us stayed the night during our stay, at BorderLinks, a group that specializes in ameliorating the effects of government policy in this area. So we helped to support this work, a bit anyway, by our housing fees. BorderLinks, at least, was glad we didn’t cancel our conference.
Reviewing a map of recent deaths of immigrants in the desert near the Arizona/Mexico border
This also gave us an opportunity to learn from local border-issues activists, who had no difficulty pointing out both the close relation between our groups (a number of border-issues activists are also war tax resisters), and that because of the increasing militarization of border enforcement, war tax resistance is directly applicable to their struggle.
The repulsive border wall, and increased border patrol enforcement in general, have not stopped people from crossing the border, but have merely forced the immigrant trails to be more arduous. Crossing the border has become more deadly as the safer routes become more difficult to pass. Humanitarian groups have responded to the crisis by trying to put bottled-water and first aid stations along the newer routes, actively patrolling to come to the aid of people who are lost, injured, or dehydrated, and setting up desert camps where people can stop along the way. Such efforts are, naturally, subject to sporadic government harassment.
afternoon I ran a War Tax Resistance 101 workshop for people who were just getting their feet wet or who were preparing to take the plunge. This group was eager and enthusiastic going in, and, I think, came out of the workshop even more so, and with some more practical pointers on how to take the next step, whichever step that is for them.
The afternoon session ended with a group brainstorm about the relationship between organized war tax resistance groups like ours and the TEA Party movement.
Ruth Benn addresses the gathering
Some of us see the TEA Party as an embarrassing distraction on Tax Day, and think it is important that we clearly distinguish our message from theirs so that war tax resistance doesn’t get confused in the public eye as some sort of TEA Party variant.
Others felt that there is enough common ground between war tax resisters and some portion of the TEA Partiers that we might be well-served by trying to do some outreach, which might hold the hope of introducing the tactic of war tax resistance to antimilitarist libertarians, isolationist paleoconservatives, and the other radical government skeptics who make up one tendency in the TEA Party. For instance, Joffre Stewart reported having recruited a new phone tax resister from within the TEA Party ranks at one of their rallies.
The new issue of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is on-line. Among the news you’ll find there:
In a spirited, harmonious opening session of the joint National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee Fall gathering / 25th annual New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters, more than fifty war tax resisters from across the country (and a few WTR-curious from the Boston area and elsewhere) gathered at the Cambridge Friends Meeting house .
The rare joint gathering started with a panel session. I took some notes along the way, but got carried away by the back-and-forth and the ideas and sometimes forgot to jot things down.
Local resister Mike Prokosch started things off by emphasizing what military spending costs us in terms of opportunity costs — that is, what things of common benefit we could be funding but are neglecting because of our pathologically bloated military spending. He suggests that the future of an organized war tax resistance movement means “organizing on the basis of interest, not ideology.” We need to find out whose ox is being gored when money is siphoned out of communities and into the Pentagon and appeal to them to join us based on, if not common objectives exactly, at least a common enemy.
Mike Prokosch addresses the gathering
Long-time war tax resisters Juanita Nelson and Bob Bady spoke next, giving an overview of the birth and growth of the modern American war tax resistance movement, from Ernest Bromley’s refusal to buy a tax stamp for his car during World War Ⅱ, to the founding of the Peacemakers in , through such highlights as the IRS siege of the Kehler/Corner house, to the present day. Nelson told the story of being hauled off to jail in her bathrobe back in the day. She says that in all of the decades she’s been resisting, the IRS has only gotten $4 out of her, when part of her pay as a model was withheld. She also expressed that the war tax resistance community in her neck of the woods “has dwindled… now we’re half a dozen people meeting every other month.”
Bady suggested that a key to becoming a more effective and powerful movement is to speak up more. Too many war tax resisters, he says, are satisfied with feeling that they have a clean conscience and are content to stay safely quiet, under the radar. We need to make more noise and be more of a friction to wear down the mechanism of the war machine, which will also help us to get the attention and support of other activists.
Ruth Benn explained what the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is, how it operates, and the range of philosophies and methods used by its members. This was old hat to me, so I didn’t take many notes, but it was an eye-opener I’m sure to some of the newbies or to those who are locally- or regionally-focused and don’t give much thought to the national organization.
Erica Weiland spoke of how she came into war tax resistance after a frustrating time trying to work within a peace movement that seemed to be counterproductive when it was productive of anything at all. Hers is one of my favorite “salvation narratives” because she always mentions The Picket Line as one of the things that helped her take the plunge into being a war tax resister.
Katherine Fisher spoke next of how her decision to become a war tax resister grew out of her joining and working within the Society of Friends. She says that when she was still in school, she heard some people from the New York Yearly Meeting (I think it was) talk about war tax resistance and she filed it away as something she’d need to consider. Since she was still a dependent on her parents’ tax returns, the concern wasn’t urgent for her, but when she got out of school and got a full-time job she had to confront her choice. She decided that she would refuse to pay her taxes to the government but would instead put the money in a war tax resisters’ escrow account and would write to the IRS to explain her position. First, though, she took this tentative decision with her to a “clearness committee” in her Quaker meeting that she had asked to help challenge and clarify her decision. She spoke of this process, and of the support she got (and continues to get) from her meeting throughout. It was an inspiring, interesting, and well-told story, and a helpful contrast to the many go-it-alone stories of tax resistance that one commonly hears.
Earlier in , a handful of us who are on the administrative committee of NWTRCC got together to do business. I’d love to share with you some insider tidbits of what goes on in our chamber of sedition, but… you’d be bored to tears. One of these days we’ll have to put some sinister plot on the agenda, but as it is we mostly were talking budget, fundraising, schedules, objectives, who is going to be moderating what part of what discussion, and so forth — like just about any other small organization. Useful stuff, certainly, for making the more interesting parts of the larger meeting flow smoothly, but not in itself the sort of stuff to get your blood racing.
Many refuse to pay “war tax” on phone bill
Providers go along; IRS frowns, but does little
by M.L. Lyke
For Seattle peace activist Bert Sacks, the monthly act of resistance adds up to only 59 cents. Symbolically, however, refusing to pay the “war tax” on his Qwest phone bill represents a pocketbook protest against what he sees as misuse of U.S. military power.
“I object to the U.S. government policy of using famine and epidemic as tools against civilian populations. That’s wrong,” says the retired engineer, who has fought for a decade to get economic sanctions against Iraq lifted.
Sacks is one of thousands of Americans believed to be refusing to pay the federal taxes attached to their monthly phone bills — money that helps fund military operations overseas.
Many are taking the step as a protest against the war in Iraq. And in many cases, the phone companies are helping them do it.
“We oppose the policies of ‘pre-emptive war’ and an ‘endless’ war on terrorism, which led to the Iraq war, which violate human rights and international law, and which have cost us hundreds of billions of dollars while our states and cities face unprecedented deficits, and cutbacks of vital services and programs,” reads the statement on a Web site called hanguponwar.org.
Although many activists have been withholding the phone tax since the Vietnam War, the act of disobedience is making headlines again as more Americans began to question the rationale for the Iraq war. A New York Times/CBS News Poll released this week shows that 52 percent of Americans believe that the Bush administration intentionally misled the public when its officials made the case for war.
The so-called tax resisters risk the wrath of the Internal Revenue Service. Yet that hasn’t stopped them. Sacks said he has never been contacted about it, and he is not worried he will be. “After all, I’ve refused to pay a $10,000 fine, still in court now,” he said.
Sacks was fined $10,000 for violating economic sanctions against Iraq by taking $40,000 worth of medicine to help suffering children there.
Ruth Benn, who runs the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in New York, said it is impossible to know for sure how many people are participating in the grass-roots movement.
“Before the war started, when the peace movement was really big, there was quite a bit of interest. Now it’s picking up again,” Benn said.
She said communications received by her organization and discussions with other protest coordinators suggest that at least 10,000 people nationwide are withholding federal excise tax payments because of the war.
“This is civil disobedience, and you can be at risk,” Benn, 53, said. “But the government listens when it involves money. This is a good way to get their attention.”
As it turns out, most phone companies aren’t shedding any tears over missed federal excise tax payments. It’s not that they sympathize with protesters’ feelings about the war. They just don’t like the tax.
Qwest Communications International Inc., which provides local phone service to most of the Seattle area, thinks the excise tax is “a silly tax that should go away,” company spokeswoman Shasha Richardson said.
The Denver-based company said it adjusts customers’ bills to remove the excise tax. It then complies with IRS Publication No. 510, Richardson said.
That publication requires providers of local, toll or private communications services to impose and collect a 3 percent tax on services rendered. If customers fail to pay it, the companies must give the IRS a list of those customers’ names and addresses, the services provided, the dates and the amounts the customers owed.
Some phone companies may repeatedly insist that the money is due. Others, such as Qwest, make it easy for the protester.
“We believe this is an illegal tax, and we would support any legislation that repeals it,” said John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T.
He said AT&T will routinely eliminate federal excise taxes from customers’ monthly bills if asked to do so in writing.
“We’ll go into our system and make an adjustment,” Britton said. “But we will have to report you to the government.”
For its part, Cingular Wireless sends a letter to tax-resisting customers agreeing that the federal excise tax is “antiquated and discriminatory” and that it has “has far outlived its purpose.”
“Please be aware, however,” Cingular’s letter warns, “that as required by law, Cingular Wireless will report your non-payment, and provide your name, address, amount of tax written off to the IRS.”
Cingular, MCI and Verizon Wireless all say they adjust customers’ monthly bills to write off the federal excise tax on a regular basis.
Tax resisters such as Benn advise would-be protesters to include a note with their phone payments explaining why they are not paying the tax. The note will make clear to the phone company what’s happening and, in most cases, deter the carrier from cutting off one’s service.
The federal excise tax on phone usage dates back to . It was adopted under the War Revenue Act as a temporary levy to help fund the Spanish-American War. The war ended in . The tax was repealed in but didn’t stay gone for long. It was reintroduced during World War Ⅰ and was subsequently used to help fund the nation’s military activities during World War Ⅱ, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The tax was given permanent status in . It raises about $6 billion a year for general federal expenditures, including military spending.
Aspects of the federal excise tax have been challenged in recent court decisions. Nevertheless, the IRS still insists that it be paid in full. Though phone companies are legally obligated to try to collect the federal excise tax, they have no enforcement power.
Because the amount of federal excise-tax money withheld per household is so small, it’s highly unusual nowadays for the IRS to go after people for not paying.
Jesse Weller, an IRS spokesman, said that failure to pay the federal excise tax on phone bills is against the law.
“There is no law that permits a person to refuse to file a federal tax return or pay a federal tax based on what the government spends on programs or policies they disagree with,” he said.
“This includes failure to pay the telephone excise tax based on moral, ethical or religious opposition to government spending for weapons programs or military operations,” he stressed.
Moreover, he insisted that the IRS is determined to identify all those who evade taxes “based on their opposition to government policies or programs.”
Weller said such people may be liable for all unpaid taxes, as well as interest and penalty fees.
Benn, at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, said she hasn’t paid her federal excise tax since , and hasn’t heard a word in all that time from the IRS.
“It’s a pretty small thing,” she said of the amount she denies the government each month. “It won’t end the war all by itself. But perhaps it will help.”
Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are some examples from past years:
A couple of things of note:
War tax resister Steve L. sends me this report from the Occupy Freedom Plaza protest in Washington, D.C., :
It was an experience I will not soon forget, bordering on spiritual. Although I have not heard an official number, I’m guessing there were close to two thousand people there. I arrived at around noon, just before Kevin Zeese, one of the organizers, got up and spoke to the crowd. His talk was informative and depressing; but empowering as well. He spoke about how our democracy has been hijacked by one percent of the population who because of their obscene wealth, have a disproportionately powerful influence in the forming of public policy. Our leaders marginalize the 99% and instead do the bidding of the 1%. He reported that the wealthiest 400 Americans have the wealth of 154 million people and that their tax rate is half that of the middle class.
Soon after Kevin spoke, we all organized and marched toward the White House, then to the Chamber of Commerce where a huge banner hung from the building that said “JOBS” in individual letters.* We held a rally there and many spoke including Medea Benjamin from Code Pink. She gathered résumés from many in the crowd as we chanted “We want jobs!” Since the doors to the Chamber remained closed and our calls for jobs unanswered, Medea slid the résumés under the front door.
Upon leaving the Chamber of Commerce, we proceeded to march down K Street which is headquarters for many lobbying firms. What was remarkable and encouraging was the feeling of solidarity among all of us. And also heartening to me was the support we received from passersby as we marched. Whether it was friendly honks from car horns, thumbs up, or peace signs, all who took notice of us seemed to share a sense of camaraderie. And why wouldn’t they? They too are part of the 99%. The major media, due to their lack of integrity and talent for honest journalism, have downplayed and/or misrepresented this movement which is spreading across the nation. They say there is no unifying message and that we are a leaderless movement. Well, to answer the latter sentiment, we may be leaderless and in my opinion, that is the beauty and one of the greatest strengths of the movement. We are a grassroots movement of many voices. The media, like the State in their weakness only understands the paradigm of authority and hierarchy. As to our message, it is simply this: We want an end to wars and we want the government to provide for human needs not corporate greed.
I have every intention of going back to Freedom Plaza and also to go and stand with my brothers and sisters on Wall Street as well. I encourage every person who loves freedom and justice to support this Occupy Movement. There are currently around 900 cities being occupied across the nation. More than likely there is a city or town near you that has an Occupy Movement. If not, perhaps you may consider starting one in your community.
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to share with your readers on The Picket Line.
* This banner was put up by the Chamber; the complete message is “JOBS: Brought to you by American free enterprise.” The Chamber likes to rhetorically champion free enterprise, but it is mostly a lobby group trying to win political favors and money for businesses, and it supported such examples of “American free enterprise” as the bailout of Detroit automakers and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. —♇
In D.C., the spontaneous spread of the Occupy movement coincided with and overshadowed the earlier-planned “Freedom Plaza” occupation there. Ruth Benn of NWTRCC was there for parts of that action, and sent a report to the wtr-s email list.
Myself, I haven’t had much to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs. I biked by the Berkeley incarnation of it on the way back from the university library where I had been hunting through the microfilm, but didn’t see anything there worth reporting: a handful of people huddled under a tarp in front of a Bank of America branch (what passes for the “financial district” in Berkeley), some protest signs. So most of what I know about how the movement is progressing I’m getting from blogs and the news media, and I haven’t felt like this has given me much original to contribute on the subject.
Most of the coverage I have read has been very disappointing. The Occupiers seem to be such a loose coalition of interests and grievances that most commentators take advantage of this to make their commentaries all about themselves — most of what I have read is variations on “what the Occupy movement really stands for is [insert my pet concern here] and the way they will succeed is by following my unsolicited advice, as herein composed from back in my office.” Witness, for instance, the abominable bloviator Tom Friedman’s revealing reaction: “When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining” [emphasis mine —♇].
(But here’s a good exception to the rule; and this is one of the better non-exceptions.)
Sadly, the vulgar libertarians have been at their vulgarest when covering the protest — reacting to a bunch of left-leaning protesters running loose on Wall Street as though Obama had seized Galt’s Gulch under eminent domain in order to have a nice place to hold a Phish concert. So my usually more-or-less reliable sources of insightful though often snarky comment that cuts through partisan posturing on important issues of the day have been less helpful than usual (I’m looking at you, Reason… though keep trying).
The one “official” statement from Occupy Wall Street that I’ve seen violates my cardinal rule for such statements — it talks almost entirely about “they” and “them” without committing “us” to any particular course of action (the closest it gets is to “urge you” to “exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone”). This is understandable, as it must have been difficult enough to get a group of people with such varying concerns, ideas, and commitments to agree on what they’re outraged about, without then trying to get them to agree on a specific and suitably-strong response to commit to.
And maybe at this point, the occupations, and their momentum, is the action, and not merely the seed from which the action is supposed to grow. It is bringing together people who were feeling angry and voiceless and
That’s not so bad just by itself, and already makes it more than just the left-wing equivalent of the TEA parties.
Cindy Sheehan’s weekly radio show/podcast — Cindy Sheehan’s Soap Box — featured war tax resisters Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann in its latest episode:
I noted Dorothy Day’s remarks on visiting a group of tax resisters in New Hampshire. Today I’ll try to track down some more information on them.
Arthur Harvey, then an organic farmer from Hartford, Maine, was profiled in Samuel Fromartz’s book Organic, Inc. because of his legal battle to make sellers who use the “organic” buzzword adhere to the genuine standards of that variety of food production. In the course of this, Formartz also mentions Harvey’s war tax resistance:
It was not the first time Harvey had gone up against the federal government. As a tax resister opposed to military spending, “especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world,” Harvey had refused to file or pay federal income taxes since . His wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, hadn’t paid federal taxes since . Instead, they donated time and money to social service and environmental organizations. The IRS had come knocking at their door a couple of times, then seized the family’s property in and demanded $62,000 in back taxes and penalties — about three times the annual income of the farm. When they did not pay, the IRS took the rare step of auctioning off the property at a town office across the street from their house, with protesters outside. They initially lost the blueberry field to a bidder, though luckily no one bid on the house, perhaps because it had only rudimentary plumbing and no electricity. Eventually, Gravalos’s mother bought the house, and the couple’s daughter successfully bid on another parcel of the land, which she later swapped for the blueberry field. They were back in business.
Harvey, an affable and intelligent man with a wiry physique, perhaps owing to his vegetarian diet, said the lesson he learned from that fight was not to stop being a tax resister, but to avoid owning property in his own name that could be seized by the government. “We own a couple of cars, so I guess they could go after those, but they aren’t worth much,” he told me.
Aaron Falbel wrote about the blueberry-growing couple for the War Resisters League’s magazine in :
War Tax Resistance and Blueberry Fields Forever
Arthur Harvey has not filed a federal tax return or paid income tax . His partner, Elizabeth Gravalos hasn’t filed or paid . Until recently, the Internal Revenue Service gave them little trouble.
“They visited us twice, once around and again around , back when we lived in New Hampshire,” Harvey says. “Probably they concluded we had nothing much worth taking and perhaps were not subject to much tax anyway,” he adds. But after the Gravalos/Harvey family moved to Maine ten years ago, earned a bit more money, acquired a house, two wood lots and a blueberry field and started paying state taxes (New Hampshire has no state income tax, but Maine does), the IRS began to take notice. , the IRS seized their properties in lieu of tax payments assessed at $62,000 (including interest and penalties) for an astonishing figure, considering the family’s annual income from their blueberry and flower business averages about $16,000.
Going Once…
The IRS held an auction at the town office across the street from the Gravalos/Harvey home. “I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted. But she was far from alone. About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur. To demonstrate the power and the good that can come out of war tax redirection, Harvey, Gravalos and their family and friends raised over $3,000 to pay off the local property tax liens of seven Hartford residents.
The auction didn’t last long. When Gravalos and her family emerged stoically from the town office, she announced, “The good news is that no one bid on the house.” Emily Harvey, Arthur and Elizabeth’s daughter and a sophomore at Wellesley College, bid on (and won) the small half-acre wood lot on behalf of her younger brother Max. (Max, at age 16, was legally too young to enter a bid.) The town selectman and town clerk teamed up to buy the larger 21-acre wood lot, and another Hartford resident bought the blueberry field.
Harvey speculated that the reason no one bid on the house was that the minimum bid was too high: $21,000 for a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing. At the conclusion of the auction, the IRS declared that they would reevaluate the minimum bid and hold another auction .
Going Twice…
The minimum was eventually set at $7,900. Gravalos and Harvey had originally discouraged friendly bids on their house, feeling that the price was too high. “We really did not want the IRS to get that much money,” Harvey said. But for the second auction, with a lower minimum bid, they didn’t discourage people who would buy the house back for them, even though that meant surrendering money to the IRS.
Harvey explained that what matters most for him is making a strong public statement, bearing witness to the government’s violence: “Our reason for non-cooperating with the IRS is a reluctance to support war preparations, especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world. Others have gone a lot further in their war tax resistance than we have, and we honor and respect those people. For [them], the most important thing is to withhold money from the IRS at all costs.”
That, he acknowledged, is not his style of war tax resistance. “There are and there have been war tax resisters who have gone that far. My friend Ammon Hennacy [the legendary pacifist connected with the Catholic Worker movement] was one. Our approach is more complicated to describe and more flexible in practice.” He scoffed at a news article that described him as “unwilling to pay one penny to the IRS.” “We have three cars,” he noted, referring to the federal tax on gasoline that he pays every time he fills up at the pump.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine. Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction. (As at the first auction, money was given away, this time to groups doing the kind of work tax dollars could fund: $500 to the local Abused Women’s Advocacy Project and $500 to a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.)
Still Here
In the end, Elizabeth’s mother entered the winning bid for the house at $15,633. The town clerk and town selectman, who bid at the first auction, entered the only other bid of $8,000. The latter two were clearly miffed at having lost such a “bargain.” (One war tax resister described them as “a picture of greed thwarted.”) The clerk, clearly irate, asked, “Why was it okay for her [Elizabeth’s] mother to bid, but not for me?”
A week later, Arthur Harvey reflected on the clerk’s comment, questioning in turn the propriety of the town officials’ taking advantage of a family in a weakened financial position. “That does not seem to me to be a proper thing for a town official to do,” he said.
Elizabeth Gravalos thinks the answer to the town clerk’s question is obvious: “The two of them were trying to take our house from under us, whereas my mother was trying to help us out, to help us continue our way of life here.” Though Gravalos had dissuaded her mother from bidding at the first auction, she did not try to stop her at the second. “It was harder to lose the blueberry field [at the first auction] than I thought. I just didn’t feel I was ready to lose the house,” she admitted.
Harvey and Gravalos calculated that the house was worth somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 and suggested that $13,000 would be a reasonable bid. Max and Emily were in favor of a friendly bid; Max especially did not want to have to move. “The alternative,” Arthur noted, “would be to go the Randy and Betsy route and not countenance a friendly bid and then risk eviction. We, as a family, decided not to go that route.” (He was referring to Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner, war tax resisters from Colrain, MA, whose supporters maintained an 18-month-long occupation/vigil after Kehler was arrested in and his and Corner’s house was auctioned off by the IRS.)
In the end, Arthur admitted, the auction “was something of a letdown.” The IRS got a fair amount of money, $39,460 in all more money, he speculated, than it would have gotten if the family had filed and paid taxes all along. Gravalos reflected, “Betsy and Randy did a better job at resisting the IRS than we did. But each family has to draw its own line. I really did not want to stage an occupation [as they did].”
So what does it mean for war tax resistance when the IRS manages to walk away with such a considerable sum? Interestingly, Gravalos and Harvey do not think of themselves as having failed. Along the spectrum of war tax civil disobedience, they are tax resisters rather than tax refusers. (War tax resisters do not willfully hand over money to the Pentagon, but if the government nonetheless forcibly seizes money from them, they take those lumps, as it were; war tax refusers tend to put up more of a fight and are unwilling to let the government collect any money or assets whatsoever.) But they believe both resisters and refusers provide witness to the backward priorities of the federal government. “When it comes to war tax resistance,” Gravalos adds, “anything is better than nothing.” Their 51 years (between them) of resistance to military spending and the redirection through the years of those war tax dollars is not to be scoffed at. And what of the future? Gravalos and Harvey do not hesitate when they are asked whether or not they will continue their war tax resistance. Says Arthur, “We will continue our stand of non-cooperation, but we will certainly make sure not to find ourselves in such a position where we own so much property.” And Elizabeth adds, “I do feel that the risks of paying taxes are greater than the risks of refusing to pay them.”
Philip Devles Broughton’s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School includes a few more notes of interest about Harvey:
A newspaper article on educational outreach efforts by the pacifist non-violent action group Peacemakers, quoted Harvey on the nature of the group: “We are a radical pacifist organization. We are against war preparation and against use of income tax for war purposes. Our members also oppose mandatory registration for the draft. However, we are not communists. We believe the best defense is a strong spiritual one, in the tradition of the Indian leader Gandhi.”
The Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, covered the tax auction in a pair of articles:
“Hands off our homes”
Couple protests on day before auction
by Mary Lou Wendell
Sun-Journal Staff WriterAuburn — The message on one of the placards held by many of the 50 or so protesters marching down Center Street morning was simple: “Honor family values. Hands off homes.”
Accomplishing their goal for the day was not going to be so simple, however. They were on their way to Lewiston to convince the Internal Revenue Service to halt the sale of property seized for nonpayment of taxes.
Arthur Harvey, who, before it was taken, owned the house and land in Hartford Center together with his wife Elizabeth Gravalos, led the march. In his pants pocket was a letter the group eventually hand-delivered to the Lewiston IRS office on Main Street after walking there from the Auburn Mall, which took about two-and-a-half hours. The note detailed the couple’s reasons for not paying federal taxes.
Funds collected by the federal government will “support war preparation of all kinds,” the typewritten letter read. “This is not acceptable to our moral and religious beliefs.”
In , IRS agents served Harvey and Gravalos with a seizure notice for their property, which includes a small home and out-buildings, a 13-acre blueberry field, and 21 acres of two combined woodlots. Selling blueberries and pansies, which is how the couple earns their living, brings in a total of $18,000 a year, Harvey said.
Based on those earnings, the government calculated Harvey and Gravalos owe $62,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties for , according to the couple. A spokeswoman for the IRS in Boston said she would not confirm the amount owed because of disclosure and privacy laws.
Furthermore, the couple wrote in their letter to the IRS, “it is inconceivable that a family could be subject to a 49 percent tax rate, especially a low-income family including two children.”
Harvey and Gravalos have a daughter in college and a teen-age son, Max, who also marched on .
IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley did say the sealed-bid auction will go on as scheduled at at the town office in Hartford Center. And if minimum bids were offered, the house and property will be sold, she said. The minimum bid for the single family home was $20,476.98, Riley said. The total minimum bid for everything else, which is divided into three properties, is roughly $16,000.
Against a backdrop of car dealerships, retail outlets and quick-change oil places, the protesters, who came from as far away as Chicago, walked in groups of three and four down Center Street. Some came from New Hampshire and Vermont. Most were from Maine.
Many of the protesters were also war-tax resistors and friends with Harvey and Gravalos. Some had never met the couple but were marching to support their cause.
Sheila Dormody, a member of the 800-member organization, Peace Action Maine, pays her taxes, she said. But she had sympathy for Harvey and Gravalos because she opposes disproportionate military spending, she said.
As the group hiked along, making their way across the Longley Bridge and around downtown Lewiston, Dormody passed out red fliers decrying the practice of “bloating the Pentagon… starving our communities.”
“This year Congress will give the Pentagon $7 billion more than requested,” the filer stated. Education, mass transit, housing programs, job training and environmental spending are all the things that will be cut in order to pay for increased military spending, it said.
If the property is indeed sold , “we’ll have to find some place we can rent,” Gravalos said as she walked. “I have a friend in Buckfield who has offered land so I can plant my pansies.”
Her husband thought it was a mistake to buy land, Gravalos said, adding he may have been right.
In hindsight, Harvey said, he would have preferred renting over owning property, which can be taken away.
But, while he and his wife have always paid their state and local taxes, he’s not sorry for not paying federal taxes, he said.
“We both understood the risk and we accepted it,” Harvey said. It’s a matter of “personal responsibility.” Withholding federal taxes is “a job that we can do,” he said.
Home survives IRS sale
Some of tax protesters’ Hartford property sold
by Judith Meyer
Special to the Sun-JournalHartford — As sealed bids were opened morning, Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos heard an Internal Revenue Service employee award three pieces of their property to others, but their home was spared, at least temporarily.
The couple, who are vocal about their resistance to paying federal taxes to a government that they say is spending irresponsibly, were served a notice of seizure on their property in . That property was offered at a public sale in a sealed bid process inside the Town Office while a large crowd of supporters from throughout New England and reporters waited outside on the lawn morning.
Harvey and Gravalos, who say they earn about $18,000 a year growing blueberries and pansies, owe the IRS $48,555 in unpaid taxes . Their properties were seized to satisfy that debt.
Attending the bid opening were dozens of other tax resisters, including one couple who carried a large painted poster proclaiming their nonpayment of federal taxes since .
The properties offered for sale included the couple’s home, which is not equipped with running water or electricity and which uses an organic compost septic system, a small house lot, a 21-acre wood lot and a 13-acre blueberry field.
No bids were submitted for the house, and a second sealed bid opening has been scheduled for at the IRS office in Lewiston. If the property is not sold at that time, said IRS agent Diane Santoro, who conducted the sale, the federal agency will re-evaluate the $20,476 minimum bid established for the property.
Bids were opened inside the Town Office, which was restricted to bidders, the property owners, town and federal officials and five media representatives chosen by Capt. James Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department from a pool of reporters standing in the side yard.
The couple’s children, Emily and Max Harvey, purchased the small house lot for $727, using money 16-year-old Max had earned raking blueberries, beating out a $600 bid from the town of Hartford. Gravalos was visibly upset that the town bid on the property.
The Town Office stands directly across the street from Gravalos’ house on Route 140, and the piece of property the town bid on was being considered as a new Town Office site.
The couple’s wood lot was sold for $10,000 to Kathleen Hutchins and Linda Rowe, both of Hartford, beating out a $9,560 bid for the land. Hutchins is the town’s tax collector, clerk, treasurer and administrative assistant, and Rowe is a selectman, but both women said they bought the land as private citizens.
The third piece of property, the blueberry field that has been cultivated for the past eight years by Harvey and Gravalos, was sold to Alan Noyes of Hartford. Noyes, who left immediately after the bid opening, indicated that he liked the view at the property and would be willing to talk to Harvey and Gravalos about some kind of arrangement to continue farming the land.
Harvey said after the sale, which lasted less than 10 minutes, that he and his family intended to remain in Hartford, would continue to live in their home and would continue farming blueberries on fields they planned to lease from other property owners.
“The good news is that nobody bid on our house,” Gravalos told the crowd after the sale was finished, and Harvey expressed his pleasure at seeing so many people supporting their cause.
“This is not a victory or defeat for anyone,” Harvey said. “It’s just a part of life.” That observation drew a large round of applause from the crowd.
And although the IRS seizure is nearly complete, Harvey said his views on tax resistance haven’t changed and he has no plans to pay any money to the federal government. Harvey has not paid federal taxes , and Gravalos hasn’t paid .
Supporter Jim Stockwell of Albion said, “I think (Harvey and Gravalos are) very proud of what they’re doing.” Stockwell praised their resolve to stand firm for their beliefs against increased military spending and decreased spending for education and health care.
Lee Holman, a supporter and neighbor of Harvey and Gravalos, said the couple’s commitment to paying local and state taxes and resisting paying federal taxes comes from their desire to “redirect tax dollars to build real security in this town instead of investing in a false sense of security” with the federal government.
The couple can redeem their properties in the next 180 days if they pay the bid price, plus another 20 percent, and any costs associated with the sale to the IRS.
IRS agent Santoro declined to talk to reporters before or after the sale.
Along with that second article was this sidebar:
Anti-tax group pays off liens of five families
Hartford — The tax resisters who demonstrated in support of Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos say they are not against America’s tax system in itself and support payment of local and state taxes to help their own communities. What they protest is the federal government’s use of the tax money, a use that they claim they have no control over.
In an effort to show support for the local property tax system, the group of resisters, who are calling themselves Spears into Pruning Hooks, walked into the Hartford Town Office just before the public sale of the Harvey/Gravalos property and paid off outstanding tax liens for five local families.
Harvey said the group paid nearly $2,200, choosing the liens to be paid off based on whether the property owner had children and actually lived in Hartford, rather than being a part-time resident. The tax resisters did not have contact with the property owners; the payoffs were arranged through the Town Office.
The group originally offered to pay seven liens, but only five were paid because two of the families declined the group’s offer. Tax Collector Kathleen Hutchins said the payment retired tax liens for property owners Joseph Bedard, Ann Carro, Penny Stubbs, Matthew Piantone and James Guilmet.
According to Hutchins, the property owners who declined the resisters’ offer of payment said they did not agree with Harvey and Gravalos’ stand on tax resistance.
Hutchins, who said the town has never seized any property for nonpayment of property taxes, indicated that there are others in Hartford who oppose the stand taken by the Harvey-Gravalos family.
Speaking for the group, which still has $800 in an account reserved for payment of other tax liens, Harvey said Spears into Pruning Hooks plans to continue raising funds and making goodwill gestures for struggling local taxpayers.
Harvey and Gravalos were still at it :
Federal income tax
Resisters keep incomes below filing threshold
by Kelly Morgan
StaffWriterHartford — While many people across the country will be rushing to meet today’s deadline for filing federal income taxes, Arthur Harvey will more likely be home binding books or working on the mowers he’ll soon use to cut his blueberry fields.
It’s not that the 72-year-old organic farmer, inspector and book seller has filed early this year. Instead, Harvey, who lives with his family across from the town office on Main Street, has not paid federal income taxes . He won’t pay because he is opposed to where his dollars would be spent.
“My fundamental objection is to nuclear weapons,” he said Thursday while seated at a small table off his kitchen, surrounded by copies of the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi. “And also to sending U.S. military forces to other countries.”
Harvey and his wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, 61, have joined as many as 200 Mainers and 10,000 people nationally who refuse to pay their federal income taxes in protest of military spending.
“We say about 8,000 to 10,000 people,” said Ruth Benn of the Brookly, N.Y.-based National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee on , “but it’s really hard to count.”
Benn said many, like Harvey and Gravalos, keep their incomes low so they won’t have to pay. Many others protest by refusing to pay federal taxes on their phone bills, another action that’s difficult to track.
According to information from IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley, who’s based in Boston, the federal government faces what it calls a “gross tax gap” of $300 billion a year. The gap, Riley explained, “is the difference between what taxpayers should pay and what they actually pay.”
Riley said the IRS does not track those who refuse to pay on the grounds of opposing military spending.
Personal property seizures and deductions from paychecks are tools the IRS uses to collect unpaid tax dollars. In , Harvey and Gravalos nearly lost their home and 13 acres of blueberry fields they farm in Hartford. At an auction after the properties were seized, Gravalos’ mother bought back the house. Their daughter Emily later received back the blueberry fields in a trade after the man who had purchased them found farming difficult, Harvey said, laughing.
Harvey, Gravalos and their son Max continue to farm the fields today. They use wood heat and kerosene lamps and drive old Volvos. Harvey sells books on the teachings of Gandhi, which he purchases from India, through the on-line marketplace Amazon.com.
The only electricity in the house comes from a small solar panel that runs a laptop computer and, on sunny days, a copier in a back room.
Because Gravalos now works as a part-time massage therapist, she does pay Social Security taxes, Harvey said. But she hasn’t paid income taxes .
The two file separately, each having to earn less than $3,100 in order to fall below federal tax filing requirements.
Harvey and Gravalos have taken part in efforts of the War Tax Resistance Resource Center of Maine. People affiliated with the organization often hand out fliers at IRS centers on tax deadline day.
Larry Dansinger, a Monroe-based representative of the group, said that people are expected to be handing out fliers from Portland to Ellsworth
He himself doesn’t pay federal phone taxes.
“In our calculations, about 50 percent of every (federal income) tax dollar that people pay is going either directly or indirectly for military purposes,” he said.
Not paying, he added, “is not a nice, easy thing to do.”
The latest issue of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line. Contents include:
The new blog mentioned above is MathewCh5v9, featuring writing by war tax resister Vickie Aldrich, largely reviewing letters from her father from when he was in a Civilian Public Service camp for drafted conscientious objectors during World War Ⅱ.
She has also addressed her own conscientious objection — war tax resistance — in some posts:
Some bits and pieces from here and there.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
One man literally pulled out a pistol and used the camera for target practice. Police found another speed camera flipped over—leading police to believe a gang of people committed the crime, considering the weight of the camera. Then there was the camera set up on a stand, near FedEx Field. A man walked up to it, cut off one of the legs, and walked away. … [O]ne of the cameras incinerated.
another case, a man recently paid his $137 traffic ticket by folding 137 dollar bills into origami pigs, carefully arranging them in Dunkin’ Donuts boxes, and taking them to the police cashier.
Greek “won’t pay” movement has launched a new phase of its constructive program — reacting to the closure of hospitals and other austerity-prompted decay of the public health system by creating its own
“Social Solidarity Clinic.” The clinic launched with a blood drive.[T]he U.S. [sold] $66.3 billion in weapons abroad [in ], a record itself, but also by far the largest single year increase ever, over the $21.4 billion in 2010.
The sales amounted to about 78 percent of all foreign arms sales on the entire planet. The second place arms dealer nation is Russia, which sold less than $5 billion themselves.
Someone shot video at the recent NWTRCC national conference in Colorado Springs. Some of the highlights include:
Bill Durland recalls the founding and early history of NWTRCC
Ruth Benn compares the work of NWTRCC today with the goals of its founders.
NWTRCC has posted some documents from ’s New England war tax resistance regional gathering, including:
Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann of NWTRCC are going to be guests of Cindy Sheehan this evening on her call-in show, which, as I understand it, is something like a radio show but you tune in by calling a conference call line (218.632.0995, code #73223). The show starts at . Sheehan promises to replay and archive the show on her “Soapbox” starting on if you miss it.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up. Here’s the highlight reel:
A “Pull the Pork” protester outside of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of military contractor Lockheed Martin
As a conscientious objector, García Barberà performed alternative service in the Barrio del Cristo, where he became involved in the Workers’ Catholic Action Brotherhood, to which he remains linked, as with the objector movement. “The objection is in all of life; it’s not only not doing military service, but it’s rethinking the role of the Army and of military spending. The movement did not end when objection was legalized nor when conscription was abolished,” he notes.
Today he is associated with pacifist groups, never fails each year to make a symbolic assault on the NATO base in Bétera, and practices tax resistance, like a handful of Alaquàsers of his generation. “We omit the percentage that we estimate is dedicated to military spending (between 7% and 12%) and redirect it to Caritas or some NGO,” he explains, which on some occasions has meant conflict with the Treasury Department. “Armies defend borders when what ought to be defended is a dignified life for people. And even if they are dressed up as humanitarian actions, they serve large vested interests. In a war the strongest wins, not the most just,” he says.
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out. Contents include:
The IRS continues to get smacked around in the partisan arena, with the Republicans smelling blood and baring their teeth, and the Obama administration having no hesitation in throwing agency bureaucrats overboard to save their sinking ship.
The scandal’s momentum has caused reporters and others to dig deeper, to give credence and airtime to previously-neglected stories, and to instead overhype what in other seasons would be ignored.
An anti-abortion group released a recording of a conversation with an IRS agent in which the agent told them that they couldn’t be a tax-exempt organization if they “use your religious belief to tell other people you don’t have a belief” or “take all kinds of confrontation activities [sic] and also put something on a website and ask people to take action against the abortion clinic” or “go to the front of the abortion clinic and… come for protesting activity, and then go up to the woman and tell the woman they should not do that.” “When you conduct religious activities,” the agent told the group, “meanwhile you have to respect other people’s beliefs, other people’s religion. You cannot use any kind of, you know, confrontation way, or to, or against other groups or devalue other groups, other people’s beliefs. OK?”
In a letter to the group in response to their tax-exempt status application (they were applying for 501(c)3 which has stricter guidelines than the 501(c)4 groups that have been the main focus of the recent IRS scandal), the agent had asked the group to “assure:”
- that the information you distribute or present to the public are not representing biased and unsupported opinions;
- that the information presented or distributed are with sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts as to permit an individual or the public to form an independent opinion or conclusion
The letter went on to claim that “Activities that are conducted to expose the racist agenda (as you claimed) of the abortion industry” were an example of activities that are “neither educational nor charitable in nature.”
The agent claimed that:
[A]n organization’s activities may not be considered serving educational purpose, if an organization carries out activities that aims to deny or reduce the rights of another segment of the community; that are designed to influence public opinion in favor of its advocated position; that may have adverse effect on the day to day operation of public health facilities that may be detrimental to the community as a whole; and that show a type of propaganda to defy other’s beliefs or viewpoints on the same matter.
A second letter contained more of the same, telling the group that because their educational material was “condemnatory and opinionated” and made claims with “no data source provided and no explanation given on how the conclusion is made” and included expressions that were “aimed to inflame the hostility to the community health clinic or family planning clinic which hold opposition position or practice on the issues of abortion,” and included “no intelligent discussion of the subject of abortions and no information presented to inform the public concerning alternatives to the present law and practice related to abortions,” that the group might not qualify for tax-exempt status.
(The IRS eventually backed down and granted the group tax-exempt status last month.)
The president of another anti-abortion group told Congressional investigators that an IRS agent had told them “that we needed to send in a letter with the entire board’s signatures stating that under penalty of perjury we would not picket/protest or organize groups to picket/protest outside of Planned Parenthood. Upon receiving such a letter, she indicated that the IRS would allow our application to go through.”
Such restrictions on the attitudes the group must have or profess towards people with contrary beliefs, what sorts of arguments their outreach material must contain, and what activities it must refrain from engaging in, do not appear to have much support in the law. But apparently IRS agents have come to believe that it is part of their mandate to police groups that are applying for tax-exempt status in this way.
Here’s an excerpt from the latest draft of my upcoming book on the tactics of successful tax resistance campaigns that speaks to this:
Troubles with Tax-Exempt Status
The legal conditions of tax-exempt, non-profit status in the United States have proven to be a powerful way for the government to make activist groups timid. Anti-abortion tax resister Jerry DePyper noted that this was a big reason why he was making no headway in trying to get the tax resistance tactic on the agenda of the large anti-abortion groups. He spoke with two leaders in that movement and reported: “Both… say that no recognized pro-life leader would want to risk it because of the legal issues with the IRS, and they don’t want to lose their tax-exempt status.”
Ruth Benn of NWTRCC had a similar experience:
I was talking about a potential war tax resistance workshop with a group for which I have great respect and who are very supportive of war tax resistance. When I suggested a certain activity as part of the workshop, the organizer hurriedly said, “Oh, no, we couldn’t sponsor that; we’re 501(c)3 [the section of the legal code that governs tax-exempt non-profits].”
For this and related reasons, some tax resisting groups, like Catholic Worker and NWTRCC, have never tried to apply for tax-exempt non-profit status. In 1972 the IRS told Catholic Worker that it owed some $300,000 in taxes and penalties because of this. The tax agency eventually retreated, acknowledging that Catholic Worker was a de facto non-profit charity, even if it was never going to fill out the de jure paperwork. This episode turned out to be a good propaganda opportunity for Catholic Worker. The New York Times editorialized: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate. Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.” Dorothy Day added:
The New York Evening Post also editorialized on our situation. The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit. Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry.…
…[T]he CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself ” so as to be exempt from taxes. We are afraid of that word “structure.” We refuse to become a “corporation.”… [W]e do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement.
The August issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is now on-line, with contents including:
A few more interesting bits and pieces that flew past my eyeballs in recent weeks:
There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Contents include:
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
The annual tax season “fifteen minutes of fame” for the American war tax resistance movement has begun:
“They’ve never actually done anything,” Erica Weiland, a 30-year-old activist from Seattle, Washington, told me when I asked her about the consequences of her tax resistance. Weiland generally tries to avoid owing taxes in the first place, but when she does owe something, she files a return without paying a dime. And while she’s received a few letters, she’s never responded, nor had a problem. Freed from the burden of paying for broken fighter jets, she has been able to give money instead to those causes she believes in, which, she said, is “one of the things that’s the most rewarding about being a war-tax resister.”
Weiland learned about tax resistance while working with the group Food Not Bombs, which helps feed the homeless in cities across the United States (at least where its activities are not banned). She met a war refugee from Sri Lanka who refused to accept anything more than room and board as payment for his labor, not wanting to contribute in any way to the sort of violence he witnessed firsthand — funded, in part, by the U.S. government. If a poor immigrant could do it, Weiland decided she could too, and she hopes her actions will send a message that Americans are not as powerless as popularly imagined. “I want to show people that there’s more that we can do to resist war and stop military actions than just marching and sending letters to Congress,” she said.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Some tax resistance news briefs from the U.S.:
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
According to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (a journalism outlet created and sponsored by the U.S. government), Taliban forces in Afghanistan have killed twenty people and wounded ten others who refused to pay a “war tax” to that group. The report is slim on details, though another version sources the report to Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, a “police spokesman” from Kunduz Province.
Ruth Benn of NWTRCC reacted to the news this way:
I am immediately reminded of what minimal risks I face (and most of us in the U.S.) with my own war tax resistance. I hope I would be strong enough to say no to militarism under those circumstances too, but it’s impossible for me to really imagine that moment for those 30. I am awed at their refusal, which does not lessen the sadness at such news for lives lost in the name of endless war and killing.
I believe war tax resistance can be a stronger force in opposition to war. If the government had to take more notice the risks would increase. It seems the least we in the U.S. can do to honor those unnamed civilians in Afghanistan is to find ways to strengthen our resistance and worry less about risks.
Some tax resistance news from here and there:
More tax resistance news in brief:
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
I’ve also seen some new interest in the tactic of tax resistance popping up here and there on-line. Twitter is full of people threatening to stop paying taxes with 140-character bravado over everything from police impunity to Obama’s immigration policy tweaks. That’s nothing to get too excited about, except that I haven’t seen so many people hit on tax resistance as a possible activist response to political issues all at once before.
Tax resister Gary Flomenhoft posted a couple of meditations recently at ClubOrlov:
Also, The Moon Magazine recently reprinted my meditations on the “one-man revolution” of Ammon Hennacy, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and Robert Frost.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
A man who read philosophy and politics, Herman despised all war and refused to contribute to its financing. Finally a local “third degree committee” came to his farm west of town. His wife watched while holding their infant in her arms as the men strung a rope over the limb of an apple tree. When Herman continued to refuse to buy Liberty Bonds, the committee ran him into town and grilled him until early morning in the hall of a local fraternal organization. A local lawyer sat on the arm of his chair and threatened to punch him in the face unless he agreed to buy bonds. What Herman said in defense of his actions was used to prosecute him for sedition, The Billings Gazette editorialized that “he should be prosecuted to the extreme limit of the law.” He was convicted in a 1½-day jury trial and served 28 months. He was released .
There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content that includes:
Here’s a note about an early modern American war tax resister who hadn’t come to my attention before, via an Associated Press dispatch from :
Man Refuses to Pay Tax, Raps War
Palo Alto, Cal., (AP) — Anton Nelson, a real estate man, declared he had refused to pay $1300 in federal income taxes because he has no “confidence in the present government.”
Nelson made public a letter he said he had sent the collector of internal revenue.
“Most of the people’s tax money is being used by our government for destructive purposes that are morally wrong and politically disastrous,” the letter said. It added:
“If I were of draft age, as a Christian citizen, I would have to refuse to cooperate with the draft and with all other military regulations — either of the United States or of any other country.”
I haven’t been able to find out much else about Anton Nelson. There is a letter-to-the-editor about El Salvador from an Anton Nelson from Berkeley, California, in the Friends Journal, so, if this is the same Anton Nelson, he may have been part of the reemergence of war tax resistance among American Quakers.
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
Members of the Bijou Community were already involved in war tax resistance when Peter and Mary arrived. Early on, money was held in common, but that evolved over the years to each doing their own thing. One year the community did a tax protest and filed a 1040 saying they didn’t want to pay anything “because we don’t want to support the war.” That seemed to trigger an audit, which took an exhausting six months of collecting receipts to convince the IRS that members were not living off donations that came in for the soup kitchen and houses of hospitality. “The IRS said don’t file like that anymore because it messes up our system, and we said don’t audit us anymore because it messes up ours!”
Also, on the War Tax Talk blog, Jason Rawn reviews David Hartsough’s book Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist. Excerpt:
David Hartsough is a Quaker and a War Tax Resister who has for decades been redirecting a large portion of his “tax obligations,” believing that if war is abolished, “humanity can not only survive and better address the climate crisis and other dangers, but will be able to create a better life for everyone. The reallocation of resources away from war promises a world whose advantages are beyond easy imagination.” (Editor’s note: The 2016 U.S. budget for past, present, and future wars is $1,300 billion.) He cofounded the Nonviolent Peaceforce, inspired in part by Gandhi’s idea of a shanti sena, a peace army, and this organization is now active in 40 countries, stationing trained professional peaceworkers in conflict areas around the globe and is sustained by an $8 million budget. He works with World Beyond War and is currently executive director of Peaceworkers in San Francisco. Waging Peace has been in the works for 27 years.
And Ruth Benn of NWTRCC was a guest on Law and Disorder radio recently.
Tax day is here, and with it the annual fifteen minutes of fame for the American war tax resistance movement. Popular Resistance picked up the news about the various actions taking place around the country to protest against taxes for militarism.
Ruth Benn from NWTRCC was on KBOO’s “Old Mole Variety Hour” to talk tax resistance:
And Peter Smith was on WMAY’s “Bishop On Air” show:
Today, a roundup of links from here and there:
The latest news from the U.S. war tax resistance movement:
Some new audio/video slices of interweb for people interested in war tax resistance and related concerns:
Some news of interest to war tax resisters in particular:
Some links to things of note:
If limiting government power by constitutional restraints doesn’t work, and if trying to influence elections to keep evil people out of office doesn’t work, what is left? Some would argue nothing. But, in reality the people can go on strike and refuse to finance or to fight in wars that have no legitimacy.
If the authoritarians continue to abuse power in spite of constitutional and moral limits, the only recourse left is for the people to go on strike and refuse to sanction the wars and thefts. Deny the dictators your money and your bodies. If enough people do this, the time will come when the dictators’ power will dissipate.
Today, some links about domestic tax and tax resistance issues:
I’ve seen a surprising amount about this in the foreign press, like this lengthy article from China that matter-of-factly discusses Schiff as an American political prisoner.As the cancer consumed him, his voice changed and the prison phone system no longer recognized it, so he could not even talk with family members on the phone during his final month of life. When his condition deteriorated to the point where he needed to be hospitalized, government employees blindly followed orders that kept him shackled to his bed. This despite the fact that escape was impossible for an 87 year old terminally ill, legally blind patient who could barely breathe, let alone walk.
is the deadline for filing U.S. federal income tax returns — “Tax Day” — which is also a traditional day of action and publicity for American war tax resisters. Here is an overview of some from this year:
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content including:
Some notes from here and there:
While movement folks talk about the intersectionality of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, war, climate change, and economic exploitation, too often we do not go beyond the rhetoric. We are inviting people involved in resisting these serious problems to make time to engage in dialog with those involved in other issues and movements. We need to explore how we can work together.
There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content that includes:
Some links of interest:
If Stephen Miller and Steven Bannon and Trump continue to run the country and we have international wars and we have a government that won’t comply with court orders, we are going to need tax resistance. Tax resistance is the kind of thing, like general strikes, that people toss around really easily and say, “We should just not pay our taxes,” but, again, I think this moment is pretty unique in American history. Tax resistance has been a part of the history of the United States of America since the beginning… Like a general strike, it [can] happen if everybody is going to do it. People need to get together and create a means by which folks can actually feel comfortable not paying their taxes, putting it into a separate account and getting receipts for it and all doing it together as a collective political statement.…
Tax resistance is something [with which] we can break their backs, and when and if it is time, we should do it together.
Some nonviolence-oriented groups have come together to issue a joint call for activists to begin to refuse and redirect their taxes to protest the belligerent and xenophobic Trump agenda. Their letter follows.
Dear Friends,
We are writing to ask you to do something that you probably have never done in your life. This is a historical moment you can be an active part of shaping.
We all know the stories of people who committed atrocities and said, in their defense, that they were following orders.
Here is a snapshot of current events:
- A ban on Muslims
- A wall along the border we share with Mexico
- The dismantling of environmental protections
- Billions added to US defense spending and cutting almost everything else.
We know about slippery slopes, about things getting worse not all at once, about the frog that didn’t escape the heating water because it was being heated so gradually. When does what happens cross the line? We know the famous words of Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.We signed this letter because we want you to consider joining others this year to take a stand. We can non-cooperate with this government which is not of, by and for all the people. As a first step, we can refuse at least a token amount of our taxes to this government.
Specifically, we want to ask you to consider withholding and redirecting a small amount of your taxes. How much? We suggest a symbolic minimum of $10.40, and a maximum of whatever amount works for you. All of us signing this letter are redirecting some tax money, either for 2016 if we haven’t prepaid all our taxes, or through changing our allowance or reducing our estimated taxes for 2017. Will you join us?
Anxious? Thousands of people before you have done this. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee has an impressive array of resources to help: written materials, videos, webinars, and one-on-one support in some cases. Reach out to them here. Or talk to friends, and perhaps create a group of people who will support each other with the emotional and material risks involved. We ask that you re-direct these funds to the cause that matters most to you.
If tax resistance is not the right choice for you, consider other ways to pursue civil disobedience and noncooperation. There is no way this government, or any government, can continue without the funding and cooperation of its citizens.
Sincerely,
David Hartsough, Peaceworkers
Kit Miller, Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
Michael Nagler, Metta Institute for Nonviolence Education
Miki Kashtan, Bay Area Nonviolent Communication
Ruth Benn, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
They’re still collecting signatories, so if you represent a group that is willing and able to sign on, contact Kit Miller and say so.
It’s nice to see this coordinated effort. There has long been an idea floating around war tax resistance circles that if we could create a campaign that has sufficiently low risk — a small, symbolic tax refusal that’s not going to bring the IRS hammer down on anyone — lots of people would be willing to sign on to it and tax resistance would stop seeming so scary. This campaign may end up being a good test of that hypothesis.
My own view is that minimizing risk isn’t enough. The reason more people don’t practice tax resistance involves more dimensions than just riskiness. People are also skeptical of tax resistance’s effectiveness, and of whether it is ethical. You have to find the sweet spot on all of those dimensions in order to bring more people into the fold, and there may be no one-size-fits-all solutions.
However, a good argument against my skeptical point of view is the rampant phone tax resistance in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. This was a small act of resistance, relatively risk-free; it did bother the government; and it did increase the visibility of tax resistance as a tactic in the anti-war movement and probably led to more people doing more significant tax resistance.
Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches in the U.S.:
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’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:
From the Salamanca Press:
Quaker vows to withhold taxes despite Supreme Court decision
Philadelphia (AP) — A Quaker who refuses to pay part of her taxes in protest of the government’s military activities is standing fast despite a Supreme Court rejection of her appeal.
“I’m deeply saddened that they aren’t going to hear the case, but they needed to look at other ways that I could pay taxes without contributing to war efforts,” Priscilla Adams said after ’s court’s action.
“I will continue to refuse to pay until the government stops using my money for the purpose of killing people,” she said.
The nation’s highest court turned away appeals by Ms. Adams and two other members of the Religious Society of Friends who said the Internal Revenue Service violates their religious freedom by charging fees and interest for delays in paying the portion of their federal tax that funds the military.
Ms. Adams, of Burlington, N.J., owes the federal government thousands of dollars in back taxes and interest. She withheld a portion of federal income taxes paid for five years in the 1980s and ’90s and was assessed late fees and interest.
Gordon and Edith Browne, Quakers who own homes in New Hampshire and Vermont, also refused to pay a portion of their taxes. The Brownes sued the IRS in federal court in Vermont; Ms. Adams sued in U.S. Tax Court. Both lawsuits unsuccessfully sought refunds for the fees and interest the Quakers were forced to pay.
Their appeals did not contest having to pay 100 percent of their tax bill when the IRS forces their hand. Instead, the Quakers cited a “religious hardship” and argued they should be able to pay the back taxes without any penalties or interest.
The justices let stand rulings that had gone against the Quakers, allowing the IRS to impose late fees and interest in addition to back taxes.
Ms. Adams said she will not pay the taxes, even if her beliefs land her in prison.
“They could create a peaceful tax pool that would collect taxes that would only go to non-war activities, but they chose to not listen to reason,” she said.
Her resolve is not uncommon, according to Quakers and members of the War Resisters League, a New York-based pacifist group. They say the rulings against Ms. Adams and the Brownes will do little to deter those who do not pay.
“If people hadn’t refused to respond to the draft, there wouldn’t be conscientious objection statutes like there are now,” said Ruth Benn, the league’s director. “Someone has to have the courage to stand up for what they believe in. Until that happens, there won’t be any opportunity for change.”
Peggy Morscheck, director of the Quaker Information Center in Philadelphia, said only a “very small” percentage of the nation’s 92,000 Quakers withhold portions of their taxes.
“There are many, many ways to act on the peace testimony, and a lot of folks do not feel they can bear witness to that testimony through war-tax resistance,” Morscheck said.
At NWTRCC’s blog, Ruth Benn gives some tips on how to create a local affinity group to resist war taxes together. It can be easier, and potentially more powerful, than trying to go alone.
Recently-discovered links of interest:
The NWTRCC held its national gathering in Los Angeles.
a banner outside of Casa Roja in Los Angeles, where the NWTRCC national conference was held
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 .
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.
Dr. Melina Abdullah addresses divestment alongside panelists Jim Haber and Anne Barron
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 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.
new NWTRCC coordinator Lincoln Rice addresses the conferees
We also spent some time 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.”
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.
This is the thirty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we finish off the 1980s.
The issue announced that a new poster was available from the MCC:
That issue also included an article on “How to start a peace tax fund” (that is, a collective redirection fund). Excerpts:
Seattle Mennonite Church established a Northwest Peace Fund in to receive donations and recoverable deposits from people withholding a portion of their federal income taxes or phone taxes because of the large military buildup in the United States. Anyone who wishes to may donate to the fund so that the resulting interest can be used for local peace activities.
Interest from the Northwest Peace Fund has been used to support peace-related projects in the Puget Sound area, such as the Emergency Feeding Program and the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP).
While the Seattle Mennonite Church’s Northwest Peace Fund will accept deposits and contributions from outside the Northwest, we strongly encourage each Mennonite congregation to establish its own peace fund.
We approved these seven operating guidelines:
- This fund will be called the Northwest Peace Fund. It will be a non-profit investment fund that will generate income. This income will be distributed for peace and social concerns projects in the Pacific Northwest.
- The peace fund will be administered by three peace fund representatives selected by the peace and social concerns committee of the Seattle Mennonite Church initially for one-, two-, and three-year terms, and for two- year terms thereafter. Current peace fund representatives are Charles Lord, Bob Hamilton and David Ortman.
- Money may be deposited into the fund through a peace fund representative either on a donation or recoverable-deposit basis: (a) Donations will be retained to generate income for the fund, (b) Recoverable deposits may be placed in the peace fund for a period of up to five years. During this time period such funds may be returned to the depositor within 30 days upon written request of the fund’s address, given below. Recoverable deposits will be used to generate income during the time these funds remain available. After a period of five years, if not reclaimed, such deposits will revert to the status of donations.
- The fund will operate on a fiscal year ending on May 31. One meeting of the peace fund representatives will be held each April to prepare an annual report, copies of which will be available upon request. At this meeting the peace fund representatives are also authorized to distribute up to all income generated from the fund to peace and social concern projects in the Pacific Northwest. Any disbursement must have prior approval of the Seattle Mennonite Church advisory council.
- The peace fund is authorized to budget up to 10 percent of any income generated by the fund to cover costs of advertising the fund to attract additional deposits and to provide copies of the annual report. Any peace fund representative is authorized to withdraw within 30 days any recoverable deposit to a depositor upon a written request by the depositor.
- In the event of the dissolution of the peace fund, all funds will be transferred to another peace fund escrow account and the depositors notified.
- The mailing address of the fund will be…
Peace Tax Fund campaign director Marian Franz also wrote in with a brief note in which she suggested war tax resisters prompt their Congressional representatives to become Peace Tax Fund law supporters:
Sometimes the sequence goes like this (and I wish it would more often): Carl Lundberg, a United Methodist pastor from New Haven, Conn., refuses to pay the military portion of his taxes. The Internal Revenue Service comes to garnishee the wages. The congregation has a meeting. The vote is unanimous. The answer is, No, they will not cooperate with the IRS because they will not be tax collectors, because they will not violate the pastor’s right to his own views of conscience and living by those, etc. Then in the same year the U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Lowell Weicker, becomes a co-sponsor of the Peace Tax Fund Bill. Is there a connection? I think there is and that more will be coming. That is because I am a person of hope.
Another invitation for war tax resisters to redirect their taxes through the MCC U.S. Peace Section’s “Taxes for Peace” fund appeared in the edition. This time the funds were to be disbursed to both the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and to the Christian Peacemaker Teams program. The note said about $4,000 had been donated to the fund .
This brief note appeared in the edition:
The Commission on Home Ministries is interested in hearing from Mennonites who have placed some of their resisted military taxes into alternative peace funds. Information on recent judicial decisions affecting such peace funds is available from the General Conference Peace and Justice office…
The Randy Kehler / Betsy Corner siege, which was a cause célèbre in war tax resistance, hit the pages of The Mennonite in its edition:
Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner’s Colrain, Mass., home is scheduled to go on the auction block any day. The Internal Revenue Service seized their house for non-payment of $20,000 in taxes and $6,000 in fines and fees. The couple has been withholding their federal taxes for 12 years, donating the money to a shelter for homeless women and children, a veteran’s outreach center, and a local peace group. Kehler says they are willing to risk the consequences “because we can’t not do it.” While the IRS is looking for a buyer, many local realtors will not touch the sale of the house because of strong community sentiment in favor of the couple’s decision.
The issue carried this news:
After 7½ years of litigation, 27 hearings, and with a case file that grew two inches thick, the Tokyo District Court has ruled against a taxpayers’ organization that sought to end the Japanese government’s collection of income taxes for military purposes. The case had its origin after the bank accounts of Akiteru Nakagawa and Mennonite minister Michio Ohno were attached by the government and the telephone of Yoshinori Tan was seized, in each instance due to their non-payment of taxes.
The Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church voted to combine into a single organization at their joint conference in . This, I hope, will simplify things for me at least, as it’s been difficult to keep track of the subtle differences in names between the two organizations and their subcommittees. Also at that conference:
The Mennonite Church narrowly (59 percent) approved a resolution calling for its General Board to take four steps on military tax-withholding. It will establish a policy of not withholding (U.S.) federal income taxes from wages of any of its employees who make this request because of conscientious objection to war. The resolution supports “other church boards and agencies that may adopt similar policies,” giving direction, not a mandate. The General Conference took a similar action in in Bethlehem, Pa., but with a stronger vote, 71 percent.
The edition included an editorial by Muriel T. Stackely that brought readers up to speed on the history of the withholding debate. Excerpt:
Our conference [the General Conference Mennonite Church] now does not withhold federal tax from those employees requesting this.
“We immediately notified the Internal Revenue Service,” says conference treasurer Ted Stuckey, “explaining our actions, being open, concealing nothing. That was . We still have not heard any more from the IRS — after getting its initial response, which told us that this was illegal. We answered that we knew it was illegal but that it was in response to the action taken by the delegate body.”
Currently three employees of our conference offices in Newton, Kan., are requesting that tax not be withheld. They are treated as self-employed people. They say, observes Ted, that they have appreciated the opportunity to witness in this way. The amounts not paid to IRS have been symbolic rather than comprehensive.
A letter from Charles Hurst and Maria Smith in the issue explained their tax resistance:
One expression of our commitment to non-violence has been war tax resistance. Thus we and our friends found that our commitment to practice war tax resistance encouraged our commitment to a simple lifestyle.
We have defined war tax resistance as filing our taxes, but refusing to pay 50 percent of what is owed because that is the portion of U.S. income tax that goes toward military spending. Fifty percent is a conservative estimate because parts of the U.S. military budget are hidden or secret.
We have learned that if we own a car, even one that is six years old, the IRS will sell it at a public auction to collect back taxes. It became obvious that consumerism and war tax resistance are incompatible. As a result several of our friends have made a conscious decision to do job-sharing or half-time employment. It has worked out that between couples both parents can act equally as care-takers for the children while also having employment, which is psychologically rewarding and complementary to their vision of participating in God’s reign on earth.
Our choice of war tax resistance as a way of reducing our participation in the U.S. war machine has made a simple lifestyle almost mandatory because it has led us to lower our tax liability and lower our material consumption.
Another editorial by Muriel T. Stackely, this one in the edition, complained that “the 7,000 brochures about the Peace Tax Fund distributed at our triennial session in Normal, Ill., among 8,000 Mennonites netted one, one new membership for this campaign that says to the U.S. government, I want my tax dollars to be used to promote life, not death; peace, not war.”
Finally, the edition included this news:
War Resisters League is initiating organizing for major Tax Day demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco on . Based on the theme “Alternative Revenue Service,” the actions will emphasize the U.S. government’s militaristic spending priorities and will feature a 1040 EZ Peace tax form and the distribution of redirected tax dollars to peace and social justice programs. WRL is inviting other tax resistance and peace groups to join in planning the actions. For more information contact Ruth Benn, War Resisters League…
Instead, he fled with his siblings on a 1,500-mile journey to the United States where he crossed the border, legally, as an asylum-seeker. But here he faces the threats of yet more criminal government gangs, this time in Trump’s ICE, the farcical court system set up to deny refuge in asylum cases, and the for-profit prison systems that exploit and abuse immigrant detainees.Criminal organizations targeted and killed Guillermo’s cousin. The relative had failed to pay a gang’s “war tax” — money the gang extorts from people through threats of violence.
They then turned their attention to Guillermo for payment.
In , he was kidnapped and beaten by two uniformed police officers carrying out the gang’s orders. Their message was clear: Pay the war tax or face the murder and rape of his siblings. He realized that as long as they stayed in the region, they would never be free from gang violence — or the gangs’ attempts to pull them into a life of crime.
In , the U.S. government began the process of seizing the Colrain home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner. War tax resisters fought back, with protests and a nearly two-year occupation of the home that galvanized the movement.
Last weekend, veterans of the Colrain actions met at the annual gathering of New England war tax resisters in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Among those who participated was Terry Chranesky, who at the time was one of the antagonists in the drama — having purchased the seized house at auction along with her husband, but who is now reconciled with those she once clashed with.
Ruth Benn shared her initial impressions of the gathering on the wtr-s mailing list.
Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner applaud a group of supporters outside their home during the attempted IRS seizure.
There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Content includes:
There’s a new National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee newsletter out, with content including:
In other news:
In other news:
In other news:
the phrase “29/3 No Brexit? No Council Tax!” painted onto a wall near Wearhead Drive in Sunderland
Some links from here and there:
Some links from here and there:
Some links that have floated through my facemask in recent days:
Now, while mostly at home, we find plenty of things to do, but running out to a big demonstration is not one of them. This got me thinking about war tax resistance as a perfect protest for the isolated. That led me to think of the many individual acts of resistance in antiwar history and thus to Ammon Hennacy and his “one man revolution.”
Some tabs that have passed through my browser in recent days:
Some links from here and there:
Some recent links of note:
Rogers is part of “The Earth Tax Strike” group, which is holding its withheld taxes in an escrow account which they say they’ll pay when the government meets their demands.Money, even in tiny amounts, talks. If money — money from a growing number of tax rebels — refuses to go where the government is trying to put it, then together we can make a difference.
That’s why I’m appealing to other self-employed writers to join me in this tax resistance.
The latest news on the tax resistance front:
In other news…
Some recent tax resistance links of interest:
Some links of interest:
Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:
We nevertheless admonish petitioner that instituting future proceedings before the Tax Court for the purpose of advancing frivolous arguments relating to his conscientious objection to the payment of Federal taxes is likely to result in the imposition of a significant section 6673 penalty against him. We recognized four decades ago that “there has been a long and undeviating parade of cases in this and other courts” rejecting the arguments of conscientious objectors who sought to avoid paying “the part of their taxes which they estimated to be attributable to military expenditures and to which they objected because of their religious, moral, and ethical objections to war and because of their claimed ‘rights’ under various constitutional provisions, the Nuremberg Principles, international law, and numerous international agreements and treaties.” Greenberg v. Commissioner, 73 T.C. 806, 810 (). At this late date, the Court will not condone the continued assertion of similar frivolous positions in meritless litigation that wastes both its own limited resources and those of the IRS.
The only thing that comes close to the problems we’re seeing now at the Internal Revenue Service was in 1985, when the agency was rolling out some new technology—technology it’s still using today. Back then, the processing centers got so behind on their work that employees started hiding tax returns in closets and putting them in bags in the trash. Now it’s way worse, with the IRS, for the second year in a row, entering the filing season with a backlog of millions of not yet processed returns and pieces of correspondence.
When I released my annual report in , I said that paper is the IRS’s Kryptonite and the IRS is buried in it. The reason paper returns are so challenging is that the IRS still has not implemented technology to machine read them, so each digit on every paper return must be manually keystroked into IRS systems by an employee.
I’d just had enough. I’d paid $50 million in income tax over the years. I thought that was plenty. I hadn’t paid tax since I went to Belize, but technically, as an American citizen, even if you’re not living in the country, using the services and driving on the roads, you still have to file and pay 30% of your income to the United States. The only two countries in the world that enforce that rule are the United States and Eritrea! How [frigging] bizarre is that? Anyway, I just said, “I’m sorry. This is insane. I’m not doing this anymore.”
Sounds like McAfee drank the constitutionalist tax protester koolade.[I]n America, income tax is in fact unconstitutional anyway. It was only ever created to fund the war effort in , but that edict, like many others, was never extinguished after the need for it ceased to exist.
I was telling people that I thought taxes were illegal, and if they also felt that they were illegal and/or unjust they should just stop paying, too. Not just that, I was showing them how to do it without getting caught.
Some recent links from here and there:
Some tabs that have recently graced my browser:
Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in .
A letter-to-the-editor in the Catholic Worker promoted NWTRCC:
Ithaca, NY
Dear Catholic Worker Friends,
I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. In these times of heightened and outrageous war fervor, it seems vital that we continue to do what we can to further the cause of peace.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is currently conducting an outreach effort to promote the work that we do: serving as a clearinghouse for the conscientious war tax resistance movement in the US. For those who are questioning their contribution to this government’s increasing militaristic emphasis, NWTRCC can extend a hand with a variety of resources and contacts.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and the militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Through the redirection of our tax dollars, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all.
For information, please contact us at NWTRCC, PO Box 6512, Ithaca, NY 14851.
In solidarity,
David Meyers
Another article in that issue promoted the New York City People’s Life Fund for tax redirection:
NYC People’s Life Fund
As approaches, we are reminded of the crucial act of war tax resistance. In , almost 50% of the US fiscal budget went to war tax and past military expenditures. Today’s war tax resisters are people from all walks of life who have in common a deeply felt opposition to paying taxes in support of the military establishment.
The New York City People’s Life Fund (PLF) is the direct offspring of New York City War Tax Resistance. Founded on , in direct response to escalating war spending and declining funds for social and economic problems, the fund redirects tax-resisted monies to assist people in need.
For more than two decades, the New York City People’s Life Fund has offered grants and loans to New York City-based groups such as Coalition for the Homeless, 4th Street Food Co-Op, John Heuss House, The Living Theater, Metropolitan Council on Housing, Theater for the New City, and Workers Defense League, Inc.
This spring, the New York City People’s Life Fund is proud to announce the upcoming publication of Why Just Survive? — Flourish! a New Yorker’s Guide to Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Alternate Living, and Leisure Time Activity. Addressed particularly to New Yorkers, this useful sourcebook is designed to enrich the lives of its readers and promote change, leading toward an alternative and more communitarian approach to life.
For further information, please contact the New York City People’s Life Fund, or New York City War Tax Resistance, at 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012.
The following front-page article appeared in the issue of The Catholic Worker:
War Resisters and Taxes
By Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann
What better time to be a war tax resister than now? The horrifying death and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, funded by US tax dollars at the shocking rate of $5–6 billion a month, demands the strongest protests. Withholding money from the government will certainly get its attention, and the more people who do it publicly, the more war tax resistance will grow, bringing us back around to getting more of the government’s attention.
When Ed began his life of crime as a war tax resister during the Vietnam War, that was an equally critical time to resist. Pictures of the war were on the news every night and hundreds of lives were lost — and reported to the public — on a daily basis. We saw the body bags coming home and the Gold Star mothers protesting. The draft was real, and for Ed, having refused induction into the military, the next sensible step was to refuse to pay for any of it. As a student with not much in the way of income, a telephone had to be purchased so that war tax resistance could begin.
Telephone tax resistance among peace activists was well-known and thousands refused to pay. In , the Johnson administration brought to Congress a bill to continue the excise tax at 10% (rather than phase it out as had been intended since the Korean War), prompting the famous quote from Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee: “it is Vietnam, and only the Vietnam operation, which makes this bill necessary.”
After the war in Indochina finally came to an end, many dropped out of the peace movement and stopped resisting war taxes, but others saw yet another equally important time to resist. The Cold War was still in full swing. The US and the Soviet Union were stockpiling bombs and challenging their best scientists to outdo each other with their destructive power and speed of delivery. The threat of nuclear war was growing, and the whole ecosystem was endangered by the environmental destruction which is a side effect of building these horrific weapons.
At the time Ruth began resisting, President Jimmy Carter — who looks like a good guy by today’s standards — was bringing us draft registration and growing military budgets. As before, the connection between knowing that you would refuse to be part of the military and knowing that your tax dollars pay for someone else to do it hit home. Once again, it seemed like a good time to be a war tax resister.
With the Reagan era of , the military budget skyrocketed, and children in Latin America were living a nightmare as family members were killed in wars sponsored by the US. We said to ourselves, “What better time to be a war tax resister?” Despite the “warm and fuzzy” legacy that Nancy Reagan wants to promote, US taxpayers are still stuck with huge debt from that era and the boondoggle of the Star Wars missile shield program.
George H.W. Bush brought us the first Gulf War and the focus on the Middle East reminded us that without US tax dollars, Israel could not support its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Then there was Kosovo, military aid to Colombia, and always the willing commitment by elected representatives to throw billions of US tax dollars at corporate contracts loaded with waste, mismanagement, and cost overruns.
All of this and, at the same time, a litany of needs around the world that could be solved with a serious commitment of money and human resources. Who can look at the Sudan today and not be shamed — shamed — that the money and human energy devastating Iraq is not being used to help solve the crisis there instead?
During our combined 51 years of war tax resistance, we’ve openly refused somewhere around $97,000 in federal taxes. That money has been rerouted to all kinds of non-governmental groups who try to ease the suffering caused by the military priorities of this country.
On one hand, our resistance adds up to one small part on a single cruise missile. On the other hand, the government doesn’t like it, and they don’t want other people to get the idea that refusing to pay taxes is a way to demand change. Why else would the IRS be the most feared agency in the federal system? In addition, there is a personal satisfaction in giving to good causes, even if the amounts are not huge.
The risks and inconveniences of this resistance are real — ongoing collection efforts by the IRS made up mostly of piles of letters, levies that can lead to the loss of a job, and an occasional trip to court.
These days, the IRS puts most of its collection efforts against war tax resisters into sending letters demanding payment, and once in a while they’ll make bank account and salary levies. But one group in New Jersey is headed to court for their refusal to pay. The Restored Israel of Yahweh is a small religious community in southern New Jersey that has a long history of resistance to war taxes. Their leader was arrested and jailed in for tax resistance, and the group has also supported military resisters over the years. On , three members of the community were arrested by federal marshals and taken to US District Court in Camden, New Jersey. They were charged with “conspiring to defraud the United States for the purpose of impeding, impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful government functions of the IRS in ascertaining, computing, assessing, and collecting taxes; Tax Evasion; and failure to file Tax Returns.” The weight of these charges is unusual with war tax resistance, and the community seeks support in their efforts to resist government interference with their religious beliefs.
Quakers in Pennsylvania have also been in court recently. One staff member, Priscilla Adams of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) is a longtime war tax resister, and the Meeting has tried to honor her resistance by not sending her withheld taxes to the IRS. The money was placed in a bank account, available for the IRS to seize, but not paid over willingly. The IRS sued last year, demanding that the Meeting hand over the money and asking a 50% penalty, all totaling about $60,000. In , a judge ruled that PYM must pay the principle to the IRS, but not the penalty; the ruling indicated that the judge felt that the Religious Freedom Act had some validity and left the door open for PYM to find some other way to handle the withheld taxes that could stand up in court someday.
These more dramatic — though very rare — cases, while used by the IRS to keep up the fear, are also the ones that bring wider attention to war tax resistance. Each time an article appears, more people call to ask how to resist, challenged by those who stand up for their convictions, despite the legal consequences.
The act of refusing to pay one’s income taxes for war is the simplest and easiest form of direct action against war: file your tax return (IRS form 1040), withhold some or all of the taxes due, and include a letter of explanation. What would happen if every peace activist refused to send $1 owed to the IRS and enclosed a protest letter with their refusal? Resisting a token amount is very low risk but forces the government to deal with the protest.
Since the election, calls and emails to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee indicate a growing interest in tax resistance and in making it visible. Many people say that they would resist if they felt they were part of a campaign where the numbers could more easily be tallied. War tax resistance can be a lonely affair at times, and everyone wants to know, “How many war tax resisters are there?” How many of you receiving this paper resist, but no one knows?
It’s time we all stepped up our vocal refusal to pay for war. There have been plenty of reasons to resist over the last fifty years, but there’s no better time than now to stop paying for war and for the ongoing military spending that allows the government to wage it. If we don’t do it, the era of endless war will certainly become a reality.
For more information and resources call the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee at 800‒269‒7464.
Meanwhile:
