Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
Catholic Worker movement →
Dorothy Day
I came across a new web resource yesterday — new to me anyway — The Catholic Worker Movement archives.
In this excerpt from The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day mentions a visit to what she describes as a sort of low-income tax resisters’ commune:
It isn’t entirely clear from Day’s description whether the ascetic and communal lifestyle was adopted in order to facilitate tax resistance or whether this was just one beneficial side-effect of a practice adopted for other reasons.
New York (UPI) — At least 360 persons, including a Nobel Prize winner, a leading
folk-singer, and a controversial Yale professor, have refused to pay all or
part of their federal income taxes for in
protest to “illegal use” of
U.S. forces in
such areas as Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic.
A statement issued by the group said some of the protestors will leave their
tax money in banks where it can be seized by the Internal Revenue Service.
Others, it said, will contribute the money to charities.
The Federal Revenue Code provides for jail sentences of up to one year and
fines as high as $10,000 for conviction of willful refusal to pay federal
income taxes.
Among the protestors who signed the statement were
Prof. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi,
nobel prize-winning bio-chemist; folk singer Joan Baez;
Prof. Staughton Lynd of
Yale, who made an unauthorized trip to Viet Nam last December; veteran
pacifist the Rev. A.J.
Muste; Helen Merrell Lynd; co-author of “Middletown;[”] poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti; publisher Lyle Stuart;
Prof. William Davidon of
Haverford College; Prof.
Carroll C. Pratt of Rider College; editor Dorothy Day of The Catholic Worker,
and Prof. John M. Vickers
of the University of Illinois.
A version of the same story in
The Milwaukee Journal has some minor wording
changes, lists CARE and
UNICEF as two of the charities some of the
resisters are redirecting their taxes to, notes that “Almost every state in
the union is represented in the group,” and adds a couple of paragraphs about
Wisconsin resisters:
Dr. Carl M. Kline, a Wausau
psychiatrist who formerly practiced in Milwaukee, was one of the signers. He
said: “I am just going to refuse to pay a part of it, and I will leave that
money in my bank account. I realize you can’t beat this thing, but it is a
matter of expressing my feelings. I am a Quaker, and I am against war
altogether, but I feel particularly that our action in Vietnam is wrong, and
this is my way of protesting. I wish I could do more.”
Another Wisconsin signer was Kenneth Knudson, of Madison. Knudson picketed
the Madison internal revenue office in and
to protest use of federal funds for
military purposes.
That article also adds this detail:
Miss Baez earlier had refused to pay 60% of her
federal income tax to protest government
expenditures for armament. The internal revenue service collected more than
$34,000 from her after attaching a lien to her income and property.
Arthur Harvey, then an organic farmer from Hartford, Maine, was profiled in Samuel Fromartz’s book Organic, Inc. because of his legal battle to make sellers who use the “organic” buzzword adhere to the genuine standards of that variety of food production.
In the course of this, Formartz also mentions Harvey’s war tax resistance:
It was not the first time Harvey had gone up against the federal government.
As a tax resister opposed to military spending, “especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world,” Harvey had refused to file or pay federal income taxes since .
His wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, hadn’t paid federal taxes since .
Instead, they donated time and money to social service and environmental organizations.
The IRS had come knocking at their door a couple of times, then seized the family’s property in and demanded $62,000 in back taxes and penalties — about three times the annual income of the farm.
When they did not pay, the IRS took the rare step of auctioning off the property at a town office across the street from their house, with protesters outside.
They initially lost the blueberry field to a bidder, though luckily no one bid on the house, perhaps because it had only rudimentary plumbing and no electricity.
Eventually, Gravalos’s mother bought the house, and the couple’s daughter successfully bid on another parcel of the land, which she later swapped for the blueberry field.
They were back in business.
Harvey, an affable and intelligent man with a wiry physique, perhaps owing to his vegetarian diet, said the lesson he learned from that fight was not to stop being a tax resister, but to avoid owning property in his own name that could be seized by the government.
“We own a couple of cars, so I guess they could go after those, but they aren’t worth much,” he told me.
Aaron Falbel wrote about the blueberry-growing couple for the War Resisters League’s magazine in :
Arthur Harvey has not filed a federal tax return or paid income tax .
His partner, Elizabeth Gravalos hasn’t filed or paid .
Until recently, the Internal Revenue Service gave them little trouble.
“They visited us twice, once around and again around , back when we lived in New Hampshire,” Harvey says.
“Probably they concluded we had nothing much worth taking and perhaps were not subject to much tax anyway,” he adds.
But after the Gravalos/Harvey family moved to Maine ten years ago, earned a bit more money, acquired a house, two wood lots and a blueberry field and started paying state taxes (New Hampshire has no state income tax, but Maine does), the IRS began to take notice.
, the IRS seized their properties in lieu of tax payments assessed at $62,000 (including interest and penalties) for an astonishing figure, considering the family’s annual income from their blueberry and flower business averages about $16,000.
Going Once…
The IRS held an auction at the town office across the street from the Gravalos/Harvey home.
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
To demonstrate the power and the good that can come out of war tax redirection, Harvey, Gravalos and their family and friends raised over $3,000 to pay off the local property tax liens of seven Hartford residents.
The auction didn’t last long.
When Gravalos and her family emerged stoically from the town office, she announced, “The good news is that no one bid on the house.”
Emily Harvey, Arthur and Elizabeth’s daughter and a sophomore at Wellesley College, bid on (and won) the small half-acre wood lot on behalf of her younger brother Max.
(Max, at age 16, was legally too young to enter a bid.)
The town selectman and town clerk teamed up to buy the larger 21-acre wood lot, and another Hartford resident bought the blueberry field.
Harvey speculated that the reason no one bid on the house was that the minimum bid was too high: $21,000 for a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing.
At the conclusion of the auction, the IRS declared that they would reevaluate the minimum bid and hold another auction .
Going Twice…
The minimum was eventually set at $7,900. Gravalos and Harvey had originally discouraged friendly bids on their house, feeling that the price was too high.
“We really did not want the IRS to get that much money,” Harvey said.
But for the second auction, with a lower minimum bid, they didn’t discourage people who would buy the house back for them, even though that meant surrendering money to the IRS.
Harvey explained that what matters most for him is making a strong public statement, bearing witness to the government’s violence: “Our reason for non-cooperating with the IRS is a reluctance to support war preparations, especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world.
Others have gone a lot further in their war tax resistance than we have, and we honor and respect those people.
For [them], the most important thing is to withhold money from the IRS at all costs.”
That, he acknowledged, is not his style of war tax resistance.
“There are and there have been war tax resisters who have gone that far.
My friend Ammon Hennacy [the legendary pacifist connected with the Catholic Worker movement] was one.
Our approach is more complicated to describe and more flexible in practice.”
He scoffed at a news article that described him as “unwilling to pay one penny to the IRS.”
“We have three cars,” he noted, referring to the federal tax on gasoline that he pays every time he fills up at the pump.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
(As at the first auction, money was given away, this time to groups doing the kind of work tax dollars could fund: $500 to the local Abused Women’s Advocacy Project and $500 to a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.)
Still Here
In the end, Elizabeth’s mother entered the winning bid for the house at $15,633. The town clerk and town selectman, who bid at the first auction, entered the only other bid of $8,000. The latter two were clearly miffed at having lost such a “bargain.”
(One war tax resister described them as “a picture of greed thwarted.”)
The clerk, clearly irate, asked, “Why was it okay for her [Elizabeth’s] mother to bid, but not for me?”
A week later, Arthur Harvey reflected on the clerk’s comment, questioning in turn the propriety of the town officials’ taking advantage of a family in a weakened financial position.
“That does not seem to me to be a proper thing for a town official to do,” he said.
Elizabeth Gravalos thinks the answer to the town clerk’s question is obvious: “The two of them were trying to take our house from under us, whereas my mother was trying to help us out, to help us continue our way of life here.”
Though Gravalos had dissuaded her mother from bidding at the first auction, she did not try to stop her at the second.
“It was harder to lose the blueberry field [at the first auction] than I thought.
I just didn’t feel I was ready to lose the house,” she admitted.
Harvey and Gravalos calculated that the house was worth somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 and suggested that $13,000 would be a reasonable bid.
Max and Emily were in favor of a friendly bid; Max especially did not want to have to move.
“The alternative,” Arthur noted, “would be to go the Randy and Betsy route and not countenance a friendly bid and then risk eviction.
We, as a family, decided not to go that route.”
(He was referring to Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner, war tax resisters from Colrain, MA, whose supporters maintained an 18-month-long occupation/vigil after Kehler was arrested in and his and Corner’s house was auctioned off by the IRS.)
In the end, Arthur admitted, the auction “was something of a letdown.”
The IRS got a fair amount of money, $39,460 in all more money, he speculated, than it would have gotten if the family had filed and paid taxes all along.
Gravalos reflected, “Betsy and Randy did a better job at resisting the IRS than we did.
But each family has to draw its own line.
I really did not want to stage an occupation [as they did].”
So what does it mean for war tax resistance when the IRS manages to walk away with such a considerable sum?
Interestingly, Gravalos and Harvey do not think of themselves as having failed.
Along the spectrum of war tax civil disobedience, they are tax resisters rather than tax refusers.
(War tax resisters do not willfully hand over money to the Pentagon, but if the government nonetheless forcibly seizes money from them, they take those lumps, as it were; war tax refusers tend to put up more of a fight and are unwilling to let the government collect any money or assets whatsoever.)
But they believe both resisters and refusers provide witness to the backward priorities of the federal government.
“When it comes to war tax resistance,” Gravalos adds, “anything is better than nothing.”
Their 51 years (between them) of resistance to military spending and the redirection through the years of those war tax dollars is not to be scoffed at.
And what of the future?
Gravalos and Harvey do not hesitate when they are asked whether or not they will continue their war tax resistance.
Says Arthur, “We will continue our stand of non-cooperation, but we will certainly make sure not to find ourselves in such a position where we own so much property.”
And Elizabeth adds, “I do feel that the risks of paying taxes are greater than the risks of refusing to pay them.”
“He almost failed to graduate from high school after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the laws and constitution of the United States.
‘I could support the Constitution,’ he said, ‘but I certainly wasn’t going to support all the laws.
They told me I was failing the rest of the students in my home room.
But I didn’t have much loyalty to my home room.’
Eventually the school gave him his diploma anyway.”
“In Michigan, a man who had recently returned from India lent him a book by Gandhi.
He was immediately struck by Gandhi’s arguments in favor of self-reliance and against excessive consumption.
In the late 1950s, Harvey spent six months in prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, for invading a missile base in Nebraska with a group of fellow peace activists.
‘Prison was a blast.
I was in there with one of my very best friends [Ammon Hennacy] and we played horseshoes and Scrabble and spent lots of time in the library.’
His tenure as library clerk ended when he refused to compile a list for the prison authorities of the books each prisoner was borrowing.”
A newspaper article
on educational outreach efforts by the pacifist non-violent action group Peacemakers, quoted Harvey on the nature of the group: “We are a radical pacifist organization.
We are against war preparation and against use of income tax for war purposes.
Our members also oppose mandatory registration for the draft.
However, we are not communists.
We believe the best defense is a strong spiritual one, in the tradition of the Indian leader Gandhi.”
The Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, covered the tax auction in a pair of articles:
“Hands off our homes”
Couple protests on day before auction
by Mary Lou Wendell Sun-Journal Staff Writer
Auburn — The message on one of the placards held by many of the 50 or so protesters marching down Center Street morning was simple: “Honor family values.
Hands off homes.”
Accomplishing their goal for the day was not going to be so simple, however.
They were on their way to Lewiston to convince the Internal Revenue Service to halt the sale of property seized for nonpayment of taxes.
Arthur Harvey, who, before it was taken, owned the house and land in Hartford Center together with his wife Elizabeth Gravalos, led the march.
In his pants pocket was a letter the group eventually hand-delivered to the Lewiston IRS office on Main Street after walking there from the Auburn Mall, which took about two-and-a-half hours.
The note detailed the couple’s reasons for not paying federal taxes.
Funds collected by the federal government will “support war preparation of all kinds,” the typewritten letter read.
“This is not acceptable to our moral and religious beliefs.”
In , IRS agents served Harvey and Gravalos with a seizure notice for their property, which includes a small home and out-buildings, a 13-acre blueberry field, and 21 acres of two combined woodlots.
Selling blueberries and pansies, which is how the couple earns their living, brings in a total of $18,000 a year, Harvey said.
Based on those earnings, the government calculated Harvey and Gravalos owe $62,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties for , according to the couple.
A spokeswoman for the IRS in Boston said she would not confirm the amount owed because of disclosure and privacy laws.
Furthermore, the couple wrote in their letter to the IRS, “it is inconceivable that a family could be subject to a 49 percent tax rate, especially a low-income family including two children.”
Harvey and Gravalos have a daughter in college and a teen-age son, Max, who also marched on .
IRS
spokeswoman Peggy Riley did say the sealed-bid auction will go on as scheduled at at the town office in Hartford Center.
And if minimum bids were offered, the house and property will be sold, she said.
The minimum bid for the single family home was $20,476.98, Riley said.
The total minimum bid for everything else, which is divided into three properties, is roughly $16,000.
Against a backdrop of car dealerships, retail outlets and quick-change oil places, the protesters, who came from as far away as Chicago, walked in groups of three and four down Center Street.
Some came from New Hampshire and Vermont.
Most were from Maine.
Many of the protesters were also war-tax resistors and friends with Harvey and Gravalos.
Some had never met the couple but were marching to support their cause.
Sheila Dormody, a member of the 800-member organization, Peace Action Maine, pays her taxes, she said.
But she had sympathy for Harvey and Gravalos because she opposes disproportionate military spending, she said.
As the group hiked along, making their way across the Longley Bridge and around downtown Lewiston, Dormody passed out red fliers decrying the practice of “bloating the Pentagon… starving our communities.”
“This year Congress will give the Pentagon $7 billion more than requested,” the filer stated.
Education, mass transit, housing programs, job training and environmental spending are all the things that will be cut in order to pay for increased military spending, it said.
If the property is indeed sold , “we’ll have to find some place we can rent,” Gravalos said as she walked.
“I have a friend in Buckfield who has offered land so I can plant my pansies.”
Her husband thought it was a mistake to buy land, Gravalos said, adding he may have been right.
In hindsight, Harvey said, he would have preferred renting over owning property, which can be taken away.
But, while he and his wife have always paid their state and local taxes, he’s not sorry for not paying federal taxes, he said.
“We both understood the risk and we accepted it,” Harvey said.
It’s a matter of “personal responsibility.”
Withholding federal taxes is “a job that we can do,” he said.
Home survives IRS sale
Some of tax protesters’ Hartford property sold
by Judith Meyer Special to the Sun-Journal
Hartford — As sealed bids were opened morning, Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos heard an Internal Revenue Service employee award three pieces of their property to others, but their home was spared, at least temporarily.
The couple, who are vocal about their resistance to paying federal taxes to a government that they say is spending irresponsibly, were served a notice of seizure on their property in .
That property was offered at a public sale in a sealed bid process inside the Town Office while a large crowd of supporters from throughout New England and reporters waited outside on the lawn morning.
Harvey and Gravalos, who say they earn about $18,000 a year growing blueberries and pansies, owe the IRS $48,555 in unpaid taxes .
Their properties were seized to satisfy that debt.
Attending the bid opening were dozens of other tax resisters, including one couple who carried a large painted poster proclaiming their nonpayment of federal taxes since .
The properties offered for sale included the couple’s home, which is not equipped with running water or electricity and which uses an organic compost septic system, a small house lot, a 21-acre wood lot and a 13-acre blueberry field.
No bids were submitted for the house, and a second sealed bid opening has been scheduled for at the IRS office in Lewiston.
If the property is not sold at that time, said IRS agent Diane Santoro, who conducted the sale, the federal agency will re-evaluate the $20,476 minimum bid established for the property.
Bids were opened inside the Town Office, which was restricted to bidders, the property owners, town and federal officials and five media representatives chosen by Capt. James Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department from a pool of reporters standing in the side yard.
The couple’s children, Emily and Max Harvey, purchased the small house lot for $727, using money 16-year-old Max had earned raking blueberries, beating out a $600 bid from the town of Hartford.
Gravalos was visibly upset that the town bid on the property.
The Town Office stands directly across the street from Gravalos’ house on Route 140, and the piece of property the town bid on was being considered as a new Town Office site.
The couple’s wood lot was sold for $10,000 to Kathleen Hutchins and Linda Rowe, both of Hartford, beating out a $9,560 bid for the land.
Hutchins is the town’s tax collector, clerk, treasurer and administrative assistant, and Rowe is a selectman, but both women said they bought the land as private citizens.
The third piece of property, the blueberry field that has been cultivated for the past eight years by Harvey and Gravalos, was sold to Alan Noyes of Hartford.
Noyes, who left immediately after the bid opening, indicated that he liked the view at the property and would be willing to talk to Harvey and Gravalos about some kind of arrangement to continue farming the land.
Harvey said after the sale, which lasted less than 10 minutes, that he and his family intended to remain in Hartford, would continue to live in their home and would continue farming blueberries on fields they planned to lease from other property owners.
“The good news is that nobody bid on our house,” Gravalos told the crowd after the sale was finished, and Harvey expressed his pleasure at seeing so many people supporting their cause.
“This is not a victory or defeat for anyone,” Harvey said.
“It’s just a part of life.”
That observation drew a large round of applause from the crowd.
And although the IRS seizure is nearly complete, Harvey said his views on tax resistance haven’t changed and he has no plans to pay any money to the federal government.
Harvey has not paid federal taxes , and Gravalos hasn’t paid .
Supporter Jim Stockwell of Albion said, “I think (Harvey and Gravalos are) very proud of what they’re doing.”
Stockwell praised their resolve to stand firm for their beliefs against increased military spending and decreased spending for education and health care.
Lee Holman, a supporter and neighbor of Harvey and Gravalos, said the couple’s commitment to paying local and state taxes and resisting paying federal taxes comes from their desire to “redirect tax dollars to build real security in this town instead of investing in a false sense of security” with the federal government.
The couple can redeem their properties in the next 180 days if they pay the bid price, plus another 20 percent, and any costs associated with the sale to the IRS.
IRS
agent Santoro declined to talk to reporters before or after the sale.
Along with that second article was this sidebar:
Anti-tax group pays off liens of five families
Hartford — The tax resisters who demonstrated in support of Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos say they are not against America’s tax system in itself and support payment of local and state taxes to help their own communities.
What they protest is the federal government’s use of the tax money, a use that they claim they have no control over.
In an effort to show support for the local property tax system, the group of resisters, who are calling themselves Spears into Pruning Hooks, walked into the Hartford Town Office just before the public sale of the Harvey/Gravalos property and paid off outstanding tax liens for five local families.
Harvey said the group paid nearly $2,200, choosing the liens to be paid off based on whether the property owner had children and actually lived in Hartford, rather than being a part-time resident.
The tax resisters did not have contact with the property owners; the payoffs were arranged through the Town Office.
The group originally offered to pay seven liens, but only five were paid because two of the families declined the group’s offer.
Tax Collector Kathleen Hutchins said the payment retired tax liens for property owners Joseph Bedard, Ann Carro, Penny Stubbs, Matthew Piantone and James Guilmet.
According to Hutchins, the property owners who declined the resisters’ offer of payment said they did not agree with Harvey and Gravalos’ stand on tax resistance.
Hutchins, who said the town has never seized any property for nonpayment of property taxes, indicated that there are others in Hartford who oppose the stand taken by the Harvey-Gravalos family.
Speaking for the group, which still has $800 in an account reserved for payment of other tax liens, Harvey said Spears into Pruning Hooks plans to continue raising funds and making goodwill gestures for struggling local taxpayers.
Harvey and Gravalos were still at it :
Federal income tax
Resisters keep incomes below filing threshold
by Kelly Morgan StaffWriter
Hartford — While many people across the country will be rushing to meet today’s deadline for filing federal income taxes, Arthur Harvey will more likely be home binding books or working on the mowers he’ll soon use to cut his blueberry fields.
It’s not that the 72-year-old organic farmer, inspector and book seller has filed early this year.
Instead, Harvey, who lives with his family across from the town office on Main Street, has not paid federal income taxes .
He won’t pay because he is opposed to where his dollars would be spent.
“My fundamental objection is to nuclear weapons,” he said Thursday while seated at a small table off his kitchen, surrounded by copies of the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi.
“And also to sending U.S. military forces to other countries.”
Harvey and his wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, 61, have joined as many as 200 Mainers and 10,000 people nationally who refuse to pay their federal income taxes in protest of military spending.
“We say about 8,000 to 10,000 people,” said Ruth Benn of the Brookly, N.Y.-based National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee on , “but it’s really hard to count.”
Benn said many, like Harvey and Gravalos, keep their incomes low so they won’t have to pay.
Many others protest by refusing to pay federal taxes on their phone bills, another action that’s difficult to track.
According to information from IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley, who’s based in Boston, the federal government faces what it calls a “gross tax gap” of $300 billion a year.
The gap, Riley explained, “is the difference between what taxpayers should pay and what they actually pay.”
Riley said the IRS does not track those who refuse to pay on the grounds of opposing military spending.
Personal property seizures and deductions from paychecks are tools the IRS uses to collect unpaid tax dollars.
In , Harvey and Gravalos nearly lost their home and 13 acres of blueberry fields they farm in Hartford.
At an auction after the properties were seized, Gravalos’ mother bought back the house.
Their daughter Emily later received back the blueberry fields in a trade after the man who had purchased them found farming difficult, Harvey said, laughing.
Harvey, Gravalos and their son Max continue to farm the fields today.
They use wood heat and kerosene lamps and drive old Volvos.
Harvey sells books on the teachings of Gandhi, which he purchases from India, through the on-line marketplace Amazon.com.
The only electricity in the house comes from a small solar panel that runs a laptop computer and, on sunny days, a copier in a back room.
Because Gravalos now works as a part-time massage therapist, she does pay Social Security taxes, Harvey said.
But she hasn’t paid income taxes .
The two file separately, each having to earn less than $3,100 in order to fall below federal tax filing requirements.
Harvey and Gravalos have taken part in efforts of the War Tax Resistance Resource Center of Maine.
People affiliated with the organization often hand out fliers at IRS centers on tax deadline day.
Larry Dansinger, a Monroe-based representative of the group, said that people are expected to be handing out fliers from Portland to Ellsworth
He himself doesn’t pay federal phone taxes.
“In our calculations, about 50 percent of every (federal income) tax dollar that people pay is going either directly or indirectly for military purposes,” he said.
Not paying, he added, “is not a nice, easy thing to do.”
I’ve many times mentioned Ammon Hennacy’s tax resistance hereabouts, but have only less-frequently commented on his more-well-known Catholic Worker comrade Dorothy Day’s stance.
The site catholicworker.org now has a search engine with which I have been able to recover some of her writings on the subject, which I’ll excerpt here today.
“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Yes, and we have heard too much of that.
Let E.I. Watkin, founder of the Pax movement in England, author of The Catholic Center, Men and Tendencies, and The Bow in the Clouds, answer as he did in his pamphlet, “The Crime of Conscription.”
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. This is a favorite text with the hosts of Christian clerics, Protestant and Catholic, who both in the present and in the past, have abused and still abuse religion to enslave men’s consciences to the unjust bondages of a usurping state.
They omit to notice the context.
Our Lord has just asked for a coin, and having obtained the admission that it bear’s Caesar’s image and superscription, bids his questioners render to Caesar what is his.
This is obviously the coin payable in taxation which bears Caesar’s stamp.
The body and soul of man, however, do not bear Caesar’s image.
Whose image they do bear we are told in Holy Scripture.
It is the image of God.
Obviously, therefore, as we are to render to Caesar what bears his image, namely, money, we are to render to God, not to Caesar, what bears not Caesar’s stamp, but God’s; namely, human beings.
Thus the same text which justifies, indeed, imposes the obligation of paying taxes, denies any right of the state to take a toll of man.
All forced labor, for example, is implicitly declared unlawful.
And still more does the principle here enunciated forbid military conscription.
Whether a war be just or unjust, no government may without grave injustice compel me — bearing as I do the divine image which marks me as God’s bondman, but a freeman in respect to my fellows — to slay and be slain in its quarrel unless I freely consent.
If a government unlawfully outsteps its prerogative and imposes conscription, any one who, from whatever motive, refuses to serve, is whether he intend it or not, fighting for human dignity and freedom, as also is anyone who abets and supports his resistance.
But now in these days it would be desirable to go even further, as did Thoreau, to refuse even the taxes which were to be used to pay for the means to kill our fellow man.
In many cases, however, it is all but impossible to separate the tax from the cost of the commodity needed to maintain life.
We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity.
It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion.
[The people] pay taxes, and it is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on.
They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan.
And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced.
Their virtue is being drained from them.
They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers.
The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer — hideous word — in this war.
If you cry aloud for land and home and tools and the good natural life for the poor without which a good supernatural life is impossible, then you are either an escapist and an inhabitant of an ivory tower, or you are a Communist in disguise trying to do away with property.
And you are a communist also if you cry out for peace and against increased armaments — against the making of the hydrogen and atom bombs and the paying of federal taxes for the making of those bombs.
We know, who picketed before the tax offices up on 45th street, because we heard these jibes as we walked to and fro with our signs.
We will have more to write about taxes later.
We believe in paying our local taxes but not federal.
Maybe this is quibbling, but the benefits of hospitals, fire department, street cleaning and health department, etc. make us firm in our decision to always pay our local taxes though we will not pay income tax.
I can scarcely list all the people Ammon [Hennacy] introduced me to, all the friends he has made through his constant protest against war and taxes for war, and his distribution of the Catholic Worker.
But I can give a little glimpse of Ammon’s living quarters, in his little three room bungalow on Lin Orme’s place some five miles out of town [Phoenix, Arizona].
Ammon likes to call our Lord the Celestial Bulldozer to indicate that ones way is smoothed for one, the rough ways made plain and the crooked straight.
He arrived in Phoenix broke, he said, as he came further south out of the dairy region to the farming section of the country where he could work by the day and not by the month and so avoid the withholding tax.
He slept all night on an anarchist’s floor (one of the readers of the CW) and got up at daylight to go to the slave market, as the corner is named in every town in every state, Calif., Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, where immigrant workers are employed.
Some times there are as many as 200 trucks, sometimes only 25. They go as far as seventy miles away for the day’s work.
Mexican trucks take only Mexicans.
He got on the second truck, owned by the Arena brothers, a corporation which owns land in California, Colorado, and Arizona, and specializes in lettuce, melons, cabbage, celery.
This was , the year the withholding tax began.
At the end of his day’s work he asked if there was a shack on the place where he could sleep, and a fellow worker told him of one down the road and he took his sleeping bag and camped out there for the night.
He stayed there for some months and as it was on land rented by Mr. Orme to the company, he became acquainted with that old gentleman who later invited him to occupy the vacant shack on his own land.
There is one room and two porches, rather than three rooms, really, and before Ammon lived there, twelve Mexicans had camped out there.
I sat on the porch one afternoon with Ammon and drank strong black coffee, brewed on a little kitchen stove, stuffed with mesquite which burned fragrantly while we talked.
How does property fit in, people ask.
It was Eric Gill who said that property is proper to man.
And St. Thomas Aquinas said that a certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life.
The recent popes wrote at length about justice rather than charity, that should be sought for the worker.
Unions are still fighting for wages and hours, and it is a futile fight with the price of living going up steadily.
They are fighting for partial gains and every strike means sacrifice to make them, and still the situation in the long run is not bettered.
There may be talk of better standards of living, every worker with his car, and owning his own home, but still this comfort depends on a wage, a boss, on War.
Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty.
If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. the argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort.
If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war.
If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops.
If you ride a bus you are paying taxes.
Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”
The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs.
We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war.
Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years.
One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax.
One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb.
If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it.
If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it.
So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.
How obey the laws of a state when they run counter to man’s conscience?
“Thou shalt not kill,” Divine law states.
“A new precept I give unto you that you love your brother as I have loved you.”
St. Peter disobeyed the law of men and stated that he had to obey God rather than man.
Wars today involve total destruction, obliteration bombing, killing of the innocent, the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs.
When one is drafted for such war, when one registers for the draft for such a war, when one pays income tax, eighty per cent of which goes to support such war, or works where armaments are made, one is participating in this war.
We are all involved in war these days.
War means hatred and fear.
Love casts out fear.
St. Augustine in his City of God says that God never intended man to dominate his fellows.
He was to dominate the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, what crawled upon the earth, but men were not to dominate each other.
He preferred shepherds to kings.
It was man himself who insisted on having a worldly king though he was warned what would happen to him.
God allowed the prophets to anoint the kings and once men had accepted their kings they were supposed to show them respect, to obey the authority they had set up.
To obey, that is, in all that did not go against their conscience.
St. Peter was ordered by lawful authority not to preach in the name of Jesus, and he said he had to obey God rather than man, and he left prison to go out again to the market place and preach the Gospel.
Over and over again, men had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience.
This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has over and over again happened through history.
It is time again to cry out against our “leaders,” to question whether or not, since it is not for us to say that they are evil men, they are sane men.
It is all very well to say we must go to the source of all strength, to drink at the living fountain of Christ, but can we go from that fount of Love to a factory where nerve gas and incendiary bombs are manufactured?
When we have talked of a general strike it is of such work and of such evil that we are thinking; when we talk of non-payment of taxes it is of the money which is going to Indo-China in the form of these incendiary bombs and the planes to drop them that we are thinking.
It is not thus that we can love God and our brother; it is not in this way that we can love our enemy.
When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other.
Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer.
The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb…
Each one of us must make our decisions as to what he should do, each one must examine his conscience and beg God for strength.
Should one register for the draft?
Should one accept conscientious objector status in the army or out of it, taking advantage of the exceptions allowed, but accepting the fact of the draft?
Should one pay tax which supports this gigantic program?
I realize how difficult this is to decide.
If one is unmarried and strong physically, it is easier to make a decision to do only day labor or work without pay.
But there are many whose mental and physical strength is not equal to this decision and there is a withholding tax taken from even the smallest salary.
Sometimes one can only make a gesture of protest.
It is not for any one to judge his fellow man on how far he can go in resisting participation in preparation for war.
In the very works of mercy which we are performing, we at the Catholic Worker are being aided by those who earn what they do only because they pay income tax for war.
Oh yes, the editors of The Catholic Worker know only too well how far we too are involved in the city of this world.
Perhaps Bob Ludlow, who left us much against our will, felt that he was being more honest in permitting a withholding tax to be taken from his meager wage as hospital attendant that working for nothing for the Catholic Worker.
Who knows the heart of another?
The temptation is always there to go out on one’s own, to walk the lone path of a St. Francis rather than the community way of a St. Benedict.
[Ammon Hennacy] has had to abandon his life at hard labor and to replace that discipline of work he is fasting Fridays; during our recent retreat he fasted, and again in August for nine days he will picket and fast in reparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cruel weapons of destruction which we have made.
All men are responsible, but Ammon by not paying income tax, and by penance, is doing reparation.
And the other trouble?
It was Federal income taxes and investigations for Ammon Hennacy, Charlie McCormick, Carol Perry and me.
Charlie has had no income for all the years he is with The Catholic Worker, but the rest of us could acknowledge having earned money on which we did not pay taxes, and which we refuse to pay because eighty per cent of the money so gathered goes for wars past and present.
The others were treated with great courtesy, but one of the revenue agents made a coldly insulting remark to me based on my past, which was entirely uncalled for.
But perhaps he was only stupid so I acted as though I did not hear it.
I would like to urge upon the bishops the idea of the non-payment of taxes by Catholic parents for school taxes, when they are sending their children to Catholic schools and so are paying double for their education.
Yes, we must set ourselves with all the force we possess, against war, and the making of instruments of war, and our means are prayer and fasting, and the non-payment of federal income tax which goes for war.
The message of The Catholic Worker is that simple one for all the rank and file, for the masses, that we have free will, we can make our choice, that our personal responsibility which we exercise is what matters.
Ammon [Hennacy], in his non-payment of taxes for war, and his civil disobedience, is bringing that message to countless thousands of people.
When we got home from our little tour of the neighborhood and I had explored the view from the eleventh floor, Ammon came for supper and brought us up to date on his journeyings as well as on the news of our own workers in Chicago.
He had no sooner arrived in town on Saturday when he was called on to picket in front of the courthouse for Roseanna Robinson.
They are keeping up a vigil night and day, people joining for a stint of three hours at a time.
I certainly hope to join them sometime these next few days.
Roseanna is a young colored woman who had refused to pay any income tax 85 per cent of which goes for war, or to file any returns.
She had been given an indeterminate sentence and she is now for two weeks on hunger strike.
I suppose they will forcibly feed her.
The newspapers are paying little head to this, so it is necessary to have the picket line, and Karl Meyer has gotten out a leaflet which is signed by The Catholic Worker, 164 West Oak street and the War Resisters League which takes in all those who are not Catholic who wish to participate but might hesitate if it were only under Catholic leadership.
There is much to be done in these small Indian schools throughout the country [the United States South-West], and a peace army could be at work there right now, without waiting to be drafted.
There would be no pay besides a living, and so no bother about income tax, and so no contributing to war in this way.
I could not help but think of Don Milani’s statement in his defense against the charges made against him of advocating resistance to conscription for war.
He said that even those who cooked for troops contributed to war.
How involved we all are, what with the hidden taxes we pay for war, the high standard of living all of us enjoy, even when we refuse to pay income tax, so much of which goes for war, and when we build prisons for draft refusers.
Every summer for a Peacemakers training program has been held at our Tivoli farm for the last two or three weeks of August.
The old mansion and the Peter Maurin house are filled with guests, and campers come and set up their tents on the lawn facing the river.
The organizer of the Peacemakers’ school is Wally Nelson, who has been in the workhouse in Cincinnati for the past two weeks, fasting.
He and several others were arrested during a vigil for DeCourcy Squire, an 18 yr. old Antioch student who had been hospitalized after fasting since her arrest and subsequent sentence of 9 mo. for participating in a peace demonstration.
(DeCourcy has since been released.)
A psychiatric examination was ordered for Wally when he refused to co-operate with his arrest and trial.
Found by court psychiatrists to be “sane,” he was sentenced for “loitering” to ten days in the workhouse, $25 and costs.
Again refusing to co-operate with legalized injustice, he was dragged from the police van by his legs, an action that caused his wife Juanita to follow him, cradling his head in her hands.
When they arrived at Wally’s cell, Nita bent over to kiss him, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and fined $25 and costs.
This she refused to pay, and was ordered to the workhouse.
Detailed stories of these arrests are given in the February 10th issue of the Peacemaker, (10208 Sylvan Avenue, (Gano) Cincinnati, Ohio 45241).
I hope that many of our readers will subscribe to the Peacemaker, since news of the conscientious objectors who are in prison and much other war-resistance news can be obtained there.
Peacemakers have led in direct action for many years.
Wally and Juanita have both refused to pay income tax for many years, and it is of them particularly I wish to write, with the most heartfelt sympathy for their suffering and the greatest admiration for their dedication.
It is their vocation to realize and to lead others to realize the horror of the times through which we are passing.
Wally has explained that his fasting during the jail sentences he has undergone was the result not of willful refusal but of a total inability to swallow food while imprisoned.
Simone Weil, the French woman whose brilliant writings on man and the state, work and war, were widely published after her death, suffered during the second world war in the same way.
She was literally unable to swallow enough food to keep her alive, in the face of world starvation.
In the stories of the saints, one reads of such sensitivity, such penances undergone, such fastings endured and they are little understood by the secular world.
I am convinced that this vocation, this calling, to give oneself to one’s brother, in loving communion, in loving understanding of the heinous crimes that are being committed today was at the root of Roger La Porte’s immolation in front of the United Nations .
It is as though such men said, “We will suffer with you, since we have no way of stopping the bombing, the burning, the napalm, the defoliation, the destruction of homes and an entire countryside.
There is no act of ours extreme enough, no protest strong enough, to deal with this horror.”
Wally Nelson was in prison for thirty-three months during World War Two and fasted for a hundred and eight days (with forced feeding by tube) as a protest against racial segregation of prisoners.
He had had time to think out his position while in Civilian Public Service camp, as forced labor camps which were set up for conscientious objectors were called.
These very camps were a concession to pacifists, who had been imprisoned and brutally treated during World War One.
But Wally decided to walk out and did so and was arrested and jailed.
His example and that of other absolutists led to further concessions.
In this present undeclared war in Vietnam, to which ten thousand more men were shipped off yesterday, the conscientious objector position is recognized, and paid employment is offered in home hospitals as “alternative service.”
To accept this is still to submit to the draft, hence the continued protests against war, and the drafting of youth to wage this hideous struggle.
[To Hennacy,] Obedience, of course, was a bad word.
Authority was a bad word.
In vain I pointed out to him that when the retired army major for whom he worked in Arizona told him to do a particular job, he did it, and he did it as he was told to.
He admired the army officer because he knew farming.
And he cooperated with Ammon in paying him by the day and thus evading the federal income tax which the tax man was trying to collect from Ammon.
I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mail order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi.
Art and Ammon Hennacy served six month terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago.
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
The other young man who visited Russia was Karl Meyer, who at present is serving his sentence of a two-year term (and thousand dollar fine) at Sandstone Federal Prison, for obstructing the income tax system by refusal to pay taxes for war.
He had made the San Francisco-to-Moscow walk some years before, joining the march at Chicago.
The walk ended at Moscow University, where the students, though not agreeing with the American visitors, demanded that the time of their talks be extended.
He also distributed leaflets in Red Square!
The Catholic Worker has received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines, penalties, and unpaid income tax for .
As the matter stands right now, there might be a legal battle with delays and postponements which may remind us of Dickens’ Bleak House.
Or, since we will not set up a defense committee to campaign for funds, it may terminate swiftly in the confiscation of our property and our bank account (never very large).
Our farm at Tivoli and the First Street house could be put up for sale by government agents and our C.W. family evicted.
One of the most costly protests against war, in terms of long-enduring personal sacrifice, is to refuse to pay federal income taxes which go for war.
The late Ammon Hennacy, one of our editors, was a prime example of this.
He earned his living at agricultural labor, always living on a poverty level so as not to be subject to taxes, though he filed returns.
Another of our editors, Karl Meyer, recently spent ten months in jail for what the I.R.S. called fraudulent claims of exemption for dependents.
He ran the C.W. House of Hospitality in Chicago for many years, working to earn the money to support the house and his wife and children.
Erosanna Robinson, a social worker in Chicago, refused to file returns and was sentenced to a year in prison.
While in prison she fasted and was forcibly fed.
It will be seen that tax refusal is a serious protest.
Wars will cease when we refuse to pay for them (to adapt a slogan of the War Resisters International).
The C.W. has never paid salaries.
Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living).
So we do not need to pay federal income taxes.
Of course, there are hidden taxes we all pay.
Nothing is ever clear-cut or well defined.
We protest in any way we can, according to our responsibilities and temperaments.
(I remember Ammon, a most consistent, brave, and responsible person, saying to one young man, “For the love of the Lord, get a job and quit worrying about taxes.
You need to learn how to earn your own living.
That is most important for you.”)
We have to accept with humility the fact that we cannot share the destitution of those around us, and that our protests are incomplete.
Perhaps the most complete protest is to be in jail, to accept jail, never to give bail or defend ourselves.
In the fifties, Ammon, Charles McCormack (our business manager at the C.W.), and I were summoned to the offices of the I.R.S. in New York to answer questions (under oath) as to our finances.
I remember I was asked what happened to the royalties from my books, money from speaking engagements, etc. I could only report that such monies received were deposited in the C.W. account.
As for clothes, we wore what came in; my sister was generous to me — shoes, for instance.
Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social “order” which brings on wars today.
In the issue of The Catholic Worker I wrote of the crisis The Catholic Worker found itself in when we received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines and penalties and unpaid income tax for .
This was a very impressive bill, and we wondered what it would be if they started figuring out what they thought we owed them !
The New York Times, in a story signed by Max Seigel, with a four column head and a picture of a few of us at lunch in our headquarters at 36 East First Street, brought our situation to the attention of a vaster group of readers, and followed up the story with an editorial [“Imagination, Please” — excerpt: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate.
Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.”].
The New York evening Post also editorialized on our situation.
The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit.
Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry.
We certainly are grateful and must apologize that we cannot keep up with the mail and get them all answered.
There is not any real news for them at the moment, nor will be until our edition of The Catholic Worker.
I will have to appear before a Federal Judge on to explain why the CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself” so as to be exempt from taxes.
We are afraid of that word “structure.”
We refuse to become a “corporation.”
We repeat — we do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement.
We intend to continue our emphasis on personal responsibility, an emphasis which we were taught from the beginning by Peter Maurin who used to quote Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalist Manifesto, and his Personal and Communitarian Revolution, Peter was our teacher, and being a Frenchman, a peasant, he emphasized decentralization, manual labor, voluntary poverty.
Voluntary poverty meant that everyone at the CW worked without salary, and contributions came from them, and from our readers, which kept the work going.
Rumblings first came from the Internal Revenue service after many on the CW staff, together with other peace groups, demonstrated against war in the Fifties and Sixties and were jailed for Civil Disobedience.
Writing about jails and courtrooms resulted in much publicity.
But it was Ammon Hennacy and Karl Meyer who wrote most consistently on Tax Refusal, and its importance.
“Wars will cease when men refuse to pay for them.”
…And while you are at it, write to TAX Talk, published by War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012 which contains letters from all over the country from individual tax resisters, telling what is happening to them.
Stimulating and invigorating.
Good make up and good format.
First Rate.
While I write, Arthur J. Lacey comes in to hand me my mail and it contains a notice from one of our two lawyers.
“Please be advised that I have been contacted by the Conference Section of the Internal Revenue Service and we have arranged for the hearing on .”
Good news first!
On we received absolution from the U.S. Government in relation to all our tax troubles.
In the Catholic Worker this year we told of the notice we had received — that we owed the government nearly $300,000 in back income taxes which included penalties for “late filing and negligence.”
The examining officer of the Manhattan District had arrived at these figures through the reports we had obediently made to Albany on our appeals for funds, which we send out once or twice a year.
We accept this compromise with our local state because we are decentralists, personalists, anarchists (in addition to being pacifists).
When we first thought about Federal income taxes, most of which go for war or “defense,” we simplistically considered ourselves exempt because we had no income; no salaries are paid at the Catholic Worker, nor ever have been .
I myself have been questioned because of my writings, and lecture fees which were not really fees but offerings made to the work which covered all expenses of travelling and supported the work besides.
A crowd of people living together as we do, in houses of hospitality, has to give something of an account to each other as to how well we are living up to our profession of voluntary poverty.
We are always bound to have healthy guilt feelings about that, and keep trying to do better.
Certainly a number of us do work on the side to provide what we need for books or rent on cheap apartments in the neighborhood, since our house at 36 East First Street is always so crowded.
But with the growing tax resistance throughout the United States, the government has become concerned.
Telephone calls and official visits made us realize that trouble was impending.
And we have been having it and have reported on it in both the and issues of our paper.
Now we are happy to report the outcome.
In a conference in with William T. Hunter, litigation attorney from the Department of Justice, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals of the United States, we reached a verbal settlement couched in more human and satisfactory terms than the notice we later received.
“They” were willing to recognize our undoubtedly religious convictions in our conflict with the state, and were going to drop any proceedings against us.
They had examined and looked into back issues of the Catholic Worker, and they had noted the support we had from the press (the New York Times news story and the editorials of the Times and the New York Post), and had come to this conclusion that ours was a religious conviction.
They had come to the conclusion also that it was not necessary that the Federal Government seek for any other kind of a “conviction” against us.
The conference took place in a law office in Manhattan, 9:30 of a Monday morning.
John Coster, our lawyer, Mr. Hunter and Ed Forand, Walter Kerell, Patrick Jordan, Ruth Collins and I attended.
There were no hostilities expressed.
As peacemakers we must have love and respect for each individual we come in contact with.
Our struggle is with principalities and powers, not with Church or State.
We cannot ever be too complacent about our own uncompromising positions because we know that in our own way we too make compromises.
(For instance, in having a second-class mailing privilege from the government we accept a subsidy, just as Mr. Eastland does in Mississippi!
[This refers to Senator James Eastland, who was a beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal cotton subsidies, overseen by a Senate committee he sat on.])
It was Jesus who said that the worst enemies were those of our own household, and we are all part of this country, citizens of the United States and share in its guilt.
Yes, we would survive, I thought to myself, even if the paper were eventually suppressed and we had to turn to leafleting, as we are doing now each Monday against the I.B.M. Wall-Street offices, trying to reach the consciences of all those participating by their daily work in the hideous and cowardly war we are waging in Vietnam.
I must not forget the beautiful young ghinkgo tree which we purchased from the city last year, and which we planted in honor of Carmen Mathews, herself a great lover of the countryside (and of drama).
She rescued us from a foreclosure when a first mortgage fell due and so has become part of this house on First Street, and of the bits of greenery back and front of it.
The fact that prisoners on Riker’s Island so I have been told, grow these trees which brighten our streets makes that tree especially dear to me.
When I pass it, I make the sign of the cross on its bark, to encourage it to grow fast and strong.
Maybe we can plant another this year in gratitude to God for saving us from the hands of the tax gatherers.
Fr. McNabb, the French Dominican, said that when Jesus left his apostles, “Peter could go back to his nets, but Matthew could not go back to his tax gatherings.”
Letter from the Internal Revenue Service:
From: District Director, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, PO Box 3100, Church St. Station, New York, N.Y., 10008
To: The Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East 1st Street, New York, N.Y. 10003
Gentlemen:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years, we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
…of our own conflict with the IRS.
We live in what we can only regard as a temporary truce.
We have not applied for or received tax exemption.
The letter we received (and published) from the N.Y. State Offices of the IRS stated:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years (), we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely yours, District Director Internal Revenue Service
The Washington official representative who met with us conveyed to us the respect they held for our religious principles and assured us that the presented bill for almost $300,000 could be ignored.
The matter would be dropped, it was indicated (but, “for the present” was the qualifying clause in my own mind).
Mr. Nixon’s first statement that he would attack the problem of “permissiveness” was a warning note.
The jailing of newspaper reporters, the Ellsberg trial — in fact, any criticisms of government policies or actions was going to meet with repressive measures.
The tax refusal movement all over the country grows.
The conflict between State and people is coming out into the open here in the United States.
The Totalitarian State is not just Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini) and the USSR (Stalin), but is here and now with the “all encroaching State” as our Catholic bishops once called it, involving China and ourselves, as well as Russia.
We assure our readers that we try to get rid of our gifts as fast as they are given to us.
But the threat still hangs over us of prosecution for not paying income tax.
We are not tax-exempt.
On principle we refuse to pay income tax, because so great a portion goes for wars, preparation for wars (defense, it is termed), and providing other countries with billion of dollars to buy our instruments of war and material and plants to make their own.
There is a sizable movement truly the foundation of the peace movement which is based on tax refusal.
(Contact Robert Calvert, War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)
Our refusal goes deep.
Our motivation is fundamentally religious.
We are told by Jesus Christ to practice the works of mercy, not the works of war.
And we do not see why it is necessary to ask the government for permission to practice the works of mercy which are the opposite of the works of war.
To ask that permission to obey Christ by applying for exemption, a costly and lengthy process, is against our religious principles.
It is an interference of the state which we must call attention to again and again.
A father who educates a young man or woman other than a blood relative is taxed for his generosity.
A poor family who takes in another poor family (as many of them do in time of unemployment or crisis), cannot count that as tax deductible.
Of course the poor suffer from the withholding tax which is taken from their weekly pay.
To understand their rights, they must plough through booklets and forms put out by the government (which I am sure I could not manage to do) before they are able to collect money at the end of the year which is owing to them due to some change of circumstance.
To get the advice of the Internal Revenue Department means standing in lines, paying excessive fares by bus or subway, with generally little redress of their grievances.
(A cheering note for us, with our very large family, which seems to increase day after day, is that when confronted by the government forces not long ago, Washington representatives from the Department of Justice were willing to concede that we were not making profits out of the poor, that we were motivated by religious principles, and that they would so notify the New York offices of the Internal Revenue Dept. which had handed us a awful bill for taxes due, along with penalties and fines, over a space of four or five years.
The New York office then sent us a brief notice concluding that our income did not obligate us to file returns.)
To talk economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists gathered in convention [a conference at New York’s Hunter College] these two days (and have to write this column) is a job.
Besides, I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists.
There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds — how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,” — with your anarchism?
Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist.
And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.
Proceeded to the Kansas City, Mo. House of Hospitality and War Tax Resistors’ Center in adjoining buildings and run by Bob and Angela Calvert who are gardening every inch of the land in their front and back yards.
It is much to the edification of the city block families and we hope their imitation.
Spent a Sunday afternoon with Karl Meyer and Jean and their three beautiful children, and all happy in the life of voluntary poverty where he receives an income low enough to be untaxable and so will not anticipate any more jail terms. His work is with the retarded in sheltered workshops.
Some of the best all around accounts of this ferment which is going on, among the young especially, is in The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229. This small packed newspaper deals extensively and specifically in works for peace, listing all those imprisoned for conscience — refusing conscription; one valiant woman is confined on Terminal Island for refusal to pay taxes (Martha Tranquilli, Terminal Island, San Pedro, Ca. 90731).
All those activities which we Catholics call “works of mercy,” are also performed by many Protestant, Quaker, and other groups in the country.
I remember a young woman who came to help us years ago, who, after her first, early enthusiasm had worn away, used to sigh wearily and say — “What’s it all about?”
I am sure many of our friends and readers also pose, more seriously, the same question.
For instance, what are Ernest and Marion Bromley all about?
Why is this frail, elderly man in jail right now for “disorderly conduct,” that is, for distributing leaflets about the nefarious workings of the Internal Revenue Service and their ways of penalizing people for advocating tax refusal.
Remember, it is the Federal taxes paid by each of us that supply arms that are keeping wars going, I cannot go into the important discussion of Tax Refusal now.
(Subscribe for The Peacemaker, 1225 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 or write to War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012.)
What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.
And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds are like that.
Going to jail, as Ernest Bromley has done, short though his stay may be, causes a ripple of conscience among us all.
And of remembrance too.
Did they search him and list every item contained in every pocket?
Did they strip him and search every nook and cranny of his body, as they did the young women arrested during the protests against air raids drills (psychological warfare) in the 50’s?
As they are doing now to Martin Sostre in Dannemora prison even after every visit from friends or lawyers.
What sadistic impulse is it that causes guards to continue these searches?
Ernest Bromley is sharing, in his (we hope) brief jail encounter, the sufferings of the world.
And we hope, like the apostles, he rejoices in having been accounted “worthy to suffer.”
The Peacemaker, every issue, has a list of those imprisoned for conscientious objection to war.
I was happy to see that Martha Tranquilli was due for release .
The Peacemakers discussed, among other subjects like voluntary poverty, life styles, etc., the kind of demonstrations to show our determination not to pay income tax which goes for building up monstrous implements of war.
Wally Nelson and his wife Juanita were there, both of whom are familiar with arrests and jailings.
I got acquainted with them years ago when Koinonia, in Central Georgia, was literally under fire from the small-towners all around them.
Next issue, I will try to write more about federal income tax which is providing the weapons for war — why we pay local taxes and not the federal income tax.
We recognize the seriousness of this and the risks involved for families.
The Bromley case is an example.
Their house was sold from under them in Cincinnati but they have not yet been evicted.
The price paid was excessively above its value.
It looks like the government is trying to make an example of them.
(It was not bought by friends and given back to them — an erroneous rumor; the Bromleys would not have put up with a connived sale which would mean still more money going to the government for war.)
This is a good and historic case, involving as it does, simple, plain and powerless (?) people.
I’d like to call special attention to a story in this issue of the paper — it is Peggy Scherer’s story, on the front page, of the Peacemaker victory [the IRS surrendered in their attempt to seize and sell Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home].
(It is the completed story of the news box which appeared on page three of the last issue.)
It is a story of gentle persistence, the power of Truth — faith in Truth (remembering that Christ is our Truth).
He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side.
I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.
We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.
We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters.
So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
We point out that one way not to have to pay income tax, so much of which goes to the military, into stockpiling, into sales of weapons to other countries, is to seek more ways of living a life of voluntary poverty, to follow our Lord Jesus and his loveable servant St. Francis.
[Speaking of Pentecostal Christian groups on the Mexican border:] I could tell of other works these groups have done, but there is no space here.
I only wish that the cause of peace, the rejection of war and service in the armed forces, and refusal to pay income tax could be part of their way of life.
Jesus told us to love our enemies and St. Francis’ followers made a rejection of feudal service to the war lords of the time part of their religious commitment.
In the Catholic Worker organization itself was targeted by the IRS for failure to pay income tax.
Eventually the IRS backed down in the face of public ridicule and Catholic Worker resistance.
Some of the Catholic Worker articles about this were written by Dorothy Day and I’ve already excerpted them in an earlier Picket Line post focusing on her writings.
The issue published a couple of reader reactions to the kerfluffle:
Dear Dorothy,
Ho, you are on the right track.
I just read your tax exemption article in the issue.
You are absolutely correct.
I don’t know how you will do it.
But you owe to all those you help, not the money represented, but the faith and steadfast purpose for which you stand — the guiding light.
I pray for you.
I hope some way you can make it — somehow.
Love, Dick Mayer 409 West 11th St. Newton, Kansas 67114
Dear Friends at CW,
I just read the 39th Anniversary issue and am tremendously excited by the article: “If the Present Is Different…”
We are in a bit of a “predicament,” between seizure of our car and auction by the IRS.
The IRS has adjourned the open auction and declared an auction for sealed bids; peace people around here are ready to rise to that challenge also.
We are starting a peace action center in this area.
We’d be interested in literature lists of books and pamphlets written by CW people.
We read that the CW has to appear in court to justify its tax refusal and its refusal to ask for exemption — as if mercy had to ask permission!
We are in a three-family intentional communlty of Mennonite background.
War tax resistance is one of our pillars and we’ve not yet found our way out of tbe maze of incorporation into some status that gives us the kind of freedom we seek.
But our existence together, our resistance and service, are dally victories.
So we keep on.
Peace and Joy be with you, David Jansen of the Bridge
On , just a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his powerful “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Eric Weinberger, the national secretary of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, wrote to to ask if King would publicly sign on to their war tax resistance campaign:
I don’t know how (or if) King responded to this request.
I have seen no indications that he participated in the war tax resistance of the period.
King had been targeted by politically-motivated tax prosecutions in areas where he had been active.
Because of this he had been under particular pressure to keep to the straight-and-narrow when it came to tax filing, so as not to give his enemies a potentially fruitful avenue of attack.
This may have discouraged him from making war tax resistance part of his protest against U.S. militarism and the Vietnam War.
It is also possible that, since King was killed , he just didn’t have time to put any possibly-intended resistance into practice.
The CNVA letterhead as shown on this letter is a clue as to who was associated with the emerging war tax resistance movement of the time.
Many of these names are familiar to me, but some others are not:
The time has come, and that time was .
350 Balk at Taxes in a War Protest
Ad in Capital Paper Urges Others to Bar Payment
Washington, — Some 350 persons who disapprove of the war in Vietnam
announced that they would not
voluntarily pay their Federal income taxes, due
. They urged others to join them
in this protest.
The Internal Revenue Service immediately made clear that it would take
whatever steps were necessary to collect the taxes.
The group announced its plans
in an advertisement in The Washington Post.
“We will refuse to pay our Federal income taxes voluntarily,” the
advertisement said. “Some of us will leave the money we owe the Government in
our bank accounts, where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they
wish. Some will contribute the money to
CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.”
Joan Baez, Lynd, Muste
The first signature on the advertisement was that of Joan Baez, the folk
singer. Others who signed it were Staughton Lynd, the Yale professor who
traveled to North Vietnam in violation
of State Department regulations, and the
Rev. A.J. Muste, the
pacifist leader.
The advertisement contained a coupon soliciting contributions for the protest.
The ad said that further information could be obtained from Mr. Muste at
Room 1003, 5 Beekman Street, New York City.
Those who placed the advertisement — which bore the heading “The Time Has
Come” — said that those who sponsored it “recognize the gravity of this step.
However, we prefer to risk violating the Internal Revenue Code, rather than
to participate, by voluntarily paying our taxes, in the serious crimes
against humanity being committed by our Government.”
The advertisement mentioned not only the war in Vietnam “against hungry,
scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians” but also “the spectacle
of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic,” an event the
sponsors said “will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.”
Cohen Is Determined
The determination of Internal Revenue to collect the taxes the Government is
owed was expressed in a formal statement by the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, Sheldon S. Cohen.
He said Internal Revenue would take “appropriate action” to collect the
taxes “in fairness to the many millions of taxpayers who do fulfill their
obligations.”
The Government has been upheld in court on all occasions when individuals
have refused to pay taxes because of disapproval with the uses to which their
money was being put, revenue officials said.
Ad Prepared Here
The headquarters of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, 5 Beekman Street,
said that it had prepared the
advertisement carried in the Washington newspaper after receiving 350
responses to invitations it had sent out soliciting participation in “an act
of civil disobedience.”
A spokesman for the committee said that Mr. Muste, the chairman, was out of
town and would return in about a week. The spokesman said that although
monetary contributions in response to the advertisement had not yet begun to
come in, the committee was prepared to mail literature explaining its program
to those who responded to the advertisement.
The spokesman said that the tax protest had been intended to represent “a
more radical and meaningful protest against the Vietnam War.”
The committee announced that members would appear at
in front of the Internal
Revenue Service office, 120 Church Street, to distribute leaflets concerning
the tax protest.
It also said that a rally and picketing would be staged from
, in front of the Federal
Building in San Francisco under the sponsorship of the War Resisters League.
The league also has offices at 5 Beekman Street.
With press coverage like this, including even the address to write to for
more information, Muste hardly needed to pay for ad space in the
Times (assuming they would have printed the ad — many
papers rejected ads like this).
Some other names I recognize from the ad are Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Dave
Dellinger, Barbara Deming, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Milton Mayer,
David McReynolds, Grace Paley, Eroseanna Robinson, Ira Sandperl, Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi, Ralph Templin, Marion Bromley, Horace Champney, Ralph Dull,
Walter Gormly, Richard Groff, Irwin Hogenauer, Roy Kepler, Ken Knudson,
Bradford Lyttle, Karl Meyer, Ed Rosenthal, Maris Cakars, Gordon Christiansen,
William Davidon, Johan Eliot, Carroll Pratt, Helen Merrell Lynd, E. Russell
Stabler, Lyle Stuart, John M. Vickers, and Eric Weinberger.
The text of the ad (without the signatures and “coupon”) is as follows:
The Time Has Come
The spectacle of the United States — with its jet bombers, helicopters,
fragmentation and napalm bombs and disabling gas — carrying on an endless war
against the hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside the unforgivable
atrocities of Italy in Ethiopia.
The spectacle of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic — again
pitting our terrifying weaponry mainly against civilians armed with rifles…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.
But the spectacle of the indifference of so many Americans to the crimes
being committed in their names, by their brothers, and with their tax money…
this spectacle reminds us more and more of the indifference of the
majority of the German people to the killing of six million Jews.
The United States government has not reacted constructively to legitimate
criticism, protests and appeals:
by world leaders including the Pope, U Thant and President De Gaulle —
by United States leaders including Senators Morse, Gruening, Church, Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Stephen Young —
by hundreds of thousands of citizens including 2,500 clergymen and countless professors who placed protest advertisements in leading newspapers —
by innumerable students, many tens of thousands of whom have taken their protest to Washington on several occasions —
by celebrated individuals such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Robert Lowell, Arthur Miller and Dr. Benjamin Spock —
and by leading newspapers, including the New York Times.
We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted and that
the time has come for Americans of conscience to take more radical action in
the hope of averting nuclear war.
Therefore, the undersigned hereby declare that at least as long as
U.S. Forces are
clearly being used in violation of the
U.S. Constitution,
International Law and the United Nations Charter…
We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily
Some of us will leave the money we owe the government in our bank accounts,
where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they wish. Others will
contribute the money to CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.
We recognize the gravity of this step. However, we prefer to risk violating
the Internal Revenue Code, rather than to participate, by voluntarily paying
our taxes, in the serious crimes against humanity being committed by our
Government.
You see the beauty of my proposal is
it needn’t wait on general revolution.
I bid you to the one-man revolution —
The only revolution that is coming.
Today, instead of dredging up something from the archives about historical
tax resistance campaigns and movements, I want to spend some time looking at
individual tax resistance in service of what
Ammon Hennacy called
the “one-man* revolution.”
Whether Hennacy got the name from Frost’s poem, or Frost from him, or whether
each came up with it independently, I don’t know. The idea goes back much
further than either, and in particular is especially pronounced in Thoreau’s
thinking.
This idea is that, contrary to what the organizers of the world are
always telling us, the key to curing society’s ills is not necessarily to
organize at all. You don’t need a majority, or a critical mass, or a
disciplined revolutionary vanguard. Just get your own house in order and
commit yourself to your own personal revolution — that’s the most crucial
and practical thing you can do.
“One-man revolution” is the answer to the question posed by radicals and
reformers who feel overwhelmed by the task ahead. “What can one person do?”
they ask (half-hoping, I suspect, that the answer will be “nothing, so don’t
sweat it”). They think the revolution that will finally put things right is
scheduled for later — when the masses see the light… when a crisis comes… when
we find a charismatic leader… when we unite the factions under one banner…
when… when… when…
The one-man revolutionary says: no, the revolution starts here and now. Your
first task as a revolutionary is to overturn the corrupt, confused, puppet
governor of your own life and to put a more responsible sovereign in its
place.
As to what the policies of this new sovereign ought to be, well, that’s up to
you. I’m not going to cover the details of how Hennacy’s and Thoreau’s one-man
revolutions played out and what specific decisions they made along the way.
Today instead I’m going to look at the reasons they gave for why the one-man
revolution is practical and effective, in answer to the
“What can just one person do?” skeptics.
These reasons can be roughly divided into five categories:
With the one-man revolution, success is in reach. It may not be easy, but
you can win this revolution with your own effort. Furthermore, whether or
not you succeed, the struggle itself is the right thing to do.
You don’t need to wait for a majority. You don’t need to water down your
message to try to win mass appeal or group consensus. You can start
immediately from a firm platform of integrity and honesty. This also makes
you more self-reliant so that you can endure challenges better, which
makes you more effective and far-reaching than those revolutionaries who
always have to check to see if the rest of the pack is still with
them.
Political revolutions that are not also accompanied by individual
revolutions don’t make enduring radical change — they just change the
faces of the clowns running the circus while leaving the corrupt structure
intact.
The world sometimes is changed radically and for the better by
the efforts and example of a single, one-in-a-million character. But the
first step is not to set out to change the world, but to develop that
character.
By fighting the one-man revolution, you are not as alone as you may think
you are: you “leaven the loaf” and cause all society to rise, you attract
other one-man revolutionaries to your side, and you sow the seeds that
inspire others.
You can win the one-man revolution
Ammon Hennacy’s theory of the one-man revolution crystallized, appropriately
enough, while he was being held in solitary confinement. He’d been sentenced
for promoting draft evasion during World War Ⅰ and then thrown in “the hole”
for leading a hunger strike of prisoners to protest awful food. Because he
refused to name names, he was kept there for several months.
Locked up alone in a cell 24/7, unable to communicate with his comrades in the
prison or outside, given the silent treatment by the guard, and overhearing
the day-in day-out torture of the inmate in the adjoining cell — this was not
the most promising situation for a revolutionary.
The only book they allowed him was the Bible (and they even took this away and
replaced it with a smaller-print version for no other reason but to inflict
another petty torment in the dim light of his cell). In the course of reading
and reflecting on what he read — particularly
the Sermon on the
Mount — he decided that the revolution could be fought and won even where
he stood.
To change the world by bullets or ballots was a useless procedure. …the only
revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one
could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority.
(A few days back I saw a bumper sticker that read “Jesus was a community organizer.”
But if you read the Sermon on the Mount, you won’t see any organizing going on there at all — Jesus is urging people individually to get their lives in order so that their deeds will be like a light shining before others to inspire them.
Do you see any “we must,” “we ought to,” “we should work together to,” or “once there are enough of us” in that sermon?
Jesus isn’t addressing an organization but an assembly.)
You can start now, with full integrity
Lloyd Danzeisen expressed one of the advantages of the one-man revolution in
a letter to Hennacy: “You are lucky and of course very wise to be a ‘one man
revolution,’ for you do not have to discuss your action over and over again
(with committees) but can swing into action.”
The advantage of organizing and working together is superior numbers, and, in
theory anyway, greater force. But there are many disadvantages. It takes a lot
of time and negotiation to get a bunch of people to take action together, and
usually this also involves finding some lowest common denominator of principle
or risk that they can all agree on — which can mean watering down the core of
what you’re fighting for until it seems less like a principle than a petty
grievance.
What such a movement gains in quantity it may lose in quality, and the force
it gains from numbers it may lose from the diffuse, blunted, half-hearted
effort of the individuals that make it up, or from the fact that much of their
energy is expended in the organizing itself rather than the ostensible goals
of the organization.
The advantage of drawing a large crowd of half-hearted followers is rarely
worth the effort.
It is not too hard to sway a crowd of wishy-washy people by appealing to the
half-truths they already believe and being careful not to attack any of the
nonsense they adhere to. But what does this get you? A crowd of wishy-washy
people who are just as vulnerable to falling for the next demagogue who comes
along with patronizing speeches. Instead, Hennacy recommends, we should
“appeal to those about ready to make the next step and… know that these are
very few indeed.… We can live and die and never change
political trends but if we take a notion, we can change our own lives in many
basic respects and thus do that much to change society.”
Thoreau noted with approval that the abolitionist revolutionary
John
Brown had not gathered around him a large party of well-wishers
and collaborators, but instead had been very selective about whom he let in on
his plans:
A one-man revolutionary is more effective and harder to defeat
A one-man revolutionary — a “man of good principles” — is individually more
effective and harder to defeat than that same person would be as part of a
movement. This may seem paradoxical to people who are used to thinking in
terms of “strength in numbers” or “the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.”
This is for two related reasons:
First, because as a one-man revolutionary you are self-motivated, you do not
get thrown into confusion if the lines of communication down the chain of
command are disrupted, and you don’t lose momentum by looking about to check
if your comrades are still with you or if they have retreated or surrendered.
And second, because this makes it difficult for your opponents to get a
foothold in trying to persuade you with threats or with bribes to give up the
fight.
For example, Hennacy tells of one of his captors trying to trick him:
Detective Wilson said that the young Socialists arrested with me for refusing
to register had all given in and registered. (Later I found out that he had
also told them that I had registered.) [But] I felt that if they gave in,
someone had to stick, and I was that one.
The detective assumed that Hennacy valued his belonging more than his
integrity, and so made a completely ineffective attack. Thoreau similarly
noted that his captors had failed to understand his motives, assuming he
valued his freedom from confinement more than his freedom of action:
People often draw the wrong conclusion from the success of the “divide and
conquer” tactic when used by governments against opposition movements. The
lesson proved by this is not that unless we stay united we are weak,
but that to the extent that our strength depends mainly on our unity we
are vulnerable.
Without the one-man revolution, no other revolution is worth the trouble
The problem with the mass, popular, peasants-with-pitchforks sort of
revolution is that it’s so unreliable. You put everything on the line, shed
buckets of blood, endure betrayals and unfriendly alliances and hard
compromises, and finally (if you’re lucky) cut off the king’s head and take
charge… and then what? As often as not, you end up with something as bad as
before.
Political revolutions, says Hennacy, “only changed masters.” — “We made a
revolution against England and are not free yet. The Russians made a
revolution against the Czar and now have an even stronger dictatorship. It is
not too late to make a revolution that will mean something — one that will
stick: your own one-man revolution.”
Tyranny is not something that only infests the top of the org chart. The
tyrant doesn’t cause tyranny, but is its most obvious symptom.
Tyranny lives as tenaciously in the tyrannized as in the tyrant. This is why
Thoreau was careful to say (emphasis mine):
Not, “when the workers seize power” or “when we get money out of politics” or
anything of that sort, but “when men are prepared for it.” We must prepare
ourselves, one one-man revolution at a time, and when we have, we will get the
government we deserve (self-government, if Thoreau is right and if we ever do
deserve such a thing).
Be careful how you define “success.” You can do everything you set out to do,
but if you haven’t set out to do anything worth doing, you still fail. Even in
mundane things, you’d be wise to keep your eye on a bigger picture. Thoreau
mused in his journal:
Success and failure have superficial and deep components that may contradict
each other. John Brown set out to launch a rebellion that would end American
slavery; the government stood its ground and defended slavery against the
rebellion and had Brown hanged. Who was successful? Who won? A victory for
evil is just a triumphant form of failure.
At the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, Brown was called insane by the pulpit,
popular opinion, and the press (even — especially — the liberal,
abolitionist press). Some gave as evidence for his insanity the most
extraordinarily sane thing about him:
You’d think with the example of Jesus hovering over Western Civilization,
people would be skeptical of traditional notions of success: being captured
and tortured to death by your enemies and having your followers scorned and
scattered throughout a hostile empire doesn’t seem much like a victory. But
Thoreau thought the response to John Brown proved that even after centuries of
Christianity, “[i]f Christ
should appear on earth he would on all hands be denounced as a mistaken,
misguided man, insane & crazed.”
You don’t have to believe that history will eventually smile on you and turn
your seeming defeats and setbacks into obvious victories. You don’t have to
believe the nice-sounding but unlikely sentiment that Hennacy attributed to
Tolstoy: “no sincere effort made in the behalf of Truth is ever lost.” You
just need to remember that the seemingly small victories in an uncompromising
one-man revolution can be more worthwhile (when seen from the perspective of
what is worthwhile, not just what is expedient) than huge triumphs
rotting within from compromise and half-truths.
Slavery in particular was such an unambiguous evil that it was one of
“those cases to which the rule of
expediency does not apply,” Thoreau said. He made this comparison: if the
only way you can save yourself from drowning is to unjustly wrest a plank away
from another drowning man, you must instead do what is just even if it kills
you. If you are “victorious” in wresting away the plank, and thereby save your
own life at the cost of another, you lose.✴
“Hennacy, do you think you can change the world?” said Bert Fireman, a
columnist on the Phoenix Gazette.
“No, but I am damn sure it can’t change me” was my reply.
If you want to change things you have to get 51% of the ballots or
the bullets. If I want to change things I just have to keep on doing
what I am doing — that is: every day the government says “pay taxes for war”;
every day I do not pay taxes for war. So I win and they lose. The One Man
Revolution — you can’t beat it.
Do not let your opponent set the norm. Generally a minority is jeered at
because they are so small. It is quality and not quantity
that is the measure. “One on the side of God is a majority” is the perfect
answer which I have given dozens of times with success.
Sometimes, a single one-man revolutionary really does change the world. Maybe
the world was already ripe for changing, but it still needed a one-man
revolutionary to break from the pack and make the change happen.
We can’t all be Christ, Buddha, Gandhi, or Joan of Arc.
(Steve Allen said that
Ammon Hennacy fulfilled more of the role of a
Lenny Bruce; Hennacy’s
wife suggested Don Quixote.) It is only one-in-a-million who moves the world.
But despite the odds we all should aspire to be this one in a million.
Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary
church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the
ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the
ordinary intellectual. Therefore one who has love, courage, and wisdom is one
in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi.
Even if we fall short of this goal ourselves, by choosing this goal we not
only choose the only goal worth choosing, but we adjust our standards so that
if we are ever lucky enough to meet this one in a million, we will be
more likely to recognize her or him. Most people are incapable of recognizing
or comprehending the hero in real life — they lionize the dead martyred heroes
of past generations, while joining the lynch mobs to martyr the heroes of
their own.
It only takes a little leavening to leaven the loaf
By being virtuous in an out-of-the-ordinary way you encourage people to call
ordinary vices into question and you force the devil’s advocates to show
themselves by coming to the devil’s defense. Thoreau was convinced that one
person was enough to leaven the loaf:
Hennacy said that his “work was not that of an organizer but of a Sower to sow
the seeds.”
We really can’t change the world. We really can’t change other people! The
best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The way to do this,
if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!
When they are ready for it [my emphasis again — ♇], the rich, the
bourgeois intellectual, the bum, and even the politician and the clergy may
have an awakening of conscience because of the uncompromising seeds of
Christian Anarchism which we are sowing.
You have a plan to reform the world? As the saying goes: “show me, don’t tell
me.” Thoreau:
So often we hear of a Big Plan that, were it enacted as designed, would solve
the Big Problems. But the problem with the big plans is that they never seem
to get enacted, or if they do, they never seem to work as designed, as the
same problems show up in new guises. Meanwhile the planners waste their time
and energy and don’t change what is changeable. Tolstoy put it this
way:
An alcoholic who spoke with Hennacy had much the same sentiment: “the
AA fixed me
up. You are right in not wanting to change the world by violence; the change
has to come with each person first.”
The present American peace movement, stubbornly paying for the imperial armies
it says it opposes, reminds me of drunks meeting in a tavern at happy hour to
organize a prohibition movement that will solve their alcohol problem.
Your one-man revolution isn’t as lonely as it may seem
Hennacy and Thoreau also had faith that if you begin the one-man revolution,
this will attract like-minded souls to you and you to them, and that you will
find yourself working in concert with comrades you never knew you had:
Hennacy: “In reading Tolstoy I had gained the idea that if a person had the
One Man Revolution in his heart and lived it, he would be led by God toward
those others who felt likewise.… This was to be proven in a most dramatic way,
and was to usher me into the second great influence of my life: that of the
Catholic Worker movement.”
The One-Man Revolution
So what do you have to do to be the exemplar and sow the seeds?
Accept responsibility, and act responsibly.
Build yourself a glass house and start throwing stones.
Accept responsibility, and act responsibly
Most political action amounts to “who can we find to take responsibility for
this problem” — the One Man Revolutionary asks “what can I do to take
responsibility for this problem?”
Not that everything is your responsibility, or that the world is
looking to you personally to solve all of its problems. But you should at
the very least examine your life to see what problems or solutions you are
contributing to with it. Can one person make a difference? You are
already making a difference — what kind of difference are
you making?
In Thoreau’s time, the evils of slavery and of wars of conquest were sustained
by the active allegiance and support of the ordinary people around him, many
of whom nonetheless congratulated themselves for their anti-war, anti-slavery
opinions.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that because the one-man revolution is in your
heart that it can just stay there, locked up inside, without leaking out into
the world around you.
The one-man revolution doesn’t necessarily require living in
opposition to society and the status quo, but it does require holding fast to
justice and virtue. When society and the status quo are opposed to justice and
virtue, as they so often are, this puts them in opposition to you as well.
Build yourself a glass house and start throwing stones
Your friends and even your enemies will come to your aid when you try to hold
yourself to a high standard. All you have to do is to make yourself vulnerable
to charges of hypocrisy. People love to point out hypocritical moralists, in
part because some hypocritical moralists are hilarious, but also in part
because it helps people excuse their own failures to hold themselves to high
standards. If you build yourself a glass house and throw stones from it,
everyone will volunteer to keep you on the straight-and-narrow.
Hennacy:
I have… put myself in a glass house. If so I must needs take whatever stones
come my way. I have the right by my life of integrity to criticize, but I
must also take whatever criticism comes my way in all good humor.
[A] spoiled and arrogant priest wanted to know if I was “holier than thou.” I
told him I hoped by Christ I was, for if I wasn’t I would be in a hell of a
fix. I used this blunt method to deflate his spurious piety.
At times those who do not want to have their inconsistencies pointed out say
in a super-sweet voice to me “judge not, lest ye be judged.” I reply, “O.K.,
judge me, then.”
While both Thoreau and Hennacy strike me as stern with others, and
maybe not always fun to be around (as Hennacy would say: “I love my enemies
but am hell on my friends”), they were anything but joyless. Thoreau’s
vigorous, enthusiastic love of life and the world are legendary, and Hennacy’s
character too was eager, life-affirming, and generous (even in its criticisms).
Utah Phillips came home from the Korean war a drunken brawler, checked in to
Hennacy’s Catholic Worker hospitality house in Salt Lake City, and eight
years later checked out again, sober, a pacifist, and an anarchist. He
remembered Hennacy this way:
He was tough without being hard — tough without that brittle hardness that
some tough men have that would shatter if you struck it too hard. “Love in
Action,” Dorothy Day called him — Dostoyevsky’s words: “Love in action is
harsh and dreadful compared to love in dreams.”‡
Neither Thoreau nor Hennacy had any tolerance for bliss-bunnyishness, but both
were cheerful; both knew how to be dutiful without being dour. Thoreau:
I’ve tried here to put forward the strongest affirmative case for the
practical effectiveness of the one-man revolution, at least as it can be found
in Hennacy’s and Thoreau’s writings.
They make a strong and persuasive argument, I think, but not an airtight one.
I wish more evidence was preserved of them in dialog with incisive critics of
the one-man revolution, to hear how they would respond to the best arguments
against it.
But what keeps the argument for a one-man revolution from persuading people is
not, I think, the strength of the counter-arguments, but just the fact that to
accept the argument is not enough — it demands much more than a “Like,” and
much more than most people think they have to give. To be persuaded is to be
overwhelmed, to take the first step off the path and into uncharted territory,
and only a few of us have the courage to take that step.
* Can we all be mature here and recognize that in Frost’s and Thoreau’s and Hennacy’s time words like “man,” “men,” “he,” “his,” and “him” could either be intended by the author to stand exclusively for males or for people in general depending on the context, which the discerning reader (I think) can still be trusted to understand?
✴ This is an old thought experiment, see for instance Cicero’s De Officiis Ⅲ.23 in which he says much the same.
Thoreau’s “ten honest men” also hearkens back to the Bible, in this
case the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. When God threatened
to destroy the cities, Abraham asked him if he would still be willing to
destroy them if there were fifty righteous people there who would be
destroyed with the rest. God said in that case, he’d back off. Then Abraham
said, what about 45? how about 40? 30? 20? 10?
He managed to negotiate God down to ten before God got sick of the act and walked away.
Alas, there weren’t even that many righteous people, so God torched the place.
For that matter, Thoreau’s note that in his speech to a mostly-shocked crowd “the seed has not all fallen in stony & shallow ground” also has Biblical roots, as does his “do not let your right hand know what your left hand does” remark.
Even if you’re not a Christian, you almost have to be familiar with the King James Bible just to acquire the vocabulary of metaphors you need to understand the centuries of English-language literature that came after.
By using phrases like these and drawing on the stories they evoked in his
audience, Thoreau is reminding them that his arguments, while challenging,
are rooted in a tradition they can understand and already are familiar with.
As good Christians, they have probably already tried to imagine the Kingdom
of God as being like a little yeast leavening a whole loaf, or whether or not
they are the sort of good ground on which the seeds of good teaching would
land and flourish, or whether if angels came to destroy their town they
would be among the ten righteous people who could argue for them to spare it.
‡ This comes from The Brothers Karamazov, where it is delivered by a saintly monk named Zossima.
He is talking with a woman who is going through a spiritual crisis, and who has
fantasized about going into a religious order and becoming a Mother Theresa
kissing-the-wounds-of-lepers sort. Zossima says that such things are nice
thoughts to have because “some time, unawares, you may do a good deed in
reality,” but they’re just daydreams of saintliness, not the real thing.
If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right
road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of
falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own
deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being
scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you
will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid
fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood.
Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be
frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing
more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing
compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action,
rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if
only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and
applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude,
and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.
Occasionally, tax resisters will join forces to form cooperative housing or business relationships that help to facilitate their resistance.
This is most often found among war tax resisters, for whom resistance is an ongoing commitment rather than a protest or rebellion against a particular government or policy.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.
The Bijou community of Colorado Springs, Colorado is a living example of nonviolent community resistance in the “belly of the beast” of right-wing military and Christian extremism.
The members of this community live below a taxable income level so that they don’t pay for war.
In addition to ongoing bannering and civil disobedience at some of the 5 major military institutions in the area, the Bijou community runs services for the mentally-ill, homeless, working poor, incarcerated, and the general community including: a soup kitchen, food banks, a land trust, several homes for transitional and homeless folks, a free bicycle clinic, and a musical theater group.
The Agape Community
The Agape Community was founded in by a group of Catholics who wanted to live closer to the ideal of Christian community they found in the Bible.
Among the founders were tax resisters Brayton & Suzanne Shanley and Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
They formed the community in such a way that it could support itself with members earning less than a taxable income, for example by being able to grow their own food.
The Shanleys have stayed with the two-house community since its founding, and it has had dozens of more transient residents through the years.
The community hosts speakers and workshops on nonviolence and related topics.
The Whiteway Colony
A group of Tolstoyans made a go of creating a colony based on their interpretation of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism, which included tax resistance, and was eventually the home to forty people.
The land was operated by a committee headed by noted Tolstoyan (and Tolstoy translator) Aylmer Maude, and this committee held the land in trust, while allowing anyone to settle on and work the land, with the understanding that nobody would own any of it except by virtue of being engaged in occupying and working on it.
(The Whiteway community still exists, but has abandoned the more radical communal-ownership principles — today the land is communally owned, but the homes on it are bought and sold as private property.)
Possibility Alliance
The Possibility Alliance farm is a simple-living showcase guided by the following five principles: radical simplicity, service, social activism, inner work, and gratitude.
It hosts free skills-share classes and a group called the Superheroes who dress up like caped crusaders and bike out to do good deeds here and there.
The founders are war tax resisters who resist by maintaining a very low (sub-poverty line) income.
Joanne Sheehan
When the Hartford Courant profiled war tax resisters Anna Aschenbach and Joanne Sheehan, who have been resisting taxes since the Vietnam War, it noted Sheehan’s participation in cooperative projects as being helpful to her resistance:
Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes.
They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters.
They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.
“Land League Villages”
During the rent strike that the National Land League organized against English absentee landlords in Ireland, when landlords were successful in evicting tenants who refused to pay rent, the League would try to find them (and sometimes their livestock) a temporary home on the land of someone who was sympathetic with the resisters.
These might grow to hold several families and were sometimes called “Land League Villages.”
Amish Milk Cooperatives
The cooperatives used by Amish communities to process and package milk turned out to be useful also when the Amish began resisting the then-new social security taxes (they believed the social security program would require them to violate principles of their faith, and after many years of resistance, they won a legal exemption from the program).
The government tried to levy the checks that the cooperative wrote to pay those of its milk suppliers who were resisting the tax, but the responsible officials of the cooperative refused to sign the checks.
Peacemakers attempted to build a decentralized and self-disciplined movement which stressed local initiative and group coordination along the lines of the nonviolent revolutionary movement in India.
Emphasis was put on building intentional communities which practiced communal living.
“Groups or cells are the real basis of the movement,” Peacemakers announced, “for this is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee.”
Instead, Peacemakers emphasized a living program which included resistance to the draft and war taxes, personal transformation, and group participation in work for political and economic democracy.
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place…
Juanita and Wally Nelson, founding members of Peacemakers, and war tax resisters Betsy Corner, Randy Kehler, and Bob Bady were among the organizers of the Valley Community Land Trust.
The trust resisted IRS attempts to seize the Corner/Kehler home for back taxes, and helped to get their home returned to them.
Art Harvey’s farm
Dorothy Day visited Art Harvey’s farm in and described it this way:
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal… by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
Peter Maurin Farm
Peter Maurin Farm
is a Catholic Worker project — a “hospitality house on the land” near Manhattan that also grows food for the urban hospitality houses.
Many of those involved in the project were conscientious objectors, and appreciated being able to be part of a self-supporting project that required its volunteers to earn little or no taxable income and so enabled them to stay under the tax line.
Collective Impressions
War tax resister Ed Guinan created a business to help facilitate the tax resistance of its employees.
One news profile described it this way:
[I]n Washington, D.C., is another group of tax resisters who have formed a nonprofit cooperative print shop and who refuse to send their taxes to the IRS.
Ed Guinan is a priest and the coordinator of the shop, called Collective Impressions.
A year and a half ago Guinan and his colleagues decided to continue paying social security taxes but to send their withholding taxes to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
“Every quarter, when taxes are due, we send a check to the Arms Control Agency,” Guinan says.
“They return it with a polite note saying that they cannot accept it, and we put it into a tax escrow account which cannot be used for normal business expenses.”
Collective Impressions owes only $500 per quarter to the IRS, but Guinan and his coworkers believe they are making an effective protest against U.S. military spending policies.
Restored Israel of Yahweh
Similarly, members of the small religious group called the Restored Israel of Yahweh formed a small construction business and helped those of its employees who were also members of the group to resist their taxes — eventually facing criminal tax evasion convictions for this.
Employers can help tax resisting employees by refusing to withhold taxes from their salaries (see The Picket Line, ) and by refusing to cooperate with salary levies (see The Picket Line, ).
But that’s not all.
Today I’ll mention some other ways that employers have helped (or can help) resisting employees:
Kenya in 2008
During a post-election crisis of legitimacy in Kenya in , Charles Kanjama urged the opposition to embrace a nonviolent resistance strategy, with tax resistance at the forefront.
As part of this, he urged people to adopt both legal and illegal forms of tax avoidance.
Among the legal techniques he advocated was a sort of tax delaying tactic:
Compliant tax avoidance plays within the rules of the current tax statutes to reduce, delay or eliminate tax liability.
For PAYE for example, participating employers and employees can enter into a voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several months.
The Catholic Worker
As Dorothy Day noted,
The C.W. [Catholic Worker] has never paid salaries.
Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living).
So we do not need to pay federal income taxes.
The Other Side
Another Christian activist magazine, The Other Side, published .
Staff member Dee Dee Risher said: “We’ve built into our workplace certain small disciplines to remind ourselves that we are on this path of conversion.
Our salaries are structured to allow staff members to do war-tax resistance and are intentionally low to remind us of the struggles of the poor and sharpen our willingness to sacrifice.”
NWTRCC notes
NWTRCC, in its publications, has noted a few cases in which employers have been accommodating when confronted with the unusual needs of war tax resisting employees:
Steve Soucy, [a resister] from Orland, Maine, arranged with his employer to reduce his hours after a levy notice arrived at his workplace.
“I had received a proposed assessment from the IRS for the first years that I’d earned enough to be taxed.
From that notice it was clear they knew my current employer, and so it seemed just a matter of time before they would try to collect directly from my wages.
After some soul searching, I decided to prepare myself to leave that position, or cut back my hours, and I began training for a career change to something which I believe will let me earn money in a way that would be more difficult for the IRS to track.
Up until the notice of attachment I did not tell my employer why I claimed nine exemptions on my W-4, since if they knew, they would be obliged by law to report me.
But once the levy arrived, I was able to be more open about my tax resistance.
I wrote a letter to my boss and my program manager (my supervisor’s boss) explaining that for reasons of conscience, I would no longer be able to continue in my position full time.
I stated my willingness to work up to a certain number of hours per week until they were able to find a replacement, or decide what to do.
I eventually tapered my hours from the maximum allowed before withholding to just a few hours per week, while increasing my employment in my other jobs to cover the loss in income and benefits.
The most rewarding part was talking to my co-workers, who I found quite sympathetic to my reasons for tax resistance.
In a way it was like coming ‘out of the closet,’ and gave them the opportunity to be supportive.”
A counseling session at NWTRCC’s Kansas City gathering got into stories of responding to salary levies and employers.
In a current case, the resister found his employer to be most accommodating and is planning to lower his salary and barter for some benefits that will help keep money from the IRS.
The resister was surprised that his employer was so willing to help — as long as the risks to the business were minimized.
One war tax resister writes: “Rent is always my biggest expense and thus the biggest burden on my practice of war tax resistance.
Usually, I try to arrange housing as a component of one of my jobs.
By doing this, I significantly reduce the amount of cash I need to earn.
I currently work as the caretaker of buildings and grounds at a camp for people with disabilities.
The camp provides me with a residence on the premises so I can keep watch over the facility and so I can be available on short notice for critical maintenance needs.
Although our arrangement is a barter of services in exchange for housing, the value of this particular type of barter is excluded from my income under the Internal Revenue Code…”
Job sharing can be a way of keeping income below taxable levels as well as balancing other parts of life.
Nancy and Gary T. Guthrie, a husband-and-wife parenting team, shared the job of Iowa Peace Network Coordinator.
This allowed them to be involved in both meaningful employment and parenting; it also let them keep their income below taxable levels.
William Hill asks uncomfortable questions
A woman who worked for the gambling bookmaker William Hill asked her employer to stop withholding taxes from her, on the grounds that under international law it would be illegal for her to continue to pay for what she felt to be illegal warfare conducted by the government.
She describes what happened next:
[T]o my amazement, I got a response inviting me to a meeting with the area manager and a chap from Personnel, and we sat down and we discussed the legal implications of paying tax to the U.K. government.
And of course they raised all the normal concerns about the legality of not paying tax, and they showed us a copy of a letter that they had received from the Inland Revenue, so William Hill actually wrote to the Inland Revenue, bringing this matter up, and got a response!
It was the usual whitewash, along the lines of “we are not aware of any law, blah blah,” — however, they also included in that letter that they’d had a series of other inquiries from other people (they didn’t say whether it was just individuals or whether they were other companies).
So the Inland Revenue had already been contacted by other people, already.
So, by the end of the meeting, the area manager of our shops and a chap from Personnel, they both seemed pretty-well convinced of the legality of withholding taxes — of course he had to go to the board of directors: if they’re going to withhold my tax, they’ve got to do it for the whole company, haven’t they, or not at all?
So we’ll see what happens.
Voices in the Wilderness
Corporations can also refuse to pay taxes that they owe as a group.
For example, in the activist group “Voices in the Wilderness” was fined $20,000 for bringing food and medicine into Iraq when that country was under a blockade.
They have refused to pay, saying:
Voices will not pay a penny of this fine.
The economic sanctions regime imposed brutal and lethal punishment on Iraqi people.
The U.S. government would not allow Iraq to rebuild its water treatment system after the U.S. military deliberately destroyed it in .
The U.S. government denied Iraq the ability to purchase blood bags, medical needles, and medicine in adequate supplies — destroying Iraq’s health care system.
We chose to travel to Iraq in order to openly challenge our country’s war against the Iraqi people.
We fully understood that our acts could result in criminal or civil charges.
We acted because when our country’s government is committing a grievous, criminal act, it is incumbent upon each of us to challenge in every nonviolent manner possible the acts of the government.
We choose to continue our noncooperation with the government’s war on the Iraqi people through the simple act of refusing to pay this fine.
To pay the fine would be to collaborate with the U.S. government’s ongoing war against Iraq.
We will not collaborate.
It may sound like a long shot, but have you considered trying to make friends with the tax collector?
It’s a strategy that’s so crazy it just might work!
Here are some examples of where tax resisters or their allies have tried it:
The Peacemakers were eventually successful in winning back war tax resisters Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home, which had been seized for back taxes.
In a retrospective, they claimed:
The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms. Believing that the legal system is an instrument of oppression and exists to protect the state and the property of the powerful, they refused to take their case into the courts.
Instead they worked to make the truth known through personal meetings with IRS officials, through continuous leafletting, through appealing to their supporters country-wide to demand justice.… They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS officials that would allow for honest dialogue.
And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.
Initially it appeared that IRS’ reversal had been an act of faith in the Peacemakers; that it had been touched by the group’s philosophy of truth and their consistent methods.
It wasn’t that complete a victory.
The Commissioner had been sufficiently impressed by these people to where he called for a special investigation — which verified the Peacemakers’ statement.
Dorothy Day wrote of this:
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side.
I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.
We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.
We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters.
So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
Ernest and Marion Bromley pose in front of their home.
Quaker Thomas Watson was seized by the American army during the revolution, and condemned “to be stripped and ironed, and on the next afternoon to be publicly hanged” for refusing to take the continental currency that Congress was using to finance the war, his family was given little hope for him.
“You may go home,” one petitioner was told, “and rest assured your uncle will be hanged.”
But the wife of the prisoner had a warm friend in the landlady of the inn at Newtown; and when was woman’s kindness ever invoked for the relief of suffering, or woman’s tact required in vain?
She was advised not to apply in person for the release of her husband.
The landlady had learned Lord Sterling’s fondness for the creaturely comforts of life; and knew that wine had the effect to soften the severity of his temper.
To take advantage of this disposition, she invited him to a sumptuous dinner.
He did full justice to the delicacies of the table, and willingly partook of the generous old wine, which had been reserved for special occasions.
As the wine warmed the General’s good-nature and disposed him to kindlier feelings, she cautiously introduced the case of the condemned; pitied his condition, cold, and in irons; regarded his treatment as needlessly severe; and at length requested that his fetters might be removed and his clothes restored to him.
He could not resist this appeal of his hostess; and a note was sent to the guard in answer to her request.
The good woman continued her entreaties, and still plied the wine; when, at the proper moment, the wife was introduced.
She fell on her knees before him, burst into a flood of tears, and told him who she was, and, with all the earnestness, feeling, and eloquence of a loving wife pleading for the one she loved best on earth, begged him to spare her husband’s life.
Her entreaties were of a nature hard to be withstood.
He remained some time silent; then, raising her to her feet, he said, “Madam, you have conquered.
I must relent at the tears and supplications of so noble and so good a woman as you.
Your husband is saved.”
He immediately wrote a pardon for the prisoner, and ordered his discharge.
The happy pair now returned to their homes rejoicing.
Such friendly meetings do not always end well.
Quaker Henry Paxson found this out when he was visited by the tax collector some 300 years ago:
Paxson kindly treats [the tax collector] with best he had, and when he had filled his wem, and drank plentifully of good cider, he distrains the plates he had eaten on, and the tankard he so freely toped out of, but the wife begged the tankard, and bid him take something in lieu of it.
In , a delegation of Quakers met with the sheriff, his sub-lieutenants, a judge, magistrates, and a tax collector in their area of Pennsylvania.
They reported:
[We] had opportunity of laying before them the reasons and grounds of our refusal to comply with several requisitions, made for the support of, or that have near connection with, war; and to open our principles, and the consistency thereof with the doctrines of the Gospel, as set forth in the New Testament and pointed out by the prophets, and the inconsistency of Christians oppressing one another for conscience sake.
They generally appeared friendly, and to receive our visit kindly, some of them particularly so; and most of them acknowledged that the prophecies concerning the disuse of carnal weapons, pointed to the Gospel dispensation, and was much to be desired.
We had good satisfaction in the performance of this service, believing truth owned it, and that there is encouragement for Friends to use further endeavors of this kind.
The Rebecca Rioters could be cruel, or even deadly, to the keepers of the toll gates they were destroying.
More frequently, they would allow the keepers a few moments to collect their personal belongings and remove them from the building before they demolished it.
And on some occasions, the encounters were almost cordial:
The gate-keeper begged of them not to destroy the furniture, as it was his own; and his wife and child were in bed, but they might do as they liked with the gate and toll-house.
Rebecca went to the door, and ordered her [Rebecca’s] daughters not to touch anything but the gate and the roof of the toll-house, and not to break the ceiling for fear the rain would harm the woman and child in bed.
In their hurry, however, to unroof the house, one of them slipped between the rafters, and his foot got through the ceiling.
Rebecca expressed her sorrow at the accident, as it might cause inconvenience to the gate-keeper.
They behaved remarkably well to the gate-keeper, and frequently desired him and his wife not to be alarmed, as they would not injure them in the least; but at parting Rebecca desired him not to exact tolls at that gate any more.
There was no more persistent foe of the IRS than Vivien Kellems, but:
Miss Kellems stresses that she holds no animosity toward the officials who enforce the tax laws.
When IRS Commissioner Johnnie M. Walker took office earlier she sent him a note outlining their differences but congratulating him on his appointment.
“He sent back a nice thank you note,” she said.
During the tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain, good relationships between the resisters and the auctioneers who were enlisted to sell off their goods for taxes allowed them to better use these auctions as rally and propaganda opportunities.
On one occasion:
…the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector.
When Kate Raleigh’s property was seized by the tax collector:
Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted.
Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.
The movement against Thatcher’s Poll Tax initially tried to reach out to the councils who were responsible for setting the budgets that implemented the tax, and to the labor union representing the tax collectors who would be enforcing it, to ask them not to cooperate.
However, this met with very little success.
War tax resister Robin Harper met with a tax auditor and a “frivolous tax coordinator” at an IRS office in .
He described how it went:
I quickly assured them that an accurate accounting should of course be established, but that in no way could I alter my refusal to deliver my tax dollars into the U.S. military machine.
Earlier I had described how my Conscientious Objection was rooted in our Quaker Peace Testimony and how I had performed two years of civilian alternative service with a self-help housing project during the Korean War.
With his defensive posture evaporating, Mr. Means [the “frivolous tax coordinator”] told us that his father fought in the Korean War and came home tormented by post traumatic stress disorder.
Thereafter he would have nothing more to do with guns, “because he had seen what guns can do.”
That gave my supporter, who had lived through World War Two in Germany, an opening.
Drawing a parallel with my war tax refusal, she pointed out how German income taxes funded the governmental atrocities of the Third Reich.
…
At one point, when I was describing how the International Center has been installing solar water purification units in Central American villages, Mr. Means broadened our discussion, noting that the scarcity of safe water is becoming a global problem.
In my followup letter to our interview, I sent him a copy of an eye-opening article from the Resist newsletter discussing this issue in depth.
Near the end I took the opportunity to unfurl the large chart which chronicles my war tax redirection these past forty-one years and to describe how I was first propelled into war tax protest by U.S. nuclear atmospheric bomb testing in Nevada and the Pacific.
After more than three hours (and well past normal lunchtime), the two finally closed the interview with smiles and friendly handshakes.
Mr. Means even admitted that his title of “Frivolous Tax Coordinator” was really a substitute for “Tax Protester Coordinator,” an internal administrative category which Congress had abolished in recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation.
Despite their training to be suspicious (all taxpayers are trying to get away with something), IRS folk, like all human beings, can be positively affected by openness, honesty and sincerity.
Transparency can often trump suspicion.
I have learned how we all hunger for caring, person-to-person exchanges.
Look how a one hour audit stretched into more than three hours, much of which involved genuine sharing far beyond the scope of the audit!
As our discussion rose above tax details, Mr. Means, the tax protester “sheriff,” was led to cast aside some of his official person and let his personal feelings and thoughts come through.
He also became increasingly interested in discerning what makes war tax refusers tick.
I am sure he came to understand that our witness is anything but “frivolous.”
Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance
movement circa .
First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to
W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the
letters are not related to each other):
At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the
war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself
where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you
have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed
the small effect these protests have had on our government.
By ,
every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary
contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we
have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold
all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your
attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress,
as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider
refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.
Signed:
Prof. Warren Ambrose
Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman
Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman
Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky
Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming
Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan
Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek
Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall
Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall
Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis
First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish
Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf
Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd
History, Yale University
Milton Mayer
Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky
Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser
Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport
Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann
Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy
Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish
Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn
Government, Boston University
* Institutions listed for informational
purposes only
P.S. The No Tax for
War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish
to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed,
and checks should be made payable to the Committee.
The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax
deadline — .
Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE,
c/o
Rev. Maurice McCrackin,
932 Dayton St., Cincinnati,
Ohio 45214.
For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name
and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________
Signers So Far
Meldon and Amy Acheson
Michael J. Ames
Alfred F. Andersen
Ross Anderson
Beulah K. Arndt
Joan Baez
Richard Baker
Bruce & Pam Beck
Ruth T. Best
Robert & Margaret Blood
Karel F. Botermans
Marion & Ernest Bromley
Edwin Brooks
A. Dale Brothington
Mrs. Lydia Bruns
Wendal Bull
Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell
John Burslem
Lindley J. Burton
Catharine J. Cadbury
Maris Cakars
Robert and Phyllis Calese
William N. Calloway
Betty Camp
Daryle V. Carter
Jared & Susan Carter
Horace & Beulah Champney
Ken & Peggy Champney
Hank & Henry Chapin
Holly Chenery
Richard A. Chinn
Naom [sic] Chomsky
John & Judy Christian
Gordon & Mary Christiansen
Peter Christiansen
Donald F. Cole
John Augustine Cook
Helen Marr Cook
Jack Coolidge, Jr.
Allen Cooper
Martin J. Corbin
Tom & Monica Cornell
Dorothy J. Cunningham
Jean DaCosta
Ann & William Davidon
Stanley F. Davis
Dorothy Day
Dave Dellinger
Barbara Deming
Robert Dewart
Ruth Dodd
John M. Dolan
Orin Doty
Allen Duberstein
Ralph Dull
Malcolm Dundas
Margaret E. Dungan
Henry Dyer
Susan Eanet
Bob Eaton
Marc Paul Edelman
Johan & Francis Eliot
Jerry Engelbach
George J. Etu, Jr.
Mary C. Eubanks
Arthur Evans
Jonathan Evans
William E. Evans
Pearl Ewald
Franklin Farmer
Bertha Faust
Dianne M. Feeley
Rice A. Felder
Henry A. Felisone
Mildred Fellin
Glenn Fisher
John Forbes
Don & Ann Fortenberry
Marion C. Frenyear
Ruth Gage-Colby
Lawrence H. Geller
Richard Ghelli
Charles Gibadlo
Bruce Glushakow
Walter Gormly
Arthur Goulston
Thomas Grabell
Steven Green
Walter Grengg
Joseph Gribbins
Kenneth Gross
John M. Grzywacz, Jr.
Catherine Guertin
David Hartsough
David Hartsough
Arthur Harvey
Janet Hawksley
James P. Hayes, Jr.
R.F. Helstern
Ammon Hennacy
Norman Henry
Robert Hickey
Dick & Heide Hiler
William Himelhoch
C.J. Hinke
Anthony Hinrichs
William M. Hodsdon
Irwin R. Hogenauer
Florence Howe
Donald & Mary Huck
Philip Isely
Michael Itkin
Charles T. Jackson
Paul Jacobs
Martin & Nancy Jezer
F. Robert Johnson
Woodbridge O. Johnson
Ashton & Marie Jones
Paul Jordan
Paul Keiser
Joel C. Kent
Roy C. Kepler
Paul & Pauline Kermiet
Peter Kiger
Richard King
H.A. Kreinkamp
Arthur & Margaret Landes
Paul Lauter
Peter and Marolyn Leach
Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.
Alan and Elin Learnard
Titus Lehman
Richard A. Lema
Florence Levinsohn
Elliot Linzer
David C. Lorenz
Preston B. Luitweiler
Bradford Lyttle
Adriann van L. Maas
Ben & Sue Mann
Paul and Salome Mann
Howard E. Marston, Sr.
Milton and Jane Mayer
Martin & Helen Mayfield
Maurice McCrackin
Lilian McFarland
Maureen & Felix McGowan
Maryann McNaughton
Gelston McNeil
Guy W. Meyer
Karl Meyer
David & Catherine Miller
James Missey
Mark Morris
Janet Murphy
Thomas P. Murray
Rosemary Nagy
Wally & Juanita Nelson
Marilyn Neuhauser
Neal D. Newby, Jr.
Miriam Nicholas
Robert B. Nichols
David Nolan
Raymond S. Olds
Wayne A. O’Neil
Michael O’Quin
Ruth Orcutt
Eleanor Ostroff
Doug Palmer
Malcolm & Margaret Parker
Jim Peck
Michael E. Pettie
John Pettigrew
Lydia H. Philips
Dean W. Plagowski
Jefferson Poland
A.J. Porth
Ralph Powell
Charles F. Purvis
Jean Putnam
Harriet Putterman
Robert Reitz
Ben & Helen Reyes
Elsa G. Richmond
Eroseanna Robinson
Pat Rusk
Joe & Helen Ryan
Paul Salstrom
Ira J. Sandperl
Jerry & Rae Schwartz
Martin Shepard
Richard T. Sherman
Louis Silverstein
T.W. Simer
Ann B. Sims
Jane Beverly Smith
Linda Smith
Thomas W. Smuda
Bob Speck
Elizabeth P. Steiner
Lee D. Stern
Beverly Sterner
Michael Stocker
Charles H. Straut, Jr.
Stephen Suffet
Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.
Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter
Marjorie & Robert Swann
Oliver & Katherine Tatum
Gary G. Taylor
Harold Tovish
Joe & Cele Tuchinsky
Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler
Samuel R. Tyson
Ingegerd Uppman
Margaret von Selle
Mrs. Evelyn Wallace
Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis
William & Mary Webb
Barbara Webster
John K. White
Willson Whitman
Denny & Ida Wilcher
Huw Williams
George & Lillian Willoughby
Bob Wilson
Emily T. Wilson
Jim & Raona Wilson
W.W. Wittkamper
Sylvia Woog
Wilmer & Mildred Young
Franklin Zahn
Betty & Louis Zemel
Vicki Jo Zilinkas
Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:
For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.
Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed
with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience
help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer
therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from
his salary.
Note: Of course, the
IRS
will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the
war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action
is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with
those who will withhold money due the IRS.
For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from
salary.
Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that
the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not,
as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is
therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.
Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the
President and to your Senators.
Remarks:
The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due
it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the
IRS
from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example)
seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay
his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the
taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the
IRS
in our letters.
Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to
a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the
IRS
has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to
file a return, by refusing to answer a summons,
etc.).
Usually, the
IRS
has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of
5% for “negligence”. The fact that the
IRS
has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full
extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.
Finally, an article from the edition of The Capitol East Gazette:
Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on , by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.
The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.
According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax.
The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.
Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.
The IRS continues to get smacked around in the partisan arena, with the Republicans smelling blood and baring their teeth, and the Obama administration having no hesitation in throwing agency bureaucrats overboard to save their sinking ship.
The scandal’s momentum has caused reporters and others to dig deeper, to give credence and airtime to previously-neglected stories, and to instead overhype what in other seasons would be ignored.
An anti-abortion group released a recording of a conversation with an IRS agent in which the agent told them that they couldn’t be a tax-exempt organization if they “use your religious belief to tell other people you don’t have a belief” or “take all kinds of confrontation activities [sic] and also put something on a website and ask people to take action against the abortion clinic” or “go to the front of the abortion clinic and… come for protesting activity, and then go up to the woman and tell the woman they should not do that.”
“When you conduct religious activities,” the agent told the group, “meanwhile you have to respect other people’s beliefs, other people’s religion.
You cannot use any kind of, you know, confrontation way, or to, or against other groups or devalue other groups, other people’s beliefs. OK?”
In a letter to the group in response to their tax-exempt status application (they were applying for 501(c)3 which has stricter guidelines than the 501(c)4 groups that have been the main focus of the recent IRS scandal), the agent had asked the group to “assure:”
that the information you distribute or present to the public are not representing biased and unsupported opinions;
that the information presented or distributed are with sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts as to permit an individual or the public to form an independent opinion or conclusion
The letter went on to claim that “Activities that are conducted to expose the racist agenda (as you claimed) of the abortion industry” were an example of activities that are “neither educational nor charitable in nature.”
The agent claimed that:
[A]n organization’s activities may not be considered serving educational purpose, if an organization carries out activities that aims to deny or reduce the rights of another segment of the community; that are designed to influence public opinion in favor of its advocated position; that may have adverse effect on the day to day operation of public health facilities that may be detrimental to the community as a whole; and that show a type of propaganda to defy other’s beliefs or viewpoints on the same matter.
A second letter contained more of the same, telling the group that because their educational material was “condemnatory and opinionated” and made claims with “no data source provided and no explanation given on how the conclusion is made” and included expressions that were “aimed to inflame the hostility to the community health clinic or family planning clinic which hold opposition position or practice on the issues of abortion,” and included “no intelligent discussion of the subject of abortions and no information presented to inform the public concerning alternatives to the present law and practice related to abortions,” that the group might not qualify for tax-exempt status.
(The IRS eventually backed down and granted the group tax-exempt status last month.)
The president of another anti-abortion group told Congressional investigators that an IRS agent had told them “that we needed to send in a letter with the entire board’s signatures stating that under penalty of perjury we would not picket/protest or organize groups to picket/protest outside of Planned Parenthood.
Upon receiving such a letter, she indicated that the IRS would allow our application to go through.”
Such restrictions on the attitudes the group must have or profess towards people with contrary beliefs, what sorts of arguments their outreach material must contain, and what activities it must refrain from engaging in, do not appear to have much support in the law.
But apparently IRS agents have come to believe that it is part of their mandate to police groups that are applying for tax-exempt status in this way.
Here’s an excerpt from the latest draft of my upcoming book on the tactics of successful tax resistance campaigns that speaks to this:
Troubles with Tax-Exempt Status
The legal conditions of tax-exempt, non-profit status in the United States
have proven to be a powerful way for the government to make activist groups
timid. Anti-abortion tax resister Jerry DePyper noted that this was a big
reason why he was making no headway in trying to get the tax resistance
tactic on the agenda of the large anti-abortion groups. He spoke with two
leaders in that movement and reported: “Both… say that no recognized pro-life
leader would want to risk it because of the legal issues with the
IRS,
and they don’t want to lose their tax-exempt status.”
Ruth Benn of NWTRCC
had a similar experience:
I was talking about a potential war tax resistance workshop with a group for
which I have great respect and who are very supportive of war tax
resistance. When I suggested a certain activity as part of the workshop, the
organizer hurriedly said, “Oh, no, we couldn’t sponsor that; we’re 501(c)3
[the section of the legal code that governs tax-exempt non-profits].”
For this and related reasons, some tax resisting groups, like Catholic Worker
and NWTRCC,
have never tried to apply for tax-exempt non-profit status. In 1972 the
IRS
told Catholic Worker that it owed some $300,000 in taxes and penalties
because of this. The tax agency eventually retreated, acknowledging that
Catholic Worker was a de facto non-profit charity, even if
it was never going to fill out the de jure paperwork. This
episode turned out to be a good propaganda opportunity for Catholic Worker.
The New York Times editorialized: “Surely the
IRS
must have genuine frauds to investigate. Surely there must be some worthwhile
work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy
for the poor.” Dorothy Day added:
The New York Evening Post also editorialized on
our situation. The National Catholic Reporter
and the Commonweal editors also registered their
protest and other papers followed suit. Letters come in daily from our
friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them
indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry.…
…[T]he CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself ” so as to be
exempt from taxes. We are afraid of that word “structure.” We refuse to
become a “corporation.”… [W]e do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic
Worker movement.
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about how the Quaker practice of war tax resistance began to reemerge after the Great Forgetting period.
The Thaw ()
In the Great Forgetting period, Quakers endeavored to overlook that war tax resistance had been an important part of putting the Quaker peace testimony into practice.
But during World War Ⅱ and the opening decade of the Cold War, a largely Christian pacifist war tax resistance movement began to coalesce, which included Quakers, but the most prominent members of which belonged to other denominations.
This movement set the stage for the coming renaissance of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.
A few of the earliest tax resisters of this period were Quakers.
I’ve already mentioned Mary Stone McDowell, who carried on her resistance from the World War Ⅰ period (the only such example I’m aware of).
There was also Arthur Evans, who was resisting perhaps as early as 1943, making him one of the earliest adopters of war tax resistance in this Thaw period.
But institutionally, the Society of Friends still had little interest in the subject.
In the American Friends Service Committee, a major voice of the practical side of the Quaker peace testimony, put out an influential booklet: Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.
It mentions war tax resistance only once, and in an 18th century historical overview context, not as an example of a contemporary method of speaking truth to power in search of alternatives to violence.
This is in spite of the fact that the committee that produced the booklet included among its members the war tax resisters A.J. Muste and Milton Mayer.
Instead, the leadership in advocating for war tax resistance and in organizing the fledgling modern war tax resistance movement largely came from outside the Society of Friends.
Some of the more prominent war tax resistance promoters in this important period were Dorothy Day (Catholic) & Ammon Hennacy (often Catholic), A.J. Muste (sometimes-Quaker, but bounced around a lot), Maurice McCrackin (Presbyterian), Ernest Bromley (Methodist, later a Quaker), Ralph DiGia (not religious as far as I could tell), and Milton Mayer (Jewish, later a Quaker).
The work of this emerging group of resisters helped to encourage the remaining Quaker war tax resisters and to remind Quakers that war tax resistance wasn’t only something of the legendary past but was an available testimony to them in the present.
The thaw in the Society of Friends had begun.
One of the first examples of this thaw was a particularly dramatic one.
When four Quaker conscientious objectors in the United States were put on trial for evading the Korean War draft, the judge told them:
“If you are not willing to defend this country, you should leave.”
They took that advice seriously, and began to look for an alternative.
They chose Costa Rica, a country that had abolished its standing army in .
“We wanted to be free of paying taxes in a war economy,” recalls Marvin Rockwell, one of the emigrants.
Seven Quaker families left the U.S. to found the community of Monteverde, Costa Rica, in .
Rockwell later told a Friends Journal reporter:
“I do not feel bad at all paying taxes in Costa Rica.
The largest item in the tax budget is for education.”
I dug up some additional newspaper mentions of Ammon Hennacy’s work.
This one comes from the Gazette and Daily of York, Pennsylvania:
A-Bomb Is Viewed As ‘One Great Sin’
Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of Catholic Worker, tells Lancaster meeting atomic bomb is ‘the one great sin’ , says he won’t pay taxes to support warlike governments.
The atomic bomb last night was described as “the one great sin” by Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of the Catholic Worker.
Hennacy, an anarchist, pacifist, vegetarian, and Catholic, spoke on “Why As a Christian I Refuse to Pay Taxes” at a meeting at the Evangelical and Reformed seminary in Lancaster sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Hennacy said one has to have been in jail to have been a radical.
He has been in jail many times.
His first experiences in prison were during World War Ⅰ when he refused to register for the draft.
It was there that he was put in solitary confinement (at the time he was a Socialist and atheist) with only the Bible to read.
It was in the Atlanta prison that he became a convinced pacifist.
Later he became a Catholic “out of steady osmosis with Dorothy Day,” managing editor of the Catholic Worker and outspoken pacifist.
Hennacy said he refuses to pay taxes or vote because they are used to support governments which as a whole are warlike.
People who support the government by paying taxes, he said, are guilty of the atomic bomb
Pickets Revenuers
Last week Hennacy picketed the bureau of internal revenue office to protest the payment of taxes.
He said he writes the “tax man” and tells him how much money he has made and how much he owes and that he is not going to pay.
He has not been imprisoned yet for refusal to pay.
Dorothy Day does not pay taxes, either, he said, but she doesn’t even bother sending in a tax form stating her earnings.
Beginning he plans to fast for 11 days as penance for his country’s having dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
It was that the bombing took place, so he will fast one day for each year since then.
Hennacy was a social worker in Milwaukee for 11 years until .
He quit his job then because he refused to register for the draft and thought he would get a five year prison sentence.
But he had been jailed during World War Ⅰ and was not bothered.
It was near that time that income taxes were first withheld from salaries.
In order that he would have nothing withheld, Hennacy did yard and farm work in the Southwest.
“Tax men,” Hennacy said, have no malice but are just stupid.
He said they stole Daily Worker property and tore things up.
His own paper also pays no taxes and the “tax men” could do the same thing, but “we won’t give them a list of contributors who help us make up the deficit.”
The hierarchy of the Catholic church has not tried to do anything about the radicalism of those associated with the Catholic Worker because they live “in voluntary poverty like Gandhi did,” according to Hennacy.
They have incurred the wrath of the “Cadillac Catholics,” and a monsignor who had petitions signed for McCarthy had Hennacy arrested for selling the Catholic Worker on New York streets, he said.
The Catholic Worker’s circulation now is 65,000, he said.
Before the paper opposed Franco’s government in Spain it was 170,000, he said.
As the ethical background for his beliefs and actions, Hennacy cited the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ teachings to “turn the other cheek” and to “love your enemy.”
An Associated Press wire photo from :
Thirsty Picket — Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of the Catholic Worker in New York City, takes a drink of water as he sits on a chair given him by an AEC employe as Hennacy began what he said would be a 12-day fasting-picketing of the Las Vegas AEC offices.
He carries a supply of the newspaper he edits which he hands out to passers, protesting atom bomb testing.
The large sign he displays contains quotations from a speech by Pope Pius Ⅻ.
In the version of Don Dedera’s “Coffee Break” column in the Arizona Republic, was this note:
A few weeks ago Colleague Bud DeWald was hurrying down bustling Lexington Avenue in frantic New York City when he spied Anarchist Ammon Hennacy, Phoenix’s One-Man Revolution, placidly picketing the Internal Revenue Service.
“I refuse to pay income tax,” the Hennacy placard read.
“I have just about conquered New York,” Ammon told Bud.
“Next fall I am going to Salt Lake City and go to work on the Mormons.”
Dedera was back, in the issue, to report that Hennacy wasn’t kidding:
Mormons, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You
Phoenix’s One-Man Revolution, flushed with its conquest of America’s largest town, soon will lay siege to Salt Lake City.
Ammon Hennacy means to save the Mormons.
Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never experienced a Hennacy siege, a public warning may be in order.
The struggle should start on even terms.
Opponents are forever granting Hennacy the weapons of surprise and secrecy, by no wish of his own.
For example, the other day when he returned to rest and visit friends in Phoenix, his first act was to contact the Phoenix FBI office and announce:
This is Ammon Hennacy, a subversive.
I am a Christian Anarchist, and I don’t believe in any government at all.
I am against war and the bomb, and I never pay income taxes.
I’m going to give you my address and schedule, in case you want to watch me.
Indeed, the FBI likely has a fat dossier on Hennacy.
He served time for dodging the World War Ⅰ draft.
Although he now damns communism as moral and economic fraud, he was a card-carrying member for years.
It was as a picketer of the Phoenix Internal Revenue office that Hennacy earned the nickname, One-Man Revolution.
He worked on farms which deducted no taxes.
At tax time, he would fill out a form, taking care to change the wording, “U.S. non-Taxpayer.”
Across the bottom he would write:
“This is how much I made last year.
This is how much tax I owe.
Come and get it.”
He said he never had to pay taxes.
Once in New York City a pair of T-men interviewed him and warned, “We have to make our report, and you’ll probably be charged within six months.”
Hennacy said he didn’t hear from them again.
Hennacy also has fasted 40 days in front of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Every April 28 he appears in New York City to disobey the Civil Defense drills.
Usually he is arrested.
“Every year the state makes New York crawl underground for eight minutes,” he said.
“There is no safety in the subways.
A New Yorker can do nothing in an atomic war but pray.”
At 78, Hennacy is rosy and unwrinkled.
His hair is gray, thick and shiny.
But he has mellowed from the day when he would bait a banker for breakfast.
“I shall make my mission into the land of the Mormons because no one has worked with them, and I find them an admirable people.
They are hard-working, responsible — people of integrity.
“My only hope is to out-Mormon the Mormons.
I will open a Joe Hill house, named for the IWW martyr, and feed the bums and maybe put out a newspaper.
“I hear the Mormons work in the fields for their charities.
I’ll work with them.
They fast once a month; I’ll fast every week.
I don’t drink or smoke, but I’ll have to give up coffee and tea.
I’ll go to Mass every day, and as a demonstration, I’ll give 10 per cent of my income to my own church, which I call the Bingo Catholic Church.”
Salt Lake.
Man the walls.
Erne Linford of The Salt Lake Tribune was on the scene when Hennacy arrived (from the issue):
Hennacy’s Coming
Salt Lake City was quietly minding its own business last week when Ammon Hennacy blew into town.
You may have lived such a sheltered life that you don’t know about this one-man revolution, but you likely will soon know him by reputation, if not personally.
Of all the places on the globe, Mr. Hennacy has decided to make Utah his future home.
He is aware that peace officers and some residents will not consider this a blessing.
Ammon, gray-haired and wiry at 65, is a self-proclaimed “Christian Anarchist.”
He doesn’t believe in any government.
He is against war and the bomb.
He never pays income taxes (and claims he gets away with it, Brack [J. Bracken Lee, Utah governor, who had his own tax resistance crusade]).
Though he once carried a Communist Party card, he now damns communism as a fraud.
Hennacy pickets institutions and projects he objects to.
In fact he cut short his Salt Lake visit last week to hurry to New York for his annual refusal to comply with the civil defense bomb shelter regulations there.
He expects to go to jail for refusing to retreat to the subway when the sirens wail.
But having been to jail many times, he considers it a mere nuisance, no deterrent.
In questioning the genial libertarian we deliberately used such terms as “publicity-seeker,” “professional troublemaker,” and “police-baiter,” but Ammon’s clear eyes never flickered.
“I’ve been called most everything,” he explains.
“But at 65 I’ve outgrown being affected by headlines.
I just work for what I believe in — or against what I don’t believe in.
I’ll never stop till I die.”
Hennacy plans to open in Salt Lake City a Joe Hill House, named for the Utah IWW martyr, to feed and bed transients.
He may even put out a paper.
For funds he will do day labor on nearby farms. (He works only on a daily basis, in order to avoid having taxes deducted).
Well, don’t say you weren’t warned about Hennacy’s imminent invasion of Utah.
Hennacy returned to Arizona for a visit later that year, and was interviewed by a reporter for Flagstaff’s Arizona Daily Sun ():
One-Man Revolution
The “one-man revolution,” Ammon Hennacy, 68, visited Flagstaff this week.
He has spent a lifetime espousing the doctrine that the only way the world can be improved is for the individual to improve himself.
Hennacy calls himself a Christian anarchist.
He says he is so far left politically that he makes “the right-wingers of the Republican party look like communists.”
He adds that if people would behave themselves, there would be no necessity for any government.
He has no use for any political group.
He believes, literally, and in every aspect of life, in the Golden Rule.
“The political parties are all going at this thing backwards,” he says.
“You have to start with the individual.”
His aim is to live as closely as he can by the teachings of Christ as exemplified and codified in the Sermon on the Mount.
He believes in turning the other cheek, in going the second mile.
He works at it.
“Possessions are trash,” he says.
“If you want to be really free, don’t own anything.
Things you think you own actually own you.”
Hennacy carries his few belongings in a small suitcase — some articles of clothing, pictures of his two daughters, a Bible and a couple of other religious books, and a memo book.
“If I lost the whole business it wouldn’t hurt me any,” he says.
Hennacy has staunch friends in many unexpected places.
Among these are Frank Brophy of Phoenix, banker and philanthropist, who by no stretch of the imagination could be considered a radical.
Hennacy doesn’t believe in taxes, hence doesn’t pay any.
Years when his income necessitates the filing of a tax return, he files it.
But he never pays the tax bill.
He is cheerfully ready at any time to go to jail for his beliefs, and has done so many times.
Hennacy is a slight, wiry Irishman whose eyes twinkle with humor and love.
He loves everybody including the wardens he has met in what he calls “a professional capacity.”
He has been arrested more than 30 times and served sentences many times.
He served eight months in solitary confinement in Atlanta Federal penitentiary more than 40 years ago.
He had nothing to read but the Bible.
He read it six times.
When he came out, he says, he had not only retained his sanity by reading, but had become a Christian, and he has been working hard at it ever since.
Among his friends are U.S. agents who have tried in vain to make him pay his taxes.
Hennacy is on the way to Salt Lake City where he will work as a farm laborer.
He can always find a job because he doesn’t argue over wage scales or fringe benefits, and works harder than anybody else; but he insists on being paid in cash each day, without deductions for taxes.
His aim is to establish a mission in due time, “without preaching.”
He is a member of the Catholic church.
He says he has no idea of converting the Mormons to his beliefs.
“They are good people, who live the Christian life as they see it,” he says.
“I enjoy being with them.
To them, religion is not something to be saved for Sunday.”
“If the Mormons want my ideas, they’ll get them, but I do not expect to make many converts, in Utah or anywhere else.
Living by the Golden Rule is pretty strong fare for most people.”
He is frequently asked if he expects to change the world.
“No,” he smiles, “and the world isn’t going to change me, either.”
When you look at his stubborn chin and smiling blue eyes, you can believe it.
Hennacy was back at the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters for a picket , as seen in this Associated Press article, as found in the Albuquerque Journal of :
Pickets Protest Nuclear Tests At Nevada Site
Las Vegas, Nev. (AP) — Nuclear explosions at the Nevada test site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas were protested by two pickets.
Ammon Hennacy, 68, and Mrs. Carol Gorgen, 40, carried signs, which stated:
“Easter Message — Peace Not Scare War.”
“Every Test Kills.”
“Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
The two picketed the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters in what Hennacy said was a one-day stand.
Hennacy, who said his life has been marked by jail terms because of various crusades, said he also has picketed air raid drills, income tax, and capital punishment.
Hennacy said he was a mission operator in Salt Lake City.
Mrs. Gorgen said she was a housewife from San Francisco.
Both said they opposed income tax because it supports “war efforts.”
Here’s one way Hennacy tried to get his message across while in Salt Lake City (from the Salt Lake Tribune):
Lectures Tonight
“Thoreau’s Message for Today,” will be the subject of a lecture by Ammon Hennacy at the Joseph Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, 72 Post Office Pl. (340 South),
The Daily Independent Journal of San Rafael, California, published this note in its issue:
Bruce Sloan of Kentfield informs us he has just had a visit from Ammon Hennacy, a Catholic anarchist, of Salt Lake City.
Asked what that is, Sloan said, he’s a Catholic and he’s an anarchist.
Hennacy runs the Joe Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, where he gives free meals and beds down sober transients.
He was in Marin to look for a Dominican priest and confer with people who are tax refusers.
United Press International sent this dispatch out over its wires in :
Man Pickets To Protest War Tactics
Salt Lake City (UPI) — For one hour each day, , a grey-haired man, looking younger than his 72 years, pickets in front of the U.S. Post Office.
Ammon Hennacy, director of Joe Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, is carrying on his protest against U.S. military intervention in Viet Nam.
A sign he carries clearly announces he is against payment of taxes for war.
Opposing Communism and welfare state capitalism, Hennacy has many friends who stop to say help as he marches each work day from noon to 1 p.m. A few people are antagonistic when they question what he’s doing, while others read his pamphlet and discuss the protest.
he started 20 days of fasting for his personal penance in the 20 years since the United States dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
he has added one day of fasting, taking nothing but water for subsistence.
In the first three days he lost 10 pounds, he said, but anticipates he will lose no more than a pound a day for the next 17 days.
“We have tried the ‘illusion of violence’ long enough,” his pamphlet says, “let us try the power of love.”
The Salt Lake Tribune also covered this protest in its issue:
Protestor Plans Fast Birthday
Ammon Hennacy, director of Joe Hill House of Hospitality, 1131 S. 1st West, will celebrate his 72nd birthday by completing of fasting in protest of “paying taxes for the war in Viet Nam.”
The white-haired pacifist said he will continue his noon-hour picketing in front of the Post Office on Main Street Monday through Friday during a planned 20-day period of fasting .
The 20 days mark one for each year since the World War Ⅱ atom-bombing of Hiroshima.
“I’ve lost 13 pounds this week,” Mr. Hennacy said.
In Hennacy competed for attention with “an acid-rock band” at an Arizona State University anti-war rally.
An Arizona Republic article briefly summarized his contribution:
Ammon Hennacy, 75, of Salt Lake City, who identifies himself as a Christian-pacifist-anarchist, said persons who believe in war should enlist and fight and those who are against war should resist the draft.
Hennacy told the students, “I don’t believe in government any place.
I believe in self-government.”
He also said the students should be more radical so they could become anarchists, too.
Hennacy died .
The Associated Press obituary read:
“One-Man Revolution” Dies Of Heart Ailment in Utah
Salt Lake City (AP) — Ammon Hennacy, an unsinkable individualist who called himself the “one-man revolution” and spent a lifetime protesting war and capital punishment, is dead at 76.
Hennacy died of a heart ailment after suffering a heart attack last week while picketing against the scheduled execution of two murderers.
He cut a uniquely personal path through life, proclaiming principles that sometimes seemed at odds.
Hennacy refused to pay tax, or to accept Social Security benefits.
But almost daily he would trundle through Salt Lake City with a grocery cart, collecting donated food.
The food went back to his Joe Hill House of Hospitality, where transients could find a meal and a bed.
He was a “christian-anarchist-pacifist,” Hennacy said.
He urged revolution; but it was to be peaceful, where a man changed himself before trying to change society.
An anarchist, Hennacy once said, was a person “who doesn’t need a cop to make him behave.”
He was born in Negley, Ohio, in and bounced across the country at a variety of jobs before ending up in Utah.
For many years he picketed and fasted in front of the Salt Lake Post Office each summer to protest the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima.
As each year passed, he added one day to his fast.
His final vigil, in , lasted 24 days.
The Arizona Republic responded to the news in an editorial:
A Gentle Anarchist
A friend sent us a clipping from the New York Times obituary columns the other day.
He wrote on it, “You remember Ammon, the pure in heart anarchist.”
That’s an apt description for Ammon Hennacy, who used to spend his winters in Phoenix.
Unlike most winter visitors, Ammon had no letters of credit or travelers checks, and very little cash.
He would work as an irrigator, back in before the citrus groves were turned into housing developments.
On Sundays he would sell copies of The Catholic Worker while discussing “Christian Anarchy” with the priests and clergymen of the various churches in the Valley.
The pay wasn’t particularly good, but Ammon was sure of one thing — none of it could be withheld by an employer who followed the instructions of the Internal Revenue Service.
However, he wasn’t a tax-evader, in the sense of doing anything fraudulent.
He filed a carefully audited income tax return each year, and then challenged the government to try to collect the amount due.
Ammon usually accompanied his ritualistic filing of the federal income tax return by picketing the Post Office Building, which used to house the IRS.
He obviously wanted to get arrested, but someone at IRS knew better.
So then Ammon would go on hunger strikes, which didn’t impress the carnivorous among us because even on his regular diet he was a vegetarian who wouldn’t even drink carbonated beverages.
He also fasted on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima — atomic and nuclear bombs were his own particular devils.
One of his favorite foods, when he allowed himself the luxury of eating, was bread made from a flour that he claimed came from cereals grown by the Hopis 100 years ago.
He insisted the cereal had been preserved in Hopi pots because of the unequaled climatic conditions on the mesas.
Ammon Hennacy was 77 years old when he died in Salt Lake City on , according to the N.Y. Times.
He was running the Joe Hill House of Hospitality for Migrants and Migrant Workers, and was a contributing columnist for The Catholic Worker, edited by Dorothy Day in New York.
He was the author of several books, including “The One Man Revolution in America,” slated for publication in .
During World War Ⅰ he went to prison for pacifist activities, but claimed he was unlike most pacifists because he could see the funny side of things.
He was locked up 30 times for various protest activities, including five times for refusing to participate in civil defense exercises in New York during World War Ⅱ.
At one time or another he was a Socialist, a pacifist, a Quaker, an anarchist, and finally a Roman Catholic.
He protested about nearly everything on the contemporary scene, but unlike most of today’s protesters he didn’t try to avoid punishment for breaking the law.
He’d never dream of burning the records in a draft board, locking up a university dean, or disrupting a court by using profanity on the judge.
Ammon knew Marx and Engels, but his radicalism sprang from the heart of history’s most radical experiment in government — the continuing revolution under which Americans rule themselves.
We don’t know where the “pure in heart anarchist” is today, but we’ll bet he is protesting without venom, and that he is able to find something funny in the lurches that the locomotive of history is making as it goes around one bend after another.
Here’s a Washington Post News Service dispatch about the tax resistance of
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement that I found in a newspaper from
:
The Bowery
Poverty worker bring pressured for back taxes
by Colman McCarthy
New York — Grubby and dingy as ever, the Bowery
is said to be kindlier in the summertime on its used-up and trapped people who
endure some of the country’s severest poverty.
Cold weather can kill the sidewalks in alcoholic daze [sic.]. But
summer nights let them live to another morning. Not that that’s much, but at
least the guillotine of misery does not fall so harshly; hard days are pain
enough without hard weather.
Dorothy Day has worked among the Bowery’s forgotten and lonely most of her 74
years, kicking poverty in the teeth not with safe programs and committees but
by living among the poor and personally dispensing food, clothing, and
shelter; these are the basic gifts in the corporal work of mercy and rescue.
Refuses to pay
, however, promises more strain
for Miss Day, not less. The Internal Revenue Service has sent her a letter
claiming $296,359 in back taxes and penalties. A second
IRS
action involves taxes on a bequest left to her by a deceased spinster; Miss
Day’s Catholic worker group is “political,” said the
IRS, not
charitable, and therefore not exempt from taxes.
The dispute has significance because Dorothy Day has no personal wealth or
money of her own. All that she earns or is given by others goes directly to
the Bowery destitute; her operation,
St. Joseph’s House, 36 East
1st
St. New York is one charity
where there is no handsome rake-off at the top for administrators, per diems,
office rent, speaker bureaus, or other dams that often block the flow of money
to the poor.
There is no question that Miss Day has not been paying her taxes in the last
few years. She has never paid them. The
IRS
allows tax exemptions for charitable organizations, but Miss Day said that
“our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the works of
mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which
brings on wars today.” To pay taxes, the Catholic worker believes, is to
become a part, directly or indirectly, of the government’s philosophy that
wars and military force can solve human problems.
A pacifist and personalist (be what you want the other person to be), Miss Day
is unlike many in the peace movement, first, because she has opposed all our
wars, and second, because she has never wasted a syllable in denouncing or
moralizing about the politicians or generals who believe in military force.
“The Catholic worker movement,” she says, “believes that tyranny and injustice
must be fought by spiritual weapons, by nonviolence, and by noncooperation. It
is not only that we must follow our conscience in opposing the government in
war. We believe also that the government has no right to legislate as to who
can or who are to perform the works of mercy. Only accredited agencies have
the status of tax-exempt institutions… as personalists, as an unincorporated
group, we will not apply for this ‘privilege.’ ”
The IRS
and Miss Day were to have met in court in
— on the bequest case — but
the trial has been postponed. A number of citizens have been protesting and
arguing her case to the
IRS.
John Cogley, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,
Santa Barbara, Calif., and
who once worked on the soup line at
St. Joseph’s House, said: “For
50 years, Dorothy Day has served the poor, living in the slums, eating
tasteless food, wearing cast-off clothes, shivering in the winter, sweltering
in the summer.
“Ridiculous”
“There is something ridiculous about the richest government in the world,
after all these years, demanding that Miss Day turn over money given to her to
meet the simplest needs of the nation’s destitute. I am not a tax lawyer but I
have millionaire friends who tell me that they pay no income tax. Like the
wealthy governor of my state, Ronald Reagan, they have managed somehow to
avoid the tax and to do so quite legally. Surely there must be a loop-hole to
cover the case of that rarest of Americans, a person who lives in accordance
with the Sermon on the Mount. If there isn’t, perhaps we should invent one.”
Dorothy Day is not unique in refusing to give money to the government, but her
noncooperation may be singular when it works the other way: refusing money
from the government. In the city of
New York sent her a check for $3,579.29. The sum represented interest on what
the city paid the Catholic worker for property bought by right of eminent
domain for a subway. In a letter beautiful in its clarity, Miss Day said no
thanks and sent the check back.
“We are returning the interest on the money we have recently received because…
we do not believe in the profit system, and so we cannot take profit or
interest on our money. People who take a materialistic view of human service
wish to make a profit but we are trying to do our duty by our service without
wages to our brothers. Please be assured that we are not judging individuals,
but are trying to make a judgment on the system under which we live and with
which we admit that we ourselves compromise daily in many small ways, but
which we try and wish to withdraw from as much as possible.”
Different view
Although the
IRS may
see Miss Day’s work as “political” and not charitable, other officials have a
different view. Her group is registered with the department of social services
of New York state. “Since we sent out an appeal once or twice a year,” said
Miss Day, “we have to file with Albany, pay a small fee, and give an account
of monies received… we always complied with the state regulation because it
was local — regional. We knew such a requirement was to protect the public
from fraudulent appeals, and we felt our lives were open books, our work was
obvious. And of course our pacifism has always been obvious, a great ideal of
nonviolence to be worked toward.”
The other evening, the dining room of the first street house was filled with
the broke and broken of the Bowery. Bread, soup, and stew were being served to
impoverished old men in tatters, to women silent in their pain, and to a few
small children already well aware something is wrong in the world. The poor,
stooped over their plates, had long ago lost interest in the
IRS and
governments. Yet, in a country of great wealth, the
IRS
still cares about them. If the tax officials insist that Miss Day is involved
in politics and thus must pay taxes, then even harder summers and winters are
coming for the forgotten people of the Bowery.
By the time this article hit the press, though, the conflict between the
IRS and
Catholic Worker was pretty much over. On
, an
IRS
district director wrote to the Catholic Worker telling the group that the
agency no longer expected them to file returns or to pay the hundreds of
thousands of dollars the agency had said they owed.
Dorothy Day stared down the
IRS.
The Pope came to visit, and gave a shout-out to Catholic Worker activist and war tax resister Dorothy Day in his address to Congress.
It’s been amusing watching politicians and activists from just about every ideological niche try to claim the Pope as one of their own… it reminds me of the old saw about the blind men and the elephant.
Or maybe it’s similar to how so many different ideologies, practices, and beliefs all claim to be interpretations of the real teachings of Jesus — nowadays we all get to interpret the Pope in our own way too…
Is the Pope Catholic? Perhaps with a lower-case “c”.
A coalition of nationalist parties won the recent Catalan election, which
they were billing as a referendum on independence. They have vowed to begin
to separate from Spain within the next couple of years. Part of this
independence campaign has already begun, with a number of municipalities,
businesses, and individuals paying their federal taxes to the state
government of Catalonia. “The key element that will permit us to exercise and maintain our independence will be the collection of all of the taxes by the government of Catalonia,”
according to planning documents of the coalition. The state currently
forwards those taxes on to the central government, so this form of tax
resistance is largely a symbolic gesture. But the new government hopes to
make this currently somewhat-illicit process official and then, eventually,
to cut off the central government. In case of conflict with the central
government over how taxes are to be paid, they may launch a blockade of the
federal tax offices so as to encourage people to file with the Catalan tax
authorities instead.
Merchants across Pakistan have been conducting strikes to protest a new withholding tax on bank transactions.
“If the government does not accept our demands,” said Naeem Mir, one of the strike leaders, “we will
observe a series of shutter-down strikes… in the four provinces and in each
and every small and big city in protest against the cruel taxation measures
of the so-called business-friendly government.” The new taxes are being
blamed on IMF-required
austerity and on the expenses of Pakistan’s version of the “war on
terror.”
Greece
The economic crisis in Greece has crushed what was already a pretty weak
state of “taxpayer morale” — the “won’t pay” movement that practiced
noncompliance with taxes and road tolls helped bring down the government
and sweep a left-wing coalition into power. One of this new government’s
officials, deputy finance minister Alexis Haritsis, was a “won’t pay” activist.
Greeks are turning away in disgust from the official economy in general, increasingly turning to barter to get their needs met.
Italy
Fifty condominium owners in Prino, Italy, have organized to stop paying
the “IMU”
municipal property tax in response to the city’s neglect of public spaces,
including a filthy public square with a broken fountain that’s become a
rubbish heap, poor upkeep of drainage that leads to flooding, and bad
traffic management. A letter announcing the strike, signed by all fifty,
was sent to the mayor and other city officials.
from the edition of
Cycle
The edition of Cycle,
a student paper from Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, gives us a good
peek into the rhetoric and tactics of the war tax resistance movement at that
time:
In , the United States government spend $103
billion to pay for present and past wars and to be prepared in case of future
wars. This was 66% of the entire federal budget of $156 billion. One hundred
and three billion dollars exceeds the gross national product of all but six
nations.
Of this $103,198,100,000, $29 billion was spent on the Vietnam war, to
continue a conflict whose brutality, immorality, and illegality have sickened
most Americans and the vast majority of the people of the world. Already, this
war has brought death to more than 42,000 Americans and more than two million
Vietnamese. It is a spur to the arms race and continually threatens world
peace.
Almost $20 billion will be invested this fiscal year in making more frightful
our nuclear missile and bomber arsenal, weapons already so destructive that
they can deliver ten tons of explosive power for every person on the globe.
$330 million will be spent on chemical and biological weapons that are
polluting the environment and endangering the people in the United States and
other countries without even being used; simply by being improperly stored.
$7.5 billion will go toward research on new and yet more fearful weapons.
$1.2 billion has been authorized for the Anti Ballistic Missile
(ABM)
system in .
$500 million to $1 billion is the estimated budget of the
CIA.
Vast sums will be paid to the corporations and research institutes that design
and build the weapons. In , the following companies, a handful of the biggest among thousands
engaged in war production and research, enjoyed these military contracts:
General Dynamics
$2.2 billion
Lockheed Aircraft
$1.8 billion
General Electric
$1.4 billion
United Aircraft
$1.3 billion
McDonnell-Douglas
$1.1 billion
AT&T
$777 million
The following amounts were spent in
for projects that
seem to have little to do with primary human needs:
For moon and other space exploration $3.4 billion.
For farm subsidies to wealthy landowners $3.1 billion.
In comparison to the enormous expenditures for acts and instruments of
military violence, luxury space programs, and subsidies to the wealthy, and at
a time when city governments are crying for more funds, the United States
government spent these sums on improving the health, education, and general
welfare of the people within this country.
Slum rebuilding $1.9 billion.
Other poverty programs $7.2 billion.
Health programs $1.8 billion.
Educational programs and subsidies $3.7 billion.
Direct, nonmilitary foreign aid to underdeveloped countries totaled about $1.6
billion.
The U.S.
appropriation to the United Nations was $109 million, about the cost of one
Polaris submarine.
In , the total of all
non-military expenditure was approximately 34% of the military expenses.
Throughout the United States, young people by the hundreds of thousands are
rebelling in disgust and anger against this squandering of resources on war,
and neglect of the day-to-day practical needs of the people. They are not
alone in seeing only massive social disruption and probably nuclear war as
eventual consequences. They are risking their freedom, careers, and often
their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
In the face of this shameful and alarming situation and in solidarity with the
youth resisting it, we, as participants in War Tax Resistance, are resolved to
confront our own complicity in war, waste, and callousness. We resolve to end
to the extent we can our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death
more than life. The least measure of our resistance will be not to pay
voluntarily $5 of federal taxes due.
We are prepared to bear the consequences of our actions, be these criticism
and unpopularity, financial penalties, confiscation of our bank accounts and
property, and, perhaps, imprisonment. These seem to us small inconveniences
beside the agony of those killed or bereft by war, and the numb hopelessness
of those crippled by poverty.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of tax refusal. War tax
resistance is not always easy, particularly for those whose taxes are withheld
from their wages, but for most there is some variety of tax refusal that they
can conscientiously adopt. It may be by not paying part or all of a balance
“owed,” or by not paying federal telephone tax. War Tax Resistance has
prepared literature and is setting up counseling services designed to help
each individual find the best way of tax refusal and resistance for him. A
list of Methods of War Tax Resistance follows this statement of purpose.
We also are developing a war tax resistance promotional program that will
include advertisements, demonstrations, meetings, a bulletin, and other
literature distribution. If you become a war tax resister, we hope you will
allow yourself to be publicly identified with the movement and permit your
name to be used on tax resistance literature.
War Tax Resistance will do more than concentrate on the weeks just before
April 15. We are planning a year round educational and resistance program. If
you agree with conscientious tax resistance as a means for opposing war, we
hope you will communicate with us now. The included coupon is for your
convenience.
Methods of Refusal
Refuse to pay at least $5 of your tax
The first goal of War Tax Resistance is to convince as many people as
possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly
everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of
their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will
establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the
unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of
massive noncooperation with its warmaking policies.
Better yet, refuse to pay all the taxes you can
Even if some of your taxes are withheld, you can refuse to pay the balance
and other taxes. These might include: taxes on additional income, the 10%
surtax, and the telephone tax.
You can refuse to pay that percentage of your tax that goes for war
Two thirds or more of the federal budget pays for wars past, present, and
future. To protest against war, a person can refuse that percentage of his
tax. He can base his refusal on the percentage of the total national
budget used for war, on the cost of the war in Vietnam, or on other
calculations. Some people pay part of their tax and contribute the rest as
a peace tax. Some give to the
UN, or a
relief agency, or some other organization engaged in peaceful,
constructive work.
You can refuse to pay the 10% surtax
This surtax was imposed in to help pay
for the war in Vietnam. Refusing to pay it is a direct protest against the
war.
You can refuse to pay the federal telephone tax
The federal telephone tax was revived in
to help pay for the war. Thousands are already not paying it. In all cases
known to us but one, the telephone companies have continued service and
referred the tax collection to
IRS.
To Reduce or Eliminate the Withholding of Your Taxes You Can
Claim additional dependents
If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can
reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. The law
reads that a dependent has to live in your household and be supported
by you. The fact is that many people, particularly draft age young men
and the Vietnamese, depend on you. So long as you declare at the end of
the year that by the government’s standards you owe so much and are
refusing to pay it, the moral point is made
The law reads that it is illegal — fraudulent — to state on a tax form
that someone claimed as a dependent falls within that category, as
defined by the
IRS,
when he does not. But no fraud appears to be involved if the people
claimed as dependents are identified as being outside the
IRS
categories. The issue has not been tested in the courts.
Make your employer an ally
Although the law reads that it is illegal not to withhold taxes from an
employee’s wages, your employer may be sympathetic to your protest and be
willing to assist — and make a protest of his own — by not withholding
from your salary. It is always valuable to raise the question.
Organize an employment agency
Have your agency hire you and then have your present employer hire the
agency to supply him with you. Naturally, an agency that you control will
not withhold taxes from its employees. Getting organized is complicated,
but if you and a few friends get together you can work out the problem.
Write us for information.
Also You Can
Demand a refund
There are four ways to do this:
You may request a refund right on the 1040 form and stand a good
chance of receiving it. Ask for a tax credit on Part Ⅴ of the
form.
You may file form 843 for a refund.
If the above demands are refused, go to the Income Tax Board of
Appeals. If the Board turns you down, sue.
You can also sue the government to refund all your taxes on the
grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral
purposes.
Protest by letter or in person
Any protest to
IRS
or other government officials will help express opposition to the war and
to militarism. If you are unable to refuse taxes, protest them as
vigorously as you can.
Maximize the Impact
Talk about your tax refusal with friends, neighbors, co-workers. This sort of
direct contact changes many minds. Distribute tax refusal literature.
Inform the newspapers and other mass media in your neighborhood that you are
resisting war taxes and why. Start a war tax resistance group in your
community.
Organize or join demonstrations at your local
IRS
office.
Inform yourself thoroughly and become a tax refusal counselor. Let your
community know through ads, leaflets,
etc. that a
counseling service is available.
Keep the War Tax Resistance Clearinghouse informed by writing or phoning about
your activities. Communication is the lifeblood of any movement.
We invite war tax resisters to send War Tax Resistance the first $5 or more
refused the federal government. This money will be used to publicize and
expand the war tax resistance movement.
Until now, the government has not imprisoned anyone for conscientious tax
refusal. A few have been given short sentences for refusing to reveal
information about their incomes. In general, the
IRS has
been content to take money from tax refusers’ bank accounts, garnishee part of
their wages, or, on rare occasions, seize and auction property.
Sponsors of War Tax Resistance
Winslow Ames
Joan Baez
Norma Becker
James Bristol
Prof. Noam Chomsky
Prof. Frank Collins
Tom Cornell
Prof. William Davidon
Dorothy Day
Dave Dellinger
Barbara Deming
Ralph DiGia
Prof. Douglas Dowd
Prof. Margaret Eberbach
Ruth Gage-Colby
Allen Ginsberg
Bob Haskell
James Leo Herlihy
Faye Knopp
Kennett Love
David McReynolds
Stewart and Charlotte Meacham
Rev. and Mrs. Arthur G. Melville
Karl Meyer
Jack Newfield
Grace Paley
Igal Roodenko
Rev. Finley Schaef
Dr. Benjamin Spock
Marj and Bob Swann
Arthur Waskow
George and Lillian Willoughby
Irma Zigas
Working Committee (in formation)
Norma Becker
Maris Cakars
Frank Collins
John Darr
Jerry Dickinson
Ralph DiGia
Bob Haskell
Neil Haworth
Peter Kiger
Kennett Love
Bradford Lyttle
Mark Morris
Christopher Pollock
Melinda Reed
Kay Van Deurs
Eric Weinberger
The Catholic News Archive has a pretty good catalog of issues of the Catholic Worker.
Today I’ll present transcriptions of some of the material on tax resistance from the span.
These include several essays by Ammon Hennacy (these formed the raw material out of which he composed his autobiography, so if you have read that, you’ll see some familiar phrases and stories), as well as other writings by and about conscientious tax resisters, including long works by Ernest Bromley, Eroseanna Robinnson, and Karl Meyer.
The articles fill in some interesting details about the evolution of the American war tax resistance movement during this period.
First, Ammon Hennacy, in the edition:
Picketing
“How are you going to get people to put up the sword?
My son died in Korea.
I know you didn’t kill him.
God bless you,” said an elderly woman as I was picketing the post office in Phoenix, , in response to Truman’s “emergency” declaration.
The woman had seen my big sign which read:
“Put up thy Sword.
He that taketh the Sword
Shall Perish
by the Sword”
Jesus’ words.
On the reverse of this sign was a picture of a pot colored green with a sign on it—Capitalist.
Opposite was a red kettle—Communist.
Underneath was the caption: “The Pot Calls the Kettle Black.” I carried my old tax refusal sign as a sandwich in front.
It read:
75%
of your Income Tax
Goes for War.
I have refused
to pay Income Taxes
for Seven years.
The reverse sign hanging on my back read:
Reject War.
Use Gandhi’s
Weapon of
Non Violent
DIRECT ACTION.
I attended mass at St. Mary’s before picketing and prayed for wisdom during my day which I feared would be more disturbing than my previous marches.
In another church that morning a CW priest said mass for the success of my witness for peace.
I had notified the City Manager and the tax man that I would picket against the war emergency.
Ginny Anderson, whose C.O. husband Rik varityped my leaflet and made the above signs, stood on one corner to hand me extra literature and be my “lookout” for trouble.
Byron Bryant, Catholic anarchist, home on Christmas vacation from his duties as professor of English at a western university, stood on the other corner.
There was an unusual amount of people going and coming.
Ne one advised me to go back to Russia or called me a Communist.
As is usual in picketing most people were afraid to be seen taking a leaflet.
If one person took a leaflet all others in line took it and if the first one refused so did all the others.
Negroes and Mexicans and Indians always took the leaflet and many times a Catholic Worker.
My leaflet read as follows:
What’s All The Shooting About?
It’s about men who put money ahead of God.
It’s about young men on both sides misled into dying and killing each other.
It’s about rationing, inefficiency, dictatorship, inflation, and politicians stealing a little more than usual.
War is what happens when one nation prepares to defend itself against another nation that prepares to defend itself.
World War Ⅰ and World War Ⅱ did not end war nor make the world safe for democracy.
Neither will this one.
There just isn’t any sense to war!
What can we do about it?
If the politicians think one person is important enough to become a soldier, a munition maker, a bond buyer, or an income tax payer, then one person is important enough to
REFUSE to become a soldier,
REFUSE to make munitions,
REFUSE to buy bonds, and to
REFUSE to pay income taxes.
War does not protect you—it will destroy you!
You cannot overcome Communism with bullets.
It can be overcome by each person doing what he knows in his heart to be right.
The way of Jesus, of St. Francis, of Tolstoy, and of Gandhi teaches us to love our enemy, to establish justice, to abolish exploitation, and to rely upon God rather than on politicians and governments.
If you are a Christian, why not follow Christ?
You might as well die for what you believe in as for what you don’t believe in.
If you must fight, fight war itself.
Don’t be a traitor to humanity!
Wars will cease when men refuse to fight.
(No “Johnny come lately" to the peace movement, I served 2½ years in prison for opposing World War I, 8½ months of it in solitary confinement in Atlanta Penitentiary.
And since more than three-fourths of one’s income tax goes for war purposes, I have refused to pay my income tax for more than seven years.
Nor did I register for the draft in either world war.
I am a Christian Anarchist, a follower of Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Gandhi, and invite your serious consideration of their examples.)
“Extra, extra, all anarchists to be shot at sunrise,” shouted the good-natured news man stationed in front of the post office as I passed by.
The one who had led the fight against me in August and later became my friend had left town.
When a later edition told of a bank robbery in Tucson he shouted as I passed: [“Extra, extra, Gandhi robs a bank.” (missing from this article, but included in a later reprint —♇)]
A woman looked at my sign and asked if I did not know that Jesus told Peter to sell his clothes and buy a sword.
I answered: “yes, but when Peter showed him the sword which he had Jesus answered ‘that is enough,’ and when Peter used this sword to cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest Jesus did not say to cut off the other ear but said ‘put up thy sword.
He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword’.”
As the woman walked on she shouted back: “Jesus called for a sword so he could perform a miracle.
He never said ‘put up thy sword.’
You better read your Bible.”
Somewhat different was a teen age boy who pointed to an ad of the Marines and said that meant more to him than my sign or my leaflet which he had just read.
I told him that if he believed that way—and he was to leave next month—that he should do what he thought was right.
He refused to take a CW although he was a Catholic and went to St. Mary’s.
I hoped that he would return safely and could then confer with the priest as to the possibilities of being a pacifist Catholic.
It was not his fault that he had never heard the pacifist message before.
We parted in a friendly spirit.
One gruff fellow asked, “What have you got there?”
I answered, “It’s either very good or very bad; depends on how you look at it; better read it and see.”
He smiled and went his way reading the leaflet.
A Catholic anarchist woman walked with me for a bit and was going to come after 3 p.m. and take Ginny’s place.
While Byron and I went for lunch the Catholic banker whose bank had been robbed spoke to Ginny.
Although the CW says “Starve the Bankers and Feed the Poor” he reads the paper and has visited me before on the picket line.
Another Catholic anarchist woman came and missed us because of the following incident.
The Cops
We had only brought along 500 leaflets and now at 3 p.m. they were nearly all distributed.
Many had stopped with kind words and no one had openly insulted us.
Two good natured policemen came up in a squad car and said they were having too many complaints about my picketing.
They read my signs and leaflet.
I told them that what I was doing was clearly subversive and that the FBI and the tax man had priority over them in my case and they ought to confer with them.
One cop did so while the other asked me questions.
Meanwhile people crowded around and watched my signs.
I saw my tax man as he came near, and an FBI man.
The police wanted to know what had been done when I had been arrested for picketing before.
I told them that I had been released and had picketed 7 more days without being bothered.
They conferred with headquarters and suggested that Ginny and I accompany them to the police station.
Here we waited about an hour while detectives and police looked over the signs and leaflet and asked questions.
I offered a CW to one police captain but he refused it saying that no Catholic paper could support such unpatriotic actions as mine.
I asked him if he knew Father Dunne and he said he did.
I advised him to call him up and see what he said about myself and the CW.
(Later Fr. Dunne told me that the man had called him.)
Byron had phoned a Catholic attorney, friend of the CW, who spoke to Chief Clair.
The latter told us we could go but I had better not picket for I might cause a riot and then charges of disorderly conduct, loitering, or other charges would be proferred against me.
I told him that I had been able so far to handle individuals and crowds.
He shrugged his shoulders inferring that I would be on my own.
I said that I had been on my own all my life and another half hour (it was now 4:30) was not much to worry about.
Before I left I told him that I would picket again on .
He replied, “That is another day.”
We went back and gave away our few remaining leaflets.
Postal employees looked out of the windows and saw that the police had not stopped us.
(One of the calls had come from an ultra-patriotic postal employee, although another employee to whom I had offered a leaflet early in the morning had refused it and about 2 p.m. had asked for one, and after reading it praised me for my stand.)
Ammon Hennacy, in the edition:
Life at Hard Labor
“I don’t wear a label; I’m for all good causes,” replied the young ex-conscientious objector who, passing through Phoenix, had called the local paper to find my address, and had found me this evening as I was caretaker of Jersey cows at the sale of purebreds at the State Fair grounds.
Many write to me or come to visit me who are drawn by different phases of my philosophy, so to save time I try to find out if their bias is Catholic Worker, I.W.W., pacifist, anarchist, vegetarian, life on the land, or tax refusal.
This slogan of not wearing a label is fine, I told my new friend, for a young person in search of the truth, but at his age of 31 he ought to begin to have ideas that led to some definite belief and action.
I admitted that for the average person of bourgeois tendencies to look at the Republican and Democratic parties and to think that wearing their labels was meaningless was a sign of progress.
Like the housewife in the days when women did the baking at home who put the initials “T.M.” on the top crust of one pie, meaning “Tis Mince”; and the initials “T.M.” on another pie crust, meaning “Taint Mince,” labels surely do not have any meaning.
The thought behind my friend’s no label attitude seemed to be a desire to approach as many people as possible, on the street, in buses, at dances, etc., and to make friends and influence people by not scaring them with such words as pacifist or anarchist, but to rattle half-truths and half criticisms as a build up for “all good causes” and as a monkey wrench toward the status quo.
This is a mass approach; mine has been to get the individual in this mass, if possible, to think.
I remember forty years ago when well meaning friends told me that to use the word “Socialist” was defeating my purpose, and that some word such as “Progressive" that did not have such ill omen should be used.
My reply then was that whatever word was used to designate a belief that word would always have a bad meaning to those who were being denounced.
Today the word Socialist only means collaboration with war and has lost all its class conscious meaning.
Even many timid anarchists whom I know prefer the word “Libertarian” for fear they will be called bomb throwers.
I go on the principle of never being on the defensive, so when I am called a bomb throwing anarchist I tell the accuser that the government is the biggest bomb thrower with its A and H bombs.
I told my young friend that he could always get a crowd to applaud mild criticism of war and for the lowering of taxes and raising of wages, but that this same crowd would really follow the blazing torch of super demagogues who spoke of “the great native intelligence of the common man,” and who never meant to catch the bird but were adept in the case of putting salt on its tail.
I pointed out that spiritual power was the strongest force in the world and that beside it all the two penny political victories did not mean a thing.
Too many of us dissipate our energies by being “for all good causes” and never develop or use this spiritual power.
And then we wonder why we become tired radicals and why warmongers rule the world.
We refuse to use our strongest weapon, but at the ballot box where we are invariably outnumbered a million to one, we choose our weakest weapon.
As I was helping a farmer polish the horns of his cows he said he had heard that I was an educated man and implied wonderment as to my being a day laborer.
I explained my plan of working at day work on farms in order that no withholding tax for war should be taken from my pay.
He wanted to know more about these ideas and for the next hour he heard the words anarchism and pacifism undiluted by “all good causes” and departed with the current CW and my promise to mail him future copies.
In contrast another farmer wanted me to go back to Russia if I didn’t like this country.
The cows for sale were listed in a catalogue with pedigrees and a record of their production of butter fat.
The manager of the sale was discussing with one farmer about certain unregistered and non pedigreed cows which are called “grades,” and many times these cows give more and richer milk than the purebred stock.
But there is no guarantee that a heifer from such a cow will be a good producer; more than likely a throwback of scrub stock.
Culls
In Albuquerque I worked for two men who specialized in extra fancy chickens.
At one place I gathered eggs each hour from a trap nest, and marked the number of the chicken, taken from a leg band, on the egg she had just laid, and also in the record book.
Those who did not produce a great number of eggs were thus culled out. “Why feed the culls?” my boss said.
Each day a dozen or more hens would die of “blow-outs”; which meant that the very efficient egg producing machine had overstepped itself.
The mediocre hens lived longer and did not blow-out.
At a dairy in Albuquerque where I worked, my job was to go to any of the eight corrals and in the mud and manure drive the next string of cows to the barn to be milked.
Nearly every night a calf would be born in this wet and cold discomfort and my job was to carry it to a warm stall after the milking was done.
Very few of these calves, coming from cows that were “grades,” died.
Later I worked for a multi-millionaire who had highly priced purebreds.
My job was to keep a fire in a stove in the barn at night and to feed these calves egg with specially prepared milk.
Yet the death rate among these purebreds made my boss groan.
Tuberculosis and Bangs Disease (premature birth of calves) seems also to be more prevalent among the inbred purebreds.
Super efficient bankers jump out of windows when red ink instead of black ink records their business schemes.
Efficient assembly line workers go berserk and often a supposedly steady bus driver leaves his route and drives right on to Florida to escape his treadmill of efficiency.
At its best our system is efficient only in turning out quantity and at its worst it is trying to bomb us to death.
Very expensive garden tools these days are held together only by the paint on the handle and are of very inferior design and workmanship.
When I was a social worker in Milwaukee in the thirties we were often derided by well to do Republicans for “coddling the culls” when we helped the poor.
And from time to time I have heard radicals who were especially scientific and eugenic minded look upon the ideals of Jesus and Gandhi as perpetuating the life of the unfit and the misfit.
Although I helped in the formation of the CW House of Hospitality in Milwaukee in I will admit that my interest in the CW was limited then to its pacifist and anarchist slant and that I felt this coddling of the bums was not so important.
Since, however, my study of Tolstoy and acquaintance with Peter and Dorothy, and my ten years as an actual laborer, rather than a radical theorist with a good job, I have come to view this whole matter in different light.
The conversation about grades and purebreds that night and my meeting with the young rattle-brain who was “for all good causes” helped me to clarify my ideas along this line.
In this age of the assembly line, of super-markets and super advertising schemes; and of Service Clubs to put a little holy oil of goodness on this theft, the illusion persists that this is a scientific and efficient age.
Yes, we produce, but for what?
If somehow we do have bums, poor housing, ill-health, new diseases, and poverty these can only be attended to by Community Funds, Heart, Cancer, and Give a Dime Campaigns; pensions and social security payments by the state.
Charity Incorporated has no room for Houses of Hospitality where there is no record of aid given or even the name of the recipient.
“They won’t work if you keep on feeding them!
They sell the clothing you give them around the corner for booze!” say the well fed parasites who also neither work nor help the poor except perhaps in a very dim and distant contribution to a fund, much of which goes for overhead.
The idea of these professional do-gooders is to “give coals and treacle” to the poor, as Shaw said, and to keep them out of sight in order that the rich may not be reminded of the filth and degradation which is the foundation of their wealth.
Good social workers are told not to “become emotionally involved” with their clients.
Again, the mechanistic approach.
The CW breaks through all this sham.
Instead of living in fine apartments to which we can repair after witnessing the other side of the tracks, we who accept Lady Poverty have given up worldly goods, insurance, and much of our privacy.
This cull in the breadline; this drunk or prostitute; this maladjusted and perhaps lazy man—all of these may not be improved a bit by our help.
Ours is not a success story; the Way of the Cross was also a failure.
He at least might have led a rebellion against the Roman State instead of dying on the Cross and forgiving His enemies.
Where are we to look for those who are going to bear the Cross today?
It is true that St. Francis, Tolstoy, Malatesta, Kropotkin and Gandhi left their inheritance and choosing voluntary poverty were able to accomplish much.
We also print the word and deliver the lecture to the purebreds.
We make no mistake in thinking that because a man is ragged that he is holy, for if he is avaricious he is as much a slave to money as is the rich man.
(My banker friend Brophy jokingly told me that he would have to write a defense of the rich for the CW.
I told him that he would end up contradicting himself and that the best defense of the rich could be obtained by giving a couple of drinks to a poor man on the street.)
The Old Pioneer [Lin Orme, Jr.] tells of stopping at a stand in the desert recently and being charged 15¢ for a soft drink.
“This is 300% profit for you” he told the proprietor.
“I’m not in business for my health” said this greedy and seedy defender of the capitalist system.
The Old Pioneer also tells of 25¢ being charged for one common needle in the old days when everything coming into Phoenix had to be hauled from Maricopa Wells station beyond South Mountain.
“The freight is what costs” was the alibi of the greedy merchant.
Neither do we consider the product of the purebreds.
Tommy Manville, the dear old DAR ladies, the useless royalty of Europe, and our own inbred Duponts and intellectuals who have nearly without exception prostituted their talents toward the making of bombs.
There is some hope that among the bums we may find a John the Baptist to carry on the work when we have gone, but there is little hope from politicians whose integrity has already been purchased and from the super educated to whom a doctors degree, a deep freeze and a television set mean more than fighting for a lost cause.
How will we then come to a sensible way of life?
Without war work we would have a terrible depression.
Hardly a person but whom will gladly earn this blood money!
Hardly a person but whom will pay taxes for more bombs!
The rich will not give up their riches and the poor will not give up their pensions; (the young will not help the aged; preparing to “keep up with the Jones’.”)
The froth at the top has little right to scorn the scum at the bottom; meanwhile we who do the work of the world support them both.
The Old Pioneer remarked recently that Jefferson’s plan of not having great wealth inherited was the right idea.
This reminds me of the old Russian proverb: “Do not lay up your money for your son, for if he is any good he can make his own money; and if he is not any good he will lose it.”
So in our writing, our picketing, our speaking, our help to the poor in Houses of Hospitality, we must need show our sincerity by our voluntary poverty.
No one would think of bribing us for by our lives we have established the fact that we need nothing.
We need not fritter our time by building up “all good causes,” which accept the tyranny of the state.
When they are ready for it the rich, the bourgeois intellectual, the bum, and even the politician may have an awakening of conscience because of the uncompromising seeds of Christian Anarchism which we are sowing.
To all of these we make our appeal and from all it is not impossible to gain a few adherents for that time “when each shall give according to his ability and receive according to his need.”
For what does all our bookkeeping mean but a denial of this ideal?
Johnny Olson came back from a sojourn in Texas.
In a splurge of affluence he bought five mouse traps and set them around our house.
He caught the whole population which consisted of three mice.
While I as a pacifist vegetarian would not cause the death of Brother Mouse yet as an anarchist I have no right to deny Johnny the right to catch them… The old mules, belonging to a neighbor, which I have used for plowing the garden these five years are now muleburger. They were not killed in time for the new government regulation which allows equine meat in weiners.
My friend Joe Craigmyle, nonregistrant, and one-cylinder vegetarian and anarchist, runs a fruit stand and at times I have helped him pick oranges and grapefruit in groves where he has purchased the crop.
Even in the month of May when the new fruit is on the trees the last year’s crop is still sweet and juicy.
As with apples the fewer fruit on the tree the larger.
There is not generally time to thin out the fruit but many drop off before maturity.
An orange or grapefruit may look fine but if it is light in weight it is pithy and is discarded right there at the tree.
The load is graded as to size when we return to the stand.
Coming home from work the other night in Joe’s truck we were discussing the idea of responsibility and of my reference in a recent CW article to the woman who called on every one else to remove the dead cat from the road.
I remarked that I had seen a dead cat on the lateral that Sunday morning but being in a hurry to catch a bus did not practice my anarchist idea of responsibility in removing it.
However, in the evening upon my return it was still there despite hundreds of cars and dozens of people on the road that day, so I took care of it.
Just then we both saw to the right of us a two-by-four with four spikes sticking up.
I said that this would soon give someone some trouble.
By that time we were a quarter of a mile beyond it.
“I’ll back up and you can throw it in the ditch,” said Joe.
In my mind, then, Joe, who has not been much of a man of action, rose from a one-cylinder to a two-cylinder anarchist.
Molokons
Recently I went to the federal court as a young Molokon who lives a few miles down the lateral had been out on $5,000 bail for refusing to report to the army.
Dozens of other young Molokons in the vicinity had been given CO status.
Whether the draft board lost his CO questionnaire or thought they ought to get hardboiled I do not know.
I had phoned a local lawyer who had handled Craigmyle’s refusal to register case and he promised to come to court but did not do so.
His excuse being that he couldn’t do anything about it.
Judge Ling set as date for a trial and the Molokon will get a lawyer from Los Angeles.
The Old Pioneer tells of in when he went to the court commissioner with about fifteen Molokons who had refused to register.
Two of them worked for him and he arranged for bail.
They asked him if they could sing and pray.
The Old Pioneer doubted if they could but asked the commissioner about it.
“Hell no, this is a court,” was the answer. “You’d better let them sing and pray and not look foolish for they’re going to do it whether you give permission or not,” said the Old Pioneer to the commissioner.
So they sang and prayed.
Now they register and do not sing or pray in court.
, I received a notice I owe $2.15 interest and penalty on my $192 tax bill for and unless paid within ten days my property and wages will be attached.
This is an old run-a-round and I am not worrying.
I ate the first Irish potatoes this year from our garden.
The persimmon tree which the Old Pioneer’s daughter-in-law gave me last winter now bears fruit.
Watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, peppers and onions are doing fine.
I am irrigating and soon will come irrigating maize.
An excerpt from “Poverty is to Care and Not to Care” by Dorothy Day, from the issue:
Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty.
If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for.
The argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort.
If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war.
If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops.
If you ride a bus you are paying taxes.
Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”
The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs.
We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war.
Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years.
One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax.
One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb.
If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it.
If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it.
So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.
All this is by way of saying that poverty is no longer voluntary, no longer a counsel, but something which is laid upon us by necessity.
Ammon Hennacy, in the issue:
Hiroshima Fast
“I got a letter from one of my sons in Korea this morning.
My three other boys will go to jail before they go to another foolish war.
God bless you for your sign about war; that’s just what it is: murder,” said a woman to me as I was on my 8-day picketing and fasting.
She referred to my sign:
DRAW THE LINE AT MURDER
REFUSE TO GO TO WAR.
In contrast a man went by with his wife and said: “Drop dead!”
“Can’t do it, Mister,” I replied.
Rik had done a beautiful job on my leaflet, printed in the CW, on blue paper.
I was nearly out of CW’s containing my tax statement so did not give out any unless people asked for them.
Now for the first time in my fasting I went to Mass and Communion each morning.
I had worked until after dark for several nights in order to finish work that I had planned, and up until .
I had eaten my last full meal and only toast bread until I commenced my fast at .
I had written the following note, enclosing my blue leaflet, to 165 of the clergy in and around Phoenix.
And as usual I had notified the police, the FBI, and the tax man, of my picketing, telling them that what I was doing was clearly subversive, but no worse than it ever was.
“Please pray for the success of my fasting and picketing in this the 10th year of my open refusal to pay income taxes for war, if you can in conscience do so.
My attitude may appear too radical but I feel that something as radical as the Sermon on the Mount is needed in this wicked world.
I too believe in a personal religion but if in matters of social concern I act just as unbelievers act, then I am a fraud.
If you have time stop and say hello to me as I fast and picket in front of the old YMCA.”
I had sent my leaflet air mail to the Mayor of Hiroshima and to Manalil Gandhi in Phoenix, South Africa.
I received but one answer which was from a leading Methodist minister, who did not agree with my ideas but who praised my stand.
I knew beforehand of the approval of the half dozen priests who appreciated the CW.
As usual the Associated Press sent a favorable factual message on the wire about my activities and the local radios reported it each day, one announcer even reading my entire leaflet.
But the local dailies, per their policy, refused to “dignify” themselves by mentioning my name.
I started the fast weighing 142 pounds.
The scales also poured forth a slip with the dubious information that read, “Don’t always follow the line of least resistance.”
I lost 2 pounds and which was exceptionally hot I lost 5 pounds.
I slept that night for 14 hours and awoke refreshed.
One friend who was an usher in a Catholic Church and also a veteran, had always been cordial to the CW, but he felt that the plan of the American Legion to take the profit out of war and make the big shots who make war go to war was a better method than my tax refusal and picketing.
I told him that I was winning my battle against the government each day and while this was only a step forward, his way was no more than conversation about it.
I said that this method stood as much a chance of succeeding as a butcher putting vegetarian signs in his window.
That those who make money and fame out of war would never stop.
It was up to us to refuse to take part in war.
Fasting
Now on I was weak but never a bit hungry.
Several people on park benches nearby told me of a young man who had gone on a 62 day fast.
They said he ate his lunch at the park.
That day I introduced myself to him and found he had suffered from arthritis, stomach ulcers and chronic nightmare.
He went to my friend Dr. Shelton in San Antonio and after 40 days of nothing but water to drink, all of the accumulated toxic poisons had been washed out of his body and he commenced to get stronger.
He was entirely cured at the end of 62 days.
Of the 25,000 people taking fasts there in 30 years only one person had endured a longer fast; that being 68 days.
A priest in Phoenix had taken a 30 day fast there and had been cured.
My friend had lost 57 pounds but had gained it all back again.
I visited with him each noon and envied his vegetarian diet of pears and grapes.
He had been raised a Catholic but believed in no religion at present.
He was interested in my ideas and felt he would never go to war but he did not feel that it was his job to propagandize about it.
Other friends I met told me of a man in Phoenix whom I knew who had been given up by the doctors because of tuberculosis of the kidneys.
He had read in some book that in ancient Egypt those with such trouble had laid in the hot sands.
Egypt was too far away so he came to Arizona and for 6 months literally lived in the sand.
He was entirely cured.
He is a strict vegetarian these past 20 years and in good health.
The Mormon wife of a friend of mine told me of her grandfather who in the old days had several wives.
At the age of 86 he discovered that he had diabetes.
He fasted 68 days at home and cured himself and lived 9 more years in good health.
But Mormons are used to disciplining themselves so his fast was not as difficult for him as it would be for the regular flabby American.
My other sign read: “Thou Shalt Not Kill,”
HIROSHIMA WAS A-BOMBED , JUST 8 YEARS AGO .
As penance I am Fasting IN MEMORIAM.
This was enclosed with a black border.
The six story Veteran’s Bureau was across the street and many men in uniform went by.
One soldier asked me what kind of lies I was peddling.
I told him I was peddling no lies, but the right side of a very important question; that he had better read it and see what it was all about.
He read it as he walked along. Another soldier did the same.
Generally soldiers refuse to take the leaflet or tear it up.
Near quitting time on a young fellow whose appearance marked him as of the nervous intellectual type, and not a rowdy, stopped and asked me if this was my sign that I was carrying.
I told him that it was.
He said that I had better call the police for he was going to take the sign and tear it up and dance on it for no Communist could carry such a sign in his town.
I told him that I was not a Communist; that I was a Catholic and an anarchist.
He replied that he was a Catholic.
I asked him what parish he belonged to and it was mine also.
I inquired if he had been at mass the last Sunday and if he noticed me selling CW’s in front of the church.
He had been to last mass and had not noticed me.
I told him that if he had looked closer he would have noticed a candle burning before the Blessed Mother for the success of my intention in this picketing and fasting.
He didn’t believe it.
I asked his name and he told me but would not give me his address.
I said I did not believe in the police and if he got any pleasure out of tearing signs he could do so.
He took them and tore them off the standard and danced on them there on the sidewalk.
He refused to take a copy of my leaflet or of the CW, muttering “Communist, Communist.”
I advised him to see our parish priest and get straight on the matter of the CW.
He promised to do so.
I then called the priest and told him of what had just happened.
He did not remember the name of my patriotic friend.
I wanted to see the AP man on another matter so went to the newspaper office.
Here I saw my friend with my signs telling a reporter about the Communist he had found.
I recognized the reporter from pictures I had seen of him but I had never met him.
The reporter said that I was not a Communist for they all knew of my picketing activities for years.
The patriotic Catholic said he was a veteran from Korea and repeated that no one could carry such signs in his town.
The reporter said he was a veteran of two wars and he had fought for just such things as the freedom of Hennacy to carry his signs and picket; that if the young man did not like my signs he could do as the pickets in front of the White House in the Rosenberg case did: get other signs and picket the pickets.
The reporter also said that I was standing up for the freedom which was true Americanism, and although he disagreed with my ideas, that the patriotic young man was acting like a Communist or a Fascist in denying me freedom.
He picked up the signs saying, “Here Hennacy take your signs; they are yours, not his.”
The young man said he would take them away from me.
I replied that I was too tired carrying them anyway and would simply give out my leaflets the next day as Rik was away and I had no cardboard to make new signs.
The young man said he would come down next day and tear up any signs that I had.
The reporter told him that he was breaking the law and he was lucky he opposed such a person as Hennacy who would not take him to court.
I left him still arguing with the reporter.
The AP carried this story and it was reported over the radio.
Some of the newspaper men wanted me to prefer charges against my assailant to make a more exciting story.
I refused to do so, explaining my Gandhian principle of non-violent resistance to evil and that as an anarchist I could take no recourse to law under any circumstances.
The next day the young man did not show up.
I phoned my priest and he had not come around to ask about the CW.
To Maryfarm
All during my picketing the employees of the tax office, including the three Catholic tax men whose job it had been to get my tax money, were cordial.
There was not a mean look from anyone in that office.
This was the first time this had happened.
Several friends came and walked around the line with me.
Only about a dozen people tore up my leaflet.
Many stopped and cordially approved of my picketing.
About half a dozen grunted disapproval.
There was not as much traffic as there had been other years at the postoffice.
I had not met the new head of the tax office so as I finished my fast I introduced myself to Col. Wood and expressed my appreciation of the cordial attitude of his coworkers toward my picketing.
He asked me the difference between a Communist and an Anarchist and seemed to understand my explanation.
Ginny and her boys came up and broke the fast with me around as we all drank juices at the juice bar.
I left for New York on the bus.
I had bought more fruit than I could eat but I nibbled at it on the way.
In Prescott, I phoned the former head of the tax bureau in Phoenix and talked to his wife, Mrs. Stuart, Democratic National Committeewoman.
They own the Prescott “Courier.”
She was pleasant as usual and told me that they had a story on my fast that day.
Soon I was with Platt and Barbara Cline in Flagstaff and now I could eat mashed potatoes and other soft food.
Platt made a recording of my experiences.
He had a fine Third Mesa basket which I took to New York for Dorothy.
I spent with Hopi friends in Winslow and by I was visiting with Msgr. Garcia in Albuquerque and my good friend Rev. Soker of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church there.
Reagans had moved to Arkansas and the letter I had sent to Al and Catherine Reser must have gone astray or they had moved, for I couldn’t find them.
By I was in Sante Fe welcomed by Peter and Florence van Dresser.
They had a meeting for me .
I did not have time to go to El Rito to see their Organic House heated by solar heat and with windmill for power.
I will stop there on my way back when I visit my daughter Carmen.
Carmen is with her sister Sharon for a retreat at Mt. Shasta.
I visited the nearby Trappist monastery and spoke to two monks who are CW fans and had lunch with the nursing sisters where I had spoken last year.
As I left I was pleased to see a good factual writeup on the front page of the daily New Mexican.
This paper goes to nearby Los Alamos, so perhaps for the first time those who make the bomb could learn of opposition to it.
A social worker told me that there were more maladjusted children from the homes of Los Alamos workers than from any other strata of people from the state.
The gloom of this blood money thus defiles the next generation.
A few days with my family in Cleveland and I arrived at Maryfarm, with Father Casey.
I understood more this year than last and read some Catholic literature that I should have read long ago.
It is too soon to evaluate the effect of this spiritual retreat upon me.
Just now I am at Dave Dellinger’s at Glen Gardner, N.J., proof-reading my autobiography.
Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the edition:
…Wally Nelson came to take me to Sharonville to spend the night with tax-refusers Ernest and Marion Bromley.
We disagree on my frankness to the authorities but we have the same aim.
The afternoon and night was most pleasant as I became acquainted with Fred Schulder, age 79, who had written in the anarchist paper Liberty in before I was born.
He is not religious in the accepted sense, but takes the CW.
His son Horace Champney took me to Brookville to an area meeting of Peacemakers where Ralph Templin, Clay Marks, and others whom I knew held forth in a discussion about tax refusal and the picketing which they would do in Cincinnati .
Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the edition:
Max Sandin, old time tax refuser, and one of we seven veterans of jails in World War Ⅰ who also refused to register in World War Ⅱ renewed old time memories with me.
Jim Ward had asked me in Chicago what live meant to me now that I was a Catholic and I had listed the seven things which seemed to me now in the most important, and I talked this over with Father Casey.
Here they are:
(1) Voluntary poverty.
(2) The Sermon on the Mount.
(3) Pacifism, with its absolutist meaning as evidenced in tax refusal.
(4) The Mass.
(5) To Work and not be a parasite.
(6) Anarchism.
(7) Vegetarianism, which includes no tobacco, alcohol or medicine.
This is for myself and not meant for others.
Each has to go at his own speed and in his own way.
We drove to Grasston to see old man Paul Marquardt and found him reading his Bible.
He told us of the time when his children had been sent home from school with a card telling the family to save fat for the war.
Marquardt immediately withdrew the children from the school saying that each morning he prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” and he was not going to save bread or fat or anything for a war.
He told also of the priest in nearby Pine City, who, in instructing his confirmation class said, “Have faith like the Marquardts.”
To have this honor in your home town is indeed an honor.
From the edition:
Individual Income Tax: War’s Chief Supporter.
Of the income of the Federal Government 48% comes from individual income taxes which we pay; 30% comes from corporation taxes; 15% comes from excise taxes; and 7% other sources
By Ernest Bromley
The Administration’s proposed budget, recently announced, asks for a billion dollar increase for “new weapons of unprecedented strategic and tactical importance” in order to give this nation “the greatest military power in its peacetime history.”
Diagrams of the proposed income and expenditures emphasize two things: (1) The chief source of federal revenue is the individual income tax, (2) The chief national expenditure is military (including bomb stockpiling and new terror weapons).
Both things have been true for these eighteen years, but one is always struck anew with each announcement of them.
So minute a portion of the tax money is being spent for any socially acceptable activity that it seems to be only an illusion to consider that one’s Federal taxes go to anything constructive.
(Actually, the only way one can support the better enterprises is to bypass the Internal Revenue Bureau completely and find ways to contribute to these causes directly.)
The war build-up touches the individual much more directly and intimately at the income tax point than it does anywhere else.
Almost two-thirds of every tax dollar goes to build H-Bombs, Guided Missiles, Germ Warfare, Conscript Armies, etc.—thirty-five times as much as for schools, roads, and health combined.
(Can there be any doubt about what the Federal government’s major activity has come to be?)
It is almost unthinkable that more people (especially more pacifists) have not declined to bolster this monstrous drive to destruction; that they have not at this major point stopped the flow of their funds through the book-keeping which takes most of what they pay and channels it into what they abhor; that they have not by-passed the present tax set-up and given their valuable, held-back funds to something worthy of support.
Will we wake up too late?
The first, and major, encumbrance to keeping one’s tax money and using it for something decent is the withholding set-up.
Trying to be a tax refuser in a withholding job is a good deal like being a pacifist in the army.
In each case you have already placed yourself well within the system; and in each case the very first step is to take yourself out of the system.
The real, creative possibilities on these fronts begin to open up only after this step of separation has been taken.
The fact that such separations are difficult to carry out makes them no less imperative.
Because the withholding situation presents problems, is there no advice that can be given to the average working person about the business of non-cooperating with income tax payments?
I would advise: Stop paying income taxes (whether you file a form to this effect or not).
For some people this will, of course, mean that they will have to leave their present jobs and take employment that is not affected by withholding.
Here we sometimes tend to lose sight of the fact that there is probably no type of socially useful work (individual or organizational) being done under the withholding tax set-up which cannot also be done outside it.
And, too, this raises the important question of what social usefulness really is.
Can “socially useful” firms or organizations remain socially useful to any real degree when their one rigid requirement is that the first portion of a worker’s earnings be set aside for war?
Can a “socially useful” person remain socially useful in his job to any real degree when, in order to do with one hand the work of building a better society, he has first to do with the other hand the work of destroying it (like a church constructing a brothel)?
Conscientious workers in such employment may reason after a while, as some have, that the effect of this operation is that they are working in a munitions factory part of the time.
Men go to prison rather than join the armed forces and support conscription.
Should not the people with these principles (especially the people not subject to any draft) face the imperative of sacrificing a little economic security (or convenience), especially when not facing it means continuing to pay substantial sums of money for terrifying weapons and conscript armies?
Ernest Bromley lives in Sharonville, Ohio, with his wife, Marian and family.
He keeps his earnings below the amount where any tax has to be paid.
Around he refused, when a Methodist minister in North Carolina, to purchase an automobile tag (not a license), for his car and did three months in jail.
His wife worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the leading pacifist group in this country, and quit her job rather than pay the withholding tax for war which this and all other peace organizations take from their employees.
He has been head of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers.
He supplements his income by an apiary in his garden.
I have visited there several times and respect the effort which he and his wife are making to live up to their ideals.
They live a few miles from the Grail farm at Loveland, Ohio.
The Jehovah Witnesses and the Catholic Worker are two groups where all work for their keep and no salaries—and no taxes—are paid.
This basis of voluntary poverty could be approximated by others if they wished to make the necessary adjustment between faith and works and try to live in community.—A.H.
Excerpts from an article by Ammon Hennacy in the issue:
For the first time when the withholding tax began I have not earned enough money to owe the tax man anything.
I only made $310 lecturing and as my Autobiography is not copyrighted and I want no royalties from it, the sales go to pay for the printing and whatever is left over will go to the CW.
There is no status [sic] of limitations on income taxes so I owe for 12 years.
I told the tax man that I would not be foolish enough to tell him where I was going to lecture so he could be there and get the money.
There is practically nothing that I have to buy as all of us here at the CW work for our keep.
However, if I was to purchase anything in a store and give the cashier a $5 bill for a dollar purchase the tax man, if he were present, could garnishee the change from the cashier right then without any legal proceeding.
In this idea of tax refusal there are ways by which pacifists have to act according to their web of circumstances.
Some, like Ernest Bromley, limit their earnings to the amount they are allowed because of dependents and have no tax to pay.
Others like Rev. George Hauser, because of being ordained in the clergy, do not have a withholding tax taken from their pay, but at the end of the year make a statement of their earnings.
Then the amount of tax is taken by garnishee from the pay with added penalties.
There are others who have an income from securities and do not work for wages and who keep their money in a bank where the tax man comes and gets it.
There are millions of people who dislike paying taxes and who may write a letter to the government about it, but they pay.
There are others like Governor Lee of Utah who put a certain amount of the tax due which comes from income other than wages in a bank and dare the tax man to sue to get it.
But the government always will evade a moral issue, so it is likely that the Governor’s money will be taken the same as others who keep money in banks.
I plan to picket the tax man here in New York City for , and then fast and picket in penance for the bomb we dropped at Hiroshima .
The T men have interrogated me and what they want to do about my tax arrears is up to them.
With more H bomb tests scheduled for the spring by politicians and militarists it is increasingly the responsibility of the individual pacifist to think and to act about being a part of this terrible destruction planned by those who will soon be asking for votes because they have “kept us out of war.”
An excerpt from an Ammon Hennacy article in the issue:
The coming atomic tests now scheduled for and the air raid drill for are a challenge to all Christians.
We intend to demonstrate against this “pinch of incense on the altar to Caesar.”
This with our non payment of income taxes for war and a refusal to be a part of the war system is positive evidence that we are trying to understand and practice the Sermon on the Mount.
The argument that the idealist hears from the opportunist is that we are not practical.
I submit that our program of the one-man-revolution is the most practical of all.
Others who believe in bullets and ballots must gain a majority before they can begin to practice their beliefs and thus postpone indefinitely anything but conversation about their views.
We do not need to wait upon others for we have seceded about 90% from this exploitative system and are already practicing our ideals.
An editorial from Dorothy Day reflected on the hydrogen bomb test among other things, and included this note:
Those who can take such stringent courses as tax refusal can give their services rather than be put on payrolls and beg their way to supply their daily needs if they can find agencies willing to work with them on these terms.
Or they can embrace voluntary poverty and manual labor as a life of penance and mortification.
The harvest is great and the laborers are few. No fear of unemployment in this field.
An unsigned book review in the issue included this:
These publications [Thomas Merton’s The Silent Life and Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality] will be of special interest to novices in the religious life or those contemplating such a move but laymen who read them should keep in mind that while there is much contained in them from which any Christian can benefit still the “techniques” of attaining union with God proper to the monk are not always the same for those “in the world.” Anyone who has lived under the Benedictine rule, and all the monastic orders of the Western world have felt the impact of Benedict’s spirit and legislation, knows the position of the concept of obedience in his thought.
It is just about the most important single element and no one can be a good monk unless he is willing to give up his own will and like Jesus become “obedient unto death,” and the whole monastic observance is organized to serve this end.
But the layman, living as he does most often in a society where “the prince of this world” and his spirit prevail, has the duty to cultivate, rather, the virtue of rebellion in order to be obedient to God.
It is in rebellion too that we can imitate St. Benedict who fled the corrupt Roman society of his day, whose only concern was “to please God alone.”
The monastic life is a judgement on the life of the “world” and in its light the “world” stands condemned.
In this way the monk practices the virtue of rebellion.
For those in the “world” there must be rebellion also if they are not to be counted “of it.” They must rebel against materialism by embracing voluntary poverty and giving all they possess over and above the absolute necessities to those who have not the necessities, they must rebel against war and its causes by conscientious objection and tax refusal, they must combat that selfish middle class individualism and fear of giving of self by embracing community in one form or another.
Rebellion is the first step in any attempt at conforming to Christ; it begins at baptism when the neophyte formally renounces Satan—et omnibus operibus ejus.
More from Ammon Hennacy, in the issue:
Richard Fichter, whose article appears in this issue, had been dismissed from the Methodist ministry in Pennsylvania because of his energetic anti-war and tax refusal stand.
I had never met him but he had bought several of my books and distributed the CW and had attended various picketing demonstrations.
He and his wife have three small children and live on a farm with twenty cows to attend to.
All radicals have to make the decision when to follow Caesar and when to follow Christ.
75,000 followers of Gandhi went to prison and someone besides the British government took care of their families.
Many bourgeois minded pacifists thought it was wrong for a CO to go to CPS camp or prison and leave a family behind.
Richard wrote to many papers about the evils of atomic war and little attention was paid to his views.
So he came to New York City and in the midst of a nation wide broadcast on television he jumped to the stage and shouted his message.
He thought that this would gain attention and the papers would print his views in full.
Instead he was locked up in Bellevue for mental observation.
I visited him there and met his wife and brother and two Methodist ministers who were his friends.
Later his brother and Parents came to visit us at the CW from their home in Ohio.
When the government comes to a pacifist and says you must register for the draft, pay taxes for war, sign a loyalty oath, or when a Congressional Committee wants you to tell on others, then if you do not follow the best you know and refuse absolutely, you are following less than you know and will live to regret your timidity.
But to leave farm and family to try to tell your message to those who do not want to hear it is not wise and does not make a witness with the dignity which no doubt inspired Richard in the lives of Thoreau and Gandhi.
A radical who has faith knows like Thoreau that “one on the side of God is a majority.” And when his neighbors think he is queer and out of step he can reply like Thoreau that he “is listening to a different drummer.” He is not frustrated if all are against him.
He does not need the applause of the multitude for he will be content when “two or three are gathered together.”
Ammon Hennacy, in the issue:
Tax Refusal
Leland Olds of Yellow Springs, Ohio has refused to pay income taxes and as a result his house worth $9,000 has been sold by the government for the less than $200 taxes due.
He can regain the property within a year by paying the tax with interest.
This action, together with the sale of a car belonging to Walter Gormly and of Arthur Emery of Iowa, are the only cases I know of where the government has taken property of tax refusers.
At times they have garnisheed wages and taken money from bank accounts.
They got $5 from a farmer I was working for in Arizona who paid it out of his own pocket rather than take it from my wage, and the tax man also took my picketing sign saying he would sell it to the highest bidder.
I never heard of anyone buying it.
I still owe taxes for 12 years and will picket the tax office here on unless I am in jail on the air raid drill.
Then I would fast in jail.
Karl Meyer, in the issue:
Stepping Up the Agitation
Dear Bob or Dorothy or whoever is holding things down there while we are all out making angry and urgent faces at the giants of the impersonalist order.
I was very encouraged to receive the issue and to read your letter to the California legislature, even as I was preparing to step up the agitation in support [of] Rose Robinson and tax refusal.
On I began to hand out a new leaflet outside the Federal Building which has been the focus of our protest.
After outlining developments in the case.
I wrote, “There are some of us who believe, as she does, that it is wrong to pay taxes for war.
We have refused as she refused, to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service in the collection of taxes.
And, beyond this, we encourage everyone to do the same.
If she deserves to be in prison we deserve to be there too.
Therefore I ask from the judge, the United States Attorney’s office, the Internal Revenue Service and all taxpayers and supporters of military preparations, a share in the judgment against her.
We have said very simply that your preparations for nuclear war, and therefore your war taxation, are criminal beyond any measure of crime that man has known before.
And you have said that our dissent from the idea and action of military preparedness is criminal.
The question of which is right is urgent for the future of all men.
We have shown a readiness to ratify the truth of our conviction at the risk of imprisonment and hardship.
The integrity of justice asks either that Rose Robinson be released, or that all who share her stand be imprisoned with her.
That is why I ask the officials and the people for a decision in my case consistent with their decision in hers.
How can one person be imprisoned for taking a stand, while others who take the same stand and, what is more, advocate and promote it in the marketplace are left free?
I ask the officials and the people involved to release Rose Robinson, but if they will not do that, I ask them to prosecute me for refusing to cooperate with Internal Revenue Service and for advocating that all people do the same.”
The third person who came out and took this leaflet was Judge Robson.
I had already mailed him a copy with a covering letter in which I said, “…By presenting this nuclear issue as an issue of imprisonment and freedom, we approach by an analogy the core of what it really is: that is, an issue of life and death for all of us…
I hope therefore that you will not regard this leaflet distribution and this request for a share in the judgment against Rose Robinson as something impertinent, but as an attempt to enunciate forcefully the terms of a public discussion of a crucial issue, as well as to bear witness to a very strong conviction that it is wrong to participate in modern war in any way.”
We encouraged Rose by our vigil, visits and letters.
In court she thanked us for that.
I feel responsible to every one man insurrection to make it a two-man insurrection, so that it may become a three-man insurrection and finally a revolution of enough men.
It is at the critical moment when we recognize our responsibility to one another that we realize our responsibility to mankind and to God.
That is what Jesus told us.
We see war coming on, bearing down on us, a visible monument to an immensity of sin.
Our voices have not reflected the horror we have seen.
Our voices have not challenged the supremacy of crime in the actions of men.
We were glad enough if a government preparing for World War Ⅲ, was yet benevolent in this decade until war comes, glad enough if our protest could be free from suffering.
We are still accomplices because we have whispered at the moment when we should have shouted.
We ought to throw up the challenge of Tolstoi and Thoreau, to keep all just men in jail or give up war and slavery.
Here we are making faces at the giants of the impersonalist order, but what we do not forget is that a face turned in urgent desperation to them is a face turned in hope to God.
Our work is primarily a prayer.
Early last week two men were standing on the step of the Federal Building watching me as I passed my leaflets and commenting to each other.
I recognized one of them.
It was deputy U.S. Marshal Wheeler, the man who put the chains on me last summer at Mead, Nebraska.
I stepped up to him and said, “Hello. Mr. Wheeler. Will you take a leaflet?”
“Yes, Karl,” he said, “I’ll take that. I see that you are still here passing them out.”
And so I was, and I realized that the children of this world are too wise to be consistent.
Last summer he put me in chains for standing on a grass covered knoll near a missile base.
Last month they gave Rose Robinson twelve long months and a long day.
Who can say what they will do tomorrow when I walk up the steps and into the building and have a try at handing the leaflet to taxpayers lined up outside the Federal Internal Revenue office.
In Christ, Karl Meyer Chicago Catholic Worker
An announcement in the issue:
Prayer, Fasting, and Tax Refusal
Ammon Hennacy will picket the office of Internal Revenue at Varick and West Houston Streets in New York City and will fast at this time as a penance for our dropping the bomb at Hiroshima, , and for our continued atomic activities.
He has openly refused to pay income taxes during 12 years while working in the fields in the Southwest, or while lecturing, as 83% of the income tax goes for war.
He will picket from 9 to 5 on weekdays.
Readers in New York are invited to keep him company, and anyone sympathetic can help by praying and fasting according to his capacity.
The same issue also included an article from Eroseanna Robinson, borrowed from The Peacemaker:
Rose Robinson Tells of Her Arrest and Prison Experiences
It was , and I got off the city bus in a hurry because I was late for work.
My arms were straining with the packages I’d bought downtown.
They were things for the Play Club mostly, and food.
I hadn’t had any lunch, except a couple of cashews and some fudge nibbled at on the bus.
I was quick-stepping toward Bethlehem Community Center compelled by two nagging realizations.
I was late and I was hungry.
I had a conference with my supervisor set for two o’clock.
It was already ten after.
Well, I’d just have to talk and eat at the same time.
I stopped, late as I was, at the corner store and bought some buttermilk.
Actually, I already had an abundance of food — vegetable soup, swiss cheese sandwich and what not.
But for a change, I had a little extra money and for the rest of that year, certainly, I was going to be earning a little more than usual.
For the first time in my seven years of tax refusal, I wouldn’t have to budget so closely.
Eating was as good a way as any to celebrate.
I was vexed with myself to be so busy.
First the conference.
Then group preparation.
Then the Play Club children’s time.
I’d have to do a lot of phoning after that for the parents meeting that night.
I took the hall steps quickly when I got inside the building and rushed into the front office, I said “Hi” to the secretary.
She had a peculiar look on her face.
My supervisor and the girl workers were also in the office.
I spoke to them but everybody kept looking at me strangely and nobody said anything. “What’s wrong with all of you?” I asked. “I’m not that late.
It’s only 2:15.” Then the secretary said, “Rose, there’s somebody to see you.”
She was nodding across the hall toward the library.
Somebody to see me.
I didn’t want to see anybody with all I had to do.
I wanted to put down my arm-racking bundles and have my conference and eat.
The fact is that I never had that conference and I didn’t eat for 115 days because a short, stocky, authoritative man in a grey uniform came toward me out of the library.
Behind him was a man I knew.
He’d come to my home several times and to Bethlehem Center only a week before.
He was Mr.
D.L.
Turner, deputy collector for the Internal Revenue Service.
The first man said, “Erozee-yanna Robinson?” and I said correctly “Eroseanna,” and he snapped his right hand open sidewise showing his badge. “I have a warrant for your arrest," he said. “Come with me.” For eight months the government, through its agents, had hammered link upon link several visits by the deputy collector, registered letters, a subpoena, a certified court order, telephone calls, throughout, to my home and work, a call to my sister, Adrienne, at her work, a visit to my job — until at last, they had reached the handcuff-end of the chain, putting my wrists into them so tightly that they cut, and lugging my body, in deliberately ungainly fashion, away to jail.
My body was lugged and dragged around many times after that because I refused to walk to jail or trial or any place authorized by the courts.
And throughout the whole of my incarceration, the practices upon which government power pivots came into sharp focus.
One is the coercion of the individual to unquestioningly submit to authority imposed by the government, the other is the deliberate misrepresentation of any individual who might take exception to such authority.
This whole pattern is disguised as the democratic process’ and, in recent years, has frequently been labeled ‘freedom’ and ‘truth’.
Actually, respect for the right of the individual to examine policies of government — which certainly affect us all — is a myth.
And taking exception to policy, as in my own case — even though that exception be a denouncement of violence, waste, psychological intimidation, misrepresentation of truth, and preparation for wholesale destruction — can constitute a felony.
When the individual is willing to be fodder for such an organ, it is partly out of desire for reward but largely to escape punishment.
And submission to such authority is no guarantee of either.
So, when the deputy marshal told me he was there to arrest me, I told him that was his affair and was of no concern to me, and started up the 2nd floor stairs to my office.
I recognized that I was going to be forcibly involved and I was alert to a point of high tension.
But still, I knew I was faced with a choice of being arrested or of arresting myself.
I knew then that my arrest was to be his affair, since he had not the conscience to do otherwise, and later, that or the ten or so others who answered his telephone call for help when I refused to go with him voluntarily.
I wasn’t going to contribute my body for incarceration anymore than I would contribute federal income taxes for militarization.
This would be giving sanction to the government’s inflicting punishment upon the individual.
But just as militarization is evil, so too is the punitive institution.
The government has prepared a glossy brochure about Women’s Federal Prison at Alderson, West Virginia.
They call their penal process ‘rehabilitation’!
This is a calculated misuse of the term. They proceed due south of rehabilitation.
Such downgrading of human beings — infantile treatment of the women, the frequent apathy toward the physical ailments of inmates, the absurd restrictions — is anything but preparation for constructive living.
This was equally true of the Cook County Jail.
This maltreatment of prisoners would be bad enough if done out of ignorance.
But attempts at concealment of the facts by all levels of government personnel, with restraint of information and with lies, reveals the hypocritical state of such authority.
I’ve learned, since my release from Alderson, that a number of lies in regard to me and treatment of me were given to the Press by the wardens of both the County Jail and the prison and by the U.S. marshal.
I will recount some in a later issue, but let me state a few of these now and set the facts in order:
Rose was arrested and taken to the Clerk’s office of the county jail.
I wasn’t taken to any office, but was carried upstairs and dumped on a bed in the incorrigible cell of the “Hole.”
The Hole is usually reserved for narcotics addicts who are breaking the habit.
It was overheated because addicts in that condition are always cold.
They vomited all day and all night and in between they talked in the lewdest profanity.
The Hole is a four part unit — 1 larger room about 9′×12′ and 3 tiny cells, removed from the outer door, about 4′×8′.
The grey speckled floors were stone, the clay colored walls, iron.
The larger section had four iron beds with mattresses and bedding.
A bed in each of the little cells took up half the width.
There’s a seatless toilet in each.
The two outer ones had windows that opened (but that were kept closed because the addicts complained of being cold).
Only one of these boasted a sink.
Two cell doors remained open usually, while the one in which I was put was locked.
In that cell, the window was nearly opaque with dirt and with heavy screening, and iron bars were on the outside.
It could not be opened.
Under it, going full blast always, was a radiator.
The only way I could get relief from the heat, and a breath of cool air, was by lying flat on the floor on my stomach and inhaling of the stream that flowed under the hall door from several feet away.
The iron bed had a wafer-thin mattress on it and was so short that my head and feet stuck out simultaneously beyond its borders.
I was given a clean sheet and a blanket.
To get some sleep at night, I tilted the bed up on one end out of the way and put the mattress on the floor.
I slept fitfully with my head resting on stone, under the toilet.
Whenever a toilet in an adjacent cell was flushed, the substance would back up into the others.
This kept me jumping up throughout the night, reflushing the one over my head.
The radiator boiled away, where my feet were, all night long.
I didn’t wash for 3½ days because I was told I couldn’t use the facilities without begging.
Frequently the matron put food for me on the floor.
Rose proceeded to take off her clothes and to remain thus in the cell.
I was forcibly undressed by two matrons after refusing to give up my own clothes.
Then I was manually searched all over and forced into a striped cotton dress that was ripped in two places.
All my clothes — even shoes — were taken from me.
The next morning I was told repeatedly that I would be left in jail to rot unless I got dressed and walked out to go to court.
I refused.
About an hour later, without explanation, my clothes were given back to me.
Another hour passed, and when I refused to walk out, I was dragged from the cell, up the steps, into a wheelchair and hauled off to court.
When I returned, the nurse had trouble removing my clothes by herself, so she didn’t bother to take any more than my skirt.
I fashioned another by doubling a sheet and wrapping it around my middle.
I refused to put on the striped dress she’d provided.
On the fifth day, after I’d been dragged from my prayers and put in isolation cell of the so-called hospital (a dingy white-painted dormitory), the nurse, who proved to be sympathetic and courteous, offered me a nightgown which I accepted.
I wore this to bed and whenever I washed my own clothes.
Rose took exercises unclad.
Silly. I always wore the above-mentioned.
Rose, therefore, had to jump into bed when the warden and a reporter from the Daily News came to interview her.
She told her story, said the reporter, who “quoted” her in the News.
How reluctant I’ll be to believe anything printed in the daily papers from now on.
No reporter was ever admitted to quarters where I was confined.
And such quotes are out-and-out lies.
Moreover, I neither saw nor talked to the warden until the last day when, under his supervision, I was dragged from the cell and carted to the U.S. hospital.
Rose left the cell to go downstairs and see a boyfriend, but she wouldn’t go to see her parents.
During my incarceration I walked out of the immediate confines 3 times — once at Alderson when I helped carry a sick inmate to the hospital car, once to my release and one other time, at the Cook County Jail.
And I went to talk to Rev. Ernest Bromley, editor of The Peacemaker.
At first I hesitated.
And then I decided that too few people knew my views on tax refusal and the like, so this was to me a fine chance to express these views through the newspaper.
I then resumed my plan to see no one unless they were admitted to the area where I was confined.
My mother was admitted and I welcomed her.
The other inmates were sneaking Rose candy bars during her fast.
The warden, head matron, priest and others had proof.
This’s the first time in my experience that fantasy has become proof.
I ate nothing throughout my whole time in jail and nobody crammed anything down my throat.
After my removal to the U.S. hospital I ate nothing.
I drank no water the first 3½ days of jail, very little — spasmodically — in-between, and none the last 9 days before force-feeding.
I did not wish to crave things that could be withheld from me, because emotional control meant freedom.
Rose enjoyed being fed through a tube in her nose. She didn’t struggle.
At Alderson, I didn’t struggle. I gave voice protest and continued whatever I was doing.
In the beginning at the U.S. hospital in Chicago, I had struggled, nonviolently against four men and two women.
It took them 20 minutes to turn me over and stretch me out and another 20 minutes to get me tied, hand and foot to the bed, in a straitjacket.
I couldn’t do much moving in that state, but they further secured me with a restraining blanket made of bulky canvas.
Then they tightened a rope across my chest.
It was in the mid-eighties in that room and no air was stirring.
I had trouble breathing. I was miserable. But they had an easy time force-feeding me.
By the next morning I was aching all over. One of the doctors came in and asked me how I felt.
I felt terrible, I said. Would I struggle if he let me out? I’d thought about that overnight.
How easy it was for them to force food into me—how uncomfortable it was for me.
Besides this, I was 37 lbs. below normal weight and very weak.
If I could keep them from having power over me, struggle I would.
But I knew I couldn’t keep up even the kind of effort I’d made the night before, and neither did I have the control yet to remain lying in one position for a long period of time.
So, I told the doctor, no. Did I want to be untied? Yes.
So, he walked away and left me like that for several hours more.
I stayed, thus restricted, for nearly 24 hours.
The night before, when they inserted the tube, the other doctor had jammed it into my nose, letting it stop at my throat.
I tried desperately to get my breath but I kept choking.
I could see the doctor’s face, looking like a great wax mask—with expensive eyes—magnified enormously.
He watched me as though I were a specimen under glass.
I gagged three times and he watched me.
“Alright now, breathe,” he said this steadily, “through your mouth”.
Of course I did, and, in one movement, he jammed the tube down to my stomach.
Blood bubbled from my nose and mouth. It continued for hours, after that.
My nose and throat were inflamed and sore for 4 days.
My nose remained sore and ran constantly, and I sneezed again and again throughout 12 days of force-feeding.
The doctor at Anderson was considerate and gentle in this.
He used a smaller tube and put it down by degrees. There was very little irritation.
My nose did run for weeks though, and always when I talked.
I sneezed, because the tube was left there all the time.
I plugged up the nostril with cotton to keep the thing from wriggling.
I slept with it and otherwise lived with it for 76 days and nights.
That made a total of 88 days of force-feeding.
Rose was being well-fed, gaining much weight, and was getting 3000 calories per day.
For nine days at Alderson, I was force-fed 2 pints of water with 5% sugar and 2 pints of a mixture of egg, molasses, sugar, salt, water, evaporated milk and orange juice.
After that the mixture was doubled and the sugar-water eliminated.
When I was removed to solitary confinement, the mixture was cut 25%.
Then it was cut a second time.
I was carried to solitary 25 lbs. underweight.
Taking measurement of myself revealed I hadn’t gained a pound. Limited exercise wore me out.
To keep from losing, frequently I’d spend long hours in bed.
Hospital aides (inmates) told me the mixture contained very little protein and an abnormally high amount of molasses, salt and orange juice.
Long before they told me this I’d started drinking lots of water because I was feeling irritation from the acidity.
I was drinking as much as 15 glasses of water each day.
Sometimes I felt a little feverish and my face would swell.
That was when the prison staff would compliment me on how nice and fat I was getting.
Only when friends came to the prison, asking after my welfare, did the aides tell me the protein had been increased noticeably but that the molasses and salt and orange juice remained high.
Again, before they told me this, I’d already noticed my measurements were increasing normally.
When I was released, I was 10 lbs. underweight.
Rose liked the feeding.
I was forced-fed in a ragged pattern.
The aides and nurses came any time between sun-up and 9:30 at night.
I overcame feelings of weakness usually through prayer, and sometimes, as I said before, by just climbing into bed.
Food was left as an enticement throughout most of my confinement.
An aide who felt sorry for me told the head nurse I wasn’t getting enough nourishment.
“That’s impossible.” said the nurse. After that they left a glassful of the stuff on the dresser.
Often I was spattered with the stuff, whenever the tube came off the syringe.
So, too, were walls, ceiling, floor, draperies bed, bedding — everything in the cell.
And usually it was left where it landed.
I made a practice of going on with whatever I was doing.
At first, the nurses carried or sat me into position for force-feeding.
Sometimes the aides would lurk, pitcher and syringe in hand, waiting for me to halt so that they could pour the stuff down easily.
After I was moved to solitary, the aides were ultimately told to walk away if I didn’t sit down right away, so sometimes my stomach was left empty.
One day I accidentally got a hole in the tube.
The doctor refused to let the aides cut it, and he decided that neither did he have the time to leave the hospital to change it.
I wasn’t fed for 25 hours.
Rose was given considerable freedom of movement.
When this was said, I was in solitary confinement in the maximum security cottage, one of only two with bars on the windows and with locked outer doors.
I remained there for 27 straight days in full confinement.
The last 31 days, the cell door was opened from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.
And so the lies went and there are more — most skillful — all paid for with federal income tax.
Lies. The Official order of the prison day, and at Alderson, the green grass grew all around.
For the grounds were lovely to look at — lovely its trees, its broad lawns and gay spring flowers, lovely the birds singing outside the cottages where wires crawled through the walls like snakes, so that every word that every inmate spoke day or night was listened to and taken down on a tape recorder.
There weren’t any secrets.
Next time, I’ll tell about the alleged psychiatric and medical examinations at Alderson and about the marshal’s predictions about what the inmates would do to me when they found out I wouldn’t work.
Also, I’ll tell about a time of weakness. One morning, for a moment, I was in a turmoil.
Daily discipline, including prayer exercises, helped me to regain strength.
More from Karl Meyer, in the issue (excerpts):
I have had a small house of hospitality, five rooms where I have lived with nine or ten people who were sick, poor, orphans, old, travelers or needy of other kinds.
I have sought some way to work for the support of my responsibilities to this house and not pay federal income taxes for the support of militarism.
In I quit my job where taxes were withheld and resolved not to pay withholding tax anymore and went to jail for 54 days in solidarity with tax refuser Eroseanna Robinson, who had just been imprisoned here in Chicago.
After my release I began a search for work without taxes.
I experimented with self-employment in odd jobs and in tutoring.
I tried to persuade employers to pay for my work in the form of a direct donation to St. Stephens House, without withholding tax.
I received an opinion from a lawyer that Internal Revenue Service had ruled that this type of arrangement with a charitable organization was legal for hospitals, so I applied at a number of hospitals, but was turned down.
I looked for part time work paid for in cash. Nothing worked, particularly me.
Being under the firm impression that only one’s relatives could be claimed as dependents for the purpose of withholding exemptions, I complained bitterly to my pacifist brethren that, in fact, I had nine dependents but was unable to claim them for non-tax purposes.
Not one of these experts on tax resistance set me straight.
On , after five months of frustration, I checked on the Internal Revenue Service definition of dependents.
This is how it reads:
“To qualify as your dependent… a person (a) must receive more than one-half of his support from you for the year, and (b) must-have less than $600 gross income during the year… and (c) must not be claimed as an exemption by such person[’]s husband or wife, and (and) must be a citizen or resident of the United States… and (e) must (1) have your home as his principal residence and be a member of your household for the entire year, or (2) be related to you…”
I counted four people in my household, in addition to myself, whom I could claim for dependency exemptions.
I discovered that all along I might have been earning $3000 per year without a cent of withholding tax.
I could have kicked myself all the way down Clark St.
We need more small houses of hospitality “to shelter the homeless at a personal sacrifice” instead of delivering them to the City and the State to be supported by taxes, on the street or in the jails.
We believe that housing the unemployed, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and the aged and, last of all, visiting the prisoners are parts of a total Gospel of Peace.
If we do these things, we can also starve the tax collector, by feeding the poor.
We can build “a new society in the shell of the old,” a City of God, and swing wide its gates to let the King, and his ambassadors, enter in triumph.
Not all of the poor who come to our door come in the embassy of God.
Several nights ago one of the men came with two drop-cloths and a gallon of turpentine “from the job” and asked permission to leave them here and stay the night himself, and I, in all innocence, agreed to this.
The next morning, two painters arrived, with a policeman, demanding the drop-cloths, which had been stolen from them and traced to our house.
I turned over the drop-cloths, but the policeman also demanded that I turn over the thief.
When I declined to do this, he said that he would take me to the station and book me for possession of stolen property.
The painters agreed to sign a complaint against me, because, they said, not only had the cloths been stolen, but also, some paint had been spilt and now they would have to pay for it out of their own pockets.
However, perhaps if I would reimburse them for the spilt paint, they would find it in their hearts to forget about the complaint.
How much paint was lost, asked the policeman? Ten dollars worth.
Now, half a gallon of paint may have been spilt, but how could anyone have spilt ten dollars worth?
Still I had to take their word for it or they would surely have taken me to the station and signed the complaint, so in the end I paid and they went away satisfied with their take, all of which goes to prove the old moral: one good theft deserves another, or no use taking a fall over spilt paint.
After the danger had passed, I found the thief under a bed in the farthest corner of the back room.
He said he was sorry. And I said he sure as hell should be. And after a little of that he left.
I did reap an unexpected reward for my ordeal however, for that morning the most shiftless character in the house, out of an excess of sympathy and generosity, offered to press my trousers for me.
I might also say that some of the “rich” even come to our door as ambassadors of God.
There is one man who comes from time to time and leaves things that we need (clothing, furnishings or household items) inside the door.
He just opens the door, puts them inside and goes away.
For almost two years he has been doing this.
He used to come perhaps once a month, but recently he has taken to coming much more frequently.
For a long time we knew nothing about him because we never saw him come, but several times recently, when the door was locked, he knocked and handed in his gifts when the door was opened and then left very quickly.
I have always respected his anonymity, because I remember from my childhood the story of the shoemaker and the elves: the elves used to come at night and make shoes for the shoemaker, but one night he tried to catch them at their work and they disappeared and never returned again.
(After the story I told above, let me hasten to say that there is always a ticket with the things that this man brings so that I know they are not stolen.)
During the voter registration period, one man from the neighborhood came in and asked, “Is this a registration office?”
And I looked at the crucifix on the wall and the picture of Ammon Hennacy and said, “No, it isn’t.”
The Democratic precinct worker for our building came in to see if we were registered, and she told me that I am going to vote under the name of Geoffrey Thornton, because he is registered but she can’t find him anywhere in the building.
She needs votes but this is one she won’t get.
Three young Catholic workers have said they may join me in the work here soon.
If they do, we will be well staffed to carry out the Green Revolution program I outlined in my last letter.
The next article concerns Laurence Hislam, a war tax resister who is new to me.
It comes from the issue:
Catholic Pacifist Jailed in England Father of Five Refuses Civil Defense Tax
By Robert Steed
My friend Laurie Hislam, who resembles Ammon Hennacy in many ways, was recently sentenced to a term in jail far refusing to pay his Civil Defense rates.
He served two months last year for taking part in the civil disobedience campaigns of the Committee of 100 which protested the British involvement in the nuclear arms race.
I was in court with Laurie in when he first appeared on this charge.
When he put on bis best suit, cranked up his car (a huge, old London taxi), which finally had to be pushed down a hill to get it started, and drove to town where other friends were waiting in court I was expecting fireworks but the magistrate put a damper on the proceedings and said he would allow no speechmaking.
He said a note would be made of the tax refusal, and went on to the next hearing.
Laurie said the court would probably send someone around to the house and want to take away a table or a few chairs and auction them off for the amount owed (the former owner having the privilege of bidding for them too) and debated whether any kind of resistance should be offered and if so what kind.
When I left a few days later nothing had happened and a month after that when we met at the Spode House PAX Conference it was still the same.
And now more than a year later I have heard in a letter from Laurie’s wife, Winifred, that he is serving time for the offense.
Lest I give the impression that Laurie became a radical in middle-age I should also say that he declined to serve in World War Ⅱ and instead of showing up for his physical went off on a tour of England and Scotland selling anarchist literature for Freedom Press.
When he got back to London after a year on the road the police picked him up but the army doctors found something wrong with one of his feet and rejected him.
In the intervening years he has become a Catholic, gotten married and moved to the Cottswolds in the west of England near Gloucester where he and his wife built their house with their own hands and are raising five beautiful daughters.
The whole family is vegetarian.
Here is the text of Laurie’s leaflet explaining his position which was distributed in the Stroud area:
Why I Am In Jail
I have just commenced serving a term of imprisonment imposed by the Stroud (Glos.) Magistrates, and I believe it is important that it should be clearly understood by the members of the community on whose behalf the Magistrates have officially acted, why this has happened.
For the past two years I have refused to pay the portion of the Local Rate (roughly 1 penny in the pound) allocated to “Civil Defense.”
My reasons are as follows:
There is not even any pretense of preparation to protect the people of Stroud in the event of war.
According to Government spokesmen, there is no known means of protecting the population against nuclear attack.
Even if “Civil Defense” could be effective (which I do not believe possible) I would still feel bound to refuse to pay for it, since “Civil Defense” is an essential part of the preparation for a war in which millions of innocent people would be brutally killed or maimed.
I believe that those who support “Civil Defense” have been deceived by the Government into believing that they are helping to save life and assist the injured, whereas in fact by their acceptance of the need for “Civil Defense,” they have given their tacit agreement (in certain circumstances) to the waging of nuclear war and its unimaginably terrible suffering.
Worst of all is the hypocrisy attached to “Western” propaganda, which says, in effect, the Russians are the atheistic barbarians and we are good people trying to protect Christianity and democracy, whereas, in fact we and the U.S.A. are prepared to collaborate with the Russians in the ultimate blasphemy of destroying the whole of creation.
A so-called policy of which this is the logical result can never be justified, and I appeal to everyone who reads this statement to seriously consider his or her position.
Examine your conscience and ask yourself the question: Am I willing to lend my support, either actively or (as the majority, unfortunately do) by my silence, to the preparation for nuclear war?
(Remembering that “Civil Defense" is part of the insidious mental conditioning for war-acceptance.)
If we give our silent agreement to Lord Home’s recent boast of our ability to annihilate all Russia’s cities (even in revenge) we have committed murder in our hearts.
You can no longer remain silent and still hope to retain your integrity.
I may be forcibly silenced for a time, but I ask you to speak out fearlessly against the crime which is being prepared by the world’s leaders.
Above all—speak out for the children and babies of the world who rely upon you for protection.
You cannot give protection by preparing for war — a war in which there can be no defense — only revengeful slaughter on both sides.
Laurence Hislam,
Brownshill,
Stroud, Glos.
This next comes from the issue:
Tax Refusal
Handbook on Nonpayment of War Taxes; published by the Peacemakers’ Movement; 35 cents; 52 pages; available from the Peacemakers (1208 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati 41, Ohio)
Reviewed by James Forest.
For all those who have ever felt a deeply responsive chord struck upon reading or re-reading the story of 10 just men saving the city, this book on conscientious tax-refusal should be meaningful.
The book is divided into a number of sections: there is a good collection of fairly brief quotations by a wide range of tax-refusers, a chapter on the philosophy and history of this particular form of conscientious objection, considerable material concerning the inherent legalities/illegalities, descriptions of the basic forms of refusal (surprising variety) and, most important, a substantial collection of “personal experience” sketches.
The reader might find it useful to see a tightened version of the major contents:
Philosophy
Nonviolence begins with personal disarmament:
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hate, let me sow love.”
It is not a partial disarmament. At least that isn’t the goal.
It is a serious and concerted effort to shred the rhinoceros hide which makes us either witting or unwitting enemies to other men.
(I recently had the opportunity to hear a young woman describe the effect her first long term contact and participation in a nonviolent project — in this case the Walk to Cuba — had on her.
She spoke of the sensation of peeling off layer upon layer of dead skin, of feeling the wind for the first time.)
What is it the pacifist says? I refuse to be your enemy.
I refuse to be your enemy so much that I will fight for you, fight with you, fight with love to see justice done — even at personal risk.
The Great Commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
I cannot be free until you are free.
I cannot be comfortable or safe or satisfied until these things are common property.
It is not necessary to quote here statistics offered in the book on where taxes go.
We all know. A good deal of it goes to the arms race in all its continuing facets.
I don’t think it would make much difference if it were only a little.
There is nothing more moral in contributing a nickel to a child’s death than in giving a dollar for the cause.
But the plain fact is that more than half that money goes for that purpose, and we do give it.
Said one woman, Miriam Nicholas, deciding this was one contribution she would be unable to make, “…the government expects me to help pay for weapons that could destroy all life on this earth.”
“This I must not give,” said Wendal Bull, finishing a similar statement.
“You may be imprisoned, but that is sometimes more honorable,” Ross Anderson stated.
“If I can’t stop other people’s killing.” Milton Mayer decided, “I must stop my own.”
What Is the Law?
The legal aspects of tax refusal are complicated and inevitably vary from case to case.
It is, of course, a punishable offense to refuse all or part of one’s taxes.
It is also an offense not to submit the required documentation.
Any noncooperation with the Internal Revenue Service is illegal.
The penalty can be as high as a $10,000 and a year in jail plus the cost of prosecution.
In practice, for reasons which one can easily understand, no such sentence is ever meted out.
In fact few tax-refusers ever find themselves in front of a judge at all.
It is interesting to draw some quick statistics from the 41 cases detailed in the handbook (there is some slight overlapping):
Four lost their jobs (two were Protestant ministers).
Six were jailed, average sentence served being about three months.
(Those jailed, it should be noted, refused any alternatives: put no money in the bank so that it couldn’t be seized, held no volatile property in their own names, etc.)
Nine had property or funds seized.
(The government, when it desires to seize anything, prefers funds; attempts to garnish salaries or draw from cheeking and savings accounts are most common.
As a last resort it may seize property for public auction, such as a house.)
29 received no punishment and had no property or funds seized.
That is not to say there was no intimidation, that the going was easy. It wasn’t.
But the simple truth is, or at least has been, that there are still relatively few tax collectors, district attorneys or judges who wish to play a modern version of Pilate’s role.
We can be glad there remain many (perhaps even a growing number) who do not feel justice is served by stale coercion of conscience.
Forms of Refusal
There are, and this I didn’t realize, several distinct forms of tax-refusal, each with its own sub-variations.
The first and probably most well known is absolute nonpayment.
Absolute Refusal
To practice absolute nonpayment it is necessary either to earn an income too low to be taxable (Citizens and residents, under 65, can figure as nontaxable any income which is below the number of members in the family times $600.
Thus a family of three would be tax exempt if it made less than $1,800 in the course of a year), or, if is is impossible or philosophically repugnant, to earn a taxable income where one is not subjected to withholding tax, such as by having one’s own business or forming one with others of similar concern.
Ammon Hennacy, though he owes $1,300 in back taxes, is for the present in the first group, earning less than a taxable income.
Karl Meyer was in the latter group until he discovered he could count all the members of St. Stephen’s house of hospitality as dependents (as long as they had lived in the hospice from the beginning of the year and received half or more of their subsistence from him).
Persons interested in both tax refusal and running a small house of hospitality might find this an ideal solution.
Partial Refusal
For persons who are having taxes withheld from their incomes there is the opportunity of refusing to pay the balance due, or part of it.
Others, whether they have taxes withheld from their earnings or not, sometimes choose to pay only the percentage which they feel is used for peaceful purposes — 30% to 40%.
UNESCO seems to be one of the frequent recipients of the balance.
A third form of partial refusal includes persons such as Franklin Zahn, who annually withholds a “token ten dollars.”
These believe that the minimum one can do is to refuse a symbolic sum.
“Ten dollars is large enough to be noticed,” Zahn says, “but small enough to avoid excessive penalty.”
The “token ten,” he suggests, could be given to some constructive project and the IRS so notified.
(The book also relates Zahn’s refusal, beginning in , to pay that portion of his telephone bill which was a federal tax, at the time 49¢ monthly.
He explained this action to the telephone company, saying “My refusal to pay this tax is part of a larger rejection of all participation in defense activities.”
Before long his telephone was removed.
His resultant letter of explanation to friends, an apology, is a document worth reading:
“Three times I have refused the monthly telephone war tax of 49¢ (15%) and now [garbled text omitted ―♇] is no more, as of .
I regret much of the inconvenience of this fails on you, and offer my apologies to you and others who thus suffer from my act of conscience.
When irked, please consider:
1. Somewhere in the world there may be one less bullet killing a human being.
2. The $3.74 saved monthly will be used for CARE parcels.
3. If it actually is the narrow choice I feel it to be, you would prefer me to be connected with my highest conscience than with a mere gadget.”)
Conclusion
Finishing the handbook, I am reminded of a brief epigram of James Baldwin contained in The Fire Next Time.
“To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”
How we admire action and commitment!
St. Francis strikes off to the Holy Land with his nonviolent “Army of Love,” an army, as Clement of Alexandria would call it, “which sheds no blood.”
And we applaud this, one of the few moments of sanctity which occurred during all the Crusades, one of the few a Christian can recall with pride.
St. Maximillian refuses to serve in the military and shortly dies under the executioner’s axe.
The Cure d’Area, as a young man, changes his name and flees to the mountains rather than be conscripted.
Before death he recalls this, saying be never felt his conscience burdened by it.
And on and on. Thank God the list is endless. No editorializing is needed on lives like these.
Somehow they change the question. It is no longer Should I be a tax-refuser?
It becomes How can I be anything else?
It is fitting to end this discussion with a quotation the book provides from Milton Mayer:
“The power to stop war is not in my hands, and never will be.
The only power that is in my hands is to stop killing my fellowmen.
A thousand, or two thousand, or fifty thousand people refusing to go on killing via the tax method may save the old way of life; fewer than that were required to save Sodom.
But if a new way of life is the condition of the revolution to which we are called, then we must find it in our hearts, and when we do that we will stop killing our fellowmen and, best of all, stop justifying our doing it.
If I can’t stop other people’s killing, I must still stop my own.”
Another book review from the issue:
The Cold War and the Income Tax
The Cold War and the Income Tax, by Edmond Wilson; Farrar, Straus and Company; 1968; 118 pp.; $2.95.
Reviewed by James Forest.
Edmund Wilson’s most recent book is a small volume which carries the subtitle “A Protest.”
Indeed it is that: a forceful, plain-spoken broadside at the cold war and the related income tax, and though it is not without blemish, it ought to provide at least an awakening for a great many.
What Mr. Wilson has done is to tell a simple, and at times homely, tale that began with carelessness (or more likely unadmitted and ingrained Yankee independence) and concluded with a monumental decision, at least for our timid age: a modified refusal to pay income taxes.
Much of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the original carelessness, fascinating in the sense that a common experience of almost everyone is seen in the sharp relief of Mr. Wilson’s prose — the utterly frustrating encounters with the rule-book bureaucrats, who seem always the same whether it is a hospital clinic or the army or a tax office that houses their working hours, or no matter what their ideology may be.
In Mr. Wilson’s case, his long encounter was precipitated by almost, dedicated indifference to taxes.
Until taxes were no problem to him, as they were automatically withheld by his various employers.
But after that year he began to devote himself to fulltime independent writing, and of course there was no withholding.
Six years went by, no taxes were paid, no returns filed, and though he tells us he occasionally thought about the eventual necessity of paying up, he was unaware of the astounding severity the law applies for even minor neglect.
When at last he spoke to a lawyer friend, saying he might need some assistance in preparing his returns, the lawyer was flabbergasted and immediately urged Mr. Wilson to establish citizenship outside the United States before it was too late.
But even the author of To the Finland Station can be naive, and he couldn’t believe it would be more convenient to change countries than negotiate a debt.
He insisted on settlement, gave the lawyer a check and told him to begin his work.
“You’re a brave man,” his lawyer told him.
The Years That Followed
It would be of little value to outline the years that followed , when the arduous work began.
He must often have wished he had followed his friend’s advice and tucked himself away in a friendlier economy, where if he were paying taxes, at least it wouldn’t be for war.
It took Mr. Wilson five years and two lawyers to settle the case.
At some unspecified point, Mr. Wilson’s instinctual annoyance emerged into a time of probing the meaning of his experience, the inadequacies of the collection system and, most important, the uses the money was being put to.
His discoveries are carefully outlined—translating the noble sounding verbiage of the Administration’s Budget in Brief
(which says in part, “The Federal Government’s final responsibility is to help safeguard the peace and security of the free world.
This is our largest category of expenditures…
Expenditures devoted to national security… space programs… and the continuing cost of past wars amount to 79% of the administrative budget…”),
translating this into the facts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of napalm and phosphorus bombs, of disease, warfare.
The latter two are of particular interest, because, (despite protest demonstrations at Ft. Detrick, Md., the U.S. research-development center for chemical and biological weapons) there is little popularisation of these methods of warfare, though it is admitted that napalm bombs are being used in Vietnam — as they have been widely used elsewhere — and there is evidence that disease weapons are also being employed.
For instance, water supplies in South Vietnam have been poisoned in areas where both civilians and Vietcong rebels use the same well, killing some Vletcong, but also many non-combatants who were merely thirsty.
About napalm: It is, Mr. Wilson writes, “a kind of jelly saturated with gasoline, which is ignited by the bursting of the bomb.
Its great advantage is that it sticks to whatever it touches…
Its effect on human beings has been described by a
BBC correspondent in Korea:
‘In front of us a curious figure was standing a little crouched, legs straddled, arms held out from his sides.
He had no eyes, and the whole of his body, nearly all of which was visible through tatters of burned rags, was covered with a hard black crust speckled with yellow pus.
A Korean woman by his side began to speak, and the interpreter said:
“He has to stand, sir, cannot sit or lie.”
He had to stand because he was no longer covered with skin…’ ”
The BBC correspondent goes on to explain, however, that he would rather be killed by napalm than phosphorus or flame throwers.
Toward Inspired Derangement
The material on disease warfare (often termed bacteriological, biological or chemical) is on much the same level, though not so grossly horrifying, as we do not see it translated into eye witness accounts.
Involved is the same degradation of any value system.
For as one military man, Admiral Mahan, puts it, every advance in the use of lethal weapons, beginning with firearms, has been denounced as cruel.
He goes on to point out that shells with asphyxiating gases could produce “decisive results.”
Says Philip Noel-Baker, in his book The Arms Race, “All the leading governments have them now.”
And in the Chief Chemical Officer of the United States Army announced that even “mental derangement might be deliberately inspired” by this form of weaponry.
As Mr. Wilson observes, “Human life since Stalin and the Nazis has been something that few people in the East or West any longer care much about.”
Or as Robert Pickus, Turn Toward Peace executive, observed: “We support policies that would make Genghis Kahn vomit, and yet we turn out for Church every Sunday.”
Of course the question is, what can we do about all this?
To Catholic Worker readers this is no new question, as we have been fighting this a long time.
Mr. Wilson outlines the general steps of tax refusal (see detailed article on this subject in the September 1963 Catholic Worker [Forest’s review, see above]) and describes the course of two more well known refusers, Dr. A.J. Muste of the Committee for Nonviolent Action and Liberation magazine, and the Rev. Maurice McCrackin, active in the civil rights effort and the Peacemaker movement.
He goes on to describe his personal response, which is to keep his income below taxable levels.
(It is a fact, though it is not mentioned in this work, that Mr. Wilson has assigned all royalties of this book to use in the peace movement.)
He has decided not to go to jail, however, and will move to another country before allowing this to occur.
But he is determined to withdraw his support:
“When the stakes in games become so serious — when everybody’s life is at stake — they ought not to be played at all, and the taxpayers should not support them.”
The following article, from the issue, announces the formation of the “War Tax Protest Committee,” a group I hadn’t heard of before.
I’m guessing it was an early, regional form of the group “National War Tax Resistance,” which came together in .
Tax Refusal
The War Tax Protest Committee was formed to bring together West Coast conscientious objectors to income taxes for war and war preparations.
The aim of the committee is to heighten public awareness of uses to which tax monies are put and to suggest alternatives to the submissive payment of such taxes.
A range of activities around the tax deadline is being planned, including an all-day picket of IRS regional headquarters in San Francisco, a press conference, and a public meeting.
Founders of the War Tax Protest Committee include Ammon Hennacy, Roy Kepler, Mark Morris, Britt Peter, Ira Sandperl, Barton Stone, Sam Tyson, and Ida and Denny Wilcher.
The War Tax Protest Committee welcomes all persons involved in war tax protest — from total refusers to those who include a letter of protest with their return.
Creation of this new committee took place at the Committee for Nonviolent Action-West weekend seminar on Conscientious Objection to Income Taxes for War Preparations at Forest Farm in Marin County, .
The new committee, however, will have no organisational tie with CNVA-West, which is furnishing it with office space.
c/o
CNVA-West P.O. Box 5983, San Francisco 1, Calif.
The issue reprinted a letter from Joan Baez announcing her income tax resistance:
Tax Protest
Joan Baez, American folksinger, has refused to pay that 60% of her income tax which goes for military expenditures.
She sent the following letter to the Internal Revenue Service explaining her action:
Dear Friends:
What I have to say is this:
I do not believe in the weapons of war.
Weapons and Wars have murdered, burned, distorted, crippled, and caused endless varieties of pain to men, women, and children for too long.
Our modern weapons can reduce a man to a piece of dust in a split second, can make a woman’s hair fall out or cause her baby to be born a monster.
They can kill the part of a turtle’s brain that tells him where he is going, so instead of trudging to the ocean he trudges confusedly towards the desert, slowly, blinking his poor eyes, until he finally scorches to death and turns into a shell and some bones.
I am not going to volunteer the 60% of my year’s income tax that goes to armaments.
There are two reasons for my action.
One is enough. It is enough to say that no man has the right to take another man’s life.
Now we plan and build weapons that can take thousands of lives in one second, millions of lives in a day, billions in a week.
No one has a right to do that.
It is madness.
It is wrong.
My other reason is that modern war is impractical and stupid.
We spend billions of dollars a year on weapons which scientists, politicians, military men, and even the President all agree must never be used.
That is impractical.
The expression “National Security” has no meaning.
It refers to our Defense System, which I call our Offense System, and which is a farce.
It continues expanding and heaping up, one horrible kill machine upon another, until for some reason or another a button will be pushed and our world, or a good portion of it, will be blown to pieces.
That is not security. That is stupidity.
People are starving to death in some places of the world.
They look to this country with all its wealth and all its power.
They look at our National budget. They are supposed to respect us. They do not respect us.
They despise us. That is impractical and stupid.
Maybe the line should have been drawn when the bow and arrow were invented, maybe at the gun, the cannon, maybe.
Because now it is all wrong, all impractical, and all stupid.
So all I can do is draw my own line now. I am no longer supporting my portion of the arms race.
Sincerely Yours, Joan C. Baez
Karl Meyer was back for the edition:
War Escalates, Tax Refusal Called For
“The future will be different, if we make the present different.” ―Peter Maurin
By Karl Meyer
I have been refusing to pay Federal income tax, or to file tax returns, .
Finally, on , after several visits, an Internal Revenue Service agent sent me returns for the years 1962, 1963 and 1965, which he had prepared and filed without my cooperation or consent, claiming a total of $1,099.12 in back taxes and penalties for those years.
we have shared the greater part of our personal income with people who have no income, through the house of hospitality, and I have claimed an appropriate number of exemptions on the withholding tax slips which one must file with one’s employers in order to hold a job, but I.R.S. did not recognize these exemptions, because I refused to file a return or to substantiate a claim to such exemptions in their conversations with me.
My resistance to Federal taxes is not based on legalities, but on moral opposition to militarism, and I will maintain it in spite of legalities and without taking refuge in them.
I will never pay the tax that is claimed, even if I must become a pilgrim from job to job in order to avoid the attachment of my wages.
(A national list of income-tax refusers is being collected for publication, by the No Tax for War Committee, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin. 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214.
Last year’s list included the names of Dorothy Day, Martin Corbin and Ammon Hennacy among a list of two hundred.)
But I am not writing about this because I expect a mass addition of Catholic Worker readers to the list of income-tax refusers (it is not that easy to resist so thoroughly the demand of the state).
I mention it as background to a more modest effort that we have also been promoting.
we have been advocating a first step toward denying to the government funds to carry on the war against the Vietnamese people, refusal to pay the 10% excise tax on telephone service.
This tax had been reduced to 3% as of and was scheduled to expire altogether, but it was restored in .
The rationale for our campaign to refuse the tax is based on the words of Congressman Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and administration floor leader for the legislation which restored the tax, who stated directly at the outset of debate on the measure, “The bill, H.R. 12752, is intended first and foremost to provide additional revenues to help finance the expenditures required to sustain our operation in Vietnam!”
(Congressional Record, .)
Further along he declared, “I believe it is clear that it is the Vietnam, and only the Vietnam, operation, which makes this bill necessary,” and a third time, “I have stated, and I state it again, that it is the extraordinary expenses attributable to our operation in Vietnam that are responsible for the Ways and Means Committee reporting this bill.”
The Chicago Workshop in Nonviolence, Peacemakers, the Committee for Nonviolent Action, The War Resisters League, and other groups supporting the campaign have already collected several hundred names of people who are refusing the tax, but not yet in the numbers for which I had hoped.
It is not that any danger is involved in the act.
In no case has telephone service been terminated, because, under the regulations, the ultimate responsibility for collecting the tax lies with the I.R.S., not with the telephone companies, which are only required to bill for it.
And the I.R.S. so far has done practically nothing to collect from any of the phone-tax refusers.
This is understandable when you realize that the amounts of money are so very small, that it took I.R.S. six years to get around to trying to collect over a thousand dollars from a publicly acknowledged income-tax refuser like myself, and that they have never succeeded in collecting from Ammon Hennacy or numerous other tax refusers.
For the individual, the telephone tax by itself seems an insignificant amount of money, though the Johnson administration is counting on it, together with a 1% automobile excise tax increase, to raise $1.2 billion in , which would pay for about twenty days of killing in Vietnam at current rates of spending.
For the individual, telephone-tax refusal is a small step, but for many it is a significant step, because for the first time they are acknowledging in action that if they had the free choice they would refuse to contribute to the activities of the federal Government, because its military activities outweigh its positive tax-supported programs.
And if they admit that they are involuntary participants in such a great evil, they must face the issue of struggling in the society for the freedom to do what they believe is right, even by going outside of the law.
But in going outside of the law they are taking back for themselves a basic responsibility for the order of society, which they had hitherto reposed in the state and the law.
They are facing the issue of ultimate personal responsibility for society and the needs of others as we have faced it in the houses of hospitality and the Catholic Worker movement.
These are some of the implications of civil disobedience; of recognizing that the majority of citizens organized in the state, have failed man so badly, that we must struggle to build a whole new way of life that will be able to be human.
I remember how often Ammon Hennacy has spoken of the people who were “pacifists between wars,” which he says is like being “vegetarians between meals,” and now it is possible to speak of those who oppose the war but pay their phone tax at “pacifists between telephone calls,” because with each ten-cent telephone call another penny joins the stream of Federal revenue that flows inexorably to Vietnam.
It is true, friends, that with a first small step like phone-tax refusal, we are trying to coax people down the primrose path to the one-man revolution.
The future will be different only if we change our lives.
The act is small, but the meaning is large: this war is not our war, and we are willing to struggle to be on the side of life.
In the edition, Karl Meyer explained in-depth how to stop income tax withholding by claiming excessive dependents and how tax redirection could be used to nourish alternative institutions.
(This would not be good advice to follow today, as the IRS has new punitive tools at its disposal.)
Through Effective Tax Resistance:
A Fund for Mankind
By Karl Meyer
Let us speak of a clearcut solution to two prevailing ethical concerns which are shared by many stable, wage-earning citizens who are in the peace movement today.
On the one hand, we see a perverse system of national priorities which devotes most of our federal tax contributions to militaristic purposes which we abhor.
We want our money to be used positively to fulfill social needs.
On the other hand, we see young men of draft age resisting war and conscription concretely by refusing to participate, and suffering the consequences: imprisonment or exile.
We wish to support them and to align ourselves with them in a real way.
Let me affirm that it would be very practicable for us to get together in our own resistance movement to prevent the conscription of our money by the military and to create a Fund for Mankind to support the things we believe in and provide mutual aid in the difficulties that might come as a consequence of our resistance.
The Vietnam War may draw towards a conclusion in the months to come, yet we have already been warned by spokesmen of the government, if not by the history of the last twenty-five years, not to expect huge amounts of money to be freed for the solution of domestic problems.
There are plenty of military boondoggles waiting in the wings, promising that military expenditures will command the stage for many years to come.
We should either seize our destiny in our own hands or stop crying about our involuntary complicity in the militarization of society.
I promise to show how we can stop paying for militarism and instead pay into an alternative fund and use it according to our own moral and political judgments.
At the outset, we must directly contradict the widespread notion that refusal to pay federal income tax is merely a form of personal witness and a purification of conscience, which because of inherent obstacles cannot emerge as a general action of resistance to the Vietnam War, militarism, and imperialism.
Instead, let us affirm that tax resistance can be the most promising basis for a movement of constructive social action, as well as resistance to the evils of war and the wastefulness of the arms race.
Right away we come to the heart of the issue, because people say, “Our taxes are withheld at the source and paid by our employers without our consent.”
This is the fallacy which must be resolutely laid to rest.
Your consent is given whenever you fill out and sign a new W-4 Employees Withholding Exemption Certificate.
The proper use of this form and of the early income-tax return are the keys to effective tactics of widespread tax resistance.
Let me therefore outline these tactics for Everyman in nine easy steps:
Obtain a new W-4 form from your employer.
On lines 4 and 5 claim as many extra dependents as is necessary to prevent the withholding of any tax (ten or twenty or five hundred thousand or thirty-five million if you wish).
Sign the statement, “I certify that the number of withholding exemptions claimed on this certificate does not exceed the number to which I am entitled.”
(Entitled by whom?
We cannot have a moral revolution as long as we supinely acknowledge that we are entitled to do only what can be drained by the Internal Revenue Code and Regulations.
We must explicitly reject the standards and definitions specified by a blind bureaucracy and instead affirm definitions that spring from our own consciousness of human solidarity.
We must affirm that our obligation to the victims of United States militarism entitles us to claim as many exemptions as may be necessary to prevent the payment of taxes in our name.) Submit the new form to your employer.
He is not responsible under law for the legality or accuracy of our claim, nor is he authorized to alter your claim.
He is advised, but not required by law, to report to the Internal Revenue Service if he believes that your claim exceeds the number of dependents to which you are entitled.1
It is only if you fill out no W-4 form that he may withhold the taxes without your consent.2
Write a letter to the I.R.S. stating that five hundred thousand American soldiers are depending on you to bring them home, or that thirty-five million Vietnamese are depending on you to stop supporting the war, that consequently you cannot accept the narrow definitions of human interdependence specified by I.R.S. regulations, that you therefore affirm your right to claim enough exemptions to forestall the collection of war taxes, and you have recently filed a new W-4 form with your employer in accord with this affirmation.
This will put you on record as an open and principled tax resister, and may provide you with some defense in case of prosecution for making a fraudulent claim, since fraud implies an element of concealment, deception, and bad faith.3
But in writing to them, I would advise you not to name your employer, since this would only facilitate possible attempts by the I.R.S. to harass or intimidate you or your employer.
Taking these first two steps should forestall the withholding of any tax from your wages.
On April 15th (fifteen and a half months after the beginning of your no-tax year) you are required by law to file an income-tax return.
File and complete an honest return, but don’t do it the way they want it.
On line 3B of form 1040 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, enter the same number of dependents previously claimed on your W-4 form (if thirty-five million, enter that number on line 3B).
Attach a schedule stating the moral grounds of your claim: the universal interdependency of man.
For line 11C, multiply the total number of exemptions claimed by six hundred dollars.
Fill out the rest of the form, showing no tax owed, and send it in.
Wait a few more taxless months while the I.R.S. gets around to figuring out your form, disallowing your numerous exemptions, and sending you a “proposed adjustment” of your income tax liability.
You have another taxless month to request a District Conference to discuss the “proposed adjustment.”4
If agreement is not reached at the District Conference, you may appeal to the Appellate Division of the Regional Commissioner’s Office.4
All steps up to this point can be easily taken without the aid of an attorney and without much cost or inconvenience to yourself.
If agreement cannot be reached with the Appellate Division, a statutory notice of deficiency will be sent to you; you will then have ninety days to appeal to the Tax Court of the United States, but if the I.R.S. believes that assessment and collection of the tax deficiency will be jeopardized by delay, it may proceed to assess and collect the tax in the meantime, pending your appeal to the Tax Court and decision by it, and any further appeals to the United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, if you choose to pursue such appeals.
So a number of time-consuming bureaucratic steps must be gone through before the I.R.S. can make its final assessment of the tax due and begin the process of attempting to collect.
The whole process must be repeated for each taxable year.
I do not see how the I.R.S. can reach the collection stage in less than two years from the date when you first began to frustrate the withholding of taxes.
Even if you chicken out and pay up at that point, you will have cost them more than it was worth and made them wait at least two years to get their money.
But above all, you will have expressed concrete convictions clearly and registered effective short-term resistance against any particular war or Defense Department program that happens to be the primary current target of the resistance movement.
If you want to go beyond this and keep struggling, as I have done, there are further effective steps to prevent the collection of the assessments by wage attachment or seizure of assets:
Take your cash out of banks you have used in the past.
If you have so much money that you have to be afraid of keeping it in the mattress, you should probably start thinking of what that money says about your aspirations towards human brotherhood.
In the meantime, you could distribute it into several banks you have not used before and be careful not to write checks in payment of bills whose payment could easily be traced by the I.R.S. (such as telephone and utility bills).
I have used an account in this way for several years, but I could do without it easily enough.
If you are not strongly tied to your current place of employment, you can switch jobs as soon as the I.R.S. arrives to collect from your wages by levy and take a few simple precautions to make it a little difficult for the I.R.S. to discover your new place of employment.
They are so bogged down and incompetent that it doesn’t take much to throw them off the trail for several years.
I changed jobs in , and they haven’t found out my new job yet, though they have tried through numerous visits, phone calls, notes left under the door, and other perfunctory attempts.
In preparation for the eventual confrontation, you can begin early to have real property which you use, such as houses and automobiles, owned and registered in the names of persons who will not be liable for payment of income taxes.
These and similar steps have worked for me and for a number of other individuals around the country for many, many years.
I have used this method of tax resistance, or variations, of it, for the last ten years.
In that time, I have paid no federal income tax of any significance.
I have devoted the greater part of my total income to sharing with other people through Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality.
The I.R.S. is many years and hundreds of dollars behind in its attempts to collect from me, and has indeed collected nothing from me so far, though it has prepared returns for the years 1962, 1963, and 1965, and is trying to collect over eleven hundred dollars from me.
Here is the strength of tax resistance.
If you don’t play by their rules, the cost of collecting will in many cases exceed the successful collections.
The process of assessing and collecting taxes in the face of intelligent resistance is an immensely complicated bureaucratic operation, which frequently gets bogged down for incredible periods of time.
The due process of law involved in the arrest and conviction of an induction refuser under Selective Service law is child’s play when compared to the due process involved in the collection of taxes from the intelligent tax refuser.
So we have an effective tool at hand for resisting the demands of war and the arms race, if we will only seize the courage to act.
Positive Side
Now we turn to the constructive side of this action.
If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe to be evil.
In each community or region we can set up a common fund.
Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative.
The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering the fund and to elect a committee to administer it according to their guidelines.
Part of the fund can be held as a reserve, which can be invested in low-interest loans to socially useful projects.
In case of needs these loans can be liquidated in order to compensate members of the fund, up to the amount of their contribution, for personal losses and needs resulting from successful tax collections by the I.R.S.
The reserve funds can also be used to provide legal defense for members who might be prosecuted under the tax laws, and to provide aid for the families of those who might be convicted and imprisoned or suffer other needs as a result of conscientious tax refusal.
Thus through mutual aid the members of the fund will be protected from personal hardships arising from their stand, and together they can develop a most valuable sense of community and solidarity, that could immeasurably strengthen the whole peace movement.
Assuming that successful collections by the I.R.S. would always lag far behind the ongoing contributions to the fund, the greater part of receipts could be disbursed in the form of direct grants for ail kinds of socially useful organizations and projects.
Assuming that the federal-income-tax contributions of most people in the movement probably far exceed their voluntary political, organizational, and charitable contributions, we could expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe.
But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation; for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we will see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society in which we live.
If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.
Deaf to history.
Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history?
Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace?
Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble?
Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance?
Was not the Estates General called into session by the King because he found it impossible to raise sufficient revenue for the operation of his government?
Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution: “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”?
Does not the Boston Tea Party, an act of resistance to taxation, stand in our historical tradition as a model for the actions of the Baltimore Four, the Catonsville Nine, the Boston Two, the Milwaukee Fourteen, the D.C. Nine, and the Chicago Fifteen?
Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experience as a tax resister?
Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?
Blind to experience.
Can we not see what the I.R.S. knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive public relations?
Why has the I.R.S. trodden so lightly in prosecuting principled tax refusers, usually concentrating instead on ineffectual attempts at collection?
Is it not because there exists among the public at large a greater reservoir of grievance, a potential of sympathy for tax resisters, and, what is more, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion, that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance?
Let us learn from the experience of the draft-resistance movement and the telephone-tax-refusal campaign, a few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience.
Today it has taken on the dimensions of a social movement.
It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.
In the telephone-tax-refusal campaign we measured the potential dimensions of a tax-resistance movement.
In , we started the campaign for nonpayment of the ten-per-cent federal telephone excise tax, which had just been restored by Congress explicitly to help in meeting the rising costs of the Vietnam War.
The issue of WIN magazine quotes from a Wall Street Journal story reporting that eighteen thousand people refused to pay their telephone tax last year.
This resistance tactic caught on quickly and spread rapidly with little organizational effort, because it was a direct and simple action which any telephone subscriber could easily carry out.
But after flaring up briefly, interest in this tactic gradually subsided, though thousands no doubt continue to refuse to pay the tax.
Enthusiasm for the action could not be maintained, because it was not resistance for real.
It was, rather, the first token of a spirit of resistance, which at the time could find no practical channel for deeper development.
When we can combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.
Note: I want to acknowledge the contributions of Brad Lyttle, Sidney Lens, and several young members of the draft-resistance movement whose names are unknown to me.
Recent discussions with them helped greatly in stimulating and formulating the ideas for the article, which has also been distributed in mimeographed form by the founders of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund (C.A.A.F), 1209 West Farwell, Chicago, Illinois 60626. (Tel: 764-3620).
We have begun. Join us!
Notes and References
Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (b) — “The employer is not required to ascertain whether or not the number of withholding exemptions claimed is greater than the number of withholding exemptions to which the employee is entitled.
If, however, the employer has reason to believe that the number of withholding exemptions claimed by the employee is greater than the number to which such employee is entitled, the district director should be so advised.”
Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (a) — “…If no such certificate is in effect, the number of withholding exemptions claimed shall be considered to be zero…”
Internal Revenue Code, Section 7201. ATTEMPT TO EVADE OR DEFEAT TAX. “Any person who willfully attempts to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.”
Internal Revenue Code, Section 7205. FRAUDULENT WITHHOLDING EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE OR FAILURE TO SUPPLY INFORMATION: “Any individual required to supply information to his employer under section 3402 who willfully supplies false or fraudulent information, or who willfully falls to supply information thereunder which would require an increase in the tax to be withheld under section 3402, shall, in lieu of any other penalty provided by law (except the penalty provided by section 6682), upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” (Section 3402 is the section which provides for withholding of income taxes.)
INSTRUCTIONS — Unagreed Income, Estate, or Gift Tax Cases — U.S. Treasury Department — Internal Revenue Service — Publication No. 5 (Rev. 8-64)
Internal Revenue Code, Section 6861. Jeopardy Assessments of Income, Estate, and Gift Taxes.
Meyer had a followup in the issue:
Clarification On Tax Withholding
By Karl Meyer
December 12, 1969
Dear Mike and Allen:
I was pleased to receive your inquiry about our “Fund for Mankind, Through Effective Tax Resistance” (Catholic Worker, ).
Yours is one of dozens of serious inquiries from all over the country, and the fourth so far from the Minneapolis area alone.
Jim Dunn (19 Sidney Place S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota) has already started an alternative fund and has reprinted my article as a leaflet.
Dennis Richter (Hope House, 2603 14th Ave. South) has begun by claiming forty million exemptions on his W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificate.
This has tremendous educational value, but we don’t know yet the effective results of this experiment.
One person in Chicago tried this mass approach and it did not work.
He claimed three and a half billion dependents, the entire population of Spaceship Earth.
His employers, on the advice of their tax attorneys, rejected his W-4 form, on the grounds that it was not correctly filled out because it would be impossible under the rules to have that number of legally qualified exemptions — a trenchant argument we must confess.
They also pointed out that their payroll computer program could not handle that number of exemptions.
Two digits, or a maximum of 99, would be all the computer could handle.
This leaves him nowhere, since his only recourse would be to appeal to the Internal Revenue Service or the courts for support of his right to claim three and a half billion, and it is obvious enough that he would get no support from that quarter.
Does my article give the impression that I advocate claiming such great numbers of exemptions as a practical step, or that I myself have used this approach and succeeded?
If it does, that impression should be corrected before it leads us down the blind alley of ineffectual protest.
I myself have always claimed the minimum number of exemptions necessary to prevent the withholding of tax (between six and twelve in my case) and the same modest approach is used by all those I know of who are successfully using the exemption method of tax resistance at present.
The idea of claiming hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of dependents makes for a beautiful protest and a glorious expression of fraternal solidarity.
I introduced this idea in my article, and I certainly hope that a certain number of bold souls like Dennis will experiment with it; but I proposed it with tongue in cheek, and I would be the first to predict that it will not work in very many cases.
Most employers, on their own initiative or on the advice of I.R.S., will probably reject such a W-4, and those that don’t may fire you.
It would be a fine educational protest, but if the idea is protest, that could also be expressed by picketing the personnel office during your lunch hour to ask them to stop withholding taxes.
If the purpose is actually to prevent the withholding of tax, the most practical way to proceed is to claim the minimum number of exemptions necessary to achieve that objective!
This number can be found by dividing your weekly salary by $13.50, or dividing your projected annual salary by $700, or by consulting the tables and rules in Circular E, Employers Tax Guide, available to the public at your local office of I.R.S.
The minimum number of exemptions necessary for most people will be between six and twenty.
If your employer should question the number you claim, you may wish to save him the embarrassment of being implicated in your action by simply stating, “This is the number of exemptions to which I believe I am entitled.”
Since you are the person responsible for the number which you claim, it is not necessarily incumbent on you to offer your employer a more elaborate explanation.
In our group, some people have explained to their employers the entire basis of their claim; others have filed the new W-4 with their employer without further explanation; some have written to I.R.S., or other officials of government, stating the entire basis of their claim; others have taken the action without informing the state directly.
These choices must be made on the basis of personal inclinations and circumstances of employment.
You ask about the chances of prosecution for tax evasion or fraud.
No principled tax refuser has been indicted or prosecuted for violation of tax laws within my memory or knowledge.
A few have been imprisoned briefly for contempt of court for refusing to reveal information about their income and assets.
The I.R.S. has concentrated exclusively on attempts at assessment and collection, rather than prosecution.
With the rapid development of this campaign, I predict that this policy will be changed.
If pressed to do so, I could name a man whom I believe to be a prime candidate for aggressive prosecution.
But it would be impossible for me to predict what pattern of criminal prosecution may emerge as this campaign grows and develops.
I do predict that many people in this movement will eventually be subjects of intensive efforts by I.R.S. to assess and collect income taxes that they have not paid.
Ten years ago I popularized the aphorism: “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” which was taught me by Marshal Raab as he drove me to the penitentiary.
Today I am in a position to coin a new variation of this maxim for our time: “If you can’t stand heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.”
If people want to start out easy and test the temperature before they go all the way they might begin by not paying the ten-percent federal excise tax on telephone service or they might try claiming just one extra withholding tax exemption.
Most important of course is to band together in small local alternative-fund groups for mutual aid and the sharing of experiences.
Over the years I have developed quite a tolerance for heat of all kinds so I was not dismayed on when Agent Roy Suzuki of the I.R.S. telephoned at my place of employment, which he had at long last discovered, and very graciously demanded payment of $46.60 in taxes, penalties, and interest for , a small part of a bill for more than a thousand dollars, going back to that I.R.S. has been unsuccessfully trying to collect for a long time.
After I stated that I would not pay he came over immediately and served my employers with a levy against my wages which they reluctantly honored by deducting $48.60 from wages due to me.
These events inspired the composition of the following ballad, which is currently leading the hit parade of the tax-resistance movement:
Some Enchanted Taxmen
Some enchanted evening
You may meet a stranger,
You may see him come to you
Across the crowded room,
Then pull put his badge
And ask for your wage;
If you don’t go along,
He will not argue long.
He will be a taxman,
He will be insistent,
He will bring a levy
To place against your wage,
And when he is done
He’ll go back to his boss,
And give a report like this:
Suzuki:— Who would believe it,
Who would say it’s so?
I found him at Follett’s,
I collected dough.
His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
How did you know?
Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go!
Suzuki:— Forty-six dollars,
All for the war,
I’ll go back again soon,
I will grab some more.
His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
Try going slow,
Don’t scare him off too fast,
Don’t let him go.
Suzuki:— l have worked so patiently,
I have tried so long,
My, but that man’s
Conscience is strong.
Boss:— Don’t get sentimental,
Remember he’s your foe,
Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go.
Suzuki:— I’ll go back tomorrow,
Shortly after dawn,
I’ll levy on his wage again;
But he will be gone.
Boss:— Buck up, Suzuki,
Don’t let it get you down,
We have lots of agents,
Snooping round the town.
Suzuki:— They will never nail him,
They’ll never collect,
Why should we waste our time,
Breaking our necks?
Boss:— The war must go on you know
And we must be paid,
The arms race must be financed
And profits be made.
Suzuki:— We will never make it
With guys like that Meyer;
Why not quit and go to work;
Our proceeds would be higher.
Boss:— Roy, that’s not the spirit
Of I.R.S., you know;
Once you have found one.
Never let him go!
A few days later I quit my job, and since then I have been earning part of our livelihood by part-time and irregular labor, while spending most of my time on the important work of developing the tax-resistance campaign.
I have to thank Roy Suzuki for having given me the incentive and the opportunity to do this.
To coordinate a countrywide campaign for tax resistance and to provide literature and counseling we have established a center called War Tax Resistance/Midwest (1339 North Mohawk St., Chicago, Illinois 60610) which is sponsored by the Nonviolent Training and Action Center, the Chicago Area Draft Registers and the Chicago Catholic Worker.
We will have a basic leaflet based on my article in the CW, as well as reprints of the article itself.
For a single copy of each, send us a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
For quantities the price will be a dollar for fifty, or two dollars for a hundred, plus a dollar for each additional hundred in one shipment.
We hope that people will send a few extra dollars to help with the organizing costs and that new tax resisters and alternative funds will earmark a small percentage of their tax savings to contribute to the organizing work.
The issue reported on the death of Ammon Hennacy on .
Ernest Bromley added a tribute, which included this summary of his tax resistance activity:
I, like so many others, knew Ammon by reputation long before I met him in person.
He was one of the pacifist tax refusers during World War Two, at a time when I could count them on the fingers of one hand.
He was in Arizona during those years, working as a day laborer in the fields.
To the few of us who made up the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, which began in , he is memorable, not only because the number was still very small but mainly because he was simple, direct and dramatic.
He saw that the government got none of his tax at the source (through withholding), he refused the total amount of income tax, he took steps so that the tax man could not garnishee money from his employer, and he went straight to the tax man and to the people with the message that he would not pay for the weapons or the soldiers.
He was basic, cryptic, humorous.
When the tax collector asked him if he thought he could change the world to his point of view, he answered, “Of course not. but I’m damn sure it won’t change me.” Then, referring to his contest with the government, he said, “Every day I win and every day the government loses.”
He once told a tax man, “Peter could return to his nets, but Matthew could not return to his tax collecting.”
It was in World War One, while doing time in Atlanta Penitentiary for opposing the war, that he read the Bible and became a Christian.
He was also turning from socialism to anarchism.
It was not however, until the early 1950’s that he joined a church.
Soon he wrote his first book. The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.
Later he revised this book, calling it in the new form The Book of Ammon.
While in Arizona he wrote a column in the Catholic Worker, entitled “Life at Hard Labor.”
He managed by doing day labor in the fields and irrigation ditches, to contribute financially to the education of his two daughters by his first marriage.
After moving to New York in he became one of the associate editors of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day.
In he moved to Salt Lake City and began a "House of Hospitality.”
Borrowing the language of Robert Frost in one of his poems “Build Soil — A Political Pastoral,” Ammon spoke early and often of the “one-man revolution — the only revolution that is coming.”
He felt that the only way to change society is for each to become a radical and responsible person.
He detested dependence on government, state, institutions.
He wished to live as the early Christians did.
He did not join organizations or participate much in conferences or committees.
Most of the actions he took were solitary ones.
After leaving Arizona he travelled several weeks of each year, going to homes of friends.
Innumerable opportunities opened up to him to talk to small groups of people.
Many young idealists got their inspiration from a first contact with Ammon Hennacy.
He was always quick in tongue and caustic in comment.
He could state his views briefly.
Once when asked why he refused to pay Federal taxes, he said “Jesus wouldn’t make atom bombs.
Why should I pay for them?”
And Karl Meyer wrote, in part:
[I]n thirteen years, I spent only a few hours in his company; so I know nothing of him that is not amply recorded in the Book of Ammon and his columns.
The only original thing that I can tell is what he has written in my spirit.
In closing I want to remind you that Ammon wouldn’t pay taxes that go for war.
In his last letter to me () he wrote, “I think your idea of claiming a million dependents is o.k. for a joke between you and the tax man, but to consider it for a group of people is not being a bit realistic.
Hardly half a dozen in this country would have nerve enough to do it for fear of losing their jobs.”
That was the main fault Ammon had: he never had faith that other people would be radicals, would change their lives and live the revolution.
But I remember a pipsqueak boy of twenty once, who didn’t want to lose his job, who wanted to take bail and get a lawyer and a long continuance.
And one summer day that boy went down to Chrystie Street, and that was the day that he met Hennacy.
That’s why I have faith that a lot of people are not going to go on paying taxes for another five years of national murder; and anyone who really wants to stop can send me a couple of stamps for our leaflet entitled “Common Sense for Every Concerned Taxpayer — You Can Stop Paying War Taxes Now,” or send a dollar for fifty copies.
After the death of Ammon Hennacy in 1970, Karl Meyer took up the torch of promoting war tax resistance in the Catholic Worker.
Meyer’s approach was less exhortational and more practical: he pioneered the method of inflating deductions to prevent income tax withholding and wrote an influential early how-to guide on that method. (An embryonic version of what is now NWTRCC’s Practical War Tax Resistance pamphlet #1: “Controlling Federal Income Tax Withholding”.)
Below are some excerpts from the Catholic Worker from the period, starting with an essay by Karl Meyer from the edition:
New Resistance to War Taxes
By Karl Meyer
“Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for Federal income tax for and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for Federal income tax for .”
If you can sign that statement, you can stop the withholding of war taxes from your wages.
The statement is the Employee Certification for Form W-4E Withholding Exemption Certificate, which was first published in by the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to the standard W-4 form.
If your employer doesn’t have it on hand, get it from the local IRS office.
Signing this statement alone provides complete exemption from prior withholding of Federal Income tax, without enumerating dependents or any other specific basis for the exemption.
Who is eligible to claim this exemption?
I say, “everybody.” It is morally impossible to incur a liability to support evil purposes and actions.
Since at least 70% of Federal taxes is spent for military or war-related purposes, and much of the balance for useless or harmful purposes, it is impossible to incur a liability to pay Federal income tax.
Who is eligible to claim exemption according to IRS?
On the back of the W-4E it says, “You may be entitled to claim exemption from withholding of Federal income tax if you incurred no liability for income tax for and you anticipate that you will incur no liability for income tax for .
For this purpose, you incur tax liability if your joint or separate return shows tax before allowance of any credit for income tax withheld.
If you claim this exemption, your employer will not withhold Federal Income tax for your wages.”
According to this definition, you would technically satisfy the requirements for exemption if you file a return for showing no tax due because of the immorality and illegality of U.S. military expenditures, even if IRS subsequently rejects your reasoning and assesses tax against you.
Likewise, if you file no return at all, your non-existent return can not show any tax due.
Now, it has always been a puzzle to me how a person who believes in conscience that taxes should not be paid could file a return showing taxes as a “balance due.”
That is self-contradictory.
If the tax is acknowledged to be due, it ought to be paid.
If it ought not to be paid, it shouldn’t be shown as “due.”
The IRS calls the income tax a “self-assessed tax.” When you file showing tax due, they are empowered to accept your assessment and proceed to collect immediately.
If you show no tax due, even if they disagree with you, they must first reassess the tax themselves and give you extensive opportunities for legal appeals, before they may proceed to collect on their claim.
Therefore, it is foolish and self-defeating to show tax as due, if you sincerely believe that it ought not to be paid.
There are several ways to assert your claim that no tax is due:
you may claim extra exemptions on line 11, on the ground of obligations to all mankind as brothers and members of one family;
you may claim an adjustment of your income on line 17, based on your principled opposition to militarism;
you may itemize a deduction on line 16 of Schedule A, claiming deduction of your whole taxable income on similar grounds.
Perhaps the soundest approach is to file no return at all. (The main disadvantage of this, besides its being illegal, is that IRS agents sometimes file distorted returns in your name, claiming excessive amounts of tax.) I didn’t file for ten years, but IRS agents have filed seven returns in my name showing more than $2000 in tax and penalties due.
On , I filed a return for in a personal interview with E.P. Trainor, the District Director at the Chicago office of IRS.
On the 1040 Form I filled in my name and address.
Under SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, I wrote “Peace;” under OCCUPATION, I wrote “Love;” across the face of the return I wrote in bold letters, “WE WONT PAY—STOP THE WAR—STOP THE DRAFT—STOP MILITARISM,” for FIRST NAMES OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN, I wrote “All Men Are Brothers;” under OTHER DEPENDENTS, I claimed “A Vietnamese child killed at Song My, an American soldier killed In Vietnam;” and I filled in a total of three and a half billion exemptions for the whole population of Earth; under BALANCE DUE, PAY IN FULL WITH RETURN, I put “$0.00;” then I signed with my name and the date.
Mr. Trainor and his henchmen haven’t figured that year out yet, but they can’t say I didn’t file.
Before you follow my advice and my example, I wish to speak a word of caution: Everything here is my interpretation.
Don’t expect the IRS, U.S. Attorneys, Federal Juries, or Courts of Appeal to buy a word of it.
In the and issues of the Catholic Worker, I published landmark articles on how to claim sufficient exemptions on the W-4 Form to prevent the withholding of war taxes.
Many people all over the country tried out these ideas effectively, but several last their jobs for persisting, and three were tried and convicted in Federal courts for claiming illegal exemptions.
If you can’t stand heat, stay out of the kitchen.
If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime.
If you have a concern of conscience about paying war taxes, but feel unready to face the possible consequences of the methods of resistance outlined above, the present tax rate provisions give ample opportunity to stop paying war taxes, without violating any provisions of the tax laws, if you are willing to live in reasonable simplicity and voluntary poverty in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement.
Under the present law an individual may earn up to $1700 a year without any obligation to file a return or pay Federal income tax.
A married person with three dependent children could earn up to $4300 a year without having any tax withheld or due.
Form W-4E was actually introduced by IRS so that such persons, earning less than the minimum yearly taxable incomes by working for only a few months out of the year, would not have taxes withheld and would not have to apply for refunds months after they earned the money.
You can find the complete tables of tax withholding rates and other information in Circular E, Employer’s Tax Guide, available for the asking at your local IRS office.
I do believe that we should all strive to live in a simpler way.
If we work part time for wages and live on less than taxable incomes, we will have extra time to grow, create and do more things for ourselves, or to offer our work as a gift to people in need of it.
Even if we work full time for taxable wages, but successfully resist collection of the taxes, we should still live simply in order to share our surplus money with others who are in need.
I have done this all my adult life and intend to go on with it.
One hundred and eighty years ago, our brother rebel Tom Paine wrote:
…were an estimation to be made of the charges of Aristocracy to a Nation, it will be found nearly equal to that of supporting the poor.
The Duke of Richmond alone (and there are cases similar to his) takes away as much for himself as would maintain two thousand poor and aged persons.
Is it then any wonder that under such a system of Government, taxes and rates have multiplied to their present extent?
In stating these matters, I speak an open and disengaged language dictated by no passion but that of humanity.
To me who have not only refused offers because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful.
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
(The Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 241)
If we do not live by these principles, how are we different from the warfare state we condemn?
The budget and accounting methods of the Federal administration are confusing.
They have recently been modified to deliberately de-emphasize the role of military expenditures as a proportion of the Federal budget, enabling Nixon to claim that they count for less than 50%.
This has been done by counting all separately raised and earmarked revenues, such as Social Security revenues and payments, as part of one budgetary total.
Then the large Social Security payments can be thrown in the pot and counted at part of domestic expenditures for health and welfare.
Rejecting this ruse, it is possible without detailed analysis to estimate that between 70% and 80% of all Federal income and excise tax revenues is spent for military programs and purposes that are intimately related to the cost of past and present military activities.
Acceding to individual judgment this estimate might include veterans benefits, space research and technology, various “international affairs” programs, certain “Justice Department” activities, a percentage of the general administrative expenditures, and the interest and principal payments on the national debt, incurred primarily as a cost of World War Ⅱ and the Cold War.
Awareness of these facts, plus the explanation of new methods of resistance, contributed to a tremendous growth in the movement of war tax resistance in .
In late a national coordinating center called War Tax Resistance was established in New York.
Its periodical bulletin, Tax Talk, lists 181 local centers of contact people all over the country.
Simple nonpayment of the federal excise tax itemised on telephone bills is the easiest and most common form of principled tax resistance.
War Tax Resistance estimates that more than 100,000 people are now participating in this action. IRS agents expend great effort in collecting very small amounts of this tax, and they are hopelessly behind in their efforts to collect.
I have paid no excise tax on telephone service and IRS has succeeded in collecting only $8.00 so far.
War Tax Resistance has a basic leaflet on phone tax resistance.
War Tax Resistance estimates that 15,000 people participate in some form of income tax nonpayment, as a principled protest against militarism.
We speak of those who consciously and explicitly relate to the war tax resistance movement, because we know that millions of our countrymen, from the highest to the lowliest, participate in tax resistance or evasion, largely because of unarticulated opposition to the basic policies of government.
They will be our allies if their protest can become articulate and organized.
The most promising development in was the significant number of people who began to successfully resist payment of all or most of the income tax amounts that would be claimed under Federal law and regulations.
Until the number of such total tax resisters was small and almost exclusively limited to self-employed persons or others who derived most of their income from sources not subject to withholding tax.
In articles for the Catholic Worker ( and ) I explained how to beat the withholding tax by claiming enough exemptions on the W-4 Form that no tax could be withheld from one’s wages.
Widely reprinted and circulated in leaflet form, these articles offered an effective tax resistance method to almost any wage earner who had the courage to try it and risk the possibility of prosecution or harassment sometime in the future.
In his last letter to me before his death, Ammon Hennacy, a pioneer influence in our war tax resistance movement, glumly predicted that from fear of going to jail, there wouldn’t be more than a handful in the country that would take up my idea.
But Ammon was wrong in this case.
I know that many have taken it up, and they are growing in numbers, because I keep hearing from them, particularly those in the Chicago area.
Thousands of dollars have been held back from the military machine and donated to alternative uses that meet the real needs of people.
This movement will continue to grow from roots that are deep in the American tradition.
The ideas of Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience, fruit of his brief imprisonment for war tax resistance, are well-known today.
But a century before Thoreau our forefathers made their stand for independence in resistance to unjust taxes.
Both the American Revolution and the French Revolution were organized around the issue of resistance to taxation.
Tom Paine understood this well because he was active in both.
In he published in England a powerful polemical tract on The Rights of Man to stir the people of England to a similar revolt.
His most persistent theme of grievance is the criminal burden of war taxes imposed on the people by power hungry men in government.
He vividly describes the genesis of the French Revolution, including the refusal of the Parliament of Paris, in , to register the edicts of the King and Government seeking to enforce new taxes:
While the Parliament were sitting in debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a regiment of soldiers to surround the House and form a blockade.
The members sent out for beds and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel; and as this had no effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament House and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were shut up in different prisons…
But the spirit of the Nation was not to be overcome, and it was so sensible of the strong ground it had taken, that of withholding taxes, that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of quiet resistance, which effectively overthrew all the plans at that time formed against it.
(Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 149)
On this strong ground let us also take our stand for a quiet battle, more effective against wrong, more productive for good purposes than any other I can think of.
Yours for a gentle revolution
Karl Meyer
Permission is granted to anyone interested to reproduce this article in whole or in part.
If it is reproduced in part, please indicate editing and deletions.
List of sources for information and communication:
War Tax Resistance
839 Lafayette Street
New York. N.Y. 10012
Phone (212) 477‒2970
Send $1 and ask for
WTR Handbook
Hang Up On War telephone tax refusal leaflet.
reprint of Karl Meyer’s Fund For Mankind article from CW
or send more to help with their crucial work of coordinating the communication and work of the movement.
The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241
A valuable periodical for all who are interested in draft resistance, tax resistance, and radical life styles.
Send $4 for a subscription, plus their Handbook on Nonpayment Of War Taxes, which includes many informative case histories.
I further recommend that all tax resisters contribute a substantial percentage of the money not paid to the Peacemakers Sharing Fund at the same address.
The Fund is a valuable channel of mutual aid for war resisters and their families, when they suffer from imprisonment or financial hardship as a result of their stand.
Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell Street
Chicago, Illinois 60628
Phone (312) 764‒3620
Call me or write to me for personal counseling and encouragement.
If you write, send two six cent stamps for my reply and any leaflets I may send you.
Dorothy Day visited war tax resister Art Harvey and brought back this story ( issue):
I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mall order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi.
Art and Ammon Hennacy served six-month-terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago.
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
The Karl Meyer article she mentioned follows:
War Tax Resistance
by Karl Meyer
On , charges were filed in federal district court in Chicago against Bill Himmelbauer, Mike Fowler and myself.
In separate cases, we are accused of falsely claiming exemptions from federal tax, to which we were not legally entitled.
Mike Fowler, a student at the University of Chicago, is charged on two counts of filing false W-4 forms with his employer.
The maximum penalty for each count is one year in jail.
Bill Himmelbauer is charged on one count.
He and Sue Himmelbauer joined with us in late in starting the Chicago Area Alternative Fund for tax resistance money, and then moved to Pittsburgh where they became ringleaders in War Tax Resistance activities.
I am charged on five counts for W-4s executed in .
Through eleven years of “one man revolution” I had successfully resisted payment of almost all federal income taxes claimed from me, mainly by claiming enough exemptions on W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificates that no tax was withheld from my wages.
The tax man did nothing beyond ineffectual attempts to collect.
Then suddenly in the one man revolution exploded into a growing movement of effective war tax resistance by the withholding exemption method.
Suddenly the tax man got worried.
Suddenly he started prosecuting withholding tax resisters around the country: , Jim Shea, Alexandria.
Virginia; , Sally Buckley and Dennis Richter, Minneapolis, Minnesota; , Paul Malinowski, and Donald Callahan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; , James Smith, Springfield, Missouri; and now, three more in Chicago.
On , IRS Intelligence Agents Sam Miele and Alan Leksander visited me at home.
They confronted me with copies of five W-4 forms for , and two articles from the Catholic Worker for and , “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective Tax Resistance” and “Clarification On Tax Withholding.”
These are the articles which launched the wave of withholding tax resistance action in .
I acknowledged authorship of the five W-4s and the two CW articles.
On , I received a letter from the Chief of the Intelligence Division of IRS:
“The current investigation by the Intelligence Division is nearing completion… consideration is being given to recommending that criminal proceedings be instituted against you…”
I was invited to a hearing with Group Supervisor Ralph A. Weber.
At the hearing I presented a statement of my position and various other relevant literature and documents to Internal Revenue Service.
Statement to Internal Revenue Service, Intelligence Division Hearing:
My name is Karl Meyer.
My immediate family includes my wife Jean and three children, William, 7 years old, Kristin, 3 years old, and Eric, 2 months old.
In South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos there are many families like ours.
I gladly accept a responsibility toward them, like that which I bear toward my own children.
These other families, these other children are the ones who were machine-gunned in a trench at My Lai, and are being killed in many other ways every day that the war continues In Indo-China.
There are also the soldiers of both sides, Americans and Aslans, who are also the victims of the war, who are dying by the thousands as it continues.
Upwards of 80% of all federal income tax revenues are devoted to purposes intimately related to American wars and military activities, past and present.
In the name of my family, of the families of Indo-China, of the soldiers of both sides and all other victims of International militarism, I claim a complete exemption from all federal taxes that finance military activities.
Yes, I have claimed ten or more exemptions on several W-4 exemption certificates. I have claimed exemption from tax for myself and my family, for several others who have lived in our household and received their primary financial support from me, and for these others, the families of Indo-China, and all the victims of war.
In a peaceful and nonviolent society the job of collecting assessments for social purposes might be a useful occupation.
But the man who collects taxes for the United States government today makes himself a direct accomplice in some of the most horrible crimes of our age.
You have already told me that you are considering compounding these crimes by beginning a criminal prosecution against me.
I and my family have already made some sacrifices in the struggle against war, but they have been as nothing compared to the suffering of our brothers and sisters who are in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
We ask you today to recognize just one basic human right, our right not to participate in acts of war against them.
Even if you refuse to recognize that right, we will still refuse to pay federal taxes that continue the war in Indo-China and the militarization of our society.
This is all that I have to say.
Karl Meyer
After I received the letter from IRS, I went in to talk with my supervisor in the huge hospital bureaucracy in which I was employed.
I expected her to be unsympathetic, and even hostile to me as a source of trouble for her.
After thirty years of working her way toward the top of the bureaucracy, it had seemed to me she lived and breathed the system and its rules, though I respected her even so for the great strength of her character.
But now when I told her directly of my long struggle against the war and of the imminent threat of criminal prosecution, she smiled at me from deep within, and expressed her own strong opposition to the war and her respect and support for me.
“Mr. Meyer” she said, taut with emotion, “I am black.
From all of my experience I know that when you fight the system in this ‘democratic’ country they are going to make you pay for it.”
Then she told me something of her own struggle.
After a long talk she asked me, "Wasn’t there a girl here in Chicago who took that same stand (war tax resistance) several years ago?”
Yes, there certainly was.
Eleven years later, another black woman in Chicago still remembered the courageous witness of Eroseanna Robinson, the very person whose example set my feet on the path of determined tax resistance, back in 1960 — Eroseanna Robinson who refused to pay taxes, who defied the order of Judge Robson to give information about her income in spite of a one year sentence for criminal contempt, who fasted one hundred and eight days and won her own release from federal prison by the strength of her resistance.
Now, on , the charges against Fowler, Himmelbauer and Meyer were announced.
That night we picketed and leafleted at the Main Post Office where special postmen were on duty to receive last minute returns from thousands of more tractable Chicagoans.
We haven’t yet received official notice or summons, but from the records filed in court David Finke has found that the three cases are assigned to three separate Judges for trial.
I am to be summoned for an initial hearing in the court of Judge Joseph Sam Perry.
I plan a simple and direct defense. I plan to represent myself without an attorney.
I will ask for a jury trial at the earliest possible date.
I will not base my defense on legalities.
I will simply seek to convince the jury, judge, prosecutor and everyone else that I have done what is right and in accord with inalienable rights of personal judgment, and that I should not be declared guilty or penalized for my actions.
If I am convicted and sentenced to prison, we have been thinking that Jean will apply for public aid for the financial support of our family.
We feel that if the State insists on tearing from the family its source of support, the State should bear the cost of providing other means.
We prefer to see the resources of the movement devoted to the needs of poor people in this country and abroad who have no other recourse.
This is just one of the reasons why I do not desire a costly legal defense or primary financial support from the movement, though we welcome the personal support of our friends.
The form of encouragement and support that we will value most highly will be if our friends in the movement take our troubles and our resolve as an example, to stop paying war taxes and to devote the greatest possible part of their income to sharing with the victims of international war and of the war of rich against poor.
This is why we of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund have saved nothing for our own protection, but have already given away all of our war tax resistance money to meet the immediate needs of others.
If you want to read the articles that launched the present movement of withholding tax resistance by explaining the method, and incidentally brought upon us our small tribulations, you may send two eight cent stamps to:
War Tax Resistance
339 Lafayette Street
New York, New York 10012
and ask for their reprint, “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective War Tax Resistance.”
To get in touch with us about the trial, write to:
Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell
Chicago, Illinois 60626
Phone 764‒3620
The issue reported on how the court ruled in Karl Meyer’s case:
Karl Meyer Sentenced to Two Years, $1,000
By David Finke
On in the court of federal district Judge Joseph Sam Perry, Karl Meyer appeared in his own behalf to answer a 5-count “criminal information” charging that he falsely and fraudulently filed W-4 income tax withholding exemption certificates.
Having successfully negotiated with the U.S. Attorney, Karl got the government to drop three of the five counts (which he had said he could prove the accuracy of).
He then entered a plea of “nolo contendere,” which the judge accepted as a finding of “guilty,” on the other two counts.
A two-week presentence investigation was then ordered. while Karl remained free without bond.
, Karl returned to court with about 25 friends, supporters, and fellow tax resisters, and personally accompanied by his 7-year-old son William.
Before imposing sentence, Judge Perry with great decorum and civility said he would hear from both the government and the defendant, whose absolute right to represent himself without attorney would be respected.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kocoras then launched into a most amazing and accurate summary of Karl’s career of leadership in the movement of War Tax Resistance:
Not only has Karl not filed a tax return , he has encouraged others to join with him in resisting federal taxes!
And he has explained publicly exactly what he is doing and how other people can do the same.
Kocoras read extensively from articles that Karl had written for Catholic Worker, including those memorable (but to Kocoras damning) phrases, “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” and “If you can’t stand the heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.”
The prosecutor hit the issue squarely on the head, then, when he said:
“What is at stake here is the integrity of the income tax law.”
The government is obviously worried about the possibility of widespread, undetected, mass-based tax resistance if Karl’s ideas should catch on and not be deterred.
The prosecutor closed his remarks by observing that federal taxes support all programs of government including the operation of Judge Perry’s court.
Karl was then asked to present his statement to the court, the Judge being very cordial again.
With brevity and simplicity, Karl pointed out that federal taxes (unlike the city and state taxes which he pays) are “overwhelmingly devoted to warfare,” and that during the course of his life between sixty and seventy per cent have gone to pay for military ventures.
In conscience, Karl said, he cannot and must not cooperate with the financing of killing.
As he began to explain how his resistance had always been done openly and publicly, the Judge dramatically changed his tone and manner.
In rapid sequence he interrupted Karl to say that being open is no excuse — “You can openly and publicly rob a bank!” — “this defendant is showing no penitence, this is obviously not a case for probation, and there is no point in wasting anymore time.”
Karl was immediately sentenced to the maximum penalty on both counts (one year, $500), with the sentences to run consecutively, although he might consider making the sentences concurrent if Karl showed a “change of heart.”
The Judge was about to call the next case when an older man, Solomon Goldman, appeared at Karl’s side from the audience, shook his hand, and loudly declared, “Karl Meyer, my grandchildren will thank you.
You are a man of peace.” Judge Perry was astounded; exclaimed to Mr. Goldman “You’re not an attorney!” and ordered him removed from the building.
Then a bit of confusion set in.
The Judge was ordering the marshal also to remove Karl, but the marshal was still involved with Mr. Goldman.
Karl was asking if he could give his briefcase to his friends, was told it could be gotten from the lockup.
Bill Himmelbauer (another convicted W-4 tax resister) was by this time at Karl’s side getting the briefcase, various people were waving two-fingered peace signs to Karl and saying “Goodbye!” as he walked out, and the Judge (whose courtroom was still understaffed) was on his feet shouting “No demonstrations!
There will be no demonstrations in here!
I’ll have you all in jail for contempt.
Clear the courtroom!” as we slowly filed out.
I’ve been informed that Karl will be sent to Sandstone, Minnesota, federal prison, after about two weeks in Cook County Jail in Chicago.
Several friends have seen him already, and report that he’s the same old Karl:
He has put his hand in the fire, and he can stand the heat as well as anyone.
(See Letter Column for Karl’s letter.
The story of his action bears repeating. ―Editor’s comment.)
Karl Meyer’s letter follows:
From Prison
Cook County Jail Chicago, Illinois
Dear Dorothy and C.W. family,
I received a letter from Kathy Bredine telling me of your call, and I was very pleased to receive your message.
Here I am permitted to write and receive mall from anyone, but I will probably be here only a few more days, before “shipment” to a federal “Facility.” There I will have a restricted mailing list; how many names I will not know until I get there; but I have been planning to put you on the list, near the top.
The letters will be for all of you, from A Prisoner.
I hope that you will not be cut from the list for being a single woman and not a relative, even though more than twice my age.
Rules are rules (though I am not sure that that is one of them), and the crime of which I stand convicted is that I claimed a familiar relationship of brotherly responsibility for the very lives of a people not in my own line of genetic descent, at least for several generations, and not even born on the same continent between the St. Lawrence River and the Rio Grande.
I was a little stunned to receive the maximum penalty for that crime, one year on each of two counts, to be served consecutively, plus $1000 in fines, though it is my prudential practice to go into court prepared and expecting to get the maximum.
Nevertheless, I keep forgetting that when these judges see a sheet of convictions as long as mine (however humane the motivations that lie behind it) going back for fourteen years, they can’t seem to see beyond that sheet, and they have a reflexive reaction to go for the maximum.
Of course it is appropriate that I should be the first person to start serving time for claiming exemptions from war taxes on the W-4 Form, since, being a child of Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, it is not my way to conduct guided tours to the jailhouse door and not go in myself.
A number of statements were torn from the context of my writings by the U.S. Attorney to be quoted against me, and he particularly dwelt on that prison aphorism. “If you can’t do the time, don’t commit the crime,” which I have often repeated.
In the light of that reality, I might have done differently myself if I had known the severity of the penalty that would come down on me.
For a person without a family of small children, two years is nothing to speak of; but for people having the care of small children such as my own, William—aged 7, Kristin—aged 4, and Eric—aged 5 months, it is a serious thing for them to be fatherless for such periods of time, I think; that is why we must emphasize that there are practical ways, fully within the range of any ordinary working person, to withdraw financial support from the murder of Vietnamese families without going outside U.S. law and without taking the risks of imprisonment that I hare unfortunately taken.
Now, after a year and a half of widespread experience, we can gauge the response of the federal government to the withholding exemption method of war tax resistance.
Nine people have been prosecuted to date, and a sentencing pattern of one year on each count seems to be emerging.
The withholding exemption method of war tax resistance remains very important and useful for persons who measure the personal risk and decide that it is proper for them to take it.
But, particularly for those of us with families, it will be useful to develop ideas on how we can be true to our deepest convictions about our responsibilities to mankind, without coming into such open confrontation with the laws of the U.S.
Many people have talked with me about working toward conscientious objector provisions under the federal tax laws that would allow war objectors to earmark their social tax assessments for exclusively peaceful purposes.
As to practical effect, such provisions already exist under the tax laws of the U.S.
We need only the generosity and honesty in our ideas to take advantage of them.
For instance, under the present tax laws, a family of five could retain income of $4350 for personal use without having to pay any income tax.
In addition they would be entitled to an itemised deduction from taxable income for up to 50% of their gross income if donated to broad categories of recognized charitable and socially positive purposes.
Thus a family of five could easily have an income of at least $8700, give half of it for peaceful purposes, and legally owe no federal tax on the balance.
This is a general figure that does not take account of many deductions and exemptions that might increase that figure.
Many people feel that it is not possible for a family of five to live decently on $4350 a year in the United States.
Our own family experience, in urban Chicago, one of the higher priced areas of the country, indicates that it is quite reasonable and possible to set a family budget at that level.
The factor which has required us to use a higher income has been our contributions to the support of several other people outside our immediate family, at St. Stephen’s House of Hospitality, whom we could not legally claim as dependents for exemption from taxation.
Over the past three years our personal household has lived on a budget averaging about as follows: rent, including heat—$135 a month; food, clothing and household items—$135; hospitalization insurance—$16; Social Security deductions—$30; public transportation—$23; gas—$3; electricity—$8; phone—$8.
That totals $385 a month, very close to the minimum we are talking about; but we are far from having explored all potentials for less expensive living; our rent is higher than necessary because we live in a desirable location in northern Chicago, one block from the lakefront, and our food budget could be cut somewhat by different and more careful buying methods that we have not taken the time to explore; we could cut our electric bill in half and do without a phone, if necessary.
Yet, I can not describe our life as one of sacrifice or hardship.
Thus I believe that if we are honest about our commitment to a peaceful coexistence with other people and other societies, we must and can learn to live in a way of voluntary simplicity that is compatible with equality among people.
And it isn’t even illegal.
Yours, with a large part of my love.
Karl Meyer — a Prisoner for Peace
P.S. The Bldg. Dept has been after us about the house on Mohawk St., which now stands alone amid vacant lots on all sides where other houses were torn down.
I have found places for two of the three men who remained of our household there; Lemont had to go back to the TB Sanitarium; Roy, who was with us , I have gotten on public aid and found him a decent place in a residential hotel; Richard has been with us but he is able to look after himself.
The building will soon be condemned and torn down.
Frank Marfla, of our Alternative Fund group, will visit the men and look after them while I am in jail.
Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance, from sources other than Catholic Worker, from the span:
First, a typed news dispatch from “M. Massiani,” Paris Correspondent for the National Catholic Welfare Council (U.S.) News Service, dated :
Priests and People of Vendee, France, Protest Tax on Christian Schools and Refusal of State Aid
Paris, . —
A delegation of 20,000 citizens from various parts of the Department of Vendee, one of the most Catholic regions of France, appeared in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a number of priests were on trial for refusing to pay a tax exacted on entertainments and theatrical productions given to aid in supporting the free Christian schools of the Department.
A large group of priests and directors of Christian schools purposely decided to refuse payment of this tax and made public announcement of the decision in order to protest what is regarded by the people of the Vendee as a highly inequitable situation; the state taxing the people to support unneeded public schools, refusing to grant a subsidy to aid in maintaining the Christian schools, and at the same time taxing entertainments held to raise money for support of the Christian schools.
It is pointed out that in Vendee public schools are practically empty. The Christian schools, on the other hand, are educating the vast majority of the children of the region, saving the state more than 200 million francs in school taxes annually.
Yet whenever Catholics hold a festival to raise funds for support of their schools, the state intervenes to collect part of the receipts.
It is hoped that in refusing to pay this tax, public attention will be called to the injustice and the need of a state subsidy to help support the Christian schools, such as is granted in other countries, including Belgium and Holland.
Bishop Antoine Cazaux of Lucon, who went to La Roche-sur-Yon to testify in behalf of the defendants, stated that his priests are neither rebels nor evaders, and that the court, in order to judge equitably, should take into consideration the unjust situation that exists with regard to education.
Many thousands of people were in the streets outside the courtroom.
Decisions were rendered in only two of the cases, the defendants being acquitted on procedural grounds.
The other cases were postponed. The action of the court caused anti-religious groups and newspapers, particularly in Paris, to demand that new suits be instituted and that the law be applied with severity.
In the Diocese of Lucon, two-thirds of the children attend the 461 primary religious schools. In six large districts, 13,757 children out of 15,183 are enrolled at the Christian schools.
In two other districts, the number of pupils in the public schools is only three per cent of the total.
In 41 settlements in the Department, with a population of 40,000, there are no public schools.
A National Catholic Reporter editorial (signed by editor Robert C.
Hoyt) in the issue recommended that men refuse military service, concluding that in Vietnam, “we are killing people and destroying a culture without adequate justification, without a rationale that meets the minimum requirements of morality.
That imposes obligations on all of us.
We believe that anyone who despairs of a political solution has a right and duty to search for more effective ways, including civil disobedience and tax refusal.
We have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to history, to God that nobody else can bear.”
In its issue, that paper published a lengthy article on the war tax resistance movement:
Protesters turn to taxes to fight against the war
By Gary MacEoin
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, NEW YORK—
Protesters against the Vietnam war are turning to the withholding of taxes as a way of fighting against the war.
A national campaign against the payment of taxes used for the war is being organized and its goal is to involve “tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in conscientious tax refusal.”
The campaign is spearheaded by the War Tax Resistance, an organization founded which draws support from a broad spectrum of pacifist groups.
Its headquarters is in New York and it has offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Resistance spokesmen say they hope to have “at least a phone, an address and a contact person” in each of the principal 50 to 100 cities in the nation by .
Groups organized around such regional centers are to focus their tax resistance efforts on demonstrations on and .
“We picked the date more or less arbitrarily,” said Bradford Lyttle, clean-shaven and soft-spoken coordinator of War Tax Resistance.
“That’s about the time that thousands of accountants all over the country hang out signs offering to help prepare tax returns.
We want to provide an option for those who want not to pay.”
The choice of is more obvious, he said.
“It is both the final day for filing tax returns and the start of the Spring offensive of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.”
Lyttle, 42, works out of an office in Lower Manhattan (339 Lafayette Street).
It is also the home of the New York GI Coffeehouse, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the War Resisters League, Win magazine (hippie-pacifist), and Liberation magazine (David Dellinger’s voice).
Between them, they occupy the two top floors of a three-story cold-water walk-up not far from the Catholic Worker.
Organized resistance to paying war taxes is not new, dating from , Lyttle said.
The War Tax Resistance is trying to give the idea broader appeal by modifying the totally pacifist position that its forerunners had adopted.
Lyttle, who himself is a pacifist, said the new approach was developed by a New York teacher, Norma Becker, who recruited a group of sponsors which included Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, Stewart and Charlotte Meacham, Grace Paley and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“The result,” says Bradford Lyttle, “was a new emphasis.
Instead of stressing the total pacifist tradition as the others had done, we decided to concentrate on two more immediate and obvious reasons:
the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and the misuse of the taxpayers’ money by the government to the extent that it was neglecting national priorities.
“And instead of calling on sympathizers to pay no taxes whatever, we appealed to them to make a token withholding, if only $5, without of course ceasing to urge those who had the moral courage to go further.”
War Tax Resisters chose as their prime targets the 10 per cent surtax and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service — two taxes more clearly linked to Vietnam than any others.
Both War Tax Resistance and other organizations distribute literature explaining the various ways — some legal, some doubtful, some illegal — for nonpayment of federal taxes.
The first War Tax Resistance leaflet was prepared for the antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., , and 10,000 copies were handed out there.
“The act of war tax resistance creates a confrontation between the government and the conscience of the citizens,” this pamphlet states.
“We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all people, not just to those of draft age…
Do whatever makes sense to your conscience. But do it.”
Among the ways to avoid paying taxes, the first is to earn an income so low as not to be taxable.
This means for the single person under 65, an earned income of less than $900 annually.
Yet a considerable number of pacifists choose this method.
Another form of protest is to refuse to pay the percentage of the tax that goes for war.
More than two-thirds of the federal budget pays for wars, past, present and future.
This is the amount some withhold.
Others refuse to pay the proportion of the federal budget (23 per cent) directly allocated to Vietnam, while others hold back a token amount.
According to Internal Revenue Service figures, 73 million Americans paid their income taxes in full , while 1,025 refused to pay all or part in protest against the Vietnam war.
The 1,025 protesters was an increase from 592 .
IRS counted 10,511 cases of refusal to pay the telephone tax in , down from 14,396 in .
Several factors combine to make the telephone tax the attractive target it has become.
For one thing, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. has handled the situation with kid gloves.
So long as the protester makes it clear to the company with each payment that the amount withheld is the tax portion, it will not cut off a phone.
Printed forms are made available by the resistance groups to facilitate this notification.
What the telephone company does is simply to report to IRS the fact of nonpayment and the amount.
IRS also is anxious to keep the situation as cool as possible, but it wants at the same time to maintain whatever pressure is necessary to dissuade the hesitant from joining the movement.
Back in 1967, the first step was to send the defaulter a “notice of preliminary assessment” which enabled him to demand a hearing.
Because of the number of cases involved and the small amount in each, the IRS quickly eliminated this step and moved immediately to Form 17-A or some other “notice of final assessment.”
This notice contains a threat to seize property to collect a debt.
Ralph Di Gia of War Resisters League is one who has been through this process several times.
Early in , for example, the IRS computer at Andover, Mass., sent him Form 17 demanding payment of $2.25 owed as telephone tax.
Next a New York agent wrote him, then called on him in his New York office.
After checking with Di Gia’s landlord and the building superintendent to establish his political views, the agent tried to place a lien on his salary at the War Resisters League, but the League refused to cooperate.
After another confrontation with Di Gia, which merely established that it was “the principle,” not the $2.25, that was at issue on both sides, the agent located Di Gia’s bank account and collected the $2.25 plus 6 per cent interest.
Under the IRS code, it can take money from a bank account without a court order in payment of taxes due by the account holder.
Apparently the discovered account was then fed into the computer, because another section of IRS moved quickly to seize the entire balance in payment of income tax.
And as of , the IRS located a savings account recently opened by Di Gia in another bank and collected yet another telephone tax bill.
But Di Gia insists that he doesn’t mind.
“The issue isn’t withholding money from the government,” he says.
“They’re going to get it ultimately.
But I made a few collection agents think about what their job’s about, and now IRS is going to have to realize that there are people who aren’t afraid to resist.
They got the tax, but they had to come and get it, like when the agents had to go to the fields in France for collection.”
Unpaid taxes, whether telephone or income, can result not only in seizure from a bank account but also a lien on salary or the attachment and sale by auction of some property, usually an automobile.
In addition, some banks make a service charge — as high as $10, reportedly each time a lien is placed on an account, and the resisters suspect that IRS is pressuring banks to do this as a deterrent.
Such a fee every month would make telephone tax refusal impractical for most people.
But actually, the load on the IRS is such that it usually moves against any given individual only at much longer intervals.
Everyone who refuses to pay any taxes he owes is actually exposing himself to heavy penalties, and the resistance literature spells out this danger very openly.
Simple “willful failure to pay” is punishable by fine up to $10,000 and a year in jail, plus the cost of prosecution.
Similar or greater penalties are available for a variety of related offenses.
Although the offense of counseling or urging others not to pay taxes would seem greater than the simple act of withholding, the law on this point is somewhat ambiguous and apparently has never been tested in the courts.
There are few, if any, cases of conscientious tax refusers being jailed for not paying taxes or filing returns.
Most of the small number of cases on record have resulted from related non-cooperation with the courts, such as ignoring a court order to disclose financial records.
In addition, it would appear that prosecutions have been initiated by local collectors who did not first check with headquarters.
Current IRS policy on this issue apparently stops short of court action.
The most distinguished American to go to jail for refusal to pay taxes was Henry David Thoreau, the essayist, poet and naturalist.
He spent only one night in confinement, because a neighbor paid the tax, but the experience inspired his essay on Civil Disobedience, espousing the doctrine of passive resistance.
It deeply influenced Gandhi and has become the bible of the resistance movement.
One passage is found to be particularly relevant by today’s resisters:
“When… a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.
What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the Country to overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”
The reference is to the Mexican War of .
About half a dozen have been jailed in the past 20 years.
Juanita Nelson was arrested in Philadelphia in , threatened with a year in jail and $1,000 fine if she did not disclose certain financial information, but in fact was held only some hours.
Maurice McCrackin, arrested in Cincinnati in , was given a mental test, imprisoned “indefinitely” on a contempt charge, then sentenced to six months and a $250 fine.
James Otsuka got 90 days and a $140 fine in Indianapolis, in .
Eroseanna Robinson, sentenced to a year and a day in Chicago in , was released unconditionally after 93 days.
Walter Gormley got 7 days in Cedar Rapids in .
And in the first such imprisonment in several years, Neil Haworth of New London, Conn., got 60 days in for refusal to produce records.
He had served six months in for “committing civil disobedience at a missile site” near Omaha.
And in , he was a crew member of Everyman Ⅲ, a boat which sailed to Leningrad to protest the Russian nuclear tests.
Those who have refused to pay federal taxes and have got away with it include the Catholic Worker settlement houses and the settlement house of the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action.
“We pay local taxes,” says Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, “and we let the IRS people examine our records, but we pay them nothing.”
The New England group says that IRS has spent thousands of dollars going through their bills and receipts, without collecting a penny.
War Tax Resistance is now urging citizens “to sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.”
The main value of such suits to date has been the publicity.
Professor Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at UCLA, filed a suit to recover his telephone tax but it was dismissed by the District Court.
He appealed, and the appellate court has agreed to hear his appeal.
The most important case to date is that of Walter C. Pietsch, of Rego Park, N.Y., a 33-year-old administrative employee in a hospital.
Last year, he instituted “a class action” for an injunction to enjoin IRS from collecting the 10 per cent surtax and all other taxes used to propagate the war, and also for a declaration that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional.
A class action, if successful, would provide the same remedy for all taxpayers.
Pietsch, who served in Korea, “is not against all wars, just this one.”
The surtax he withheld was $190.84.
“The amount is insignificant,” he said, “It’s the principle I’m fighting for.”
After a preliminary hearing in the Brooklyn federal district court on , written arguments were submitted on , and on the case was dismissed on a motion by the defendants.
An appeal was filed immediately.
Although the Vietnam war is the direct issue on which tax resisters are concentrating, many of them insist that the campaign has escalated into something much bigger — the war mentality behind much of United States foreign policy.
“Maybe it’s a hang-up,” says Ted Webster, administrator of the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship fund, “but I personally have a great feeling of urgency, it seems the logic behind bombing North Vietnam can be so easily applied to China.
The influence of the Pentagon on policy, and the political expediency of yielding to it seems so obvious, I see the need to rapidly escalate resistance, or there will be a greatly expanded war — maybe with China — within one to three years.”
Another National Catholic Reporter article, from the issue, asked “In the name of God, how did Milwaukeeans get so radical?” A section of it covered tax resisters:
One area in which a number of community members are discussing is tax resistance.
Some say they have claimed as many exemptions as were needed to keep from paying any federal taxes used to finance the war.
[Richard W.] Zipfel, who is defense committee chairman for the Chicago 15, Feit and Father Robert W. Dundon, a Jesuit, have sent a letter to the Wisconsin Telephone Co. stating they are refusing to pay the federal telephone tax on their phone bills because “we can no longer tolerate our nation spending more than $75 billion on the military while our cities die.”
The letter, dated , added that “even if the present war ended, our policies would quickly create another Vietnam.”
Their resistance gesture is significant, they said, because the tax was argued through Congress as a specifically Vietnam war tax.
They have reserved a reply from the utility saying their letter was being forwarded to the government.
“I do believe in the legitimacy of the magistrates,” [Michael] Cullen said.
“In paying property taxes, I believe in the state.
“I’ll render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when Caesar decides to take what is God’s, or if Caesar decides to look like God or act like God, I won’t render to Caesar.
“You only render to what is legitimate and what is human, and what is for the common good.
War destroys humans.”
Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House still looks to be something like a hotbed of war tax resistance, at least relative to the current national lull.
Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria is the current NWTRCC coordinator.
I recognize the names of war tax resisters Roberta Thurstin and Don Timmerman among their volunteers as well.
From the Pittsburgh Catholic, :
Five say they won’t pay taxes
Five local clergymen handed in their income tax forms at the Federal Bldg. downtown on with the announcement they were withholding a portion in protest to the Vietnam War.
Joining them in the protest at the Internal Revenue Office there were several dozen local lay members of War Tax Resistance, an organization whose members carried out withholding actions in a number of cities , the last day for filing income tax returns.
It is headquartered locally at 3601 Blvd. of the Allies.
The clergymen issued a statement denouncing the Vietnam war as immoral and stating other means of protest had been futile.
“Now we must do more than talk.
The time is now that we must act,” they said.
They included three priests active in civil rights causes here: Fr. Donald C. Fisher of St. Francis de Sales, McKees Rocks; Fr. Donald W. McIlvane, St. Richard’s, Hill District; and Fr. John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s, Manchester.
Also taking part was Fr. Bernard Survil of St. Hedwig in Smock, Greensburg Diocese.
Protestant clergy included Rev. Oscar L. Arnall, a Lutheran, Rev. Thomas Whitcroft, an Episcopalian, and Rev. William S. Richard, a Presbyterian, signed the statement but weren’t present.
The clergymen announced they were withholding 25 per cent of their income tax, the proportion of the national tax that is estimated goes for the Vietnam war, they said.
Some said they would pay the money into local community action programs suffering because of the amounts given to the Vietnam war.
“We are conscious of our obligation to pay taxes, but we are equally conscious of our obligation before God to refuse to cooperate with evil,” the clergymen said.
The National Catholic Reporter, in its issue, printed the following letter from Robert Calvert of War Tax Resistance:
Tax resisters suggest: “Stop paying for it”
To The Editors:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos… young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against the squandering of lives and resources in an immoral and illegal war.
They are risking their freedom, careers and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
We, as participants in war tax resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste and callousness.
We resolve to end to the extent possible our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life.
For every dollar which the administration expects to spend in , 64.8 per cent will go for wars — past, present and future.
Of this amount, 48.4 per cent will go for current military expenditures, including Vietnam.
(The administration has not revealed the exact costs of the Indochina war.)
Another 17 per cent will go to health, education and welfare; 18.2 per cent for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is close, .
Many who read this letter will owe the federal government money. Don’t pay.
War tax resistance is being supported by numerous civil rights, anti-poverty and peace organizations in our call to help end the war by widespread tax refusal.
Widespread tax refusal does more than force the government to spend much money to try to collect unpaid taxes.
It confronts the government with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
We need to dramatize war tax resistance and to expand it from an act of individual conscience to a nationwide demonstration of collective civil disobedience.
On , the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice — which includes such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Welfare Rights organization, the American Friends Service committee and the Fellowship of Resistance — is calling for a nationwide “Tribute in Action to Martin Luther King.”
The theme is “Freedom from Hunger, War and Oppression”; the event will be observed by hunger marches, fasts, teachins, demonstrations and religious services.
War tax resisters will relate to these events in a real way.
We are asking people to refuse to pay $10 to $50 or more of their federal income taxes, and to publicly turn this money over to a local community group on .
We will thus take our tax money out of the hands of the government and put it into the hands of the people.
If we work hard thousands of dollars can be rechanneled to the people.
We can not wait for the government to change priorities. We must change them ourselves.
Find out what actions are being planned in your city or region and build a demonstration dramatizing the transfer of funds to useful community programs.
A possible action: Rally at the IRS office where people put their tax money into a container of some sort.
The money is then carried to the main event and is turned over to the designated local community group.
There also will be actions at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country on .
We will publicly submit our 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of our taxes deducted.
This is a simple action and serves as an extension of the observance.
If no action appears to be under way in your community, contact the nearest war tax resistance center or the People’s Coalition office (1029 Vermont avenue, Washington, D.C.).
Information about the WTR center nearest you, and about other forms of tax resistance, may be obtained from War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette street, New York, N.Y. 10012; telephone (212) 477‒2970.
Thousands are already engaged in these acts of peaceful, conscientious civil disobedience.
If you engage in any of the above acts of civil disobedience we strongly urge you to write a letter to the IRS setting forth the reasons for the steps you have taken.
Keep a copy.
Although there is a penalty for openly refusing to pay federal taxes (Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code — a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, plus the costs of prosecutions) no war tax resisters have been prosecuted under this law.
The only war tax resisters arrested have been those who have filed “fraudulent” W-4 forms, refused to file any income tax form, refused to present financial statements to the courts when ordered to do so.
There have been prosecutions and convictions based on Section 7203 but none for openly refusing to pay for conscientious reasons, as far as we know.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of war tax refusal.
We must now take a stand by refusing to support the governments destructive policies with our bodies, our skills and our money.
Robert Calvert
New York, N.Y.
Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Working Committee of WTR.
Among sponsors of the organization are Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Arthur and Cathy Melville, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, Rabbi Michael A. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Seeger and Theodore Roszak.
An op-ed from Eugene C. Bianchi, in the National Catholic Reporter:
“Maybe next year…”
To resist or not to resist
Two TV tableaus recently jarred me into fresh appreciation of how my tax money fosters the insanity of Vietnam.
In one film, helicopter gunships swooped down on a truck convoy; thousands of rounds of computer-directed cannon fire pierced the night.
There goes at least one year’s withholding tax, I thought.
But the commentator saw this military exercise as a demonstration of admirable killing efficiency.
It was so orderly and precise; nothing out of place, except perhaps some Vietnamese flesh and bone.
The second scene showed men carefully loading bombs into B52s.
The calm reporter noted how effectively these marvels of American know-how worked.
The big bombs tore open huge craters and sent waves of damaging concussion.
The antipersonnel bombs spewed thousands of body-ripping nails.
As I viewed the distant puffs of smoke, I mused about how many income tax returns it took to accomplish such a feat.
It’s appalling how resigned we are to this insane use of our financial resources.
Yet my and your tax money is closely related to the terrible statistic from the Kennedy subcommittee about 325,000 Indochinese, civilian deaths in recent years.
Many more are maimed and driven from their homes.
When I drop that IRS envelope through the red and blue bomb bay of the mail box, I wonder how many sad faces I’ve put behind the fences of relocation camps, how many children I’ve separated from parents.
If Mr. Nixon is a prime candidate for war crimes according to the Nuremberg principles, we have all in some degree had our hands on the tax trigger.
Yet my courage rarely equals my insights.
I also tell myself that some tax money goes for good causes.
But the spirit of Ammon Hennacy, that holy maverick against war, won’t let me be content with such dodges.
The whole Catholic Worker crowd stares up at me from their penny paper.
I finally summon up the mouselike courage of refusing to pay the telephone war tax.
At least that will cost the government more in time and bother than they’ll eventually get from me.
Maybe next year around income tax time, I’ll be brave enough to risk other concrete gestures.
The words of Thoreau won’t go away:
“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill 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.”
War tax resistance, though only a small act before the mighty state, could have broad effects if it became more widespread.
It has the educational effect of conviction in action.
Such tax resistance is illegal; but the war, by an ever-growing consensus, is enormously more illegal and immoral.
Even token refusal to pay war taxes confronts the government with a concrete statement about its brutal policies.
Tax resistance also awakens conscience to active non-complicity, to a new level of sensibility.
For the situation is overwhelmingly clear: Tax money can be as killing as the weaponry it buys.
Since some risk is involved in tax resistance, it is worth reading a brochure or two about it.
These can be easily obtained from a number of peace action groups, such as the War Tax Resistance (339 Lafayette St., New York 10012; or War Resisters League-West, 833 Haight St., San Francisco 94117).
A Catholic group, Ammon’s Tax Associates (Box 1744, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) is striving to awaken church institutions to their responsibilities for supporting conscientious tax resisters, as an extension of the church’s respect for conscientious objectors.
Perhaps the American church will end its complicity of silence with the warmakers when enough of us try to stop our own complicity in war taxes.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Episcopal Diocese Pays Protesting Priest’s Tax Bill
By NC News Service, Philadelphia (NC) —
The Episcopal diocese of Philadelphia has decided to pay $545 in income taxes withheld by one of its priests as a protest against the Vietnam War.
After the Rev. David Gracie, an urban missioner here, had refused for 10 months to pay half of his income tax assessment, the Internal Revenue Service went to his employer asking the Episcopal diocese to turn over $545 of the priest’s salary.
Refusing to do so would have made the diocese liable for possible criminal charges for non-payment of the taxes.
Father Gracie appealed to the Episcopal council “to join in a corporate act of resistance against this barbaric, immoral war.”
Paying the bill, he said, “will finish me as a tax resister.”
Voting to pay the tax bill, the council also set up a committee to study the theological implications of conscientious tax resistance and tax exemption.
Tom Cornell reviewed the book Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More (Robert Calvert, The War Tax Resistance, ) in the issue of Catholic Worker:
Ain’t Gonna Pay No More
This book represents a tremendous contribution to the movement against war and for a more decent society, in itself and in the War Tax Resistance campaign from which it emerges.
Probably the most significant development in The Movement during the past two years has been the growth of organised tax resistance along with its alternate funds.
Tax resistance has long been recognised as a pillar of anti-war activity, at least in theory.
After long incubation since the beginning of the Cold War in , tax resistance is taking its place in the minds of many pacifist activists alongside such stances as conscientious objection and draft resistance.
Ain’t Gonna Pay is an unusual movement publication.
It is pocket size, has a soft cover, is handsomely but modestly produced.
The type is legible and generously spaced.
It is crammed with useful information in a digestible form, and it is sprightly and wryly humorous.
To Bob Calvert is due not only credit for this most useful book, but also for the cohesion and outreach the national tax resistance has attained.
A most extraordinary man, you may read more about him in his own disarming paragraphs “About the Author,” in the comments about him by Bradford Lyttle on the back cover, and in David Dellinger’s Preface.
Karl Meyer
Much of the impetus for the tax resistance movement has come from the writings of Karl Meyer.
Karl has recently been released from Sandstone federal prison where he served 10 months for one of his experiments with tax resistance.
An important new development he has spurred has been the alternate fund.
Basic reasoning behind both tax resistance and the fund is well stated by Karl himself in his CW article. It is well to repeat portions of it:
If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe evil.
In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative.
The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering it according to their guidelines.
Assuming that the federal income tax contributions of most people in the movement probably exceed their voluntary political, organizational and charitable contributions, we would expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe.
But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation, for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society on which we live.
If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.
Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history?
Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace?
Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble?
Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance?
Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution:
“Taxation without representation is tyranny I”?…
Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experiences as a tax resister?
Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?
Can we not see what the IRS knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive relations?
There exists among the public at large a great reservoir of grievance, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance.
Let us learn from the experience of the draft resistance movement and the telephone tax refusal campaign.
A few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience.
Today it has taken on the dimension of a social movement.
It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.
When we combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.
Penalties
People are always anxious to know the penalties for various forms of tax resistance.
There is a chapter of questions and answers taken from the column by Payno Warbucks in Tax Talk, organ of the WTR ($2 a year subscription).
It is practical and accurate.
Stories of individuals who have dealt with IRS’ and the courts’ attempts to make them pay are told succinctly.
Long-time readers will recall the stories of Wally and Juanita Nelson, Rev. Maurice McCracken, Walter Gormly and Eroseanna Robinson.
Some recent efforts to collect taxes-due through confiscation of property and sale at public auctions are related with hardly suppressed glee.
Here is the story of Bob Marcus:
On , the IRS auctioned the car of Bob Marcus at the National Guard Armory in Boulder, Colorado for $1.25 in phone tax money.
People from the Institute/Mountain West, a branch of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence and Denver War Tax Resistance decided to make good use of the opportunity.
They sent out a leaflet to the 3500 people in the Institute’s mailing list, telling them what had happened and asking that they contribute to a fund to buy Bob’s car back at the auction.
It was explained that all money bid for the car above the unpaid tax and fees is refunded to the tax (non)payer.
The excess money would be put into the war tax resistance alternative fund.
The auction was promoted as a “joint IRS/Institute for the Study of Nonviolence fund-raiser for war tax resistance.”
About thirty people showed up at the auction, held in a stiff wind outside the armory.
“We passed around cookies in the shape of the resistance omega, tossed balloons of all colors into the air, and held signs which read ‘I ain’t gonna pay for war no more’ and ‘celebrate life — don’t pay war tax.’ ”
Beneath a skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” kite that went wild in the wind, two revenuers read the IRS ground rules.
They told Bob that he could still redeem the car.
He stepped foreword and said, “But can I redeem my soul?”
The car was sold for $277.00.
It took about twenty minutes to complete the transaction because much of the money was in twenty dollar bills.
After the IRS got its blood money, and the Institute expenses had been paid, the war tax resistance alternative fund had netted $203.35.
Bob donated the car to the community.
He decided that he preferred bicycling to polluting the air.
In addition, all the media covered the story extensively and pretty sympathetically.
It can be stated that the IRS bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the idea of war tax resistance.
“A final benefit is that we showed the people of the community that tax resisters will stick together and help each other out.”
How’s that for a bit of nonviolent jujitsu? (pp. 89–90.)
The book ends with a listing of the eighty-nine local War Tax Resistance centers around the country (as of press date ).
There are now almost one hundred more, as well as twenty-three alternate or “Life Funds.”
These centers offer tax-resistance counseling, supply current literature, buttons and bumper stickers, coordinate speakers, produce demonstrations, and administer Life Funds.
I suggest you buy at least five copies of this book to give to friends who might then help you to organise a war resistance center in your locale.
You will get all the help you need from Bob Calvert
The National Catholic Reporter covered Karl Meyer’s war tax resistance in its issue:
An act of “political significance”
Resister urges withholding of taxes
By Jerry De Muth
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — Chicago —
“Tax resistance is now like draft resistance was in ,” Catholic Worker Karl Meyer told 1,000 persons who gathered to greet him on his parole from prison where he had been serving a two-year sentence for falsifying his federal income tax deductions.
“When I tore up my draft card in , it was an act of personal witness,” the 34-year-old Meyer explained.
“Today it has become an act of political significance because so many do it.
“In , eight of us refused to pay the telephone excise tax.
Now at least 100,000 do not pay that ten per cent tax.”
The tax was levied for the expressed purpose of raising funds for the war in Indochina.
Today, Meyer sees the number of income tax resisters as numbering at least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000.
And, he hopes that soon this act of personal witness will also become an act of political significance.
In an interview after his talk, Meyer said, “I like concrete results.
If you don’t send $500 to Washington, you can spend that $500 as you wish on something positive.
That’s concrete, but there’s no other concrete result unless tax resistance becomes organized and grows.
“The first step,” Meyer said, “is nonpayment of the ten per cent telephone tax.
Then there is nonpayment of any balance due or nonpayment of $50, $100 or a significant amount of the income tax.
If many do this it does have political significance.”
The affair for Meyer included a $5-a-plate dinner, with the proceeds going to the Chicago Peace Council, Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Catholic Worker movement.
Referring to the people who promoted the dinner, he said:
“They should have decided not to send $500 in tax money to Washington and instead sent it to the Peace Council.
But instead they send $500 to Washington and send $5 to the Peace Council, and then they wonder why Washington is strong and the Peace Council is weak.”
Meyer: Tax resistance is like draft resistance was in 1967
Meyer was first exposed to pacifism by his mother, who taught him about Gandhi, and his father, William H. Meyer, a former U.S. representative from Vermont who was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ.
, the elder Meyer proposed the abolition of both Selective Service and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
In , young Meyer became involved in active resistance, joined the Catholic Worker and converted to Catholicism.
Also a believer in such “educational” acts as peace marches, he has participated in many such actions, including a ten-month, 6,000-mile San Francisco to Moscow march in .
Meyer’s frequent protests against the war have resulted in numerous arrests.
In , he was expelled from South Vietnam for antiwar activities and, he says, similar efforts resulted in his being beaten up by delegates to the Lions International convention in Chicago in .
Meyer began his protest against the use of tax money for the military in by having his income tax underwithheld.
In , he progressed to all-out resistance through the influence of a Chicago tax resister, Eroseanna Robinson, an Olympic high jump champion.
So that no income tax would be withheld from her pay, Miss Robinson would change jobs every time her income from a job totaled more than $600.
At the end of the year she did not report any of her income.
She was arrested and while detained in Cook county jail in Chicago began to fast while Meyer and others picketed outside.
Sentenced to a year in prison, she continued to fast.
After 108 days the Bureau of Prisons, Meyer said, asked the judge to release her and the judge complied.
“I said to myself then that I was not going to pay taxes any more,” Meyer said.
“I began by leafletting the IRS IRS offices.”
At the time Meyer was supporting a House of Hospitality in Chicago and legally claimed as exemptions the persons who were living there.
As a result, no taxes were withheld.
“But as I phased out the house,” he added, “I no longer legally had a sufficient number of exemptions.
But in I claimed 12 anyway, and in I claimed 10.”
Meyer was legally entitled to four — for himself; his wife, Jean; a son, William, now eight, and a daughter, Kristin, now four.
(They since have had a third child, Eric, now one year old.)
It was for those extra exemptions that Meyer received a maximum two-year sentence plus a $1,000 fine last .
He was released from the federal prison at Sandstone, Minn. — where Joe Mulligan and Ed Hoffmans of the Chicago 15 are also imprisoned — on and will remain on parole until .
Meyer has frequently changed jobs to avoid a lien on his wages.
Once, the government got $46.60 before he quit one job.
It is the only income tax he has paid in the past 11 years, he says.
He has also avoided paying all but $8 of the federal excise tax on phone service.
“My jobs were determined by my radical pattern of life,” he explained.
“I was in jail a lot.
I was not thinking of building a career, which was good because, as soon as you stop living as the poor live and stop working as the poor work, you stop caring about their needs.”
A simple lifestyle is a very important part of tax resistance for the Meyers.
“There are essential principles more important than tax resistance,” Meyer emphasized.
“They are the idea of voluntary poverty and simplicity of life which we have done through our House of Hospitality, sharing our income with others.
“The other major principle is the refusal to do harm to others, especially to claim control of our own productivity and not pay for the killing of others.
We can claim control of our lives through tax resistance.”
Meyer said there is only one reason why more persons, even if they strongly oppose the war, do not refuse to pay part or all of their income taxes — “They’re afraid.”
“But the first time it’s done, there’s certainly no risk,” he said confidently.
Partly for this reason he backs mass tax resistance as a national antiwar action.
“The question,” he said, “is how do you tell people about their own strengths.
They mistakenly think that Karl Meyer is stronger then they.”
Meyer, who frequently delves into history with a preference for the writings of Thomas Paine, fondly points out that the American Revolution, the French Revolution and Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence all had their roots in tax resistance.
The step of tax resistance, he feels, is important for those who have unsuccessfully urged their senators to vote against military appropriations.
“When the time comes for us to vote against appropriations — and that day comes April 15 — do we vote against appropriations?” he asked.
“The courage we ask of our representatives should not be greater than the courage we ask of ourselves.”
Meyer: “voluntary poverty and simplicity of life”
As for the Meyers’ future, Meyer said that they will not pay the $2,000 in taxes owed for , will not pay the telephone tax and will not pay his $1,000 fine.
“But in order that we may be allowed to remain together and not be separated by imprisonment,” he added, “we will limit our income to an amount that will not be taxable, to about $4,800.
It’s easy to live on this.
In fact, I think we can live on $4,000 by the simplification of our life.
We will then be in a position to share the surplus with others not so fortunate as us.”
Meyer was working at a hospital when he was arrested a year ago and now is employed by “an association,” working with the mentally retarded.
“We will continue to do productive work for the good of society,” he vowed.
“We will continue to oppose this war and all other wars and all militarism by the testimony of our lives and the witness of our actions.”
From the The Catholic Advocate:
Promotes “Tax Resistance” to War
A 27-year-old priest refuses to pay the “war share” of his federal income tax.
Rev. Thomas McKenna, assistant pastor at St. Luke’s, St. Paul, Minn., in a letter to more than 100 priests inviting them to discuss possible tax resistance, said: “No matter how we vote, no matter what we say, no matter how many statements, marches and demonstrations we endorse, we still support the war (and the weekly death toll) with a large portion of every dollar we pay in federal income and telephone excise taxes.”
A follow-up on this from the National Catholic Reporter, :
17 clergy to withhold tax
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — St. Paul, Minn. —
Seventeen Twin Cities’ area priests, ministers and seminarians have announced that they will refuse to pay a portion of their federal income tax to protest the Vietnam war.
Among the group are five priests of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.
“We cannot before God support or finance this unjustifiable killing of fellow human beings whether American or Southeast Asian,” said Father Thomas McKenna, a leader of the group, in a statement read at the federal building here. “Therefore, we feel that we must in conscience refuse to pay that portion of our federal income tax that goes to support this inhuman, ungodly war.”
Father McKenna, an assistant pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic church in St. Paul, said that 25 priests of the archdiocese had indicated to him that they might join in the tax resistance.
The 20 who did not join, he said, are still considering other forms of protest, such as withholding the federal telephone tax.
The tax resisters’ statement came at the conclusion of a peaceful demonstration by more than 200 clergy, seminarians and laymen who marched from St. Paul’s Dayton Avenue Presbyterian church to the St. Paul cathedral and then to the federal building.
The march was organized by the Ecumenical Witness for Peace.
A skeptical reporter for the Pittsburgh Catholic penned this for its edition:
Most pay little attention
Peace marchers get mixed reaction
By William McClinton
A procession of 25 people, even when escorting a black coffin and led by a man with a cross, doesn’t make much of a ripple in the hurrying crowds in downtown Pittsburgh at lunch time.
So it was with the 25 clergy and laity — mostly Catholic — who marched some 10 blocks to the Federal Bldg. to protest the escalation of the Vietnam war and the use of their tax money to finance the war.
Their sidewalk procession drew attention in some less busy areas, but in the main blocks was separated and absorbed by the crowd.
Nevertheless, the war headlines at every newsstand illustrated the relevancy of their concern, and the news media was present, almost as numerous as the marchers.
The 25 were members or friends of the recently opened Thomas Merton Peace and Justice Center, an interfaith but predominately Catholic effort on the South Side.
Larry Kessler, director of the Center, said the cross was to illustrate the religious motivation of the protesters who cannot “in conscience” support “this atrocity we call the Indochina war.”
Asked if the escalation wasn’t the result of North Vietnam’s attack, several responded in essence:
“What do you expect? We’ve had plenty of time to get out. We shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
The demonstrators chose the front of the Diocese of Pittsburgh Bldg. to form, unknown to diocesan officials.
As they filed through town they passed out handbills signed by 45 persons, including 12 diocesan priests and three nuns, announcing the undersigned were withholding part of their federal tax payment or the 10 per cent phone excise tax to protest the war.
The handbills urged others to “conscientiously object” the same way.
Many people took the bills and read them impassively.
The procession stopped at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on Sixth St. for a brief prayer service and again at the Methodist Bldg. on Smithfield at Seventh where the closest thing to an incident occurred.
The ground floor of the building houses a bank branch, and Fr. Donald Fisher had hardly begun paraphrasing a psalm through a portable mike when the building manager rushed out and announced that “You can’t do that here.”
It was private property, the manager said tensely and when the demonstrators tried to discuss it, he hurried off to call the police.
By the time he returned, however, the demonstration had moved on.
At the Federal Bldg. on Liberty Ave. where several more demonstrators were waiting, the group set the wooden coffin down in the outdoor plaza, and after Kessler read from one of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s writings, they tossed into the coffin some old phone bills and income tax forms as a symbolic gesture.
Several dozen persons who gathered to watch included four or five young men preparing to enlist at Armed Forces offices inside the building.
“It’s a shame.” said Robert DeRose Jr., 18, from Gallitzin in Cambria County, a sturdy, dark-haired youth who said — looking at his watch — he was to be sworn into the Navy “in 10 minutes.”
“All they’re doing is letting Communism spread around the world,” he said heatedly.
“Yet they’ll be the first to scream when Communism comes in.”
There was a humorous moment when five of the priests went inside to pay their self-reduced income tax and — even as any hapless taxpayer — were unwittingly directed by a solicitous Internal Revenue guide to the wrong line.
“I don’t take any money here,” the official told them after they had worked their way up to his desk and Fr. Donald McIlvane had introduced everyone all around and explained their purpose. “You have to give it to the cashier.”
The cashier proved to be an attractive redhead at the other end of the room who listened politely to the priests’ explanations, smiled and said, “Thank you,” as she accepted each payment.
The procession’s religious aura commanded respect — the prayers, the obvious concern for peaceful protest, the appeal to Christian principles, as the marchers see those principles.
But the intensity of the division this war has generated was reflected by the reaction of a stumpy, graying man on one streetcorner.
“They’re a bunch of Communists,” he told a companion contemptuously.
“They wouldn’t do that in Russia.”
“Not in East Germany either,” his friend replied in a strong foreign accent.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Tax Problems Dog Catholic Worker Movement
By NC News Service New York (NC) —
“My little case is to explain to the court that performing the corporal works of mercy is indeed charitable even under the standards imposed by our government, and I refuse to apply for tax exemption.”
With those words Dorothy Day, the 74-year-old founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has summarized what she expects to say when she appears in a federal court in Lewisburg, Pa.
Miss Day will have to explain why the Catholic Worker movement has not paid $296,359 in fines, penalties and back income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for the past six years.
A confirmed pacifist, Miss Day has opposed the theory of a just war, a theory that has been foremost in her decision not to apply for federal tax exemption.
“Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the works of mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which brings on wars today,” she said.
“One of the most costly protests against war in the way of long enduring personal sacrifice is to refuse to pay income taxes for war,” she wrote recently in the Catholic Worker newspaper.
She argues that the Catholic Worker organization has never paid salaries.
Its volunteer workers are given room, board, clothing and free instruction in the Catholic Worker movement.
“So we do not need to pay federal income taxes,” she contends.
“I’m sure that many will think me a fool indeed, almost criminally negligent for not taking more care to safeguard, not just the bank account, but the welfare of all the lame, halt, and blind — deserving or undeserving poor — who come to us.”
Miss Day told NC News Service she considers the tax investigations a “harassment by the federal government” because the Catholic Worker movement is against all war.
The Catholic Worker is not incorporated as a religious organization and therefore is not exempt from paying federal income taxes.
She said the Catholic Worker does not incorporate because it is a principal of the movement to avoid all ties with the state.
She says the Catholic Worker did not set up a defense committee to campaign for Catholic funds.
“I can only trust that this crisis will pass,” she said.
“I am sure that some way will be found either to avert the disaster, or for us to continue to care for our old, sick, helpless, hungry and homeless if it happens,” she said.
The National Catholic Reporter reported that the “peace tax fund” idea had captured Catholic attention as well:
Applying papal suggestions
From tax dollars to peace fund
By Phil Haslanger
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Madison, Wis.—
Trying to apply papal suggestions to political realities is not the easiest job in the world.
Take, for example, Pope Paul’s suggestion in his encyclical Populorum Progressio that a world fund be established “to be made up of part of the money spent on arms, to relieve the most destitute of this world.”
For Dr. Daniel J. Guilfoil, a 39-year-old philosophy professor at Edgewood college here, that suggestion provided the key to his dream of having part of his tax money be deferred from military expenses to help the poor.
With the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives which would enable citizens to avoid paying war taxes on grounds of conscience (N.C.R., ), Guilfoil saw his dream moving closer to reality.
Although Guilfoil had worked for about two years to have his congressman, Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), introduce such a bill, the push which finally got the bill introduced came from a citizens group in Ann Arbor, Mich. under the leadership of Dr. David Bassett, a physician.
Neither Guilfoil nor the Ann Arbor group had any knowledge about each other — a fact Guilfoil interprets as both a weakness in the tactical effort and a sign that the bill embodies an idea whose time has come.
The path Guilfoil followed which led him to work for such legislation was not dissimilar from that followed by other liberal Catholics in the wake of Vatican Ⅱ.
As enthusiasm for the declarations of the council yielded to frustration over the pace of change, Guilfoil, his wife, Barbara (“She’s probably more activist than I am”) and their nine children became a part of Madison’s John ⅩⅩⅢ experimental community.
With the community, they worked on civil rights and open housing legislation and, in Guilfoil’s words, “moved into the peace movement, if you will, as a connected issue.”
Working with the social action committee of Madison Area Community of Churches to establish a draft counseling center, Guilfoil became sensitive to the witness offered by conscientious objectors and he began to think that “the principle of alternative service should be extended to all people,” not just to draftable young men.
At the same time, he was aware of the growing tax resistance movement to protest the war and he was considering the implications of Populorum Progressio.
The various threads were woven together by Guilfoil and other members of John ⅩⅩⅢ into a petition, signatures were gathered and a resolution was adopted by the social action committee of the diocesan priests’ senate urging “legislation to create an alternate fund to administer to the needs of people.”
From there, more signatures were collected and on , Guilfoil talked with Kastenmeier about the possibility of having legislation to that effect introduced.
The congressman responded favorably and suggested the petitions and information be sent to his administrative assistant.
Kastenmeier’s office considered the proposal, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for such a bill.
Some time later the idea of just such a bill was stirring in Ann Arbor.
By fall the World Peace Tax Fund steering committee had been established.
According to Arthur Mack, the committee’s corresponding secretary, a second committee was established in Washington to lobby towards such legislation.
Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Cal.) liked the idea and put his office to work on rounding up cosponsors.
In , he and the other nine congressmen introduced the “bill and saw it referred to the House Ways and Means committee.
, Guilfoil prodded the faculty of Edgewood college to “go on record as supporting the right of all citizens to the privilege of the status of ‘conscientious objector.’ ”
, he convinced the social action commission of Blessed Sacrament parish in Madison to unanimously adopt a resolution asking the parish council to educate the parish “on the theology of alternate service.”
Resolutions written by Guilfoil supporting the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund act the bill pending in the House were adopted by both the Second District caucus of the Democratic party (Madison) and, most significantly of all, by the State Democratic party as a part of its platform.
Guilfoil sees his efforts on the local level as part of the push to draw national attention to the bill.
He said he hopes the National Conference of Catholic Bishops will consider supporting the legislation, and he would like to see other national groups support the bill.
As for the realistic chances of getting the bill out of committee and passed into law, Guilfoil admits, “I’m not optimistic.
But if you told me two years ago it would even be a bill now. I wouldn’t have believed you.”
He sees lobbying combined with education as the lever to getting the bill moving.
“There’s enough sentiment today that taxes are being directed foolishly,” he says.
“It’s a matter of getting people aware that straight people can think about these things.”
For Catholic groups, he added, the concepts of the bill “must be tied to the pacifist and just war traditions of the church — the doctrine of the church is surely important.”
As for Guilfoil himself, he is not waiting for the government to pass legislation which will make that papal suggestion a political reality.
He has joined with others in the state to form a Wisconsin Peace Fund.
The specifics of the group haven’t been worked out yet, but basically, members will put a part of their tax money into the fund and the group will disperse it to local causes.
What Guilfoil and the people in Ann Arbor hope is that someday that peace fund will be on a national or even international level.
The World Peace Tax Fund act has helped sustain that hope.
The issue of National Catholic Reporter reported on a national war tax resistance conference and included a sidebar on “How tax resisters resist taxes.” From the opening paragraphs, it appears that a political endorsement was on the agenda, suggesting that the conference was much more mainstream-liberal then than it is now (I doubt such an endorsement would be seriously considered by a NWTRCC conference these days):
War tax resisters
Can’t quite “endorse” McGovern
Jim Castelli, Associate Editor
Kansas City, Mo. —
The second National War Tax Resistance Conference, attended by about 40 persons from around the country, gave what amounted to a qualified endorsement to the presidential candidacy of Senator George McGovern.
The tax resisters approved a statement praising McGovern for his promises to end the war, cut military spending, restudy the entire tax system and support a guaranteed annual income.
The statement also said the political climate in the country would substantially improve with McGovern as president and that he would end “repressive” actions by the government.
But the tax resisters also said they saw a negative side to McGovern, saying he “completely believes in maintaining United States power in the world” and that providing more arms for Israel, as McGovern has said he would do, is not the way to end the crisis in the Middle East.
Despite such criticisms, the statement said that most of the participants would probably vote for McGovern.
Discussion indicated that those at the conference not voting for McGovern would either vote for Dr. Benjamin Spock, the People’s Party candidate, or not vote at all.
One participant suggested that applying pressure on McGovern from the left would let voters see him as a moderate, and therefore more acceptable.
Another noted that because War Tax Resistance has strong anarchistic tendencies, a statement in support of McGovern might induce some anarchists to vote in this election.
The conference was held at St. Mark’s church, an unusual church in that it is staffed by Protestant and Catholic clergy.
The participants, for the most part, wore sandals, well-worn jeans and long hair but weren’t all young.
They came from both coasts and such cities as Denver, Chicago and Ann Arbor, Mich.
Also coming out of the conference was an agreement to draw up a statement on what the focus of the war tax resistance movement should be when the war ends.
It was agreed tax resisters should continue to oppose the domination of the federal budget by the military and the centralization of power in the hands of governmental and corporate structures.
This opposition, the participants said, should include presenting alternatives, such as a nonviolent peace-keeping force and a blueprint for converting to an economy based on peace — for example, an analysis of how to shift the emphasis at Boeing Aircraft to building mass transportation facilities.
The conference expressed opposition to key segments of the World Peace Fund Tax Act, a measure introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and nine other legislators.
The bill would allow taxpayers who qualified for conscientious objector status under Selective Service standards to divert the percentage of their taxes slated for the military to a “world peace tax board,” which would study peaceful alternatives to international conflict.
The major objections to the bill were the screening process to obtain the conscientious objector status and the fact that the alternative funds would still be controlled at the national level, preventing tax money from being used in the community from which it was paid.
No specific action was taken at the conference on the bill, but Robert Calvert, coordinator of War Tax Resistance, said he expects a new national working committee to try to rework the bill in .
Calvert, in an interview, said the number of Americans withholding taxes because of the war is growing.
He estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 are either refusing to page the 10 per cent federal telephone excise tax, which is used for the war, or refusing to pay all or part of their income tax.
At present, he said, there are 192 war tax resistance centers in the U.S.
He added that each regional office of the Internal Revenue Service now has a person or department dealing with taxpayers protesting the war.
“We’d love to get our hands on the IRS list,” he said.
“They have many more names of resisters than we have because many people resist on their own without working with a local center.”
The two main purposes of the conference were organizational: the creation of a working committee, and the question of whether or not to move the national office from New York to Kansas City.
The proposal to move the office was approved, partly because of expected lower operating costs, but mostly because War Tax Resistance wants to be closer to “middle America.”
The move is expected to be made by the end of the year.
The working committee, now being assembled, will consist of representatives of national regions and the seven state area around Kansas City.
The committee is to meet every two months beginning in .
How tax resisters resist taxes
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, Mo.—
How do you resist paying taxes as a protest against the war, and what happens when you do?
Interviews conducted at the second annual National War Tax Resistance Conference and materials put out by the movement provide these answers:
There are a variety of ways to resist taxes:
Withholding the federal telephone excise tax, withholding all or part of the federal income tax, not filing a tax return at all, paying taxes under protest and keeping one’s earnings below a taxable level.
All have a different set of consequences.
The most common form of resistance is withholding the telephone tax, says Robert Calvert, coordinator of the War Tax Resistance organization.
The telephone tax, which helps finance the war, currently is 10 per cent.
To withhold it, resisters simply deduct the tax when they pay their phone bills, explaining that it is a protest against the war, not against the phone company.
Members of War Tax Resistance say that telephone companies have told resisters that their service will not be interrupted, and that they regard the protest as a matter between the individual and the government.
They point out, however, that phone companies do provide the Internal Revenue Service with the names of resisters.
The experience of resisters is that, after several written demands for payment, IRS can usually secure payment by attaching the resister’s bank account, taking the amount of the unpaid tax, plus up to six per cent interest.
Technically, a person who resists the telephone tax is liable to a year’s imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, but so far the government has been satisfied with collection, resisters say.
In Calvert’s opinion, the government might still decide to arrest telephone tax resisters.
But, he adds, it has been the history of movements such as tax resistance that they are strengthened by governmental crackdowns.
Resisting income taxes is more difficult because taxes are withheld from most people’s wages during the year.
Thus, resisters who owe money at the end of the year can refuse to pay it or, through the use of such tactics as claiming more dependents than they actually have, file for a refund.
Income tax resistance is viewed more seriously by the government; resisters have been jailed, but penalties are greater for falsification of income tax returns or failure to file than for refusal to pay.
(Any tax returns indicating resistance should be accompanied by a letter explaining the nature of the protest.)
So far, however, either because their returns have been accepted by IRS computers, or because appeals proceedings can take years, most resisters have still not had to pay taxes.
Tax resisters advise against keeping withheld tax money, however.
The organization instead advises putting the money into alternate funds which may be used to assist tax resisters who are challenged by the government.
The government can seize personal property such as cars and houses for public auction to bring in the owed taxes.
(Whatever money is brought in over and above the taxes and auction fees is returned to the resister.)
These auctions have become occasions for peace demonstrations.
An auction for a car that had been seized from a Kansas man for tax resistance heard bids of Vietnamese tears, coffins, and napalmed babies.
Also, a resister can often arrange to have friends or a resistance center make the actual purchase at the auction.
The use of withholding allowances as a means of tax resistance was devised by John Egnal, a lawyer from Philadelphia representing resister Jack Malinowski.
Malinowski was charged with supplying “false information” on his tax status; he had claimed 14 dependents (the number of other people in the Philadelphia tax resistance center), an amount which negated his tax for the year.
He was found guilty, but has not as yet been sentenced.
The problem with past methods of tax resistance is that they are all technically illegal because they hinge on a yes or no answer to questions regarding certain parts of the internal revenue code.
The use of withholding allowances, however, seems to avoid this situation.
An employee fills out IRS form W-4 to indicate to his employer the number of deductions he will claim for the coming year; form W-4E indicates that no tax liability has been incurred for the year, usually because of income below the taxable level.
People who expect to have a large number of itemized deductions can enter a number of withholding allowances — converted from dollar figures by a chart on the back of the W-4 form — which will reduce tax payments; this way, higher taxes are not paid and then refunded at the end of the year.
Egnal holds that “the withholding allowance claim would be applicable to any tax resister who believed that, as a result of the illegal and immoral conduct of the U.S. government, some or all of the federal taxes claimed could not lawfully be collected.
“If one held such a belief… it would be necessary to improvise some basis for preparing one’s income tax returns, since IRS has not, as yet, seen fit to follow the law of this country, which includes not only the Internal Revenue code, but also numerous principles of international law to which the U.S. has subscribed.”
This improvisation, according to Egnal, would be a “war crimes deduction” for which a withholding allowance could be entered.
Egnal, claims that if the government were to prosecute such a resister, “the only false statement they could point to would be ‘I am entitled to a war crimes deduction because…’
Such a statement reflects a legal conclusion which has never been ruled upon by any court, and which… enjoys the support of many noted scholars.”
Even if the courts eventually rule that such deductions are illegal, Egnal points out that past rulings would not allow prosecution because the fact that the legal question was in doubt erases the possibility of “willfully” breaking the law.
A similar situation exists with form W-4E, which states “Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for federal income tax for and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for federal income tax for .”
A resister could, according to Egnal, use the “war crimes deduction” to justify the claim that he was not liable for any taxes.
(A follow-up brief in the issue read: “There was some discussion at the annual conference of War Tax Resistance that if McGovern lost the election, his followers would make a prime target for the tax resistance movement.
He lost, and the war is still going on; if it drags on until income tax time, it will be interesting to see if there is an increase in tax resistance.”
Another, in the issue read: “The war tax resistance movement has found a new home in Mid-America — Kansas City.
The organization moved from New York to save money and to be physically closer to ‘middle Americans.’
Nearby Independence, Mo. is the national headquarters of the paramilitary Minutemen, but tax resistance members don’t expect any hassles.
One resister joked, ‘Maybe we can learn something from them about grassroots organization.’
The new address will be 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo.”)
The same issue included this opinion piece:
War taxes and conscience
“It is the issue of coresponsibility and complicity that will become salient”
By Roderick Hindery
Even if United States military forces in Indochina should be reduced to a residual element or less before or after the election, the war will remain an issue crucial for the conscience and morale of those who led it and those who were coresponsible.
It is particularly the issue of coresponsibility or complicity that will become salient.
The fact that the Indochina war was explicitly rejected by millions who simultaneously supported it by taxes and other forms of cooperation may make the judgment of Nuremberg the question of the present era:
“that a person acted pursuant to the order of his government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
One of the more constructive expressions of an emerging consciousness of coresponsibility for military action is the World Peace Tax Fund Act (N.C.R. ).
Although the bill may never escape committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as one attempt to legislate an alternative to economic participation in war for those conscientiously opposed, it is enormously important.
The rationale attached to the bill argues that since compulsory significant participation in war against one’s religious conscience is opposed to the original spirit of the First Amendment, the law should allow a realistic alternative such as contributions to qualified peace-related activities — for example, research toward non-military solutions of conflict.
The compatibility of alternate contributions with responsible citizenship is defended by reference to Christian tradition, the traditions of the United States, judicial interpretations and legal precedents.
In a survey of some of the bill’s ramifications, the authors assure their readers that tried and proven standards for determining authentic conscientious objector status can also be applied to military tax objectors.
As for other possible abuses, it is alleged that the Peace Tax Fund’s passage would not open the floodgates to earmarking tax dollars because opposition to war involves a right of conscience that is uniquely fundamental.
In a concluding section entitled “Effectiveness,” the Peace Tax Fund proposal realistically admits that the military budget would not decrease unless Congress were persuaded by the fund’s growth to reduce the priority of military spending.
Tax exemption is primarily a means to that end.
In noting that the bill would “force” taxpayers to decide whether they can support military spending, the authors underline the thesis with which we began — the importance of an emerging consciousness about coresponsibility for war through military spending.
The Peace Tax Fund, of course, is not the only path of dissent being explored.
An increasing body of tax resisters (192 listed groups in the United States) have experimented with alternatives ranging from individual protests to communal resistance and harassment of the Internal Revenue Service.
Taxes are withheld totally or in amounts proportionate to military spending by the government.
Equivalent sums are donated to social and charitable causes.
However, if the citizen takes steps to insure that military taxes are not confiscated from his salary or property, he is liable to legal sanction.
While refusal to work for taxable wages and emigration are further options, emigration alone may offer the only route toward a “pure non-cooperation.”
When economic systems can support war by deficit spending and by the transfer of non-military funds to military budgets, even participation in a future World Peace Tax Fund would not neutralize the fact that living within a military economy is itself a kind of cooperation in war.
The option most commonly followed is to justify support of military spending as a means of buying time and freedom to work toward a less militaristic administration.
None of these options to economic military support necessarily presuppose a totally pacifistic position.
In principle they also apply to citizens concerned with the justice of supporting particular wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions, or exorbitantly massive forms of national defense.
In each of these instances it is maintained that money becomes power and weaponry which kills against one’s conscience.
What was always true is becoming increasingly obvious.
Conscientious objection is a problem not only for draftees but for all taxpayers and their dependents.
The fact that the problem is not yet widely recognized is partly grounded in a profound dilemma never resolved in the history of theoretical ethics and only tenuously confronted by national constitutions and international law.
The dilemma can be expressed in two questions:
1) Is there not a basic and inalienable human right/duty not to kill against one’s conscience?
2) If this right/duty is inalienable, how can the right/duty of national defense override it?
Within the legal dimension the dilemma is not yet totally resolved.
The Russian Constitution, for instance, legislates that the duty of defense supersedes freedom of conscience.
The United States Constitution refers to no such priority, only to a religious freedom which implicitly presupposes a prior freedom of conscience in matters so basic as killing.
No subsequent legislation has inverted that valuation, and judicial decisions consistently interpret the Constitution in favor of the primacy of conscience (at least in reference to opposition to war in general).
This priority of conscience was explicitly confirmed by the principles of Nuremberg, which were approved by the United States and promulgated as international law by the United Nations in .
In principle the United States accepts international law as an authority which obliges its own citizens.
In the United States the priority of conscience still needs clearer and more explicit legislation.
The unconstitutionality of compulsory war tax may be argued from the perspective of the written Constitution (intentions or actual practice of the framers or citizens who first ratified it) or from the viewpoint of the living constitution (manifested in judicial decisions or people’s referendums).
From either or both of these methodological perspectives the priority of conscience may be argued more cogently than it has in the past.
In other words, whatever may be said for or against other freedoms of conscience, the liberty not to kill, when killing is judged immoral, is unique.
It is so basic to the freedom of conscience which the Constitution presupposes, that there is need of an explicit amendment or other legislation to guide courts in deciding all cases involved.
A bill like the World Peace Tax Fund, while not as irreversible or desirable as a constitutional amendment, is needed to help explicate what is already implicit at the legal level.
Within the ambit of theoretical ethics which operate autonomously outside or within various world religions, the priority of the right not to kill against one’s conscience is in jeopardy due to two as yet unsolved theoretical controversies.
The first controversy is the one engendered by classic utilitarianism’s principle that morality is always determined by whatever serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
As recently as John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. Press, ; cf. The New York Times Book Review, ), philosophers have joined in continued debate about the adequacy of the greatest happiness principle and have argued the pragmatic need to supplement it by postulating an equal and, in some ways, prior principle of justice:
Since certain individual rights of life or liberty are inalienable, their inviolability necessarily, if sometimes invisibly, brings about the greatest happiness.
This principle is not acceptable to everyone since it seems verifiable only in the future.
The second controversy has been sharpened by analysis of ethical language.
Are rights something people merely feel about and confer or bestow on one another?
If rights are dependent on what others think of us or what they contract with us, how can rights be inalienable?
Or, if some rights are inalienable, what is the source of human certitude in specifying them, intuition or what?
Ethical thought which is not rooted in heteronomous religious authority continues to founder on these two controversies and lacks the ringing certitude about inalienable rights proclaimed by the United States Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or by the international principles of Nuremberg.
Consequently, the sources of national and international laws manifest a greater unanimity and authority than do conflicting approaches in theoretical ethics.
Whoever does not immediately perceive the self-evidence of the liberty not to kill against one’s conscience will apparently function best when he appeals not to a universal authority in reasoned ethics but to the legal authority and presuppositions of constitutions or international law.
As mentioned previously, those who are convinced of conscientious objection’s legality should work for its logical extension into the economic sphere.
Not all wars or military spending appear so clearly immoral to so many people as does the war in Vietnam.
There are other issues on which progressives or conservatives may be divided among their own groups, e.g., future support of military operations in the Near East or Latin America, nuclear defense programs powerful enough to destroy the planet many times over, or foreign aid programs thought to be gravely exploitative and imperialistic.
The authors of the World Peace Tax Fund Act give assurances that exemption from war taxes would not open the floodgates for citizens who wish to earmark their tax dollars in other programs.
On the contrary, this concern may be offset with the judgment that, given a plurality of fundamental human rights, there may be many other crucial moral issues on which citizens should vote with their dollars.
The lasting merit of the growing war tax resistance movement may not be that it helped end the war in Indochina, but that it raised the question of citizens’ coresponsibility to the moral priority it deserves, not only in matters of war and peace, but in every matter of life and death.
The issue of citizens’ coresponsible decision-making entails more than the purity and liberty of individual consciences.
If free and informed decisions by greater numbers have anything to do with the effectiveness of democracy, the future of democracy itself may be involved.
Roderick Hindery teaches religious ethics at Temple university in Philadelphia.
The latest tax resistance news to hit the web:
Bridget J. Crawford and W. Edward Afield have a forthcoming paper in Tax Law Review in which they analyze the tax resistance of Dorothy Day.
The paper has some good background and overview of her tax resistance and her reasoning behind it, but the authors seem to mostly have the perspective that Day was mistaken and if she only realized what a marvelous social service and wealth-redistribution agency the government is, she would have changed her mind.
The IRS now has its hands on the big budget boost that was recently passed, and one of its first orders of business is to try to boost its depleted and aging workforce.
But that may be easier pledged than done, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The current job market is tight (especially in the finance sector, where the IRS is competing), and agency wages are stagnant against a background of inflation and wage growth in the private-sector.
Expedited hire authority and pay flexibility that were part of early versions of the funding bill were stripped from the final version, so the IRS must plod along as before, though with more budget to work with.
In addition, some of the positions the IRS is hoping to fill are in its hollowed-out human resources department: the same people responsible for recruiting, interviewing, and training new hires.
The founder and former owner of the outdoor recreation gear company Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, has transferred the ownership of the company to a non-profit focused on environmental causes.
If he had sold the company — which is worth something like $3 billion — or if his heirs had inherited it, this would have resulted in a huge tax bill.
But by giving the company entirely to a 501(c)(4) non-profit instead, he avoids those taxes.
So not only was Chouinard generous to environmental causes, he also was able to avoid funding the environmental wrecking ball of the U.S. government.
The U.S. federal government is seeing a surge in tax revenue.
Federal tax collections as a percentage of gross domestic product are higher than they’ve been since World War Ⅱ.
The largest component of this recent increase is from personal income taxes.
In part this is because wages are rising due to inflation and employer competition for labor.
There was an evacuation and large-scale police response at an IRS building in Memphis, Tennessee in response to reports of an “active shooter” in the building.
Those reports were later labeled “misinformation.”
This begins to look like it may have been a case of “swatting” — the use of false, anonymous reports of violent crime in progress to provoke a militarized police response against some target.
I’ve reported on a number of garden-variety bomb threats and “suspicious powder”-style incidents at IRS buildings in the past, but this is the first swatting I’m aware of.
I continue to be impressed at how tax resistance seems to be just part of how politics works in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The latest example comes from a rally by small businesspeople in Butembo, North Kivu who are protesting heavy-handed tax enforcement there.
![No Income Tax For War! Now Particularly the U.S. War in Vietnam. Statement: Because so much of the tax paid the federal government goes for poisoning of food crops, blasting of villages, napalming and killing of thousands upon thousands of people, as in Vietnam at the present time, I am not going to pay taxes on 1966 income. Name ___. Address ___. [In order to withdraw support from war, particularly the savage and expanding war in Southeast Asia– Some are refusing to pay their total tax, or some portion. ☐ Some have in advance lowered their income so as to owe none. ☐ (for our information, would you like to check which form of nonpayment you are following?) NOTE: There are laws which (although not usually applied to principled refusers) cover possible fine and jail term for non-payment of a legally-owed amount.]](noIncomeTaxForWar.png)
