You may have heard about Cindy Sheehan — she’s the co-founder of the group Gold Star Mothers for Peace who is camping out at the gates to Dubya’s vacation home in Crawford, Texas trying to provoke him into coming out to hear her complaints about the war her son was killed in.
My son was killed in , so I’m not paying my taxes for .
If I get a letter from the IRS, I’m gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal.
This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral.
You killed my son for this.
I don’t owe you anything.
And if I live to be a million, I won’t owe you a penny.
And I want them to come after me, because… I want to put this frickin’ war on trial.
And I want to say, “You give me my son, and I’ll pay your taxes.”
I live in Vacaville, come and get me if you can find me there and put me on trial, because like Camilo [Mejía], Camilo knew what was right.
And he went to prison for that.
And Henry David Thoreau he went to prison, he refused to pay his poll tax, and Emerson — I call them HT and RW — and RW came to visit HT and said what are you doing here, buddy?
And HT said, why aren’t you here?
This is the only place for a moral person in an immoral world.
It’s up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist.
As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you.
These maniacs have no authority over us.…
In , after many years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg wrote:
“In that time, I have seen it first as a problem; then as a stalemate; then as a crime.”
…the US war effort in Iraq is not a quagmire.
It is what Daniel Ellsberg came to realize the Vietnam War was: “a crime.”
Cindy Sheehan — and many other people who have joined her outside the presidential gates in Crawford, and millions of other Americans — understand that.
And they’re willing to say so.
They have rejected not only the rabid militarism of the Bush administration but also the hollowed-out pseudo-strategic abdication of moral responsibility so well articulated by Howard Dean.
…Bush got his scripted syntax inverted when he made the mistake of saying something that rang true:
“Obviously, the conditions on the ground depend upon our capacity to bring troops home.”
While Bush sees the war as a problem and Dean bemoans it as a stalemate, Sheehan refuses to evade the truth that it is a crime.
And the analysis that came from Daniel Ellsberg in , while the Vietnam War continued, offers vital clarity today:
“Each of these perspectives called for a different mode of personal commitment: a problem, to help solve it; a stalemate, to help extricate ourselves with grace; a crime, to expose and resist it, to try to stop it immediately, to seek moral and political change.”
Meanwhile, the right-wing is blowing its top. Rush Limbaugh:
And the hawk attack blogs are making a big deal about Sheehan’s tax resistance vow (Cindy Sheehan Confesses to Being a Tax Cheat!) while the peacenik world is more-or-less ignoring it.
Although the Sheehan vigil is the top story on SmirkingChimp.com, a blog that collects articles from the anti-Dubya press, I checked through the eleven front-page articles on the subject and not a one mentioned Ms Sheehan’s declaration of tax resistance.
I have yet to see any suggestions or musings that maybe her supporters might want to sign on to that protest.
I’ve got to suspect that this is a case of “we support you Cindy — as long as we can do it without having to do more than express our opinion!”
Finally!
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the peacenik press these last several days as they crow with delight over the Cindy Sheehan vigil and how it may be marking a turning-point in how the press and the country talk about the war.
Until today, none of these articles — and I mean none — have taken Sheehan’s tax resistance seriously.
Only a couple have even mentioned it in passing.
Bill O’Reilly just howls about Sheehan’s low character in her refusal to pay federal taxes that might put more money the Pentagon’s way.
Listening to O’Reilly and even mainstream pundits, you’d think tax-resistance was a fresh and terrible arrival on the shores of American protest instead of a form of resistance as old as the Republic.
But the notion that tax resistance somehow marginalizes Sheehan as an “extremist” does highlight an important point.
The aim of any serious anti-war protest is to force a government to quit fighting, pull the troops out and come home right now.
But Sheehan is castigated in the press, by mainstream liberals as well as mad-dog rightists, for not leaving any wriggle-room on this central point.
She says, “Bring the troops home right now.”
Why this silence?
I can think of a few reasons: One may be that a lot of Cindy Sheehan’s appeal comes from a very short, simple description of who she is and what she is doing — a grieving mother who isn’t convinced the loss of her son was worth it and who just wants a moment of the president’s time.
Anything that adds to and complicates that simple message dilutes it.
Another reason may be that the right-wing slime machine has latched on to anything they can get their hands on in attempts to make Sheehan look like a sinister and insane monster.
Anything that puts her out of the mainstream and makes her look less like a grieving mom and more like a weirdo, they amplify (and exaggerate and fabricate if necessary).
It’s possible that their desperate focus on Sheehan’s tax resistance has intimidated the peaceniks into believing that this stand really is a liability and something they should downplay or ignore.
But neither of these two reasons is really adequate.
There is a limit to how much the peace movement wants to portray Cindy Sheehan as just an ordinary grieving mom — what makes her stand out is that she’s fighting back!
And her tax resistance is one important, confrontational, and risky part of this stand.
If you start watering down her protest in your description of her, you make her seem more mainstream at the cost of making her seem less newsworthy.
I think maybe the real reason this part of the protest is being ignored by the peacenik press is that it’s hard to celebrate tax resistance without inviting the question:
“well then, why are you still paying taxes?”
You can avoid camping out at Crawford and confronting Dubya like Cindy does by saying “well, I don’t have a son who was killed in Iraq — I don’t have an angle” but you can’t get out of joining her tax resistance that easily.
If you praise her tax resistance stand, if you admit that she’s right not to continue funding the warmakers who took her son’s life, then you have to ask yourself why you’re paying for the next Casey Sheehan’s casket.
Ray—
I read with interest your remarks about Cindy Sheehan’s vigil in Crawford, and your attempt to find ways that more of us can take a stronger stand in support of Sheehan’s struggle and the anti-war effort in general ["things we might consider doing to walk the talk"].
I’m surprised you didn’t mention war tax resistance as an option.
That’s something we all can do that is in direct solidarity with Cindy Sheehan’s own tax resistance pledge and that firmly terminates our own reluctant support for the government policies we abhor.
I stopped paying federal income tax in March, 2003 when the invasion of Iraq began.
I’m resisting the federal income tax completely and legally (by lowering my income below the tax line) but there are many ways to resist — some less completely, some less legally, some easier than others.
One war tax resister told me that it seems there are as many ways to do war tax resistance as there are war tax resisters — the point being that there’s a method for everyone and that anyone can join in to the extent of their ability, their level of commitment, the results they want to achieve and the amount of risk they want to take.
I hope you will consider war tax resistance as a possible avenue for people who want to expand their resistance.
I may end up having to turn this into a form letter, since there are so many other folks in the anti-war movement who could use this message.
I have publicly said for months that I am not paying my income taxes.
Since my husband and I spilt and he filed separately, and I didn’t make one penny in , I don’t think I owe any, anyway.
I welcome the chance to go to trial, or be audited for not paying my taxes.
Then I can tell the world why:
George Bush and his lying bunch of criminal neocons deceived the world into an illegal and immoral invasion of a country that was no threat to the USA.
My oldest, dearest son is dead because of their lies.
Give me back Casey and I’ll pay your damn taxes.
I also think it is immoral to pay taxes to feed the War Department and to fund more killing.
If these people think they are hurting me by their petition, I smile.
I am thinking of signing it myself.
Ideologically, there is nothing wrong with sabotaging the State or even shooting statists; either you believe the State is pure institutional aggression or you need to go back to elementary classes in basic libertarian theory.
However, for agorists there is a strong economic element involved: is this economically sound?
Morally, all but our pacifist allies should have no problem with self-defense and hence sabotage of the State.
The interesting questions arrive in the Strategic and Tactical levels.
Strategically, we refer to agorism: all counter-economic activity is considered sabotage of the State’s economic order.
So, again, we have no problem in a systematic sabotage of the State.
But how and where?
When should scarce resources be utilized for a negative, defensive purpose rather than our usual pursuit of moral profit having the positive side-effect of smashing the State?
And so we come to the Tactical level, the elegance of Counter-Economics answers our question simply: almost never.
There are two categories where sabotage may be engaged in, divided praxeologically, into production and consumption.
Consumption means that a particular counter-economist finds sabotaging the State to be his or her whim-worshipping pleasure.
Most of MLL, most of the time, cannot waste resources on such pleasures.
On the other hand, on a production level, one commits a destructive act in order to clear the way for an even more constructive act.
What object of the State could distract us to put our “dynamite” in its vile dam blocking the road to freedom?
The answer is War.
Not only is sabotaging the war machine satisfying, but downright urgent.
Lives are at stake, either draftees from home or victims of imperialism abroad.
[T]he ideological differences that exist between Cindy and Sam must be set aside in the interest of a united front against this obscene war.
If she had to do so, Cindy would describe herself as a progressive humanist who wants the militarism of America and the world to be replaced with kinder, more gentler foreign and domestic policies.
She passionately believes that the vast amounts of our tax dollars that are being dumped into war and wasted by the “War” Department every year need to be returned to our communities to build a culture of plenty and peace.
If he had to do so, Sam would describe himself as a political and economic libertarian who wants a government that is limited solely to the protection of our human rights.
This would eliminate almost all departments and agencies of the federal, state and local governments as they exist now.
Like Cindy, he wants an end to militarism, the return of all U.S. military forces to the continental U.S. and the closure of all foreign bases.
But, Cindy and Sam are “we” in this struggle against the fascist, warlike society that America has become — particularly under the Bush regime — and “we” want a lot of company.
Sheehan stood her ground, but I haven’t heard her mention her tax resistance or recommend the tactic.
I worried that maybe she’d changed her mind or decided it was too controversial to mention, both inside the anti-war movement and out.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about.
She’s back — and more tax resistery than ever:
This supplemental funding bill will pass, and I believe that giving George Bush a blank check for more killing is reprehensible and I refuse to support these crimes against humanity with my own funds.
I urge every American with a heart, compassion, and a sense for justice and a return to moral based leadership to join me in withholding our money from this murderous and callous government.
Give your money to peace or justice groups instead.
Give your money to homeless shelters; grass-roots Katrina recovery efforts; create a “Peace Scholarship” at your local college to reward a young person who doesn’t want to join the military to pay for college; give to Veteran’s groups who are advocating for better care for our veterans or a group like IVAW which is a group of returning vets who are actively trying to stop the war; give to War Resisters to support legal aid for our active duty soldiers who refuse to go to war; give to Camp Casey; give to your local peace group.
I am sure there are thousands of places to put our money besides the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex.
So many people and groups have been damaged because of our war economy.
A lot of good could be done with our tax dollars instead of funding continued killing.
Our elected officials have failed us miserably.
We elected them to oppose George and his war, not support him.
We are not being represented properly and I, for one, refuse to be taxed by them.
Cindy Sheehan continues to beat the tax resistance drum.
, she spoke in Sacramento, California.
She urged people to stop paying for war and militarism through tax resistance, as well as dedicating themselves to increased personal sacrifice in their roles as anti-war activists.
The Freewayblogger answers that frequently asked question in activist circles: “What can I do (that’s easy, safe, quick, and makes me feel all special without committing me to anything)?”
Anti-war activist and war tax resister Cindy Sheehan announced that she plans to go up against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the elections.
News reports suggest that rather than challenging Pelosi in the primary, Sheehan will launch a third-party or independent challenge for the House seat.
The anti-war activist group “Code Pink” is launching a massive nationwide war tax resistance campaign that aims to get 100,000 people to pledge to resist taxes to protest U.S. belligerence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.
We have marched, we have petitioned, we have called and emailed and urged Congress to stop buying Bush’s war.
It isn’t working.
Congress continues to vote billions of dollars toward the occupation of Iraq without any timeline for withdrawal.
It is time for us do what they don’t have the courage to do.
If Congress wants to fund the war with our dollars, well, we’ll simply refuse to give them those dollars!
When our political leaders have not listened to the will of the people, individuals have engaged in civil disobedience.
There is a great tradition of war tax resistance in the United States and it is our time to carry on that patriotic tradition.
When there are 100,000 of us who have the courage to pledge no more money for war, we will join in an act of mass civil disobedience and refuse to pay the portion of our taxes that represents the % we spend on the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Join the resistance today — you can make a difference.
The campaign will officially launch .
In Boston, an action at Boston Harbor will be attended by tax resistance pledgers including Cindy Sheehan and Ray McGovern.
In Portland, Oregon, activists will read the Declaration of Independence and perform a recreation of the Boston Tea Party action.
Other actions to launch the tax resistance campaign will occur in cities across the country.
How much of your tax payment this year would you like to allocate for water boarding in Iraq or an invasion of Iran?
Around the world, people are puzzled as to why the U.S. public allows the Bush administration to wage illegal wars and usurp our power.
Why do we tolerate it and continue to pay for it?…
…It is time for taxpayers who oppose this war to join together in nonviolent civil disobedience and show Congress how to cut off the funds for this war and redirect resources to the pressing needs of people.…
There is a great tradition of war tax resistance in the United States.
During the Mexican-American War that began in , Henry David Thoreau refused payment of war taxes and called on others to join him in resistance.
“If a thousand people were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, he asked the author of Walden, “Henry, what are doing in there?”
Thoreau responded, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”…
…Some might suspect that tax resistance is symbolic and futile.
But we want to purposely put a cog in the machine of war tax collection.
We believe it will lead to a deepening of opposition as tens of thousands of people say, “I can no longer in good conscience pay for these acts by my government.”
Mass war tax resistance, on the scale proposed, has never been done in the U.S.…
The world and history will judge us by how vigorously we resist the illegal and immoral war tactics of the Bush Administration.
My husband, friends and I have decided we can’t pay for war anymore.
What are you doing out there?
Nina Rothschild Utne, chair and editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, writes in an upcoming issue of that magazine that she, too, is enthusiastically joining the campaign:
War tax resistance is far from a new idea. But there is a bold initiative
brewing that has an elegantly simple new angle: There is safety in numbers.
The idea is to get people to sign a pledge that they will engage in civil
disobedience by withholding a percentage of their taxes, but only if a
critical mass of 100,000 signers is reached
.
Activists have spent long hours pushing for election reform, marching in the
streets, and engaging in other forms of civil disobedience against the Iraq
war with seemingly no effect, so clearly a different tack is needed. The
“I’ll jump if you will” approach to war tax resistance just might work.
My friend Jodie Evans, cofounder of Code Pink, is one of those people who
live on the barricades, sleep little, and dedicate most every waking moment
to social change. Her material desires take a backseat to her convictions,
and the ragged pink mules she has worn for years as part of her Code Pink
identity are the laughingstock of her friends. She has been arrested more
times than she can count and has been at the epicenter of many of the most
effective and mediagenic progressive campaigns of the past several decades.
But Jodie is also at home in the most rarefied strata of power. Thanks in no
small part to her, the pledge list will be seeded with participants from
business, Hollywood, and other influential enclaves, and the initiative will
be backed by a strong communications strategy.…
Some people think that a good tactic is to withhold some amount of their taxes due, in order to prevent the government from using that money to finance its empire-building.
This is a symbolic gesture, at best, because it’s not going to prevent the government from monetizing more debt and stealing the value of your savings through inflation.
Consider withholding all or part of your Federal Income Tax until US troops are withdrawn from the Middle East.
Tax-resistance is a time-honored and courageous form of protest (purely symbolic because of borrowing and deficit spending, but I can look at myself in the mirror because I don’t contribute any of my money to the war machine).
I’ve seen this argument before, and it really frustrates me.
It’s like a military commander saying “well, if we confidently defend our left flank, the enemy will just attack us from the right, so we might as well not bother.”
The government has many tools that it can use to raise funds to buy what it wants, or, hell, it can just steal what it wants if it comes down to it.
But each of these options has a set of costs to the government, and at any time, the government will likely choose from these many options the one that costs the least (give-or-take government stupidity, inefficiency, lack of foresight and so forth).
It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for anti-government activists to want to restrict these choices or to try to make the choice that is currently most favorable to the government less so.
If the government is currently funding something with tax dollars rather than with seigniorage or debt, it’s presumably doing this because, for whatever reason, it finds it advantageous to do so.
If we can make the government fall back on its second-best choice, one that costs the government more — that counts as a (small, partial) victory.
It’s going to take a lot of such small, partial victories to add up to any big wins, but that doesn’t mean that such victories are failures or “purely symbolic” things.
Making the opposition expend ever more resources to meet its goals is the slow, steady path to victory.
This sort of “it’s only symbolic, it’s not really important” thinking is usually accompanied by gestures of capitulation.
Mr. Z goes on to say that “all efforts to resist paying a portion of one’s income taxes are essentially futile, because one is still paying all other forms of taxes…” In other words, I may as well not fight the battle, because even if I win, I still won’t have won the war.
Mr. Z’s call for anarchists to “lead the way for ‘off the books’ transactions, making them more available” is followed not by some good examples of how he does this, but with what seems to be a demand that these anarchists be more-or-less completely victorious in this task before he joins them: “Find me a way to buy my house, agorist-style, and I’ll listen.”
(Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, lists a number of actions individuals can take, and notes that “Nothing will change as long as we sit around wringing our hands and whining that there is nothing that we can do about the mess we’re in.”
That’s more like it.)
I forgot to mention that tax resister Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district (and mine).
She’s successfully qualified for the ballot as an independent.
Somewhat to my surprise, the liberal knives are out.
I would have thought that Pelosi’s ginormous warchest, her name recognition, and her eminently safe Democratic district would cause her to laugh off an underfunded challenge from the left.
But I guess they’re a little scared.
Cindy Sheehan backstabbed us — she used us to catapult herself into fame, and then she stabbed us in the back when she had no more use for us.
And what’s more, she conveniently omits her support for the abolition of the IRS and the Federal Reserve on her website.
That raises another question — why should we believe her when she says she is against the war, when she has already stabbed us in the back?
…[A]nti-tax extremism kills.
Cindy Sheehan’s anti-tax extremism led to the misery and suffering of millions of people in this country, broke families and communities, destroyed relationships, and nearly brought this country down to its knees.
That is why we got the New Deal in the first place.
Cindy Sheehan’s anti-tax extremism directly led to Katrina and I-35. So, for the purity police to be claiming that Pelosi is all about death, suck on that.
Wow.
Who knew Democrats could get so unhinged over Cindy Sheehan?
Why should we believe her when she says she is against the war?!
Her anti-tax extremism caused Hurricane Katrina!
There will also be a measure on the ballot to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the “George W. Bush Sewage Plant.” I think I’ll vote this year after all.
I hadn’t heard much about tax resistance from Cindy Sheehan since she first
announced that she’d stopped paying her federal income taxes as a protest
against government policy (and the Iraq War in particular). Since then, she’s
gotten on the ballot in my Congressional district, and is running as an
independent candidate against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I was a little
worried that Sheehan had decided to downplay or even abandon her tax
resistance in part of a campaign-related effort to seem more mainstream.
Before my son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, I… dutifully obeyed stupid laws and
paid my taxes like a good, properly propagandized American.
As I wrote the checks, I never considered what my money was financing. After
Casey was killed, I became deeply ashamed that I had in some small part
funded the very thing that killed him: greedy and rampant
U.S. imperialism.
I have not paid my taxes since. I won’t pay my taxes until our money is used
for positive projects: health insurance, affordable housing, credits for
green development, jobs programs to rebuild our compromised infrastructure,
education, etc. I
can hold my head up and say that I feel that I have taken a principled stand
against this U.S.
Corporate Empire.
This out of control system needs to be overthrown and even though we still
retain a modicum of the 2nd Amendment, we do not
have the firepower it would take to militarily overthrow our Mad King George
and his Jesters. More importantly, I fear armed revolutions for the very
reason that they always install violent regimes, so I am proposing another
solution: a tax revolt.
Over the past 7+ years, our taxes have gone to pay for: killing innocent
people, torturing and detaining without due process other people (innocent
or guilty is no matter), increasing Police State America, bailing out other
finance companies, paying for private mercenary soldiers in New Orleans, Iraq
and Afghanistan and the very ephemeral notion of a “War on Terror.” Most of
us have continued to pay for these crimes against humanity. Some haven’t and
some have done so with a nagging feeling in the back of the place that is
called a “conscience.”
It is time to with hold your support from this criminally insane institution
of Government/Wall Street. Do not allow your money to be used to
bail out the fat cats. I propose:
If employed, change your withholding to M-9, (married with 9 dependents)
so no taxes are withheld from your paycheck, and do not file
.
If possible, limit your income to so you do not have to file.
Or this is the best scenario: file your taxes and deduct $2300.00 for
each member of your family and request a refund from Uncle Sam (and still
change your withholding).
Withhold a partial amount of your taxes to make a statement.
There are many ways that this government finances its schemes, but a massive
tax revolt will send reverberations throughout the rotten system.
Before Congress approves this Crime of the Century bail out, call your House
Representative and Senators (toll free: 1-877-851-6437) and tell them that
if they collude with the Bush Regime to do this, you won’t be paying your
income taxes.
Tax protest is a time honored and very courageous form of protest (i.e.:
Boston Tea Party, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi). I am not calling for a
“protest” though… we have had many of those. I am calling for you to have the
courage and integrity to join me in nothing less than a Revolution. It won’t
be easy, but neither will the resultant collapse of our economic system if
this “trickle down” plan goes through. I am tired of being trickled on… it is
time for action, not complaints or whining.
This is the only way we can stand up to power in this country and if we stand
together, they cannot divide and conquer us. Let’s reverse the trend and have
thousands “striking at the root.”
I followed the story of Cindy Sheehan while she was in the limelight, keeping the heat on the powers-that-be — especially when she added tax resistance to her repertoire of civil disobedience.
But in the last election, she decided to try to run for office — making a quixotic campaign for Nancy Pelosi’s House seat.
I was disappointed to see her wasting her time and energy, and that of her supporters, on what seemed to me a poorly-chosen quest.
…I outline a clear path for grassroots communities, from neighborhoods to associations, to divorce ourselves and declare independence from the Robber Class.
…what can we do here in the Robbed Class?
The so-called Ship of State that “turns slowly” cannot turn at all if the rudder keeps pointing in the direction of economic piracy for the Robbers and economic pillage for We the Robbed.
We can’t turn the Ship of State around, but we can turn ourselves around… most of us move more easily than this Empire laden with corruption, anyway. It’s easier to turn a canoe than an aircraft carrier!
Among the steps she’s advocating are that people shift their savings from banks to credit unions, get out of debt, reduce consumption (and when you do purchase things, buy local and consider used goods) but consider stocking up on staple goods before inflation ramps up, and work to form small-scale barter cooperatives and mutual-aid groups.
Tax resistance also makes an appearance:
Another thing to consider above the fact that our economy is intended to make us debt slaves to the banks for our entire lives, is that we fund our government’s war crimes around the world with our tax money.
I stopped paying income taxes after my son was killed in Iraq because I paid for Empire with my own flesh and blood, but now, we are financing corporate welfare and still losing our homes and jobs.
It’s not right and not paying your taxes will also send a message to Robber Class Politicians.
Much of the U.S. peace movement has been anesthetized by the one-two punch of Hope and Change, but Cindy Sheehan stayed alert and noticed that the war, militarism, and torture policies are just as worthy of disgust and revolt now as they were before the last election.
She recently tried to rally what remains of the active anti-war movement at Martha’s Vinyard, where Obama was taking a Summer break (Obama was no more interested in meeting with her than was Dubya back in the day).
Those in attendance have composed something they call an International People’s Declaration of Peace.
(This link may be to a draft, not the final declaration; I’m not sure.)
I could quibble with some of the details, I suppose, but I like the look of it.
It’s fairly tightly-focused on war & militarism, without trying to throw in a horn-of-plenty’s worth of concerns, which I think is a good thing.
Most crucially, it represents a commitment by the signers themselves to certain actions — it’s not just a set of demands they’re making of the powers-that-be, which is where many such declarations flounder.
Although it’s an “International” declaration, its focus is on the United States.
This is for the very sensible reason, the Declaration says, “that the United States of America is still, as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the ‘greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’ and the biggest arms dealer and war profiteer; citizens of the USA should acknowledge the special role that must be played and the sacrifices that must be made to help lead this planet on the path to peace and worldwide reconciliation, as the US has allowed its leaders to lead this planet in aggressive behavior.”
The signatories of the declaration pledge, among other things, that “We will not allow the fruits of our labor to be used by our governments to finance wars.”
This is the sort of thing I’ve been hoping to see for years now.
However, the peace movement is at an ebb, and the influence that Sheehan and the other signatories (I haven’t seen a list of drafters or signers yet) over what remains of this movement is uncertain.
It may be that with the collapse of the fair-weather, luke-warm liberal support of the anti-war movement, a more dedicated core remains who may be more willing to rise to the challenge of such a declaration than the more dilute movement ever was.
Hard news about this Declaration has been difficult to come by, but I think the folks putting it together are hoping to roll it out in a final form at the White House protest action being organized by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (formerly, Iraq Pledge of Resistance).
I was happy to see that that group has prominently linked “War Tax Resistance” on its web site.
I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.
On her blog, Cindy Sheehan confirms that the International People’s
Declaration of Peace (see
The Picket Line
for ) is a work-in-progress
that is just about but not quite ready for final release. They plan to do the
roll-out in time for the upcoming demonstrations at the White House.
If only we the people could finally realize that it is not up to our
governments to end war. Our governments and the War Machine are locked in a
violently greedy mutual stranglehold and could not care less about our
opinions or our children.
In my opinion, our struggles are in vain when we try to organize each other
and ourselves to go begging the Robber Class to reform itself. It’s not ever
going to happen. Throughout history we have repeatedly and to no avail
begged for our few crumbs of prosperity and peace and look where it has
gotten us… in the midst of an economic depression that is further fueled by
the blood of our troops and the blood of strangers thousands of miles away.
The Capitalist system of military conquest to perpetuate itself will never
go without a fight. So, we need to forget about our governments and their
masters, we need to reach out to each other to make firm promises that we
will never allow our governments to use us as weapons of mass destruction to
kill or oppress each other again.
That is why I am working so hard on the International People’s Declaration
of Peace (IPDoP). It proclaims our essential and intrinsic
values as human beings and our basic human right to not be subjected to
state sanctioned violence.
We can pour our hearts out in marches, elections, and petitions to beg for
what is right and rightfully ours, but it won’t be effective if we avoid the
real struggle: the revolution of values and the paradigm shift of peace
through rejecting the status quo.
The root of all war is profit and we will not allow the war profiteers to own our labor or steal the fruits of that labor to be used solely for their greed of power and money.
We will boycott products and/or services from companies that profit from war and/or companies that support nations that make war on others.
Indeed, I doubt most people will see this as a call to war tax resistance at all.
An earlier draft of the declaration included the sentence: “We will not allow the fruits of our labor to be used by our governments to finance wars.”
This was much less ambiguous.
I’m sad to see the change.
The problem with vague and ambiguous vows like these is that they are so difficult to precisely interpret that people end up interpreting them to require no action or change on their part.
Have you vowed to boycott products and/or services from companies that support nations that make war on others?
That would include every taxpaying company in the United States, you know.
You are not seriously going to consider boycotting all of them, so you will look at whichever ones you already boycott or just happen not to frequent and check the box next to that solemn vow and be satisfied that you’re doing your part.
And so your vow ends up meaning nothing at all.
Have you vowed not to allow the war profiteers to own your labor or steal the fruits of that labor to be used solely for their greed of power and money?
Better stop paying taxes, then.
Oh, but they don’t use our taxes solely for their greed of power and money; they must have other reasons too.
So I don’t really have to do anything different here, either.
Check the box; the status quo wins again.
Cindy Sheehan points out
that one advantage of practicing war tax resistance is that it makes you more
credible in your work encouraging soldiers to refuse to deploy or to resist
in other ways:
Even if you do go to prison for taking a principled stand, wouldn’t that be
better than killing a baby in one of those countries, or killing your own
mother’s baby?
You may also say: “Cindy it’s easy for you to say, you are not risking prison
yourself.” But I do, I risk it everyday because I am a conscientious tax
objector. I refuse to pay my income taxes. Personally, I find it morally
repugnant to be a combat “enabler.”
Please don’t bloody your hands for the Empire.
Peace is only possible if we do the morally upright thing, because our
governments will not.
Why do we consistently and constantly perform these symbolic actions, when
millions of people are not symbolically dying?
Have our actions over the years diminished the War Machine by one iota? Hell
no, as a matter of fact, The Empire counts on us to keep our actions symbolic,
because our symbolic actions actually strengthen The Empire.
Why?
Because we march one day and write out a check to The Empire the next day in
the form of paying our Federal Income Taxes.
Because we sign a petition one day then fill up our gas tanks at Chevron the
next day.
If we really do want real change, then we are going to have to really do
something real.
More on the anti-bullfighting tax resisters from Padrón.
Rubén Pérez, a spokesperson for the resisters, says that the city has at the same time claimed that it doesn’t have enough money in the budget to comply with animal welfare laws, but that it does have enough money to organize and fund an annual bullfighting festival.
“The city of Padrón has no moral authority to force citizens to pay taxes when it does not comply with animal protection and animal welfare laws.”
Cindy Sheehan reminds anti-war taxpayers that you get what you pay for, and there’s no sense in getting shocked when the troops you “support” do what supported troops do.
Then she suggests an alternative:
I haven’t paid my income taxes since my son was killed in Iraq in 2004.
I am ashamed that I ever paid taxes to fund the crimes of this Empire.
I started paying taxes around and this Empire was embroiled in crimes then as it was before and has been ever since.
Get this, in , Exxon, a multi-national billion-dollar crime syndicate paid zero dollars in income taxes!
Some years since , I have made enough to be required to file, most years my reportable income has been way below the filing level.
I rarely even receive letters from the IRS.
However, I would rather go to prison than know that one of my dollars went to pay for the murder, torture, false imprisonment, or oppression of one person here or abroad.
Think of it this way — what if St. Obama himself walked up to you and asked you to write him a check for two-grand so he could have money to buy a water board, or other torture apparatus, or for bullets, or for one square inch of a bomber?
Would you do it?
Some of you might, but most of you wouldn’t.
There are many ways to be war tax resisters and there are a handful of us doing it.
If more of us who really believed in peaceful conflict resolution did it that would be a far more effective and more courageous way of opposing this Empire than marching in circles.
I hadn’t heard much about Cindy Sheehan’s tax resistance for a while.
She hasn’t been mentioning it as much lately.
But she recently announced:
I just got a notice from the IRS that I owe them $104 grand and they are going to levy my bank accounts and property.
I don’t have any property and there’s less than $150.00 in my bank accounts.
Looks like Fed Prison is in my future.
I would rather go to prison than fund the crimes of this government.
I am going to send them a notice that they owe me infinity dollars for killing my son.
It would be pretty unusual for the government to send her to prison just because she didn’t have assets to cover her tax debts, though they could I suppose if they felt like making an example of her.
They simulated a bureaucratic organization and randomly assigned participants to be in a high-power role (prime-minister) or low-power role (civil servant).
The prime-minister could control and direct the civil servants.
Next, the researchers presented all participants with a seemingly unrelated moral dilemma from among the following: failure to declare all wages on a tax form, violation of traffic rules, and possession of a stolen bike.
In each case, participants used a 9-point scale (1: completely unacceptable, 9: fully acceptable) to rate the acceptability of the act.
However, half of the participants rated how acceptable it would be if they themselves engaged in the act, while the other half rated how acceptable it would be others engaged in it.
The researchers found that compared to participants without power, powerful participants were stricter in judging others’ moral transgressions but more lenient in judging their own:
“power increases hypocrisy, meaning that the powerful show a greater discrepancy between what they practice and what they preach.”
This effect is stronger when the powerful people believe they have come by their power legitimately or deservedly.
Peter J. Reilly continues his series touching on war tax resistance at his Forbes.com blog.
In this episode, he takes a second look at the court case in which William Ruhaak tried to assert a legal right to conscientious objection to military taxation, saying that Ruhaak’s argument isn’t so frivolous after all.
In another post, Reilly looks at the “paper tiger” of IRS tax enforcement, and shows how most taxpayers, if they keep their tax debt under $10,000, can get away with letting the statute of limitations expire and never have to pay it.
Cindy Sheehan has done a further write-up on her tax resistance: “I vowed that I would never, ever pay a penny to this government in the form of income taxes again, because: A) My oldest son was priceless to me and I feel this nation owes me and B) other people’s sons and daughters all over the world are precious to me and I refuse to fund their murder, torture, displacement, etc.… I will defer paying my taxes as long as slaughter abroad is the foreign policy of this government, economic terrorism is the paradigm here at home and the Bush mob continues to roam the world as unrepentant criminals.”
Cindy Sheehan has made her book Myth America Ⅱ: The Twenty Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution freely available on-line.
Here is her take on tax resistance:
Now tax evasion and tax resistance are two different things.
Tax resisters, like myself, take a moral position that we do not want our money to be used for the purposes of such things as, war, torture, environmental degradation and other immoral shit that we would not pay directly for, so why should we pay indirectly?
If Obama came up to you and asked you to write a check for $5,000 to pay for war and torture, would you give it to him?
Or would you rightly refuse?
Some tax resisters go the tax evasion route to legally avoid taxes by limiting income to under the legal plateau that would require one to file.
Others, like myself, simply do not file no matter how much, or little, we make.
If you feel that it’s your duty to support this country in its crimes, then I suggest you learn how to game the system and as thoroughly and successfully as these Robber Class entities that take plenty away, but give nothing back.
However, I do not pay my income taxes because I do not, even in a small way, want to help finance what the government is doing.
I have read that over 50% of our federal tax dollars go towards paying for wars and paying off prior wars.
After my son was killed in Iraq, I felt ashamed that I had been funding this cancerous system for years.
It’s a system that grows like a cancer and takes the lives of unsuspecting members of the Robbed Class who do not take the time to educate themselves about the disease.
The approximate Pentagon Budget for 2009 is $635 billion for the Pentagon and $168 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is over $800 billion dollars where the department of education gets $46.7 billion!
Our priorities are definitely skewed in the nation!
800 billion dollars could send every high school senior to a four-year university!
Imagine if we had a system where education was equalized for everyone, not just for the children of the Robber Class?
No one would join its army — hmmm.
Imagine what else your taxes go for — you subsidize the government to torture other people.
You give the government a portion of your hard earned money to spy on its own citizens.
You help incarcerate people in morally bankrupt “three strikes” laws and help fight the failed war on drugs.
And you guessed it, the Robber Class also benefits from the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs.
We do not pay our taxes to cover every American with universal, single-payer health care or universal university education.
We also do not pay our taxes to have every American housed.
I would pay my taxes for these things.
With the Federal Reserve System in place, federal income taxes are only a Robber Class illusion anyway — One that keeps “We the Robbed” in a constant state of political flux.
If everyone who disagreed with U.S. foreign (and/or domestic) policy stopped filing and paying their federal income taxes, that would send quite a message!
We could, and we usually do, sit around and bitch and moan about taxes.
As I pointed out in the chapter, we are literally taxed to death.
But what do we do?
Consider withholding all, or even part, of your taxes as a protest.
Learn how and the risks at: War Resister’s League.
Let’s be real — there could be some pretty stiff consequences for paying for war, but like I said in the chapter, I was ashamed when I realized that my obeisance to this Robber Class system had not only contributed to the deaths of millions of people, but to the death of my own dear son.
To me, the consequences of paying my taxes were far greater than any penalty the Robbers may throw at me — how much money is a son’s life worth?
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Carl Watner, proprietor of Voluntaryist.com has put out an anthology of works critical of the practice of taxation: Render Not: The Case Against Taxation.
“Some goods and services are essential to human survival, but voluntaryists realize that they need not be provided by the government on a coercive basis.
What we oppose is the coercion involved in collecting taxes.
We oppose the means and take the position that the ends never justifies the means.”
Austerity for the citizens and tax payers, more money for the banks and tax farmers: that’s the message the European ruling class is giving the people of Greece, and the Greeks are experimenting with ways of saying “forget it,” or in Greek: “ΔΕΝ ΠΛΗΡΩΝΩ” (I won’t pay).
The Greek government intends to combat tax resistance and evasion by increasing fees, fines, and tolls, and by slapping a tax onto electric bills: so “sales of generators have shot up” and people are threatening to simply not pay the extras.
The government says it will shut off power to those who resist, but as one resister put it: “when 70% of Greek households don’t pay it, what are they going to do?
Cut off the whole lot?”
Greek resisters are also occupying toll booths and waving cars through, sabotaging public transit ticketing machines, and unionists at the power corporation have refused to print out and send bills that contain the new tax.
The IRS has finally taken notice of Cindy Sheehan’s tax resistance, and recently took the unusual step of issuing her a summons to bring all the details of her financial life to their office so they can decide how much of it to seize.
Her response?
“We will never pay, so stop harassing us.”
A while back, the U.S. government experimented with turning some of its naughty delinquent taxpayers over to private debt collection agencies.
This, they hoped, would result in increased tax revenue, a new source of corporate profit, and some nice campaign contribution kickbacks.
It was a bit of a boondoggle, was naturally opposed by the union representing IRS employees, and was scrapped in .
But then what happened to all those cases that had been given to the private debt collection companies and then reverted to the IRS?
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration took a look. In the sample of cases they investigated, on nearly half the IRS had taken no collection actions since the cases had been returned to them.
Cindy Sheehan again addresses her tax resistance and the IRS’s use of the adjective “frivolous” to describe conscientious objection, at Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.
You can learn more of the background on the Greek tax resistance movement, in English, at Andy Worthington’s site.
Charles Carney reflects on his conversion to war tax resistance, partially motivated by the war tax resistance of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in .
I have been able to divert over $100,000 away from the Boeings and the Halliburtons of the world to the Oxfams and Amnesty Internationals and Physicians for Social Responsibility and Harvesters of the world.
It all started for me with that very liberating idea of unilateral disarmament.
What a freeing thing to be able to lay down my sword and shield.
What a freeing thing to tell the government, to tell the military-industrial complex, to tell Wall Street: “No you can’t have my money.
All my checks will be written out to the people.
All my checks will be written out to the 99 percent; no more checks written out to the 1 percent.”
Notes about the IRS policy on salary levies and on employers who are willing to work with resisters to help them resist such levies, on banks versus credit unions, and on the effectiveness of scary letters from the IRS.
Information about the upcoming International Conference of War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns, on the European Court of Human Rights case for conscientious objection to military taxation being pursued by Roy Prockter, and on a new director for the American peace tax fund promoting group.
A report from the 26th annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters.
Ed Hedemann’s proposal for “zombie war tax resistance,” in which he suggests that resisters prefill war-tax-refusing tax returns for several years in the future, and leave instructions for people to file them each year after your death.
“Why concede the ‘death’ part in that old saying about certainty?
Why give the government a break from having to deal with your resistance when you die?
What if there were a way to continue war tax resistance from the grave?”
An update on the case of imprisoned war tax resister Carlos Steward.
Some years back, Cindy Sheehan, furious at the war that had killed her son, and increasingly upset at government deceit, decided to withdraw her financial support from the federal government by resisting taxes.
She chose to refuse to file returns — completely withdrawing her cooperation from the IRS.
The IRS has since called her on the carpet and asked her to tell them details about her assets (so they can decide what to seize).
She has also refused to comply with this.
In a recent post on her blog Sheehan discusses her case, and also some of the criticism she has been getting from pro-tax American liberals.
Even in the years that they are trying to collect 105k in back taxes, fines, and interest, I re-invested most of the money I ever made by speaker’s fees, donations, or book sales right back into the movement.
Now, I intentionally live simply and don’t own anything the establishment considers of value.
If the IRS goes looking for my assets, they will not find anything.
If I had some kind of secret trust fund, I certainly wouldn’t be scraping by for rent money every month.
I don’t own anything and I don’t want or even need to own anything that the 1% tells me that I need to own to make my life “worthwhile.”
I have had to pare my life down to one that is oriented, not around things, but around ideas, people, activism, peace and mostly, love.
The IRS has filed a petition asking a district court judge to compel war tax resister Cindy Sheehan to provide the agency with detailed financial information.
She had previously declined to provide such information in response to an IRS “Collection Information Statement” summons.
The agency is hoping to find assets they can seize to satisfy a tax debt that has accumulated since she stopped paying taxes in reaction to her son’s death as a U.S. soldier in Iraq.
“I see nothing but opportunity in this new development,” Sheehan says.
“When those papers were filed against me, the Feds did something that I have been trying to do for years: put its evil, illegal, and immoral wars on trial.
The Feds have thrown down the gauntlet against someone who has absolutely not one ounce of fear of them, and when it’s over, they’ll know they have been in a fight.”
I did an interview with the BBC.
I don’t like the BBC and I usually have distasteful experiences, but it has such a huge audience, I try to swallow my distaste and just do the interviews.
Seamus, the host, didn’t disappoint me — he was just like all the rest — combative and sensationalist.
At one point he asked me something like this:
“Cindy, given the fact that the Military Industrial Complex is so large and powerful, what kind of impact do you think not paying your taxes has on it?”
Well, at least I can read the latest act of horror committed by my country or its adjuncts and think to myself, “at least I didn’t fund that.”
How can one say he/she is against war and other atrocities, yet pay for them?
And Seamus was right, withholding my money and using it for good rather than evil doesn’t seem to be slowing down the war machine even a little bit, but what if conscientious war tax resistance were a movement and not a statement by just a few?
After that interview with Seamus and the meeting at the Peace House in war-torn, but healing Belfast, I received an email from one of my attorneys who is helping me with my tax issues telling me that my hearing before a magistrate to try and force me to comply will probably be on in Sacramento.
At the meeting at the Peace House, a gentleman asked me if I would go to prison rather than pay my taxes.
I don’t want to go to prison in the U.S.A. — that’s one of the last things in the world I want to do.
I don’t think that it will come to that, but my answer to the gentleman was, “Yes.”
This is one of the multitude of reasons why:
The other day, I saw a video report from the BBC, not some left wing anti-Semitic, radical news source, that told about an Israeli soldier that lined three sisters ages four to eight up against the side of their home in Gaza and shot them — killing two and crippling the four year old.
By conservative estimates, the U.S. gives Israel ten million per day for military aid.
Would I rather go to prison than fund the murder of these young girls and millions more?
That’s not a hard choice for me.
In Belfast, the British troops finally left, forced out by a combination of non-violent protest and armed struggle.
Tax resistance is one of the most non-violent forms of resistance that I can think of: One that can make a profound difference.
I hope we can Occupy Peace and grow the tax resistance movement to really and non-violently make a difference.
We must ask ourselves if funding the execution of babies is something that our moral center is comfortable with.
War tax resister Vickie Aldrich
reports that she’s getting some help from students at the University of
New Mexico law school in her fight against an
IRS
“frivolous filing” penalty:
They will argue it not in terms of my position on war taxes or the
IRS
regulations but in terms of “case law” and in relation to how the penalty
was applied. I’ll know more as time goes by. I was surprised at how much I
was relieved at this news. I was a bit disappointed that they suspect it
will take more than one semester. I fantasized that it was like a western
movie scene when the cavalry would come riding in to the rescue, the
IRS
would look up from their desks and drop everything and run shouting “look
look it’s New Mexico law students!,” “we give up.” Evidently, this is not
the case, we are not at the end, just beginning a new chapter.
New war tax resister Chris Gaunt explains what led her to take her stand, in Iowa’s Your Weekly Paper.
I would like this to be a movement. I do know that there’s many, many people
who are conscientious tax objectors around the country, but I think we need
to make it a movement with more and more people joining us.
There are many ways people can be conscientious tax objectors. You don’t have
to do it 100% like I do. You can not pay part of your taxes, you can write
letters to the
IRS on
tax day, you can have protests on tax day.
Many people think that they have too much to lose, to go like I do. I have
pared down my life to where… I’m in my bedroom right now, looking at
everything I own. So I have really sacrificed a lot of material comforts to
do what I do right now: I don’t own a car, I don’t own a home, I don’t own
any property. And that’s been pretty much intentional for me.
So I would like April 19th, 2012, when I’m having
this court hearing, if there’s anybody in the area, to come and let’s have a
rally and let’s Occupy the
IRS
that day. To show, first of all, support for me, but to show that I’m not the
only one that feels this way, that our tax money is used for really nefarious
and evil purposes.
Shortly after Tax Day, Cindy Sheehan will appear in court where the IRS will ask a judge to compel her to fill out a collection information statement so they can find assets to seize for her back taxes (or, possibly, so they can determine she doesn’t have enough assets to be worth pursuing).
When the IRS takes Cindy Sheehan to court to try to force her to support the war machine that killed her son, other war tax resisters from Northern California will be standing with her.
On , the IRS will ask a judge of the U.S. Federal Court, California Eastern District (501 I St., Sacramento) to compel Cindy Sheehan to give them information that would help them collect money from her.
Northern California War Tax Resistance supports Sheehan’s continued refusal to cooperate.
Cindy Sheehan is not waiting for Congress to shut off the spigot of funding for war and militarism — she’s taking a stand of conscience by refusing to pay the taxes that make the wars possible.
And she’s not alone: war tax resisters across the country are refusing to pay into the Pentagon’s budget.
Among them are members of the group Northern California War Tax Resistance.
“I wish more antiwar activists would put their money where their mouth is like Cindy does,” says David Gross, 43, of Berkeley, California.
Gross hasn’t paid any federal income tax .
“I didn’t feel like I could really say I was against the wars until I stopped supporting them with my tax dollars, so I decided to stop paying.
Now I put all of my energy on the side of my values instead of being a reluctant parttime worker for the Pentagon.”
Jan and David Hartsough of San Francisco, California, have been resisting the federal telephone excise tax , and today they also refuse to pay half of their federal income tax.
“The U.S. Government has already taken Cindy’s son for the immoral and illegal war in Iraq,” David says.
“She should not in addition be forced to pay for other mothers’ sons to kill and be killed in Afghanistan.”
“This year I’m celebrating of refusing to pay war taxes to the federal government,” says Jon Marley, 50, of Berkeley, California.
“I choose this kind of civil disobedience because I believe it is morally wrong for the U.S. to spend nearly 50% of our taxes on murder, torture, and rape in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
We should be using those dollars for projects that provide housing and food and education and health care.
Cindy Sheehan understands this, and that’s why she has my full support in her brave stand as a war tax resister.”
“How many of our sons and daughters must die in faraway lands?
And how many faraway sons and daughters must die at their hands?” asks war tax resister Susan Quinlan of Berkeley, California, who has been resisting taxes .
“Thank you to Cindy Sheehan and to the other mothers and fathers who say ‘no!’ to this military madness!
Not our children, not their children, and not with our taxes!”
Martha Cain, of Berkeley, California, says: “[Former U.S. Secretary of State] Alexander Haig said [of antiwar protesters], ‘Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’
Cindy Sheehan interpreted this advice and acted on it.
I support and admire Cindy for her courage and commitment in refusing to pay for more violence in this world.”
“I refuse to allow any of my tax money to be spent on wars, torture, rape, and killing people for whatever excuse the government and our corporations want to make up,” says Xan Joi, of Berkeley, California.
“To attempt to force Cindy Sheehan to pay for this war on Iraq that actually took her child’s life is unconscionable, immoral — and demanding that she participate in supporting, condoning, and accepting the murder of her own child — let alone other mothers’ children.
I feel so tender toward the women of this nation and other nations that I will not allow myself or others to injure their sons and daughters.
Cindy Sheehan is a courageous mother who is refusing to be bought by the greed of our nation.
I support her stands.”
“I have been resisting the military portion of my income taxes since
Vietnam,” says Lorin Peters, 69, of Lafayette, California. “For two reasons:
our military is being used for domination and empire, and not for defense;
[and] nonviolent defense works better than violent defense, as was
demonstrated by Gandhi and others.”
Sheehan appreciates the company: “I would like this to be a movement,” she
says. “There are many, many people who are conscientious tax resisters around
the country, but I think we need to make it a movement with more and more
people joining us. There are many ways people can be conscientious tax
objectors. You don’t have to do it 100% like I do.”
one of the signs used by Sheehan supporters who gathered at the federal courthouse in Sacramento yesterday
Yesterday the
IRS
took war tax resister Cindy Sheehan to federal court to ask a judge to
compel her to turn over information about her finances so they could find
assets to seize.
And the agency completely struck out. The judge told them that if they want
Sheehan to come in and talk to them, they should ask her nicely. But can’t
you make her come in and answer our questions? they asked. Maybe I
could but I won’t, the judge said.
There is a second hearing scheduled for at which time the judge may reconsider.
During the hearing, the judge said others have made political statements with tax protests while still managing to comply with the law.
“Finally, someone in this government recognizes my pain,” she told reporters.
Sheehan has agreed to meet again with the
IRS,
but not to answer their questions or to pay the taxes the agency says she
owes. “No matter if the government says I owe a penny or $100,000, I’m not
paying one penny to them,” she told supporters outside after the hearing.
When I decided to be a conscientious objector to war tax, I knew that the
consequence could be harassment and/or punishment, but I decided to do it
long before I became well known as a gadfly to Empire. I was willing to
accept those consequences because I felt that if I were put on trial, the
reasons that I don’t fund war crimes would have to also be put on trial, and
I think it’s the only way that the illegality of the wars can actually get a
hearing.
I have an advisor who is an experienced tax attorney who advises the National
War Tax Resister’s [sic] Coordinating Committee and he feels that the
Empire may be targeting me to get publicity and to intimidate others from
taking the same course of action that I actually encourage others to do, so
he could inform me as to what usually happens every step of the way, but my
case could be “special” and contain many surprises, a few which did occur in
court today.
Before I continue, I’d like to say that since I have become an antiwar
“criminal,” my respect for the legal profession has grown by leaps and
bounds. I have always managed to attract some amazing attorneys to help me in
my cases always on a pro bono basis and this case is no
exception. My attorney of record in California is San Francisco attorney,
Dennis Cunningham, who has been involved in many protest cases and advising
us is Peter Goldberger in Pennsylvania. I am so thankful for the help of my
attorneys and for the
NWTRCC
and I honestly don’t know what I would do without their legal help and peer
support.
Anyway, there was a pre-hearing rally in Sacramento today and supporters came
there from Los Angeles, Ventura, San Jose, San Francisco, Nevada City and
Sacramento — we filled the small courtroom after the rally
(my pre rally statement is linked here).
After we went through security and had to relinquish cameras and the signs we
had pinned to us showing my son’s picture and my picture and No War
Taxes printed on top, we went to the courtroom where my hearing was the
final one on a short docket of four.
We were arguing that I had a 1st Amendment right
to the protest and a 5th Amendment right against
self-incrimination and the attorney for the
IRS and
her buddies that traveled from D.C.
(yes, of course, this is not a political persecution) argued that a “blanket
5th” is not allowed by case law and rulings and
she wanted me to be ordered to go to a room in the federal building to answer
questions about my “assets.” (My lawyer brilliantly argued that the “secret”
agencies already had all that information on me, anyway) — but there was no
way that I was going to be blindsided by an unwarranted demand like that and
this is where some extraordinary things happened.
Dennis was able to expound at length about our fears of political retribution
and my moral opposition to the wars and he was able to iterate that I was
against militarism and the huge proportion of our taxes that go towards it.
This is what I have always wanted — the position of Peace had its day in
court today! I was thrilled beyond belief, but what happened when Dennis
finished literally blew me away.
The Magistrate who presided over the hearing, John Moulds, is an older man
whom my attorney said has been on the bench for years and years, but is known
to be “fair” and not too “excitable.”
The Magistrate said that he read all of our motions and he looked me right in the eyes from across the room and with great emotion in his voice he said, “It strikes me as a civilized way to protest uncivilized acts.”
(Reuters)
I actually started to cry because it was such a beautiful thing to say in
such a loving way and I can’t ever recall anyone in the government and/or
establishment that has ever genuinely acknowledged my pain and practically
admitted that what happened to Casey and my family was disordered. Oh, many
democrats pretended that they were sorry for my pain, but they were only
doing it for crass political gain — and when the republicans acknowledged it,
they were “thanking” me for my son’s brave service to the country — I don’t
know which approach was worse, but I felt no compassion until today.
Then the lady from D.C. said that she
could “sympathize with conscientious objectors” but “losing a son” was no
excuse to “break the law with impunity.” What’s the empire’s excuse for
breaking the law with impunity in many ways on every day?
Dennis and I agreed to meet with the
IRS at
a future date so I could do a line by line 5th
amendment claim to each question and the lady from
D.C. requested that the magistrate order
me to comply and show up for the meeting and he said something like, “I want
the parties to talk, this hearing is over and I have 45 days to make a ruling
one way or the other on your motion — I may, or I may not.” According to
Peter, this is also something unprecedented.
I came away feeling very energized and encouraged by today’s proceedings and
if the Empire wants to make someone cower before them in fear to intimidate
others, they picked the wrong person. Even if the magistrate hadn’t been so
favorable to our side, I still would feel triumphant.
The fissures of imperial overreach and excess are widening and the Empire is
being exposed for the ridiculous bully it really is.
No Empire lasts forever and the terribly destructive nature of ours requires
us to help its inevitable collapse. I am doing everything I can in my own
small ways with all the courage I can muster and I appreciate all the support
and help I get along the way.
Cindy Sheehan met with the IRS the other day to hear their questions for her about her finances, but she didn’t much feel like giving answers.
She shares what happened on her blog.
An excerpt:
There was no ruling from the Magistrate at my hearing on
whether I could use a “blanket 5th” for the
IRS
form 433-A, but we agreed to meet with the
IRS on
…
to do a “line by line” answer for my “assets.” Basically, every answer was
“No” or “Zero,” but I do receive contributions for my books and speaking that
pay the expenses for Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox and which allow me to be a
full-time activist… so I did take the 5th on my
bank account records. Confirming my suspicion that the feds either want me to
perjure or incriminate myself, after I answered “no” to the automobile
question, the Revenue Officer pulled up my
DMV
record showing that I owned a Toyota Camry — which I transferred to my son
last year after his only form of transportation died on him. It was barely my
car anyway as I also try very hard not to purchase fuel. I had the feeling
that I was asked many questions that the feds already have the answer to.
Clare Hanrahan’s tax day speech:
“We must stop supporting this system of destruction.
Not merely because it is immoral and unjust, but because it is illegal — according to International Law.”
counseling notes — Congress considers revoking passports from tax delinquents, the IRS struggles to cope with a flood of tax fraud, and Ed Hedemann suggests low-income tax resisters inflate the numbers on their income tax statements so they have something to resist.
international news — tax resistance in Spain, and a new nonviolent campaign guide from War Resisters’ International
legal news — updates on the Frank Donnelly and Cindy Sheehan cases
action reports and photos
reports from the NWTRCC national gathering in Chicago
The 200-person town of Gallifa in Catalonia, Spain, has begun tax resistance as a municipality — by refusing to pay €1,662.62 income tax due on the salaries of the employees at the tax office.
The town government is controlled by the small separatist coalition party “Catalan Solidarity for Independence.”
There have been other rumblings of tax resistance lately in Catalan independence circles, and some people have made a symbolic gesture of trying to pay their federal taxes directly to the Catalan regional government.
A not particularly favorable Spanish-language news article about the Gallifa action gives a good overview of Catalan nationalist tax resistance in recent years (translation mine):
The group from local Barcelona-area government is considering conducting the same action with other taxes, such as the contributions for Social Security.
In , Òmnium Cultural, a radical separatist group that tops the list in terms of subsidies received, launched a new challenge against the present law — more than those it is accustomed to raise — that the federal government grant the Catalan regional government an economic treaty [like the ones that make the Basque region and Navarre more fiscally independent] in the next four years, or it will promote “tax resistance” against the Tax Agency.
This proposal was dismissed by the Catalan government — which considered it “interesting” — and by CiU, while the PSC called it “appealing” but “unrealistic.”
Gallifa is not the only municipality that has initiated an action of this sort.
The Consistory of San Vicente dels Horts (Barcelona) — chaired by the ERC leader Oriol Junqueras — or of Gerona — with Carles Puigdemont (CiU) in charge — also attempted to cheat the national Treasury, but eventually backed down.
I’ve had less luck trying to parse this article (in Italian), but the gist of it seems to be that Italy’s “Northern League” is threatening tax resistance (though it seems I’ve heard similar bluster from them in the past, without much to show for it).
The gist of the grievance is similar to that of Catalonia — that taxes paid by people that live in the region don’t go to provide services there but to prop up economically poorer regions of the country.
Northern League-allied mayors are threatening to kick out the agency that collects federal taxes, and to instead collect and spend these taxes themselves at the local level.
Laura McGonigle said: “I’ve always enjoyed being a public representative and taken the rough with the smooth but tonight was horrendous.
“While everyone is entitled to protest, I felt extremely intimidated and unsafe in our democratically-elected chamber.”
Bill Evans, a pensioner living near Hartlepool, England, is refusing to pay his council tax because the government services it pays for have become so shoddy.
“It has reached the stage where I feel the only thing I can do now is stop paying my council tax,” he says.
“The council is not fulfilling its commitment and I will have my day in court.”
The New York Times profiles American alternative currency martyr Bernard von NotHaus, who is facing serious prison time for minting a set of coins for people who were losing faith in the government’s official legal tender.
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:
Another town in Catalonia, Alella, has begun refusing to forward its municipal taxes to the Spanish central government and is instead paying the money to the Taxation Agency of Catalonia, as part of a spreading Catalan nationalist tax resistance movement.
(Més)
If you missed the conference call with Cindy Sheehan, Ruth Benn, Ed Hedemann and three other war tax resisters talking shop, you can hear a recording here.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has an update on tax fraud perpetrated by U.S. prisoners, an industry that has been growing in recent years.
In , prisoners filed at least 91,434 tax returns that claimed $757,600,000 in refunds that they did not legally qualify for.
The IRS caught most of this in time, but still issued $35,200,000 in refunds they wish they hadn’t.
A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up.
Here’s the highlight reel:
The IRS has been pursuing war tax resister Cindy Sheehan for months, and not long ago they hauled her into court to try to get a judge to order her to cough up financial information they could use against her. She fought back, with help from NWTRCC and its legal advisor. The IRS has apparently thrown in the towel! Sheehan posted to her blog a letter she got from the agency in which it informs her that they have withdrawn their summons.
Some notes on the taxable income baseline, how to adjust your withholding as a new employee, and the latest news on the telephone excise tax resistance front.
A “Pull the Pork” protester outside of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of military contractor Lockheed Martin
A coalition of groups have organized a “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” national day of action to try to point out that the sacred cow of Pentagon spending is really a pricey pig in a poke.
Levante profiles ecological and antimilitarist activist Francesc García Barberà, who was involved in the Spanish struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection to military service, and in its war tax resistance movement. Excerpts (my translation):
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.
notes on a seeming IRS capitulation in the Cindy Sheehan case, the prospects for war tax resistance communities, and the scoop on Social Security levies
ideas and actions such as marching war tax resisters in Austin, next Fall’s New England Regional Gathering, and a call for more fraud in military spending
news about the upcoming May NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville, North Carolina
Cindy Sheehan addresses the Spring 2013
NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville, North Carolina
I’m back from Asheville, North Carolina, where NWTRCC
was holding its Spring 2013 national gathering: A pretty town, though it was
a stormy weekend so we didn’t get out much.
There are several distinct varieties of war tax resister, each with subtly different motives for their resistance and a somewhat different idea of what war tax resistance is meant to accomplish. Because of this, when we counsel or try to recruit new resisters, it is important that we take the time to learn what sort of resisters they are.
Leanne Brown has published Good and Cheap: A SNAP Cookbook — a handsome guide to cooking tasty, nutritious meals on a budget — that’s available for free on-line.
Cindy Sheehan puts in another good word for war tax resistance at her blog:
“Petitions, Marches, and Rallies, Oh My!” — “I had a showdown with the IRS and the IRS was the one that blinked. I am not a legal expert or expert on WTR, but it’s lucky that I know some people who are and I also know that they would be happy to answer any questions you have. I think the time has long passed that we just give lip service, or shoe leather to what we believe in. It’s time to take a stand. If you oppose war, why do you pay for it?”
American conservative radio show host Jason Lewis walked off the air after announcing that he would be “going Galt” to avoid paying taxes (or, I suspect, mostly to publicize his new project: galt.io).
Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal
income tax filing deadline approaches in the
U.S.:
The Independent also ran a second article — The new tax resistance? — about a Baltimore woman named Kesh, who has stopped paying her taxes:
This year she isn’t paying because she began thinking more about where her
tax money goes and she feels like she can’t keep paying the government. “It’s
not going to anything that I can see personally that is going to benefit me,”
Kesh, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “But me paying it is
definitely going to hit me. Not having that money that needs to go towards
other things that I have to pay — that affects me immediately. That’s a loss
for me.”
The inauguration of President Donald Trump only worsened her feeling about
the situation. First, because she has her doubts about whether Trump has
bothered to pay his fair share of taxes, and second, because his
administration seems to be waging a war against people like her. “I’m all the
groups that are hated. I’ve decided to come to earth in this body and be
black, be a woman, gay, so you know, I get hit on every side of it,” she
says. “I was a teenaged mother, I’m a single mom — I’m all the things [Trump
and Republicans] hate.”
Living in Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015
and where just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to hamper
police reform, taxes funding the police are an issue for her as well. (Police
are primarily funded through local and state governments, but Kesh isn’t
paying state taxes either.)
“I know that my tax money is going to the police and I can walk down the
street and get shot,” she says. “I can get shot by my own money and get
killed by my own money and there’s no one that’s gonna do shit about it. So
basically I’m giving you money to kill me and people that look like me.”
Unlike long-time tax resisters, Kesh is new to this. She doesn’t know where
it will lead her yet — hence her decision not to use her name. The Internal
Revenue Service may target her, but not paying feels right.
“I’m basically saying, ‘Fuck you.’ ” she says. “I’m keeping my money.”
The Satyagraha Foundation for Nonviolence Studies is continuing its series on tax resistance with A Call for Tax Resistance — “a joint appeal from leading nonviolent activists and organizations, urging US taxpayers to nonviolently express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration by refusing to pay a symbolic amount of their US federal income tax, and instead donate that amount to a deserving charity or institution.”
War tax resisters’ letters-to-the-editor and op-eds are starting to appear, too, including ones from:
