Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Italy → Catholic war tax resisters, 1985–

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The emerging Spanish tax resistance movement, which combines the war tax resistance movement with a broader anti-austerity / community-autonomy focus, has put out a video (and has helpfully translated it into English for its overseas fans):

• An article about Catholic women activists included a note about war tax resistance in Italy that was news to me (translation mine):

  War tax resisters and peace activists in war zones

  In the 1980s, in Italy, Beati Costruttori Della Pace [“blessed are the peacemakers”] was born. While it is not an exclusively female organization, it emphasizes the participation of women. At its creation, religious people were involved who were motivated by war tax resistance. Instrumental at its launch was a document defending this practice signed in the Fall of 1985 by Lorenzo Belloni, bishop of Trieste and president of the Peace & Justice Commission, and by ten thousand laypeople and five thousand nuns, monks, and priests. All of them pledged to practice and spread war tax resistance. The founding document says: “peace is central to the Church if it wants to remain faithful to the risen Christ. Peace cannot be delegated but is entrusted to each person in everyday life.” This association, in addition to war tax resistance, has organized nonviolent intervention marches in war zones like Sarajevo, Kivu, or Ramallah. It also promotes campaigns against the manufacture of landmines, nuclear energy, and military bases on Italian soil.

• The Historic Ipswich Massachusetts blog pointed out that the Ipswich post office has a mural representing an assembly of colonial Americans debating how they would resist taxes that had been illegally imposed by Governor Andros:

  This act of resistance has been called “the foundation of American Democracy,” and was the beginning of a series of events which eighty-eight years later culminated in the Revolutionary War. The act of opposition is commemorated in the seal of the town of Ipswich, which bears the motto, “The Birthplace of American Independence 1687.”

  In 1687 John Andrews was chairman of the selectmen, the town clerk was John Appleton and the minister at Chebacco Parish was the popular John Wise. They met with other town leaders to discuss the command of crown-appointed governor Sir Edmond Andros and his council that a new tax be assessed on the king’s subjects. A town meeting was hastily organized the next day which voted that “no taxes should be Levied upon the Subjects without consent of the Assembly chosen by the Freeholders.” For this act Rev. Wise, John Andrews, John Appleton, Samuel Appleton, William Goodhue, Robert Kinsman, and Thomas French were arrested and tried before the court in Boston. They were severely handled, imprisoned for several weeks and fined. Sam Appleton refused to give the bond and was kept a prisoner from November to March under very harsh conditions.

  A group of provincial militia and citizens gathered in Boston on April 18, 1689 and arrested several dominion officials as well as members of the Church of England who were suspected of sympathizing with the administration. Major Samuel Appleton was among the men who helped escort Andros to Castle Island in Boston Harbor as a prisoner. Leaders of the former Massachusetts Bay Colony then reclaimed control of the government, rescinded the tax order, and Andros was shipped back to England. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed governance under their earlier charters as well.

Your international tax resistance news round-up:

• In northern Italy, a group of small businesses have united under the banner “protesta fiscale ad oltranza” (tax protest to the bitter end) to begin to refuse paying taxes.

  We can no longer pay protection money to a phantom state. Join this group of people who have decided to lift our heads, a group of businesspeople who have had enough of this extortion practiced by a corrupt and criminal class with their legal scam of extorting money from businesspeople, from companies, from Italian households to expend revenues on their own interests, while starving citizens who cannot pay more under threats and victimization from the tormenters of the state.

  (Caveat: I pieced this translation together from Google Translate and some educated guesses based on Spanish grammar.)

• In Italy, Daniela Fregosi has started resisting taxes in protest against the way the government discriminates against the self-employed when it subsidizes medical treatment. Fregosi is battling breast cancer and, when she discovered how flimsy the social security benefits were for self-employed people like herself, she decided to stop paying for them:

  [I decided to begin resisting] in December, when I got the bill from INPS [for the social security tax] — about three thousand Euros! When they asked me for that money, I felt like an ATM with breast cancer. So after having paid the INPS contribution every year since 1992, I decided not to pay it.

  Dear Thoreau, father of the fight against the state and power, as well as an emblem of civil disobedience and tax resistance, help me. Sustain and encourage me with your wise words so I do not feel alone: “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now.”

• In Italy, Giovanni Paolo Ramonda, general manager of the Community of Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, spoke at a conference on the theme of “peace is the best defense.” He called on the government to create a “Ministry of Peace” and to allow taxpayers to choose to direct their taxes there instead of to military spending, and, “in the absence of this… we call on everyone to perform war tax resistance.”
• In England, Hedley Lester has stopped paying his council tax in protest against the U.K.’s militarism.

  Mr Lester told the court that domestic and international laws stipulate that when war is illegal, the collection and payment of council tax to the government is a war crime.

  Mr Lester argued that the money going to Havant council went into a central pot of government cash.

  He told magistrates: “International law applicable to the U.K. as well as our own domestic legislation forbids me from becoming party to criminal acts being committed on an ongoing basis by the U.K. government.

  “It overrides any otherwise lawful requirement placed upon me by U.K. government. I submit it is beyond the scope of the powers of any public body, in this case Havant Borough Council, to require anyone to commit a crime.”

  He added: “I am not trying to achieve national chaos. I am trying to achieve the end of this country’s illegal and immoral use of war.”

  Lester lost his court case and is appealing.
• In Malakasa, Greece, the mayor, deputy mayor, and aldermen were among those arrested at a toll gate protest at which the protesters raised the gates and waved cars through, and later destroyed some of the tollbooths. In another action in 2011, the mayor of Pelasgias took a city-owned bulldozer and knocked down the railings along the roadside leading up to a tollbooth, creating a bypass around it.
• A movement that is resisting increased fares on government-run monopoly public transit, which I first noticed in Mexico under the name “Pos Me Salto” has gone thoroughly international. In Rio de Janiero, Brazil, protesters of the passe livre movement occupied the central station:

  After marching peacefully from the Candelaria area dozens of activists from the Black Block group sprinted off and entered the station before police could close the gates. They smashed turnstiles, waved flags and entreated commuters to enter the train system without paying.

  Riot police and station security temporarily regained territory with pepper spray and percussion grenades, but after a brief hiatus the demonstrators regained control of the concourse and started drumming, dancing and singing as passengers — many clutching handkerchiefs to their faces because of the pungent police gas in the terminal — passed by without paying.

  “I totally support this protest,” said Fabiana Aragon, a red-faced, teary-eyed health worker who was heading home after work. The 43-year-old said she spent almost a third of her 1,000 reals income on transport fares but still had to endure long delays, dirty trains and hot, crowded carriages without air conditioning. “The situation now is absurd.”

• Meanwhile, in London, England, a mini fare strike was launched to support the unions of transit employees. The government is hoping to cut back on ticket booth workers in favor of vending machines; the union, naturally, disapproves. As part of the union’s pressure tactics, they have decided on periodic “revenue actions:”

  This means that station staff will refuse to carry out “revenue duties”, including selling and checking tickets. Ticket office windows will be closed and ticket machines will be powered down. Revenue Inspectors will not conduct checks and issue penalty fares, and, except in cases where crowd control means it’s unsafe to do so, ticket gates will be kept open. In other words… free travel!

• The December 9 Committee in southern Italy, part of a movement popularly known as Forconi (“Pitchfork”) have started ramping up a tax resistance campaign. They’re starting with a small, easy-to-resist tax: the television licence fee.

  Resources are being organized with sample letters, flyers, and volunteer counselors who will inform and assist anyone who wants to stop paying a tax we consider illegitimate. “We expect a lot of participation, with tens of thousands of people participating and sending a strong warning to those responsible.”

• In Catalonia, the nationalist movement is pressing for a referendum on independence from Spain, though one which the Spanish government has already said it has no intentions of honoring (or even permitting). The movement has long been engaging in sporadic, and mostly symbolic, tax resistance actions. Recently the Catalan National Assembly considered launching a fresh tax resistance campaign.

  With this campaign (“From disobedience to sovereignty”) the ANC proposes that rather than paying taxes to the national Treasury to pay them into the Catalan Government, to initiate a “progressive disengagement from the State.”

  When the city council of Vilablareix backed a similar plan in 2012, they were taken to court by the state government for this show of rebellion. (The complaint was dismissed on the grounds that the support was rhetorical and did not involve the council in any overt impropriety.) More recently six more Catalan municipalities have begun illegally paying the income tax withheld from the paychecks of city workers as well as the value-added tax collected locally into the Catalan tax agency instead of the federal one. This brings the total number of such municipalities up to 59, with another 172 having expressed that they plan to do so at some point.